#🎫 // arthur morgan

[fabricated-misslieness]

pairing: arthur morgan x male reader

req: no | wc: 2.1k

summary: After Arthur unfortunately loses Boadicea, he’s got to have a mode of transport. With the wagons full, he has to share a horse with someone. That someone happens to be you.

warnings: suggestive, reader blushes and it’s a visible color.

a/n: inspired by Cpt. Monroe and Eagle Flies' hand placement when they ride on the same horse as Arthur. turned out longer than i thought (mainly cause i didn't know where this was going)

Warmth. All you can think about is warmth.

You wanted warmth.

You were in need of it, after riding with the gang for hours at a time in this cold, desolate mountainscape. Why did nature even grow up here? Perhaps to survive in a place it could actually thrive in, just like you once upon a time. You missed it, the wide expanse of desert and rolling tumbleweed, sand beneath your feet and the warm oh… the warm sun. You’d hated it, then, only to be in desperate need of it now.

The sun, ah, she’s only there when you don’t need her.

That was you a few hours ago. Warmth was still plaguing your thoughts, though for a different reason now. At the present moment, it seemed as if you were in abundance of warmth. It was too much, felt like too much, but it was just enough.

Arthur Morgan.

Fucking hell, Arthur Morgan.

His, damn, big hands, big and warm, hooked between the length of your waist and your hip, held you lightly, as if the mere existence of a firmer touch could set you on fire. For the record, even the ghost of firmness, even the tips of one or two of his fingers at a time or the center of his palm gripping harder at your body was enough. God knows what’d happen if he had access to bare skin unlayered by your useless coats.

Arthur Morgan.

His chest hovered right behind you. The large expanse of his broad chest made you aware of his presence, if you weren’t aware of it on your own. You were painfully aware of it.

Silently, you thanked the mountains and cold for covering the fact you were blushing. Though if anyone put a hand to your forehead, they’d think you were sick. You wouldn’t put it past Miss Grimshaw to be concerned even with the cold or her tough love behavior.

There was not much you could distract yourself with, aside from the occasional yipping of a fox or mangled shadow coming into view (it was a weird tree); and you desperately needed something. Least you’d have a settlement to distract yourself with, if you even came across one. You’d been sent out as scouts for a reason. Then again, it’s already been a couple hours or so; you already lost track of time.

Arthur, on the other hand, didn’t seem to think of it much. If he were truly comfortable with you, though, he wouldn’t mind putting his chest to your back. So he was thinking about it, at least a little bit. Although, you thought he was comfortable enough with you. It certainly seemed like it sometimes. What even were you? The two of you?

One moment, you’re under the wide expanse of the night sky, huddled together for a bit of warmth and something more; the next, you’re half-way ‘cross camp from each other, not a thought in your heads about the other. Least, mostly. The spare glances from his seat at the poker table and yours at Pearson's wagon said otherwise.

His grip on your waist comes a little harder now, when his eyes catch another weird shadow. You’re vaguely aware of him peeking from behind your shoulder until you’re fully aware because of his cold breath against your ear. You can see the end of it from your peripheral.

“What do you reckon that is?”

“Hm?” So distracted, you barely registered his words.

“That.” He didn’t seem to notice.

“Oh, um, ‘nother tree?”

It was indeed another tree. Arthur sighed, slumping back down from his alerted position. God, he was tired of scouting. He wouldn’t have taken the duty if he had no qualms with sitting around in the misery and hopelessness of his fellow gang members, or if he had Boadicea for that matter.

Oh, Boadicea… he missed her.

“How’ve you been?” He distracts himself from thoughts of mourning by talking to you, which is exactly what you’ve been avoiding.

“G-Good.”

“Just ‘good’?”

To a certain degree, for varying reasons, “Yeah… just said so.”

Arthur can feel how tense you are under his fingers, and he sees the stiffness of your shoulders. That and the state of the gang after the Blackwater job. You’re not ‘good’, he can tell. “You sure yer good? Or, uh, anythin’ wrong?”

“Nothin’s wrong, Arthur.”

You don’t loosen up in the slightest, so he’s keen on knowing whether you’re really alright. ‘Sides, he knows you. “I've been riding with you for long. I know something’s off.”

“Couple hours?”

“Couple years, more like.” Right.

Arthur moves to continue speaking, to coerce your troubles out of your shut lips, before he is interrupted by a sharp yell. It's inhuman, he learns a second later, when a buck runs across the scape right in front of you. Your horse cries out too and jumps on his hind legs.

"Woah! Steady, steady!"

He has to cling onto your waist to keep himself from falling off as you calm your stead down. The moment ends within a minute, but Arthur clings on all the same.

It's after this that he notices a lot of things, your sharp inhale as the horse stands back on four legs, and the remaining stiffness from your alert pose. Even after, you can't find yourself calming down.

He loosens his grip eventually, and then he notices something else, too.

You sigh in relief once Arthur's grip loosens. Not that you weren't quite fond of it –made you feel rather secure, actually– you were just not in need of the scalding heat that it brought.

"Oh." Arthur breathes out audibly as he comes to a realization.

"Oh, wha-" You stop mid sentence as he grips at your waist hard again. You hate yourself for it, but you will admit that you let out an embarrassingly high squeal.

The squeal would've been higher had Arthur pressed his chest to your back at the same time, although it didn’t seem like you’d have to wait any longer for that, ‘cause he pulled that same gesture only a few seconds after.

"Nothin,” He chuckles, “just, thought that Buck's shout was a man's."

Right, nothing; of course it wasn't 'nothing'. Arthur Morgan had you fooled in one lovely way, but he did not have you fooled this way.

“Say, (y/n), I don’t see so much as a shiver in you.”

“Really?”

His grip tightens around your waist. Surely he’s caught on by now… but if he hadn’t, you weren’t going to reveal it to him any time soon. These thoughts about him, Arthur Morgan and his piercing actions that left you stunned, they weren’t new; yet, he hadn’t discovered their effects on you thus far, and you wanted to keep it that way.

For what? Fear of shame, embarrassment.

Though, it seems you couldn’t avoid that anymore.

“Not a peep of it.”

“I got a… tolerance, to the cold, ‘suppose.”

“Uh-huh,” He affirms at first, nodding his head. The tip of his hat bumps against the back of yours and pushes it forward. The brim of it covers the top of your field of view, urging you to look down just that little bit more. “supposedly, anyway.”

Just what was he planning?

Your eyes find his hands and you swear you can see them tighten. You can certainly feel it, too.

Arthur goes silent, so you do too, thanking whatever God decided to shut him up. His audacious actions hadn’t stopped, but at least you didn’t have his sharp tongue and deep voice to accompany them.

You thought that to be a miracle, his lips zipped shut, but where the absence they left was, his hands took over.

“What’re you doin’, Morgan?” You know what he’s doing, clear as day.

His fingers rub circles along your waist, slow and steady and pressing hard, but not too hard. They hold purpose, supposedly, but purpose you know nothing of.

You’re so focused on his fingers that you don’t notice where he keeps his lips. “Eyes on the road.”

The whisper comes right at your ear, along with the subtle touch of his lip against the shell of your ear. A shiver goes down your spine… so much for that tolerance earlier.

You follow his command, anyway, or at least what you can see of the road through the storm and his distracting actions.

Fucking hell, Arthur Morgan, the things you do to a man.

Focus on the road.

“Yer awfully warm there.”

You can’t focus on the road, not when Arthur’s right there. The cold tip of his nose presses against your warm cheek, and he leans his chin ‘gainst your shoulder. Rather bold of him, you think; then again, he’s done bolder things on occasions where you need less warmth and more breeze.

“...ain’t awful in this d-damned hellscape.”

He chuckles, “Y’got that right.”

You bask in the silence that ensues, and even more, you bask in the warmth of him. The scalding heat, like that of your beloved west’s summer sun, that is Arthur’s touch soon becomes comfortable, nice and cozy, like a campfire.

Oh, sitting by campfires was so warm. But Arthur… he, was warmer.

His cold breath hits you right on the cheek like the kiss of a breeze, which in this snowy circumstance is not what you’re looking for, yet it doesn’t drain the heat from your cheeks. And his hands, phew, they work their way down to your hips, finding a steady grip around them. His pinkies work away on the meat of your…

Eyes… eyes on the road.

“Shit! Woah, woah, steady!”

Suddenly, Arthur is thrown off your horse. You’re barely on it, if it weren’t for your deathly (you hadn’t noticed) grip on the reins.

You’d run into a goddamn tree.

You turn, quickly after settling your horse down, to Arthur. The cowboy’s on his ass, on the ground, sunken in a good fifteen centimeters into the pure white. His entire backside –calfs, thighs, hair and all– is covered in a nice layer of snow.

Horror spreads through your face. This was all your fault-

Then, he laughs. He laughs it off, and you follow suit. He distracted you, you remember that now. If anything, it was his fault. And god, if the sight of him messy like this wasn’t hilarious. His mouth is wide, wide open, and even in this bastard of a storm, he’s laughing loud.

Until he’s not.

Suddenly, he’s coughing, and your concern is back. “Arthur? Arthur, y’alright?”

Clearly, he’s not. “I-khoff” He clears his throat, “I, er, think I swallowed some,” (a lot) “snowflakes.”

And you’re laughing again. It’s only after a lung-full of air that you realize you should get moving. “Get up, cowboy! ‘Fore you freeze your ass off.”

“Not helping me, darlin’?” Yet, he stands up on his own.

“Sure.”

So you go behind him, resist all your urge to touch his ass for longer than you need, and wipe him down. Arthur wipes himself down, too, best he can, but for the most part it’s your labor. Still, you don’t fail to notice the shiver in him, regardless of your swift work.

He turns to you, bashful, when you’ve got most of it off. “Seem to have frozen my ass off anyway.” He clears his throat, and despite that fondling he’d done earlier, rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “Can I take the reins?”

“Um,” You think about it for a mere second. She was your horse, but this was Arthur Morgan. Even if you’d done the same fondlin’, he’d have handled it better than you. Eyes on the road. “sure.”

Arthur settles on your horse, with you behind him. You’re sure why he’s asked for this, a hug or more than that to warm him down, just as he’d once done to you. He needed that warmth, more than you, after all.

After falling into snow, he was extremely cold, not that it wasn’t obvious. You could notice his shivering, with your arms wrapped tight around him; and from the close proximity, it wracked your body almost like it did his. Your hands were cold, too, from wiping him off, so you kept them intertwined to be warmed up and used later. Your chin found refuge on his shoulder, and Arthur could feel you just like you did earlier.

Yet, even with this cold, he felt warm. You’re sure it’s the butterflies of love or the knowing that you were holding the man you oh so adored; but it was also that Arthur was a warm man, big grizzly bear as he was.

You press a kiss to his temple. Arthur seems to lean into it.

“When this is all over, I’m takin’ ya out on a date.”

“Planning on courtin’ me, Arthur?”

“I thought I was already.”