#arthur is a kind ghost

[redrum-alice]

Girl (CJ) meets Ghost (Arthur)

Short info: Arthur followed CJ home in a cat’s body bc he can see her in purgatory— another human he encountered so far after nearly 70 years :)

Arthur died at the age of 14 and woke up not knowing where to go, yet he was sure he was tasked to do something but he couldn’t remember

CJ is a 13 yr old middle schooler who has been applying part time jobs because she feels like she needed to repay her adoptive family the expenses they spent on her care…even though they kept saying they love her unconditionally (the girl has anxiety and trust issues mkay, leave her be)

[arthursfuckinghat]

Another ghost sighting, whatever she went through sounded heartbreaking.

[cheshiresbakery]

cheshire's interview

"by the way .. if you'd really like to knooow .. he went, that way. ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚"

୨ৎ about me

hello there, my name is cheshire. i’m a new writer with an average vocabulary, i’ve written privately but never publicly. i don’t currently have a schedule for when i’ll publish/produce content. this was last updated september eighteenth, 2024.

i’m 19 years old, and i’m a capricorn. i’m interested in cod, avatar(09/aww), marvel, rdr2 and other things.

୨ৎ about my blog (important things are highlighted in pink.)

this blog is strictly for adults (18+), minors do not interact. you will be blocked. if you ever spot a minor on my page, please report to me in my ask box or contact me, don't be shy. i will be publishing SFW and NSFW content and Dead Dove ; Do not eat content, prompts, blurbs and fanfics. normal romance and dark romance. warnings will always be used, please protect yourself and do not ignore your triggers. warnings will be there, and i will not be responsible so please don't blame me! C:

୨ৎ boundaries

i will not write about certain things. a list of them . . . ageplay, raceplay, pedophilia, scat or any bodily fluids besides little blood. i will not entertain necrophilia or woundfucking, nor STDs/HIV. bestiality is a huge no as well. The list goes on a little more but isn’t noted.  Sometimes tumblr will eat asks/questions, if the wish is within the rules and boundaries you can send one more time! but, please do not send me anything disgusting. Do not send me gore, or websites I will not open them. Do not send me porn links, they will be ignored and not posted. Though of course you can send me your prompts / writings and I will gladfully read them! ♡ it’s possible for me to write male(amab) readers … but i strongly prefer female(afab) concepts, as i am female and i prefer to stay in my comfort zone. i’m not saying it will never happen though.

"you may have noticed .. that im not all there myself ˚ʚ♡ɞ˚"

[theonekierce]

finally did some arthur designs 👁👁

[fivekrystalpetals]

Pandora Hearts really took up the trope of Dead Men Tell No Tales and fucking ran with it

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

(first sentence meme)

Now he wasn't saying the place was haunted, but he definitely wasn't not saying it, either.

(fandom and character/au of choice!)

(y'know it's been a minute since i did anything msa... and per usual i'm absolute dogshit at sticking to that sentence limit. honestly i forgot it even existed this time) (src - still open!)

It wasn't just the age—though it was old—but old places weren't inherently haunted, in Arthur's opinion. Sure, every place tended to acquire a sort of... flavor, over time, as they were lived in, but sometimes that vibe was calm. Peaceful.

This place was—not. It was not that, even if Vivi apparently couldn't feel it. It had an almost oppressive air of anger to it, low and simmering, like the old walls were glaring daggers down at them. And it felt... there was this nagging in the back of his head, like something he was forgetting that he should have remembered. Something important about this place. That meant something.

Per usual, though, his vocal complaints were being ignored—until they came to a bigger room. It might have been some kind of theater, once, or a performance hall, or—

Any speculation was cut short when the centerpiece of the room—sparked, immediately making everything else a distantly secondary concern. That feeling of hatred spiked with it, too, sending his heart rate instantly through the roof—and seriously, if Vivi thought he was still making shit up now—

"You've got a lot of nerve, K," a voice echoed around the vast room, "waltzing back in here like nothing's wrong."

The fire—the fire that radiated an entire spectrum of warm colors, edging into a magenta that couldn't be anything natural—coalesced into a form that was starting to look almost—human.

"Your expression says you maybe haven't remembered me yet," it—he says. "That's fine."

He waves one hand, and a whip of fire whirls around the edge of the room, making doors that definitely weren't there before all slam in an almost rhythmic thunk-thunk-thunk.

A pair of neon-white eyes glare like they're trying to burn holes through his skull. It feels almost like they're succeeding.

"I'm more than happy to help remind you."

[deerpun]

A ref for Art!

[nostalgia-tblr]

spoilers from 1989 btw

Am I overthinking things (again) or is the stuff in Curse of Fenric where we're introduced to Millington with his Hitler-room where he's got a copy of a room in Berlin so that he can learn to think like the Nazis, and then by the end he's planning to blow up Moscow with the Weird Green Stuff, ie he has indeed learned to think like the Nazis? Which'd tie in with that vicar's loss of faith because of what The Good Guys have done in the war, wouldn't it? So is it a thing?

Last time I overthought Curse of Fenric I ended up wondering about the significance of Millington's "had to lock some men with a fire to save the ship" story coming about two scene's before Ace's gran gets the telegram saying that her husband's died in a fire on a ship and I was like "...is this implying that's what happened to him too?" because it does sound exactly like the telegram those men's wives would have got doesn't it? The navy wouldn't say "oh yeah we had to lock them in" they'd just there was a fire. And I never decided if that was what was being implied or if it's a "and now here's how that incident looked from another perspective" or if it's just two unrelated stories about men dying on boats. But it'd be odd if it was just that? So I dunno!

[lonepower]

oh There's a missed opportunity that I hope someone has capitalized on 👀👀👀👀

[idiopathicsmile]

you know what really grinds my gears?

okay, bear with me: so as you may know, harry houdini and arthur conan doyle were friends, at least for a while.

by the early 1920s, both arthur conan doyle and acd's wife jean, aka lady doyle, believed whole-heartedly in spiritualism, talking to ghosts and all of that. (sidenote: this was of course right on the heels of a devastating world war and a devastating pandemic, both of which had created a huge population of grieving people, so spiritualism was having a moment.)

lady doyle sincerely thought she had the ability to go into a trance state and pass along messages in writing from the dead. she offered to do this for houdini. houdini agreed.

lady doyle attempted to channel houdini's late mother. she basically drew a cross at the top of the paper and filled it with generic platitudes addressed to "harry." houdini's mom was jewish and didn't talk like that, so houdini knew the jig was up, even if lady doyle didn't. but not wanting to make the situation awkward, he kind of went along with it to their faces.

then acd decided to publish a glowing account of the seance, and since both he and houdini were super famous, it got a lot of attention, and letters started pouring in for houdini, asking if this was true. ultimately, houdini couldn't lie about it. so he essentially said, like, "yeah, i think lady doyle THINKS she can talk to ghosts but she absolutely can't." and it ruined his friendship with acd forever.

and then of course a lot of the people running seances weren't even well-intentioned like lady doyle, they were just simple charlatans taking advantage of traumatized people mourning loved ones. in houdini's youth, he and his wife had traveled the carnival circuit where he did an act pretending to commune with spirits, so he knew all the tricks of the trade AND he had lingering guilt over having done this, AND he was infuriated by this increasingly popular wave of con artists so he decided to assemble a team of anti-grifting grifters and together they went on the road exposing whichever spiritualists were preying on the locals.

houdini's best agent was a young woman named rose mackenberg, who donned disguises to visit the fraud de jour and then importantly sussed out what non-supernatural thing was actually happening, and then houdini would demonstrate the techniques onstage to packed audiences.

(if you want to know more, check out episode 175, "ghost racket crusade" of the podcast Criminal or read Tony Wolf's book The Real-Life Ghostbusting Adventures of Rose Mackenberg.)

but yeah, what really gets my goat is that all this happened and as far as i know, we still don't have like four seasons of a Leverage-style historical procedural about rose mackenberg and the rest of the crew having adventures in the 1920s as they unmask craven hucksters all over the united states. (what we do have, apparently, is one season of a show called "houdini and doyle" which is about the oddball friendship of two contrasting men solving sometimes-actually-supernatural mysteries, and whose premise does i think at the very least a real disservice to houdini's whole quest and also totally erases rose, who is arguably the most interesting part of this story to me.)

i am just steamed about this. steamed.

[sakuravalelp]

Ellie(Dani) didn't realize how dangerous Danny's home was for him until he was more worried about her when she got her own home. - Prompt I think(?)

Ellie wasn't sure how to feel when Danny excitedly animated her to accept Arthur's invitation to live in Atlantis.

"Just if you want of course, but you'll get a stable home, and Frostbite said living underwater might be good for your water cores stability."

She had already been planning to accept the offer. Once she gave the guy an opportunity to have some sort of conversation, the guy was pretty chill, and the castle was pretty cool. So yeah, she was going to accept the offer.

But for some reason Danny's eagerness for her to go with Arthur hurt. It felt like he was trying to get rid of her.

She knew that was ridiculous, she didn't even live with Danny. He looked out for her, and was always a call away but, as much as Danny parents her, he was just a child like her. It made sense he was happy to give away the responsibility of taking care of her.

So when Ellie moved into Atlantis, she was expecting to hear less from Danny. After all, she had settle down, and he didn't need to worry about her adventures anymore. That was Arthur's and Mera's job now.

Weirdly enough, it was the complete opposite.

Now that Ellie was living with adults, Danny seemed MORE worried for her. They went from a call once a week or so, to almost daily calls in the afternoons. He would be more insistent about her telling him if anything was wrong.

He would ask specifics about the food she was eating, and her activities of the day, and her room, and the castles security...

Sam had told her that it was because he used to be able to monitor if she was eating well through the transactions of the debit card they had given her. Tuck had told her that he used to evaluate how safe she was through the phones location, and the hotels receipts.

And well, maybe she underestimated how much attention Danny put on her before, but the way the calls went made it seem like he thought she might be in more danger now that she had a stable home.

Which made no sense, because unlike him, she didn't even need to hide her ghostlines. Anything that was out of normal for Atlanteans was excused with meta-abilities, she didn't need to worry about being classified as a non-sentient species.

That was when it caught up to her. Danny was worried now that she was in a stable home because his stable home had always been dangerous for him. It isn't even a think of it being dangerous now that his a ghost, it has been dangerous ever since he was a child. She remembers all of Jazz's rants about how unreliable their parents have always been.

The food has always been contaminated. The security now attacked him directly, but there had always been a possibility of it malfunctioning and hurting the residents. Him and Jazz had always had the responsibilities of not only keeping the house clean, but the lab as well. If she tops it with the house security system attacking him, and his parents been ghost hunters...

Ellie hadn't found it too dangerous back then, Danny mocked Jazz rants with her, and Jack and Maddie were kind when they interacted with her in her human form. The Fentons neglect seemed liberating in comparison to Vlad overly controlling nature. But thinking about it now, after two months living in Atlantis, she doesn't like the picture.

She doesn't like the idea of Danny being somewhere so unsafe, but where would he go? He doesn't have a water core like her, and even if he had gotten sorta used to shapeshifting, he isn't good enough to live in a second form, which isn't recommendable either way. So he wouldn't be able to move underwater with her.

More so, she doubts that Danny would like to leave his Amity, he had taken the sole responsibilities of dealing with the whole humans - ghost conflicts. With the anti-ecto acts, there's no way he would leave the portal unsupervised.

What should she do now? Should she talk with Arthur about it? He said he was part of the heros friend group, what if they already know about the anti-ecto acts and are okay with it? What if they change hoe they act with her when she tells them she isn't actually an atlatean meta?

[sprout-fics]

Yarrow in Bloom

(Arthur Morgan x Reader)

Rating: Explicit (MDNI) Wordcount: 13.5k Tags: Angst, Fluff, Female Reader, Flashbacks, Blood/Injury, Vaginal sex, Slowburn, Hurt/Comfort, Happy ending, The only thing I'll write for RDR2 I swear, (doesn't post for months, drops 13k, leaves)

Summary: You lose him. He finds you. Despite everything, you still love him.

The sun sets quickly north of Annesburg, golden resplendent twilight of the mountains soaking your lonely mountain cabin in long shadows of citrine and amber where the evening wind sweeps through the aging firs. The old creak of wood floorboards under your feet is a familiar echo to the solitude of your existence, here on the fringes of the rapidly dwindling frontier you call home. The logs in your fireplace crack, the stew inside offering a slow simmer of venison and wild carrots that curls through the air of the cabin in a beckoning whisper.

You ignore it, instead standing by the window and watching the long shadows of autumn dance through the clearing outside. Quiet, you listen to the bird calls of a wilderness tamed by human hands.

There’s something about evenings like this that invoke memories of the past, have them wrap their slender arms around your shoulders and murmur through your thoughts with the aching sound of regret, of a hope since lost.

It’s in your reverie you spot the shadow that flickers through the underbrush.

Your heart doesn’t hammer as you set down the tin cup in your hands, gently deposit the shawl from your shoulders on the back of your chair. Rather, it’s with practiced ease that you reach for the rifle next to your door, slinking against the wall next to the window and carefully peering outside to watch the creeping intruder who dares to sneak up on your isolated homestead.

It’s minutes before he emerges, slowly, like a panther creeping through the brush. All muscle and subtle movement, crouched low and placing every footstep carefully, deliberately against the fir needle earth. There’s a kerchief drawn up over his mouth and nose, a tightness to his shoulder that speaks less of rigidity and more of decades of experience, a life hard lived and a youth far gone. He moves quickly, silently, moving from the underbrush to the side of your stable, and from there you watch him peek his head out from behind the corner.

Then, he lifts his eyes to the fading light.

and you know.

Like the thunderclap of gunfire, the air in your chest is punched from your lungs in one solid exhale, legs weakening as the ghosts of years past stalk and whisper at the surface of your mournful soul. In your memories the blue of his eyes sparkles like the sky over the Heartlands, a cloudless joy of something hopeful, intangible, looking ever west towards a distant future he holds cupped in his palms.

The front door of your cabin creaks loudly as you step outside, your voice carrying like a clarion across the clearing.

“Are you here to rob me, Arthur Morgan?”

- - -

“There’s someone I want you to meet.”

You eye Hosea uneasily as he sits next to you at the saloon in Armadillo, where the dry desert heat bakes the back of your neck and the sun carves scorching paths into the dusty ground outside. The cash from the bounty you turned in but an hour ago burns in your pocket- a fact not unnoticed by the gunslinger beside you with gray dotting his temples.

Still, he’d been kind enough to buy you a drink upon spotting you, and rather than arouse suspicion you accepted his offer of conversation with the both of you seated towards the back of the saloon. He’d told you of his travels, sparse in details in a way you’d come to recognize from conmen. Yet underneath there lay a sincerity, a gleam in his eyes that spoke less of sinister intentions and more of genuine curiosity.

“That so.” You drawl, finishing the warm beer in your hand and setting it back on the table with a thunk. Hosea huffs a laugh at you, bemused if anything else, but makes a low hum of assent anyways.

“I’ll compensate you for your time, of course.” He goes on, eyes remaining focused on you even as you avoid his gaze. “Simply to hear us out. If you decide you’re not interested, then at least I have had the pleasant experience of your company.”

Spinning a yarn. Silver tongue. A viper hidden in the underbrush.

You open your mouth to say you aren’t interested when the saloon doors swing open and Hosea sits up to regard the newest guests.

“There they are!” He crows triumphantly, beckoning over the two men who catch sight of their companion instantly- pausing to eye you over from a distance with an equal amount of suspicion. “Gentlemen, come meet my new friend here.”

The older one, a man with slicked back, jet hair and a curling smile is the first to speak.

“Hosea.” He greets before turning his attention to you. “and...?”

His smile only broadens when you mumble your name, and for some reason it reminds you of a wolf lingering at the edge of a campfire. Hungry. Watching.

“A pleasure to meet your acquaintance.” He offers smoothly, easing into the seat on your other side even as the younger man behind him lingers, standing. “Arthur, take a seat.”

It’s only then that you turn your attention towards him, pausing, blinking as you catch sight of his glinting steel gaze. He’s young. Slightly younger than you, perhaps. Yet there’s a set to his jaw that speaks less of boyishness and more of persistence, a stubbornness that comes with youth as much as it comes with the lives you both lead.

He’s handsome.

“Arthur Morgan.” He tells you, voice firm but eyes locked on yours. Unblinking. Blue like a Sunday morning where the missionary church bells ring.

- - -

“I’ll be damned.”

Arthur lowers the kerchief from his face as he stands from the bushes, hands above his head and holding his pistol in an open grip. He doesn’t seem to look at the rifle in your hands, looking past its sight with wide eyed, astonished wonder at your face.

When he says your name, it feels like the first time.

Your chest aches.

You don’t say anything. You’re not sure if you can. What do you say to someone you lost? Someone you loved, only for them to leave?

When Arthur looks at you, his eyes are sad. You watch his lips part, words forming on his tongue, before his jaw flexes shut and he decides against it.

The setting sun catches on his hair. You remember the sensation of it between your fingers when you kissed him.

You lower the gun. There’s a scrape in your throat when you speak.

“You can hitch your horse inside the stable there.” You offer quietly, turning so he can’t see the bitterness in your eyes. “There’s...soup on the stove.”

You feel his eyes burn into your back as you turn away, leaving the door open behind you and waiting just inside. There’s a moment where you think maybe he’ll go back the way he came, will mount his horse and ride off into the setting sun the way he did all those years ago. Maybe that will be the end of your story, maybe then your ghosts will be put to rest.

There’s a whistle as he calls for his mare, a jangle of reins as he leads it to the barn.

You swallow the sob in your throat.

- - -

It’s late. Midnight engulfs the camp seated outside Armadillo, where the endless expanse of stars glimmers above the dark desert. The distant, pale light of the moon rises over distant bluffs just as coyotes raise their wayward cries towards the open skies. You’ve never had a home, not truly. On nights like this, it feels pretty damn close.

The firelight dances against your features as you sit at the scout fire, crackling low as cottonwood smoke curls upwards. You huddle under your jacket, the night breeze slithering across your nape as you idly read the book before you. The pages are frayed, torn at the edges with dog-ears that speak of the years spent lost in the words between.

Across from you sits Arthur. Watching. Contemplating. Neither of you lax enough to sleep in each other’s presence just yet. Gazes glinting, shoulders stiff- two wild animals at the same watering hole, waiting for the other to give an excuse to bare your fangs. You hear the howl of wild creatures in his flinty stare.

You try to ignore his eyes on you, but given that everyone else is asleep you find yourself unable to tolerate his terse silence for long.

“What?” You sigh at last, closing your book to scowl at him. Arthur only shrugs noncommittally.

“Nothin’.” He grumbles back despite his crossed arms, and avoids your eyes as they lock on him. It’s strangely petulant, his jaw set tight despite his feigned nonchalance.

In the silence that follows, you spot the journal by his side.

Your eyes flick to his fingers tapping on the inside of his elbow, and inwardly you feel something clever curl inside your stomach.

“Is that a journal?” You ask, watching him stiffen imperceptibly. Yet his eyes glance at you, glinting from the flames.

“...Somethin’ like that.”

You feel a smile tug at the corner of your mouth, bending towards your saddlebag beside you to withdraw a worn, leather-bound notebook. When you look back at Arthur, he’s leaning forward with interest.

“Funny.” You offer, and rather than display your notebook’s contents you lean back smugly and begin to write to yourself, enjoying the look of perplexity that flashes across his features.

“Are you...writing about me?” He asks, baffled.

“Mhm.” You chirp pleasantly. “All the horrible, nasty things I thought when I first laid eyes on you, Morgan.”

He barks a laugh loud enough to make you jump, and it sounds like the howl of coyotes singing to the moon.

- - -

The door creaks as he stands on the threshold, and the autumn air sweeps inside to tickle the flames in the hearth. You stand before it, quiet, faced away from him so he can’t see the heartache in your eyes.

There’s words on your tongue that you refuse to speak. Anger, betrayal, hurt, and most of all heartache. You want to go to him, to fold into his chest and beg to know why. The cold, bitter wind of growing winter has frosted over your heart long ago when you made a vow to live the life you always wanted- a life of peace.

You only thought maybe it would have been with him.

When he says your name again, it feels like an arrow piercing your soul. You remember the way he whispered it against your skin, the way he bellowed it amidst a hail of gunfire, the way he spoke it against your lips like the confession of a sin.

“You must be hungry.” and oh how you hate the way your voice trembles, the way your hands shake as you fetch him a plate. He stands unmoved, as if torn between staying and retreating. You feel it the same inside you. Begging him to remain, to give you just a few more minutes of his presence in hopes you can once more feel his love for you. Chasing him away, screaming, crying, the wild animal he loves in you, saying goodbye for the final time even though you know it will break you.

Yet when you look at him at last, when you look into those beloved blue eyes, you see the pain there, the regret, and you know.

He loves you even now.

- - -

“You can do better than that, Morgan, c’mon!”

Your knife finds the tree trunk just as John hollers from his seat behind you two, Hosea and Dutch leaning not far from him. If you were to turn, you’d see the broad smile on his sunburnt face shaded by his hat.

Arthur ignores him pointedly, focusing instead on the ‘WANTED’ poster of his likeness pinned to the tree in front of you both. Two of your own blades stick from it, while only one of Arthur’s lodges itself near the bottom.

“He’s right, Arthur.” Hosea calls, lifting his coffee back to his lips. “Don’t take it easy on her.”

“I’m not!” Arthur snaps back over his shoulder, before turning and throwing his knife, only for the handle to bounce off the trunk. Behind him, John whistles.

“Gettin’ sloppy Morgan.”

“Says the man who can’t keep it in his pants.” Arthur grumbles lowly beside you, and you laugh before raising your own blade once more and throw your blade forward with devastating accuracy- landing square between his eyes on the poster. Dutch’s laughter erupts behind you.

“If I hadn’t known better, I’d say you had a vendetta against our sharpshooter here.”

You twirl another blade in your grip, shooting a cat-like grin to the outlaw beside you, who levies an even gaze at you. You can see his eyes sparkle. Your heart thumps wildly in your chest.

“Y’know Dutch? I’m inclined to agree with you.” Arthur voices, and this time his knife finds a notch just behind his throat.

“There we go!” John shouts, leaning forward in his seat. “Didn’t think you’d let a girl beat you, Arthur.”

This time, your knife lodges itself into the earth at his feet, and John yelps and curses before looking down towards the dirt. A scorpion lays pinned under your blade, inches away from his boot.

Dutch explodes into laughter behind him, clapping loudly enough to make the horses startle.

You grin at Arthur, who dips his head respectfully. Even then, you see the mischief playing on his lips.

Distantly, you wonder what they would feel like against your own.

- - -

There’s silence as you both sit at your table.

What words are there to say? How do you say ‘I still love you’ to the person you lost, to the person you have said goodbye to? All these years you’ve done your best to forget him, to start anew, to convince yourself Arthur was dead and to mourn him. Even when you’d seen news of the gang in the papers you’d told yourself Arthur was not among them, that he was out west where he belonged, to the place where he always felt free.

Arthur sits with his hands folded, head tilted down so you can’t see his eyes past the brim of his hat. He’s less clean shaven now, rugged and older in a way that becomes him. Handsome still, you think with your chest aching. Hollow, just like the life you once led.

“I thought...” He says at last, voice tight, refusing to look you in the eyes.

You remember that night on the mountain, in the forest. You remember the smell of blood, the pain, the tears and the barest whisper of your voice when you called for him.

He looks at you at last, eyes sad.

You remember when he left you.

- - -

He catches you at the riverbank at dawn.

You sneak away from camp before sunrise, tiptoeing past the scout campfire and down the hill towards the river before anyone else can wake. The water is still, tenebrous and velvet as you slip bare into the gentle current, shivering as your arms wrap around your naked form. Smoothed pebbles knock against your feet as you wade deeper, soap in hand as you try to accustom yourself to the chill.

You vanish under the water for a moment, holding your breath down in the dark, liquid silence as the water closes in overhead. For a moment you’re buoyed gently by the river that washes over your limbs with a tender grazing touch, your heartbeat the only melody to your quiet existence. You emerge only a moment later with a gasp, shivering and hugging your arms tight around yourself to retain a fraction of warmth.

You rub your eyes clear of water, glancing back to the shore-

and find Arthur staring back at you.

The scream that erupts your throat is silenced by your own hand, and in a flash you vanish back up to your chin, ignoring the cold water and staring venomously at the gunslinger who immediately coughs and averts his eyes.

“Heard uh...uh commotion.” He tried to justify, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the scout campfire where he’d been dozing. “Thought maybe-”

“-That you’d what? Come sneak a peek?” You snarl, and you expect him to flinch, to bow his head, to look even mildly ashamed. Instead, Arthur smiles.

“Only if you’re offering.”

You feel your face warm, and quickly you send a splash of water that falls just short of his feet.

“Woah there.” He chuckles, holding up his hands placatingly. “I thought maybe some bandit was tryin’ to steal you off. Didn’ expect to find myself a mermaid.”

You snort. “What, you thought you’d come and rescue me?”

“Depends. You need rescuing?”

“Do I look like I need rescuing?”

Arthur’s smile tugs further at his mouth. “Not necessarily.”

“Then piss off, Arthur.”

Arthur huffs a laugh, and in doing so he shows his teeth. A coyote baring its fangs.

“Pardon me then, ma’am.”

You glower at him as he retreats a short distance, posting up by a tree nearby before lighting a cigarette. The match flame dances across his rugged features.

“What are you doing?”

Arthur doesn’t glance back at you, but flicks the match off into the bushes. “Still bandits about. Can’t have them stealing one of our best shooters bare-ass naked.”

You huff. “I think bandits are the least of my concern.”

Arthur puffs on his cigarette. “Course not, not while I’m here.”

“That’s my point.”

You can see the grin tug at his mouth, but he doesn’t answer, doesn’t turn. Eventually, when he doesn’t go away, you’re forced to go back to scrubbing, never once letting your eyes dart away from him. Yet when you dunk underwater once again to rinse the rest of your suds away and surface once more...

He’s gone.

- - -

“The others?” You ask, voice hoarse, and Arthur flexes his jaw. There’s an apology, or something akin to it building on his lips. You aren’t ready.

“We...lost some a few weeks back.” He begins. “We had a job in Blackwater that...”

You know how it goes. Dutch’s ambition was too great for his execution. You knew there would come a day when the gods of fortune would disown him. You never knew why he couldn’t see it, too blind, loyal to a fault.

“Pinkertons chased us over the mountains. Somewhere along the way we lost Davey and Jenny.”

You close your eyes at that. You’d liked Jenny, for the scant amount of time you’d spent with her in the gang. She was a sweet girl, too soft for the life you had lived then.

“John?” You ask quietly. Arthur pauses before he huffs a mirthless laugh.

“Bastard nearly got himself eaten by wolves. He’s alive. You should have seen the way Abigail tore into him. For a minute I thought it would have been better to leave him out there.”

You smile at that, the first smile you’ve had for a long time.

“Hosea is gettin’ on, but he’s as whip smart as ever.” Arthur goes on, and you see the tension begin to unspool from his shoulders. The love he has for his family is real, his loyalty to them more sacred than anything else.

Even you.

“and Jack- he’s growing so fast. He was just a baby when-”

He stops. Dares not echo the sin he’s committed. You don’t look away from him, refuse to break away from his blue eyes. The truth of the past, of what he did, of the oath he broke to you is etched across your face, in the bitterness in your eyes.

You wonder if he went back, if he would do it all over again. If he would leave you for this life of his, if he would break his promise to you one more time. This life of his, the life that was once yours, so full of violence and pain that in the end it left you alone, dying and wishing for him to return to you, begging God for the moment where he would kiss you once more.

You suppose, in the end, it was how it was supposed to be.

- - -

Whiskey stings against your tongue, the bite of it like teeth against the soft flesh of your throat. It feels like wood smoke and embers, a bite of rawness that your savor just like the untamed wilderness you’ve come to imbue inside your soul. You’ve yet to fully scrub the blood from your jacket, and if anything it adds to the flavor of violence, of brutality that marks the nature of this life you lead.

Yet Arthur’s laughter beside you fills the emptiness, brings with it the sound of rain against parched earth. It fills your soul, lifts you, and you hold it secret lest it be mistaken for weakness.

You look at him, at the way his mouth pulls sideways when he laughs. Lopsided, boyish, alive in this life without apology. Your heartbeat pulses low in your ears, a distant drum over the prairie where thunderclouds roil against the horizon. Fear is a thing that’s always existed inside you. The shadow of it drove you to a life of savagery- freedom as Arthur would call it.

In the firelight of his smile, you feel it wane low against your heart.

- - -

“I guess nothing has changed much then.” You offer in the silence that follows, your words layered with a meaning that has Arthur’s eyes flickering. “Trying to find the next big score, chased by the law, living life the way it’s supposed to be.”

“We’re living.” Arthur snaps back, shoulders tense once more, like an animal you’ve wandered too close to. Your mouth is a firm line when he looks at you, and he softens once more.

In the silence, multitudes remain unspoken.

There’s a part of you that wants to scream still, that wants to shriek like a wild thing, ignoring the tears that build in your eyes and curse him to the grave. The ghosts that linger beneath your gaze howl for reprieve, but in the end all you see in Arthur is a despair, a pain more alive than he is. It’s mirrored in your soul, in the ghost of you, the shell of yourself you’ve kept alive these years without him.

You want to kiss him, to let his arms wrap around you as you sob into his chest, in the only place that’s ever felt like home. You want to beg and plead for him to stay, to go back to that moment on that stormy night if only for the chance he would not abandon you once more.

You wonder, why despite it all, you still love him.

- - -

Fresh flowers, tucked into the bag of your saddle. You blink at them, feeling heat rush to your face just as John whistles beside you. You shove at him a little too hard- embarrassed, annoyed somehow at him witnessing the gesture, and John curses at you under his breath, bad tempered and juvenile. You don’t hear him, fingers tracing the red button blossoms.

Yarrow. You’ve seen Hosea put it in his mortar and pestle, grind them into a paste he swears does good for his heart. You wonder if Arthur knows as much, knows that the flowers he’s chosen convey so much without words.

You hide them before anyone else can see them, face warm and heart fluttering. You hide your smile when Dutch calls to you, tells both you and Arthur to ride over the horizon in sight of your next target. Even when you and Arthur mount up, your horses’ hooves thundering against the ground just as a storm brews on the horizon of the prairie, you hide the smile blossoming against your lips. You see his smirk tugging his mouth as he rides beside you. Knowing, mischievous.

While he sleeps, you press the flowers into your journal.

- - -

So what now?

Now that you’re both here, alive, regret the only thing you own in the presence of each other- what path leads forward? Is this a greeting, or a goodbye? Maybe it’s both- a chance to finally close the door on the person you were before, a farewell to the man you know will not change.

“I thought you were dead.” Arthur breathes at last, eyes full of emotion you dare not name. “I went back to look for you- nearly got shot more times than I could count. I took weeks to look for you but I never...”

He swallows, throat bobbing.

“Dutch told me to give up. They needed me. I wanted to keep looking but we had to move east. I told myself I’d go back but-”

The same as you, you think. Convincing yourself the other was dead just to avoid the heartache of a life apart from each other.

“I got picked up by some missionaries.” You mumble, looking down into your hands to avoid Arthur seeing your wet eyes. “They took care of me, nursed me, didn’t ask any questions or anything. When I finally was healed I-”

I couldn’t bear to look for you. Not after you left me.

“Sweetheart, I-”

“Don’t.” You snap sharply, emotion cracking at the cage of your ribs, and when you look up the tears finally spill over, eyes brimming with the anger and despair that has haunted you all these years. You stand sharply, the chair falling behind you so loud it sounds like thunder. “You don’t- don’t get to call me that. Not anymore.”

Arthur looks wounded, and there’s a sick curl of satisfaction inside of you at seeing his pain, at seeing the guilt you wish he’s always had for what he did. Yet his eyes are open, the color in them a touch darker, like a summer thunderstorm like washes the earth clean.

When he speaks, it’s scarcely a whisper. A confession you’ve hoped for all these years, and now rings hollow inside your chest.

“I never stopped loving you, darlin.”

- - -

“Stay still.” You snap, and Arthur hisses through his teeth as you dab at the wound with alcohol, like the snake that bit him. Venom in his veins, cured only by a tonic of wild yarrow and ginseng that blossoms bright in the summer sun. He’s broken out in a cold sweat as his body fights the poison, face ashen and shivering as he clenches his jaw tight enough to pop.

He clenches and unclenches his hand, sitting wide and forcing a breath through his shivering shoulders. You raise a hand to wipe sweat from his brow and he catches it on instinct when you get too close, like a bear trap springing closed. You’re ready to snarl back at him, all teeth and fangs, when Arthur pulls you closer instead.

You think it’s the venom that has his eyes dancing with a strange sort of light- a coyote snapping its teeth at something in the tall grass. He licks his lips as he leans closer, wound forgotten as he bends towards you.

Poison, you think, as he kisses you for the first time. Poison of the sweetest kind, aching and open and desperate as he shivers fully against you- as you knock the hat from his head and loop your arms around his neck as if he’ll dare to part from you. You swallow him down fully, heedless of the venom, of the fever he possesses just for you, of the starving thing that hollows out both of your souls, only to be filled by the other.

- - -

Despite yourself, despite everything, you fold.

It begins like a distant rainstorm, the soft mist of rain against the earth. You swallow a sob despite the tears against your face, despite the urge to hold it all in. Showing weakness was how this story began. It was how he left you.

Your weakness has always been him.

A sob startles loose from your chest, and you vainly press your palms to your eyes as if it can contain your tears. Anger, despair, hopelessness but above all else longing for the things you lost, for the time you had with him, for the things you did just to stay with him.

You hate him, hate yourself, hate the things you both lived for even if it kept you alive just to be with each other. You want to go back to the sunny day where he kissed you under the open sky and confessed his love for you against your lips. You want to banish him and scream into your solitude, you want to go back to a time where you never knew him. You want him to never leave you again.

Wordless cries, desperate noises from the broken thing that’s resided in you all this time, and all at once you’re swallowed up by his arms. He presses you to his chest and you try to fight him, you do, but Arthur holds you despite your struggles, hushes you as he hugs you to him like he’ll never let you go again.

“I’m sorry.” He whispers against you as you fall apart, as you shatter into pieces that have been held together by string all this time. It’s the words you’ve wished for all this time but it doesn’t matter anymore. He’s here, and you hate yourself for allowing yourself to weep into his arms despite your promises you never would again.

Then again, you’ve both been fools from the very start.

- - -

You don’t see the third coach guard crouched on the floor.

Wet, warm breaths cling to the fabric against your nose and chin, sweat beading your forehead as you peek out from behind the tree to check for any remaining gunmen. Corpses litter the ground on the country road, the horses whinnying frantically as shouts call out between the group of you. The scent of blood, of gunpowder is a familiar aura to you by now. It cloaks itself around you, drapes its skeletal arms about your shoulders and whispers a tender embrace of death.

You stare into the barrel of a rifle, eyes wide.

Death does not lend itself to you when the shot rings out- not his.

From the tree beside you, Arthur’s pistol smokes, the bullet having found its mark.

Your heart hammers too loudly, too close to keep it silent from him you think. It feels lodged in your throat, something akin to a scream, a sigh stuck there unable to release. Arthur’s eyes are flinty from above his bandanna, steel blue like platinum, like a blade so sharp it slices through your ribs and inward towards your soul.

You try to speak, all you can manage is a nod.

“You okay?” He asks, breathless, weapon still raised. Your hands shake.

“Fine.” Your voice is calmer than it should be. “...Thank you.”

Arthur shrugs, but his eyes don’t leave you, not for a long while.

“Let’s get this done!” Dutch calls, voice cracking with his volume as he darts towards the lockbox. You wait until Arthur goes after him to follow, unsteady on your feet.

You pass by the guard in the coach, halfway hanging out of the window, a red dribbling from the center of his head.

His eyes reflect you.

- - -

“I waited for you.” You sob, fingers gripping his shirt and bunching the fabric between your fists. “You told me you’d come back. You said-”

“I know.” Arthur soothes, voice cracking as you sniffle into his chest. “I’m sorry.”

“I told myself you were dead. When you didn’t come back, I told myself you died if only to spare myself the pain. I wanted-” You sob.

I wanted you to be dead rather than live a life without me.

There’s an ache inside you fit to burst, a seed planted the moment he kissed you goodbye with false promises of a reunion. It blossoms scarlet in eulogy, painting your remembrance in washes of crimson cast aphotic upon your soul. You want to burrow yourself inside its thorny stems where he can’t touch you, resign yourself to solitude in vain hope it will dull the pain.

Yet Arthur holds you, cradles you in his arms like a fawn hidden in the goldenrod where you empty yourself of cries, confessing to him the seed of grief he planted all those years ago.

“You’re okay.” He whispers into your hair, and his embrace nearly squeezes the air from your lungs with how tight he gathers you close to him. “I’m here.”

“I’m here.”

- - -

You awake with a gasp, back bowing off your bedroll and eyes wide with sightless terror. Your fingers curl into your blanket, a whimper bubbling up your throat. In the vision that plagues you, your hands are dipped red, holding a bloody rifle pointed at the eyes of the stagecoach guard. He reaches for you with a wet gurgle, offers a damnation that shivers under your skin and sinks into your bones.

His eyes reflect you.

Hands land on you, press your shoulders back against the ground and you struggle against them on pure instinct, throwing out your curled fist only for it to meet empty air.

“Hey- hey!” A voice whispers harshly above you, weight settling over your hips to pin you down. “Calm- calm down!”

It takes a few moments for the voice to register, and in that time Arthur wrestles your hands above your head in one gloved grip, the other holding your face with a gentle shake until your eyes focus on him.

“It’s me.” He breathes, shoulders heaving, eyes glimmering like stars in the darkness. “Just me.”

You’re shaking, trembling from head to toe as the scent of iron clogs your lungs and you try to think through the haze of terror gripping you. Arthur’s voice cuts through the fog, and you go lax under him. Trusting, sincere, knowing that of all the people in the world, it’s Arthur who will guard you- keep you safe.

“I’m here.” He whispers, softer, dropping his head towards you as you shudder. “You’re okay.”

- - -

“Why did you have to die, only to come back to haunt me?” You ask hoarsely into his chest, nose pressed against his shirt. You remember the feeling of the hair underneath as you traced it under the pads of your fingers.

Arthur is silent, one hand slowly tracing the curve of your spine as long shadows dance through the small, dim interior of your cabin. A single oil lantern casts you both in a yellow glow as sienna fades against the sunset fading west to the place where you both belong. Open, wild, free.

“You’re the ghost I never wanted to see.” You whisper, and Arthur stiffens. Yet you nuzzle closer into his chest. He still smells the same. Tangy sweat, acrid smoke of gunpowder, and beneath- something unshakable, tender, something that feels like home.

“Tell me to leave.” He tells you at last, and he sounds desperate in a way you haven’t heard in so long. “Tell me you hate me. Tell me to go and never come back.”

His hand cradles your head, presses you closer, and you melt further into his hold, into the thing you’ve hated yourself for ever wanting, and you go willingly.

“Tell me.” He says again, voice all wood smoke and pine, a forest campfire against a glimmering expanse of stars.

Yet you’re silent. The voice that holds your protests, your anger feels weak in his embrace, tendered by memory and the touch of him. The rational part of you knows you should, that you should let go of him forever and try to live a life free of violence in pursuit of glory. You know hanging onto Arthur means anchoring yourself to a ship destined to sink to the bottom of the ocean, but the part of you that remembers what it meant to kiss him, to be held by him, to be loved, doesn’t seem to care.

So instead the word that falls from your lips is:

“Stay.”

- - -

“Stay.” You ask him quietly, gripping at his sleeve as if you were a child. Arthur seems frozen to the spot, unbalanced and unsure. His own bedroll lays a short distance away, at the edge of the fire that licks warm against your bare arms. You half expect him to gently withdraw your hand from him, whisper a goodnight and turn with his back towards you. The taste of his lips upon yours those weeks ago lingers, and you wonder if the poison inside of you both has finally quelled the gnawing hunger inside both your souls.

Arthur turns to you, lips parted. You want to steal another kiss from them just as you live your life on thievery- this treasure more precious than all the others. You want to wrap yourself in him like smoke, bathe in the moonlight waters of his gaze and burrow deep into his chest where you’ve made your den. The wilderness of his soul feels inherent to yours, alight with the misty green valleys and towering, ancient forests of which you find yourselves in.

“Stay.” You say again, quieter. Softer. Pleading.

He goes to you, and it feels like a dream of a different nature. It feels like something from a vision, the way he bends to you, raises you to his lips and breathes whiskey onto your tongue.

“Sweetheart.” He whispers there, and you shudder at the slow, sweet drip of his voice onto your tongue. You crane towards him, shivering, too warm, wanting to burn alive in the cinders of his touch.

He kisses you again, harder, more forcefully, a low groan spilling past his lips. You wrap your arms around his neck, drag him down with you into hell, where the sins of the lives you’ve led taste just as sweet as the other upon your tongue.

- - -

“Just for tonight at least.” You whisper hoarsely, fingers gripping at his jacket, nose buried against the worn cotton of his shirt. You know from experience that Arthur’s loyalty runs deep, far too deep for even you to conquer. To ask him to stay is like asking a wild thing to release dying prey from the clutch of its maw. Even if you pry at his jaws and make your fingers bleed he won’t relent. Red from your palms blooms like yarrow under sunlight, and all it does is make his eyes glimmer with an unquenchable hunger.

“I just...you owe me that much.” You go on, and it’s a low blow, one he doesn’t deserve after the time he spent trying to search for you, but you’re selfish just as he is. In this moment you need him, you need him to stay just to call him yours for the scarce time you have together.

Arthur’s arms are still around you. You can hear his heartbeat thump against your cheek as you nuzzle against him. You can hear the hesitation held between his breaths just like the calm before a thunderstorm before it slaps against the space between sky and earth. Silently, you beg whatever god has not deserted you that you can be afforded this much, that you can close your eyes and pretend just for a moment he won’t leave you again.

Finally, Arthur breathes. Rather than speak, you feel the moment he surrenders with the tension bleeding from his shoulders, reaching to tip your chin upwards into his waiting mouth. You go without an ounce of resistance, too tired to fight, to scream, to even feel the tear that escapes the corner of your eye.

“Alrigh’.” Arthur sighs into your lips, and swallows your shuddering breath.

- - -

You’re drunk on the taste of him, on the low moan that rumbles from his chest. You taste endearments on his tongue as he whispers them with low, sinuous tones that make your toes curl. To kiss Arthur is to feel the vibrancy of life itself against your lips. Living without regret, without fear, reckless as he smiles to hail of gunfire and glinting knives. Alive, wild, untamed in a way you can’t seem to manage but want so desperately to be.

Arthur kisses you without any hesitation, without a sense of gentleness. Desperate, wet, noisy as he laps at the inside of your mouth, feeds on the mewl that bubbles up your throat. His teeth find your bottom lip, your jaw, your breast. He finds the pulsing vein of your throat and you wonder if he’ll bite down on that too, let red gush into his mouth if only to quench the hunger inside of him. It’s not enough- it never is. The very act of living isn’t nearly enough for his soul- as endless as the map of the world itself. Neither is the sensation of your blunted nails digging into his shoulders, crawling beneath his shirt and tracing through the coarse hair of his stomach just as his muscles jump under your touch.

The desire of being wanted, of being found, of belonging here is enough to make you fall apart in his arms, where he feasts upon the sin of your flesh. Into your neck he whispers “Darlin’.” Against your bared breasts he growls “Sweetheart.” Between your legs, where his tongue laps against your glistening folds he breathes. “Mine.”

All your life you have wandered in search of somewhere to rest the empty fringes of your heart, to lose yourself in someone else just as the horizon swallows up the setting western sun. If Arthur asked you to open yourself to him, to swear yourself to just him, to follow him into hell itself, you think you would follow just as long as he held your hand.

He kisses the tears of overwhelm from your eyes, and you taste the salt of them upon your lips.

Arthur devours you, and you allow him gladly.

- - -

He takes you to bed, gentle in a way that feels unfamiliar. A younger version of him would have met you with clacking teeth and a bruising grip- overeager, hungry and ferocious all at once. Now Arthur is softer, dulled at the edges like a worn knife. Still sharp enough to leave a jagged wound upon your heart. Every slow, languid kiss melts away at the loneliness that has kept you as your only companion for years. His hands pull carefully at your shawl, your shirt, popping each button with nimble hands trained from years of violence.

He tastes like bourbon, like cigarettes, like sweat and gun oil. Traces of the life he lives beyond the bounds of laws. Your fingers tangle in his overgrown hair, drag him down so he can lick inside your open mouth and pour careless whispers onto your tongue. You want him to surround you, to be inside you, to crack open your ribs and make himself home in the place where he’s always belonged no matter how much it might hurt you.

There’s a need inside you unlike anything else. To call it hunger would be to call a wolf tamed. It cannot be fed no matter how much he indulges you, and with every second he parts to breathe it howls with something primal and ferocious that threatens to bleed him dry. Your teeth snag on his bottom lip and Arthur growls in return, a low rumble of warning you dare not heed.

“I want you like you used to have me.” You pant, bracing his forehead against yours, feeling the sweat build against his nape as he presses you into the wall with his bulky frame. “Like we had nothing else to live for.”

You feel Arthur pause, feel a fission of tension run through his shoulders, his hand curling as it braces on the wall behind you.

“My girl.” He offers then, in a voice that haunts your waking dreams. “Mine.”

- - -

He’s looking west.

The sky arches over both of you, cloudless, azure, open to the horizon in any given direction. Prairie grass tickles your cheeks as you lay beside him, your hand trapped beneath his gun calloused palm. The wind ruffles his hair and in this moment you can’t help but think how alive Arthur looks- sunburned but smiling, wistful in his eyes as he stares at the western sky. Hoping, longing, desiring something you both will never reach.

You reach for him, and wordlessly he goes to you, breathing against your lips as if he would a prayer. Without words you understand each other, through touch alone you convey symphonies of the endless sky and all the hopes wished to it. Arthur kisses you like the wind that carves through the bluffs- wild and beautiful and home.

“My girl.” He rumbles from above you, braced on his elbows as he gazes down at you. You trace the growing lines on his face, of age that finds you both. Proof of the life you’ve both lived, of survival despite brutality and violence for the sake of this thing called freedom.

He is no longer the young man you knew when you found him all those years ago, and you find yourself have changed as well. You’re softer now, aged by the blood on your hands that sinks into your veins and transforms you. Guilt and regret are things that are not allowed to you, not with the sins engraved into your soul. You think the longing for peace is the same thing Arthur feels when he looks west. Freedom of a different kind.

Yet you know too that you’d do it all again for him, for this moment where he kisses you under the beautiful blue sky the same color of his eyes looking ever towards the horizon. In this moment you are happy, you are loved, and you would gladly drown yourself in sin if it means you can stay with him for just a moment longer.

- - -

The scars on him are different now. You trace them under the bare pads of your fingers as he pauses to hold his own between his bared teeth and pull off his gloves. Under him, you lean back to admire the strength in his bare shoulders, the sinewy muscle that lays under a thick thatch of curls that you trace down to his stomach. Arthur shudders above you, braced on his forearms, panting, hair falling into his wild, flinty eyes.

Arthur looks at you like he’s seen a ghost, too transfixed to look away. For a moment his eyes are distant, and you know where his mind goes, to that stormy night atop canyon bluffs where he had held your limp form and begged you for something you could not give.

“Arthur.” You whisper, and the light in his eyes changes. You watch his throat bob, his jaw tighten for a moment before he shudders into you, the bulge in his pants nudging insistently at your thighs, which you spread to either side of him with open invitation. “Arthur.”

He leans down to kiss you again, groaning openly into your mouth. It’s messy- wet and slick as he sucks at your tongue. Brow scrunched, he lets himself fall into you, allows himself the cardinal sin of remembrance amidst betrayal. You welcome him with open arms, knowing despite your fruitless efforts that you were meant to be here, in his embrace.

“You’re going to haunt me for the rest of my days.” He murmurs as his hand strokes the bareness of your inner thigh.

Outside, coyotes howl at the moon.

- - -

The golden glow of the fire casts him in resplendent light. Bare chested, sinewy with taut, lean muscle. His hair has gotten longer, clinging with sweat to his nape and brushed from his eyes. You follow the silvery skin of an old wound from his rib to his side- a shallow knife slash you stitched yourself. As he bends forward you long to knead the soft flesh of his stomach under your palms, trace the line of hair from his navel downwards into his lap where the worn, leather-bound notebook resides under his palms.

You lay on your side, bare under his draped bedroll, watching him sit beside you. He traces your likeness into the pages of his journal, eyes flickering like flames as they dart from you to the paper as if he can’t entirely trust himself to remember the vision of you. The spend of his leaks between your wet thighs, and you know by night’s end he will have added to it, so ravenous is his hunger for you.

“Writing about me?” You ask as he glances up at your face, a knowing smile on your lips.

He hums a low note, raspy in his chest as his mouth tugs into a smirk.

“Horrible, nasty things.” He muses, and you snort.

Your hand travels from under your chin, southward to cup the swell of your breast under his hungry gaze. You catch your lip between your teeth as you moan, watching his eyes glimmer and his hands pause over the pages. Temptation, bait for a wild creature who crawls towards you, over you, smiling into your purring mouth.

“Again.” You tell him without preamble, and you taste his smile against his lips.

- - -

He settles himself above you, all musk and smoke as he rolls his hips against yours in languid, slow thrusts. You feel his shoulders shiver under your bare hands, forehead pressed to yours and every rattling breath fanning across your skin. He’s indulging, gentle, remembering what it was like to have you as his. You wonder if he’s lost the memory of every scar, every dip and curve of your body against his.

The stretch is uncomfortable at first, larger than you remember as you whimper into his neck. A hand braces at your hip, rubs soothing circles into your skin as he angles with slow, powerful motions that drag at the burning need inside of you like a riptide. The tip of him nudges something deep inside you that’s remained untouched since you lost him, and the aftereffect sends coiling pleasure fissuring out along your limbs like gunpowder igniting under your skin.

Your need dribbles out around the plug of his girth, stretching you until your toes curl and you moan openly, baring your neck to his ravenous gaze. Arthur is loud above you, an endless stream of words and noise that burrows warm and viscous into your veins.

“Yeah, that’s it. Fuck- fuck. That’s my girl. So damn pretty.” He huffs, voice catching something low and rough in his chest. He moans long and loud as you clench up around him, gritting his teeth as his hips stutter for a moment- exhaling long through his nose. “Not gonna last if you tighten up like that, sweetheart.”

Cheeky, you flex down on him again and the noise that drops from his mouth is sinful. It only lengthens his thrusts, bracing himself so he can fuck down into you, his tip nudging your slick walls that grip him with every retreat. The pace is enough to drive you mad, gripping at him until bruises are sure to form along his skin. You want to leave a memory of you there, want to mark him so that when he leaves he’ll remember you for just a little longer.

and quietly, despite yourself, you hope he stays.

- - -

On the third dawn of your long ride with Arthur, you awake tangled in his arms, legs entwined with his as the low, blue glow of sunrise softly colors the sky above. The fire has burned down to cinders, and the cool bite of morning against your bare skin has you cuddle all the closer to him, listening to his sleepy groan as he rouses.

He whispers good morning against your soft lips, and in return you smile against the corner of his mouth. Arthur tastes like sweat and sunshine, like something wonderful and wild that you can never truly wrap your hands around despite the yearning inside you.

You should rise along with the sun, should pack up camp and continue on this scouting mission Dutch has sent you both on. You’ve taken long enough, should have been heading back days ago, but instead you find yourself here, tangled in each other's arms as the low, azure hues of dawn settle over your bare forms.

Arthur seems to think the same, because when you try to wiggle out of his arms, reach for your haphazardly shed clothes, his arms only fasten around you all the tighter, nose buried against your collarbone.

“Stay.”

For him? Always.

- - -

There’s tears brimming in your eyes. From the overwhelm of sensation as Arthur gently tugs one of your nipples between his teeth, from the sharp stab of memory between your ribs, you aren’t entirely sure. They well hot in your eyes, your voice caught between a sob and a moan, legs trembling as you press your heels into his back.

Arthur’s blue eyes fasten on you, look up at your knotted brow and trembling lip as he softens at the seams, takes your face in his hands and turns you up to him.

“Darlin’.” He rumbles, syrupy and sweet like the warm bite of bourbon. His lips descend to the corner of your fluttering eyes, drinking in the salt from your wounds laid bare beneath him.

“Arthur.” You whisper, voice cracking on the sound. It hurts, you think, somewhere deep inside of you, but the pain is buried by the sensation of him inside you, above you, around you, engulfing you like a tidal wave out to shore where all your reservations drown in the deep.

You kiss him, salt upon his tongue, melting into him. It’s what you’ve always wanted. It’s the place you thought you belonged for so long. In this moment, it’s the only thing you’ll ever have.

Arthur’s gun calloused hand slides down to the meat of your thigh, hauls you up so your calf is pressed against his shoulder and you moan, the new angle allowing him to press deeper inside you. It’s all you can do to cling to him as Arthur resumes his pace, whimpers bubbling up your throat as he leans back and begins to truly fuck you, grunting and groaning, words incoherent.

“Fuck- fuck beautiful. Feel so fuckin’ good, so pretty.” He pants, pausing to suck a bite into your calf which has you bow off the bed with a yelp. “Yeah, that’s it. Lemme hear you, honey.”

“Arthur-” You moan in return, and if it’s a plea or a prayer you aren’t sure. Everything feels too warm, too bright, nerves narrowing down to the feeling of him inside you, the press of his public bone into your clit as he claims you like you’re his.

You remember this. You remember the snarling, wet kisses and bruised lips and the feral sensation of it all, two wild things in the wilderness lost except for each other.

and, quietly, you find the words within you to say:

“I love you.”

- - -

He takes you there under the open blue sky, tucked away in an aspen grove where a vixen barks nearby. Sunshine fills your head, golden and honey-sweet as you laugh under him, his teeth nibbling against your neck where you can feel his smile. You’re wasting time, laying in the sun bare and uncaring, wrapped in each other, and you can’t think of any place you’d rather be than here.

Arthur braces on his arms suddenly, twisting off to the side and hauling your bare leg over his hip. You think for a moment he’ll slide inside you again, but instead Arthur pauses. Thinking, eyes distant.

“I...” he tries at first, suddenly hoarse. There’s an emotion in his stare you don’t have words for. His scraped knuckles brush your cheek. “I love you.”

You blink, caught off guard, eyes wide with wonderful realization that blossoms like yarrow under rising summer sun.

“You...I...” He tries again, at a loss. “Hell, I’ve never been good with words sweetheart, I-”

You lean forward, brush your lips with his. It silences him with a little noise of surprise, a breathless sort of shudder that trembles through the sinew of his shoulders.

“I love you, Arthur Morgan.” You whisper, fingers stroking through his sweat damp hair. “I love you.”

He grins, and you feel your chest flutter helplessly, surrendering completely to him.

“My girl.” He rumbles, lips descending to yours again as sunshine abounds inside your heart.

- - -

“I love you.” You say again, holding his face as Arthur pants into your mouth, chasing his release just as he chases yours. “Despite everything, I love you.”

His forehead drops to yours, tongues entwined as he groans into your mouth, lost in the haze. You can still taste the salt of your tears, and you wonder if Arthur allowed himself, if perhaps he’d cry too. For the regret of leaving you, for the pain of losing you, for the years spent without you, for this moment where you both pretend like this will be the rest of your lives.

“Gonna fill you up.” He growls, teeth catching on your lip. “Let me. Let me, please darlin. I want-”

“Tell me you love me.” You manage between gasps, hands tangled in his hair, hauling him down against you, legs locked around his hips to prevent any thoughts of escape. “Say it.”

“I love you. I love you. Fuck, honey- I love you. I’ve wanted you all this time, needed you-” Arthur babbles, hips stuttering. You can feel him twitch inside you, and you cant your hips up to meet him just as Arthur curses, leans back to rub a calloused thumb over your clit and your body sings. Lightning fractures your spine, the pressure building so fast and overwhelming you can hardly choke out a warning of your impending orgasm before it begins to crest.

“Cum fr’me, c’mon.” Arthur growls, jaw grinding as he thrusts into you with the beginning throes of his release. “C’mon sweetheart lemme feel it, need to feel it, c’mon- oh fuck-”

You sob as you finally cum, legs shaking as the pressure recoils taut through your muscles and spreads warm along your limbs. Your ears are ringing from the force of it, so severe and sudden it’s all you can do but to hang on to Arthur as he grinds his thumb into your clit, working you through it, punches the final few thrusts inside of you with a whine bitten off at the back of his throat.

“Good girl- damn. Good girl, my girl. So good fr’me.” He slurs, feeling the ricochets of your release ripple down over his length just as he empties inside of you, shuddering and grinding his release into you. “That’s it. My girl. Feels like heaven darlin.”

He cuts himself off with a low, shuddering groan before dropping his weight onto you, cock twitching still. You pepper his face with kisses. His mouth, his nose, his eyes, his cheeks and knotted brow. Arthur pants against you just as you catch your breath, skin damp with sweat and sex, the cabin too warm now in a way that makes you want to wrap yourself in him all that much more.

“I love you.” Arthur says again, but this time it’s aching, tender, and you hear the years spent without saying it in his voice. “Never stopped lovin’ you.”

He pauses, and you feel him swallow with his head dropped to your shoulder so you can’t see his eyes. “I tried. I tried to stop but...”

You raise his face to yours, and feel his confession upon his lips.

- - -

“I love you.” He says again, as the stars glimmer above, as the fire crackles beside your tent. Here in the middle of everything you are the only two creatures to exist, away from violence, from machinations and savagery and the curse you’ve both gained through the weight of your sins.

The fire catches golden against his eyes, his hair, his bare chest as he braces above you. Sweat beads his brow as he rolls his hips against you, your heels pressed into the small of his back as you swallow his confession with a breathless gasp. The dizzying intoxication of him glows warm in your veins, thrums under your skin and electrifies you. Pleasure curls hot and liquid below your belly but it doesn’t compare to the warmth in your chest as he echoes your name again, braces his forehead on yours.

“I love you.” He tells you, and it’s desperate somehow, as if he thinks you haven’t heard him, as if he’s never said it before and will somehow lose the chance. You kiss him, swallow his moan with your tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth, fingers tangled in his hair to drag him impossibly closer. “My girl. God-”

He sits up, hauls you with him so you’re braced into his lap. You loop your arms around his neck, bounce on his lap and feel the smile he presses to the corner of your lips when you giggle. His hands splay against your back, cup the swell of your ass just as he nips at your collarbone, knowing the mark he’ll leave there for the others to see. You don’t care. Let them know, you think, that the things you fight and kill for, the murders you commit, the lives you ruin, are for this- for the freedom he loves so much.

Freedom, if only to love him in return.

- - -

He lays with you tucked in his arms, fingers tracing along your nape, legs tangled. If you close your eyes, you can almost feel the desert stars above from all those years ago. It’s warm here, and your home is finally complete with him in it.

Yet the unspoken lingers, the whisper of goodbye both past and future quiet ghosts to this moment of peace you wish you could stay in. You cling to Arthur like a life raft amidst stormy seas, knowing at any moment he can be torn from you, that you’ll be cast into the cavernous depths below.

“I don’t want to be alone again.” You whisper to nobody but yourself.

Arthur’s fingers pause, and with his heart below your cheek you feel him shift, tip your face towards his.

Blue eyes. The color of a Sunday morning where missionary church bells ring. The color of skies promising rain, of the oceans you never got to see, of the waves that threaten to rip him from your hold.

“I am never leaving you alone again.” Arthur whispers, and the fierceness of it startles you, makes your heart leap in your chest. It would be a snarl if it weren’t for the tender caress of his hands against your bare form, the way his thumb presses down on the soft bed of your lip.

When he kisses you, it feels like a vow.

- - -

You stand atop the valley at sunset. Orange bleeds across the sky, where the train station waits below. Smoke curls up into the heavens from the steam engine, and you watch the distant glimmer of gold from high above as it’s loaded onto the train.

Beside you, Arthur whistles low and long, lowering his binoculars. There’s a telltale glimmer in his eyes, the kind you see only when he’s sizing up a score. Grinning, all teeth, fangs bared. If he had a tail, he’d be yipping at the sky.

A thief, through and through, even though you’re the one that stole his heart.

“Think we can manage it?” You ask, and your horse seems to sense your trepidation, pawing at the soft earth anxiously.

Arthur hums low, considering. “Need to do it smart, but with Dutch and the others I’d say so.”

Smart. You’ve known Dutch to be clever, wily, but smart...

You can’t shake the dark cloud that looms inky over your thoughts like distant thunderclouds, the feeling that this isn’t as easy as it looks. There’s something off here, and you can’t seem to place it.

Above, a vulture circles.

“Might get away with enough for me to buy you something.” Arthur murmurs, shooting a sidelong smirk at you. You huff, trying to cover the doubtful flicker of your eyes.

“Like what?”

“A ring?”

You stare at him, slack jawed, the wind whistling between you the only sound on earth. Flabbergasted, you try to speak, to question him, anything, but Arthur leans forward out of his saddle, uses his gloved knuckle to close your mouth.

“Gonna catch flies, sweetheart.”

You splutter, reaching for him, but he darts away. In fact, he urges his horse about, turning on his heel and racing back down the trail as your voice echoes after him indignantly.

Arthur laughs upwards towards the setting western sun.

- - -

He falls asleep holding you, arms wrapped around you as if he’ll never let you go, just as he says.

It takes effort not to cry.

You tell yourself you believe him, that this time he’ll stay. You tell yourself he loves you more than he loves freedom itself, that all that glitters is not gold. For the briefest, fleeting moments, you allow yourself to dream of him growing old by your side, of getting to watch the grays dot his temples, smile lines etched into his face. You think about what it would be like to watch the setting sun with him as you both slowly fade away.

You think about how you asked him to leave with you once, how you’d quietly confessed to him that you could no longer live this life but were unable to part from him.

You think about the heartbreak in his eyes.

and you know, deep inside yourself, here tucked in his embrace...

That it is better to think of this as just a dream.

- - -

You don’t feel the bullet. Not at first.

You hardly hear it above the din, the echo of gunshots all around you. Yelling, gun smoke, the shriek of horses as you try to out-ride your pursuers suffocates the world around you. Your mare stinks of foamy sweat as her legs pump under her, trying to carry both you and the bags of gold dust secured behind your saddle. The whites of her eyes show, wild as you race alongside the others, turning to fire behind you as gunfire glints in the darkness.

You can hardly tell the difference between the whistle of bullets and the slicing wind, the rain that drives hard against your skin, leaks into your eyes so you can hardly see.

It’s only after you raise your gun arm again, feel it fall limp and weak to your side that you notice something’s wrong.

As the world tilts, you hear Arthur scream.

You’re still trying to raise your gun when you slouch sideways in the saddle. Your mare races onward with you as her limp passenger, blind with fear and twice as fast.

Arthur is yelling as you fumble for the reins, as you finally notice how the rain seems to seep below your clothes, how it feels warm against your skin.

You focus on trying to sit up, trying to breathe against the blinding pain that erupts from your shoulder. Your ears are ringing, trying to discern the thunder from the eruption of guns behind you. There’s voices, muffled as you try to focus on them, movement on either side of you as John and Davey drop back to cover you. You try and urge your mare faster, spurs digging into her sides, and she only squeals.

All at once, arms fasten around your middle and you feel your body hauled abruptly sideways, off balance. They cradle you to his chest as you slouch sideways in his saddle, blood trickling down your arm and onto his.

“C’mon.” Arthur grits, trying to shake you before his voice goes breathy, desperate.

“Stay with me. Stay with me.”

- - -

You wake to an empty house, and a note.

Sweetheart, it reads, and you graze the torn edges of the paper, fresh from his journal

I’m sorry. There’s things I need to do, debts I need to settle. I’ll be back for you. I promise.

I love you.

- - -

“We need to draw them away. Keep them on our tail and then shake em.” Dutch announces, voice low and grim. You feel Arthur’s arms tighten around you. It feels as if you can barely grip his jacket. The fabric slips under your fingers, slick from the rain. The grove at the edge of the valley rise is dark in the rain. You can hardly see Dutch beyond the darkness. No lanterns lest your pursuers spot you. Even now, you can hear them in the distance. Hollering, searching.

“We can’t just leave her-” Arthur tries to protest, voice bordering on a snarl and-

“Arthur.” Dutch says, voice ringing deep with his baritone, and you hear Arthur’s jaw click shut almost instantly. Duty bound. Kept at heel.

There’s words then, quieter, more grim that you can’t make out. You drift in and out of awareness. The world around you feels too cold, the grip on the pistol in your hand too loose in a way you can’t seem to tighten. Blood oozes steadily from your wound, dresses you in a blossoming red of yarrow flowers laid upon your grave.

Then, Arthur.

“We gotta go darlin.” He breathes, voice tight, and you are awake just enough to try and shake your head no. Not like this. You always thought he would be here at the end. “Just- just stay alive. Please.”

“Arthur.” You wheeze, gripping at his coat, his arms, anywhere you can reach. Pistol forgotten so you can touch him. Just him.

He presses kisses to your scrunched brow, bloodied hands cupping your wan face as you whimper. You can feel the warmth of his breath spill across your skin as he speaks. It smells like cigarettes, and where you usually wrinkle your nose now it feels like the only tether to him.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll be back soon. Stay here.”

Your protest is a dull, groaning sound in your ears as you try to grip at him, weak and exhausted as you are. You try to form words on your leaden tongue. Please, please. Just a little longer. Stay, until the end.

You don’t realize you’re crying until Arthur kisses the corner of your eyes, warmth beading in your liquid gaze. There’s a hiccup forming in your throat, and it clogs the words you want to say to him, a plea to stay just a little longer until you fall asleep forever.

“I’ll find you.” He promises, voice catching in his throat even as he begins to pull away. “I will. I promise.”

“No-” You try in one last, feeble attempt. “A-Arth...ur.”

“I’m sorry.” He whispers against the corner of your mouth. “I love you.”

When he pulls away, the cold is all you feel.

- - -

Just like that, you’re back where you started. Except this time, it’s so much worse.

There’s traces of him everywhere in your home. The scent of him clings to your sheets, his empty dinner plate on your table, a stubbed cigarette burn on the porch outside. Undeniable, painful. It hurts to see the ghost of him after he had held you, told you he loved you, and promised to never leave again.

You should have known. You should have never allowed yourself to think even for a moment this could end any other way. Arthur could never be tethered down, could never be tamed by your gentle hands seeking his bloody fangs that squeezed tight down onto something he could never let go of. To think otherwise was beyond foolish, and yet you’d allowed your heart to open for a fleeting moment in which he nestled between your ribs, only to leave something bitter and rotten in its wake.

In the end, you try to convince yourself it was just a dream.

Even if you do wish it was real.

The seasons change. The golden afternoons of fall fade to winter. Snow blankets your homestead in silence, and you pretend not to notice the chill of tears against your cheeks as you stand on your front step and try not to look down the lonely road where you dare to hope he’ll return from.

You tell yourself he died, if only to make it easier.

As spring blossoms new life in the valley you think more about moving west again. It’s been years, and you know whatever life you lived there is long gone. The lives that stained your hands, the sins you committed, the person you were, died on the night Arthur left you. Nobody would recognize you now. You could tell them you’re a widow, say the man you loved died and you’re there for a new start. Folks would believe you, if only for the way your eyes always look a little lost, distant, looking for somewhere to belong again.

You think about Arthur riding up onto your empty home where the only thing left behind is the yarrow flowers you’ve kept pressed in your notebook all this time. You wonder if he’d hurt as much as you do.

It’s better this way, you tell yourself. Arthur was never going to change. He was never going to be the man you needed, but maybe that’s why you loved him so. You loved Arthur because he was intangible, yours but never truly there, his eyes always looking west, his gaze glimmering in a way you wished so dearly would be only for you.

You pack your things, quietly tell your neighbors you’ll be leaving. They wish you well, buying your meager belongings so the only things you have to your name fit on the back of your horse. It’s achingly familiar, living just from your saddle bag and satchel. You tuck your rifle along the saddle of your mare and pray you don’t need to use it, and make plans to head west.

The night before you leave, you cry until you’re hoarse.

and come dawn, he comes to you.

You awake to the sound of a horse neighing, and you know it isn’t yours. Your feet carry you to the porch before you even know you’re there, heart leaping wildly as you watch him quietly ride up to you. Slowly, each hoofbeat slower than your racing heartbeat, and when Arthur looks up at you from beneath his hat, you sob.

It’s the heartache that keeps you rooted to the spot when he dismounts, removes his hat to his heart. You want to laugh at the gesture, so unlike him, but the sadness, the plea in his eyes makes the air in your chest so thin it hurts to breathe.

You stare at each other. Words alone are unable to convey the depth of emotion shared in your gazes. Everything inside you screams to race down the steps, fling yourself into his arms, cry until you're empty and welcome him home to the place inside you that’s always been empty in his absence. You want to scream, to yell, to curse him, but the only sound that you can summon is simply: “Arthur.”

You watch his throat bob, at a loss for words before he finally speaks.

“I’m not going back.”

When you say nothing, he goes on.

“I...I’ve done things, bad things. I’m not a good man, that I know. I’ve made my peace with that. Even if I try, I’ll never...”

He pauses, and you see him struggle. You stand firm, unmoving, scarcely breathing as he offers himself to you.

“We...I-” He falters, and there’s an emotion that flashes over his face that you don’t recognize. A compass broken, his axis failed under him. Arthur stares through you towards something you cannot see, another future that plays out before his eyes with horrifying viscera that paints his gaze.

“I tried to settle debts, make things right. But Dutch-” His voice cracks. There’s something caught inside of him, guilt torn between devotion and realism that changes the polarity of his wayward path. “Dutch isn’t the man I thought he was. I shoulda seen it sooner but I’ve been so blind. Blind to...a lot of things.”

Arthur looks at you, looks at you, and for the first time you feel like he sees you.

“Things went down. The others, they’re fine. Hosea is lookin’ after em now. Gave me his blessing. I rode out of camp. Didn’t look back. I...don’t fancy myself a traitor but for the first time I managed to...to see things for what they were.”

He takes a step forward. You don’t move away, don’t move towards him, but you feel the tears overspill against your too-warm cheeks.

“There is a price on my head, and there will be until the day I die.” Arthur declares softly. “But...if you’ll have me, then I’ll stay. For good.”

You stare at him through the tears, try to school your face into a valiant attempt of passivity, of anger, of righteous fury, anything. Your fists sit clenched at your side. When you try to speak, the only thing that comes out is a hiccup.

Arthur takes a step towards you, eyes crestfallen, and it takes every ounce of strength in you to not fall apart at the seams.

“Why should I have you?” You demand at last, voice thick with tears. “You...you’re a no good, rotten bastard Arthur Morgan. You think you can be an honest man for me, hmm?”

Arthur looks wounded, but he takes it. He takes your anger, purses his lips and it makes you angrier.

“How the hell are you going to earn a living, huh? You only know how to kill and steal a-and-” You break off, scrubbing furiously at your face.

“I...” Arthur tries. “I can read, and write. I can...I can hunt and I’m good with horses-”

“and you probably don’t even have a penny to your name-”

“I can...I can ranch I suppose, but-” Arthur breaks off with a muttered curse. “Goddammit woman, will you have me or not?”

You stare at him, face wet, chest clogged with your cries...

...and you launch yourself down the steps and into his open embrace.

“Ride west with me.” You tell him as he parts from your kiss, his arms fastened around you, blue eyes sparkling. “They way I’ve always wanted.”

“West?” He breathes, breathless. His smile is so radiant it almost burns. “Where?”

“Past new Austin. Out towards Montana, or...I dunno, California. Past the mountains. Back to where it all started and then some.”

Arthur kisses you again, and again. You feel fit to burst at the seams, so outdone by joy and hope that you think you’ll float off into the dawning blue sky above.

“Anywhere.” He promises you. “I’ll buy you that ring, and I swear to God I’ll marry you.”

“You think I’m going to marry a no-good outlaw?” You ask him, tears overflowing.

“I’ll earn some money somehow, even if I have to pan it from a spring myself.”

You laugh, kiss him, hold his face in your hands and dare to dream of the future.

“I love you, Arthur Morgan. I will never stop loving you until the day I die.”

Arthur’s eyes glimmer, and even without words you know the truth that lies in his gaze. Arthur will never leave you. Never again.

“Let’s go.” You whisper against his lips. “Let’s go be free.”

You ride west. In the empty house where he found you, yarrow blooms red in the sunlight.

[sleepy-grav3]

The Moon Child Part 2

Part 1

A/n: Wow. I posted the first part to this and you guys like- rushed to it like starving animals holy SHIT... Should I be scared???? anyway- here ya go

Summary: Danny meets the Aqua Family and gets the love he deserves, plus a little comfort.

Tw: hurt/comfort, bad parents, mentioned discrimination, angst, ghost animal cruelty, swears, objectification, fluff

I forgot to mention Danny goes by he/they pronouns, Atlanteans know a lot of animals, and gender is weird sometimes so they aren't assuming anything and that's fair since Danny could shapeshift if he wants

The Moon Child Part 2 - The Moon Loves the Sea

Warm. He felt warm while in his core. And he could feel the soft cushion he was placed on. He heard the stories that Aquaman Arthur would tell him about all of his adventures and the rambles about his family. He was even told the secret about his stepbrother, Orm, who's death was faked and now lived on land.

It was... nice. Safe. He hadn't felt so loved in a long time. Or, at least, he thinks he hasn't. He had lost track of time while in the labs. It was painful to think about. Visibly so. Apparently, when he drifted into those dreadful terrors, his core's soft light would flicker into a dimmer one which resonated with his sobs. Arthur or his wife, who would keep him beside them at all times, would pick him up each time and hold him close to their heart.

"It's alright" They would say. "You're safe now."

Their heartbeat would always calm him down. It pulsed out reassuring feelings with each beat of their hearts. It was soothing and he never felt so safe. Not even when he was alive. To think he needed to die to feel this way.

It took a while for the pain to finally go away, but he soon felt ready to come out of his core. He couldn't recuperate as much as he wanted to. Not to use his full abilities of his ghost powers. No, there wasn't a massive supply of ambient ectoplasm like in Amity. He learned that what he was absorbing the most was the magic, which acted as a saline solution to blood (which he was pretty sure his blood was fully ectoplasm now).

It was interesting how magic tied in with ectoplasm. He wondered if that's why summoning worked best for those in the realms for that reason. Maybe the specific rituals to summon them even tied closely with their ecto-signatures? It's an interesting thought really.

That isn't the point though. What is, is that he was healthy enough to come out of his core.

"Ok, Danny. Deep breath. Here we go-"

-

Arthur was doing his usual thing: struggling to wake up in the morning and only really doing it because he didn't want to worry the literal spirit of a god. And it's not even because they're a god, but because they're a child. Should he have kept them in the same room. He feels like that might've been a better choice than just leaving them in a room next to his.

Arthur shook his head, rubbing his eyes as he swung his legs over the edge only to jump at the cold feeling of the floor.

"All kinds of water magic and they still can't stop the floor from being cold."

He huffed, getting up and picking out some casual wear that didn't have a bunch of jewelry with protection runes. Some normal clothes to hang out with family.

Kaldur came back yesterday, so they're having breakfast together. He hoped that he'd believe the whole moon deity thing. Kaldur was pretty good and believing new things, but this was their main religion they're talking about. Religion is iffy, or at least it was for those on land. The ocean folk are... extremely loyal.

Should he worry about them trying to destroy the new moon...?

He shook his head. No, they probably couldn't get past the layers of the atmosphere. Hopefully.

He walked out of the door, now thinking about how sea creatures would even pull that off before knocking on the door of the room next to his.

"It is uh, me. Again." It never sounds less awkward. Maybe I should try adding the dramatics?

And with a twist and push, he opened the door only to freeze with widening eyes. The stone wasn't there.

"Oh my god- I lost-"

Only to hear a chirp. he flinched, attention darting over to the full body mirror on the other side of the door that pushed into the room. A door he was going to have fixed to avoid heart attacks like these.

He let out a huge sigh of relief, walking over and bending down with a crooked grin.

"Well, good morning. I didn't expect you to appear for a while. But hey! Perfect timing! Kaldur's going to be joining us during breakfast today, so we could introduce you guys! We could meet Orm soon too! I bet he'll be absolutely surprised!"

The child only looked at him with their big wide doe eyes. Hope sparked in them, but anxiety kept their body tense.

"You... You were serious about it? About me meeting your family?"

Arthur placed a hand on their shoulder, he could barely notice the cool temperature of their body before he saw them jump. He was going to pull away his hand, but then the child relaxed a bit more. It was as if they hadn't had affectionate physical contact in a long time.

"Have they ever been anything but a moon? Are all moons like this? What about other planets? Earth... we have so much pollution. If it were alive..., would it only just barely be clinging?"

"Yes, I was and still am. You're a part of it now for as long as we live. And even when we pass, you will continue to have a place in the ocean. You might not have realized this, but the ocean worships you like a god. In fact, I think I'm going to have to talk with the Justice League about offering an apology gift of some sort."

The child blinked, eyes wide and glistening as a layer of moisture sparkled more yet made the eye look foggy. Looking closer, Arthur could see how moonstones came to be when they cried. It would hurt if it was a literal stone the kid cried. Like- like kidney stones! He was thankful that it wasn't like that.

"You... You aren't scared of me being dangerous to them? You don't think I'm evil or non-sentient?"

Arthur blinked. What?

"No... Nobody- Why would anybody think that?"

The child pursed his lips into a thin line, averting his eyes. With each blink, a silvery white liquid would start to drip and condense to the moonstones he found.

"I... don't know how things work around here... But on land... I've... They don't respect the dead or those associated to the concept. I've tried to keep both sides from trying to destroy the other- but... but..."

Arthur took a breath, pulling the spirit into his arms into a tight embrace. They clung to their veil that was wrapped around their arms like a shawl.

It seems that he had some lore to read up upon and some things to investigate.

-

(This bit's about Danny's POV. It'll be continuing with his while he meets everyone)

Danny didn't know what to think when he looked at himself in the mirror earlier. He didn't have a shirt, but the scarf thing was comfy. He could make it into some kind of make-shift shirt if he wanted to too. His memory on how to do it was... foggy and fractured. Some parts of speech were muffled and what he saw from that time would blur or seemed made up.

He knew the person teaching him.

Why can't he remember them clearly? He could hear whispers of something in his head telling him who that was.

And when he pushed that thought aside, he'd look back at other memories and realize who that was.

Tucker. How could he ever forget about Tucker? Why was he forgetting him?

What made it worse was how much he had to stare at the damn mirror to get the knots right. His chest... it wasn't ever that clean. No Lichtenberg scars. No burns, no cuts, no incision scars. Nothing. It was clean of any of his failures. His struggles. His learning experiences.

And yet... he still imagined them being there. Each time his fingers would brush up against places where he knew scars should've been, a shot of pain would spike as if he'd been electrocuted.

It hurt.

He hated how he remembered.

He hated that he didn't.

He used to remember all of it. He did when he was sobbing for days on end.

Now, it was foggy. Now, it was hidden away. He couldn't reach it.

"Oh my god- I lost-"

He chirped in surprise, turning with widened eyes. Oh. It's just Arthur. I really need to get out of my head.

Arthur walked over, looking slightly drained, as if he was relieved of a sudden weight placed on his shoulders. And by the vibes, Danny's guess seemed right.

Relieved Happy Happy Excited Nervous Happy

He was always so cheery in the... well, what seemed to be the day. Sucks to be out now that he thought about it. It would be rude to just fall asleep at random now that they could physically see if he's awake or not.

Arthur greeted him warmly, cheerily saying how he didn't expect him to come out of his core as if the event was a surprise gift. That... was confusing to say the least. It's easier to have a pet rock than a guest. Now he has to feed him to be polite, or at least offer. He has the room covered since the beginning. It was a really big room. A waste for something someone like him.

He felt his body freeze and start muffling sounds when Arthur started mentioning Kaldur and Orm. His family. Close ones, from the stories he would tell.

M4Dd13 and J4Ck would never allow strangers near him, much less Jazz.

"You... You aren't scared of me being dangerous to them?" He couldn't stop the questions from slipping out even when his expression shifted. "You don't think I'm evil or non-sentient?"

He doesn't even know how he could even think of himself as otherwise. He could remember the custom-made, high voltage tasers that targets his ecto-signature itself until he acted how they expected him to. How they wanted him to.

His eyesight became extremely cloudy. It was similar to the green he'd see before he would start crying after he couldn't cry water anymore.

Ghosts... Ghosts cry ectoplasm. What... What was he crying? What is he now? He was- Why wasn't he gone? He was Ended, wasn't he? They got rid of his heart and crushed his core to determine the durability- there wasn't a way to come back from that.

So why was he alive?

Why can't he-

"-think that?"

Shit- he wasn't paying attention.

Danny couldn't bare to look at the man, guilt eating away at him.

"I... don't know how things work around here..."

He could barely register that it was his voice.

"But on land... I've..."

Why was he still touching his shoulder?

Why isn't he disgusted?

Why isn't he scared?

Why isn't he angry?

"They don't respect the dead or those associated to the concept. I've tried to keep both sides from trying to destroy the other- but... but..."

But they destroyed me instead.

It was all for nothing.

Why didn't he listen to the Ancients?

Why did he just kill people?

They already expected him to do so anyway.

So why didn't he?

He couldn't feel the hug he was pulled into until he stopped crying.

What was he even crying about?

-

Ok so- Maybe Danny should start scheduling his breakdowns. So far, he's had ones at random or ones that goes on for multiple days without any stopping. Or- if he did stop, he really doesn't remember them.

But this is getting embarrassing. He was lucky Kaldur came home late or else they might've either came late or completely missed the breakfast reunion.

Ugh- and don't get him started with anxiety.

His eyes must be puffy or something. Great first impression, Danny! All ya gotta do now is cry again in front of everyone to make it one of the worst introductions in life.

Well, it wasn't really a good start even without him. Arthur had just dropped him onto a very cushiony chair and exclaimed: "Thank the seas! I'm starving!" And just went to devour a whole plate before calming down a bit with Mera scolding him.

He was just awkwardly watching until a plate was placed in front of him. He slightly tensed, attention going from his plate to the hand pulling away from the plate now that it was down. That's when his eyes made contact with Kaldur's. He seemed a bit startled to, as he blinked owlishly before smiling politely.

"Hello, I'm Kaldur'Ahm. You may call me Kaldur."

"U-um.. I'm..." What should he be called now? Phantom didn't feel as right anymore. Ah, what the heck. It's not like they know little ol' Danny Fenton. "I'm Danny." For some reason, that name didn't feel too right either.

"It's a pleasure to meet you. I've heard that you've been in a stone, so I was surprised to see you carried in by fa- Arthur."

Curious Happy Happy Nervous

Danny relaxed a bit, turning to his plate once eye contact became too difficult. He picked at his food

"I didn't have much strength when I first formed. I wasn't meant to even have a body but I... didn't want to be discovered and have my core cut up and carved into for some jewelry or something, so I forced myself. you could say it's like... an energy conservation form."

Danny started to actually eat his food, though a bit quicker than he usually would. Stress eating, how lovely.

"Is it a lot of work to stay as you are now? You don't have to stay like this if you're too drained." Kaldur started to fret for him, looking for any sign of strain.

Danny, feeling the worry from him, smiled. It's been a while since someone was worried for him.

"I recovered enough energy that I have a bit extra. I can't do a lot of the things I could before, but I don't feel any pain anymore. So, I'll be fine."

Kaldur relaxed a bit, though still held a slight frown.

"Tell me if you ever feel anything. I'm more than able to hold onto your core and protect you."

Danny hummed, continuing to eat. That's about the time Kaldur remembered that it was breakfast time and started- no, continued to eat from his plate. He must've served himself when Arthur started to or even before that.

"Hey hey hey! Now that the kid's awake, why don't we take a family trip toooooooooo" He dragged out the word as Mera glared at him. "-my brother's grave! I bet he'd love to meet you! And on the way, we can go to the burger place and shop for some clothes, meet my dad-"

Danny looked over at Kaldur, who shook his head fondly at his obvious father-figure. Really, that slip up wasn't getting past him, no way, not possible.

"Don't mind him." Mera sighed. "He's an idiot."

"Hey!"

"Danny, you could always say no. We could go a different day." Kaldur mentioned.

"Danny?" Arthur questioned. Mera rolled her eyes.

"Pay attention, will you?"

"No, it's fine." Danny shook his head with a nervous smile. "I'd like to see him too."

"GREAT!" Arthur exclaimed, making Danny jump and Kaldur wince at the volume. "Hurry and finish your meals! I'll call over the pups!" and then he ran off.

"Pups?" Danny asked.

"Sharks." Mera clarified with a fond sigh. "Ever since he heard someone call them sea puppies, he's been calling them pups and puppies ever since."

"That's... really cute actually." Danny snickered.

"He sneaks away to play with them all the time." Kaldur groaned, remembering the number of meetings he had to take over for the man.

Danny reached over and patted Kaldur's forearm.

"You poor child."

"At least you understand."

-

Kaldur... well, Danny didn't really know how to put it. He was really nice and all, but he was a bit...

"These earrings would look great on you." Kaldur hummed as he held up dangling pearls to his ears.

Kaldur's already bought 3 bags of stuff for him in the last 20 minutes since coming to Reef Town (completely made-up place, just go with it). He even had to adjust his ghost clothes so he could wear the pants and shirt, and other stuff that were bought for him. He still kept the veil since it was really soft and soothed him when he rubbed it between his fingers.

"Ah, but this goes with your clothing... Perhaps we should order one to be made in Atlantis?" Kaldur trailed off, mumbling about different shops and what materials they had along with design names Danny had no clue about. He was almost sure that some of those words were made-up with how they sounded.

"Oookaaayyy- how about we think this over later?" Arthur insisted, a hand on Kaldur's shoulder and the other taking away the earrings in his hands. "We have someone to meet in... about 5 minutes."

"Right, sorry! I got distracted-"

"You're fine, you little urchin." Arthur chuckled, pushing Kaldur towards the door. "Now let's go meet Orm!"

Danny felt a hand on his head. It was a gentle, motherly touch. It nearly made his core let out a purr. Only Jazz could do that with touch alone. Though he nearly started to do the same when they'd mark where they'd cut next. They didn't do that as often with how much they liked to see his organs and bones regenerate.

"Tell Kaldur if it's too much. He's just really excited to have you around and is used to having to give something to keep sea creature friends around."

Ah, he knew that voice.

"Ex..cited? Why?" Danny looked up at Mera, leaning into her touch.

Mera smiled down sweetly at him; her eyes were filled with love that would be pointed to her own child.

She didn't have that drunken lust M4Dd13 had in her eyes each time she came back.

It made his core flutter.

"He sees you as a younger sibling. He's wanted one for a little while now. I... I can't get myself to try again, so he didn't expect to have a sibling. He was really excited to meet you after he heard that you agreed to stay with Arthur. You didn't reject my touch either. I hope it was fine that I held your... core, was it?"

Danny felt her finger card through his hair. He melted at the soothing touch.

"Yeah. It's... it's everything to a ghost. Heart and soul. And... I heard about you from Arthur while I was in my core. And you were the reason Arthur knew to comfort me. So, I knew I could trust you."

Mera smiled a bit more brightly and knelt down, hands holding his face with all the love in the world before she placed a kiss on his forehead.

"I'm glad. Now, let's go catch up with the boys. I'm sure Kaldur and Arthur must be panicking."

Danny could barely follow after her, having to make himself float as she grabbed his hand to lead him outside. Everything was too fuzzy and happy; it was hard to focus.

-

"Did you kidnap a child spirit?!"

That was the first thing Orm said when he saw Danny, immediately looking at Arthur incredulously as he slammed the table with his hands.

He immediately walked over and knelt down in front of Danny.

"I am so sorry about him-"

"Hey! I didn't-"

"-he's an idiot and really doesn't know any better."

"I didn't kidnap him!"

Orm arched a brow at his brother before looking over at Mera.

"No contracts were made."

Orm looked back at Danny.

"You went with him willingly?"

Danny snickered. "He looked like an idiot."

"You too?!"

"You really can't blame him." Kaldur agreed, smiling over at Danny.

Danny giggled and looked back at Orm.

"I'm Danny."

"Orm, that idiot's older brother. Stepbrother. Now, why did a saintly spirit decide to tag along with this family?"

Mera walked over, placing a hand on Danny's head again. He leaned into it, barely able to keep in a purr.

"You remember the incident with the moon?" Orm nodded. "Well, they're the spirit of the moon."

Orm's eyes widened, head snapping right back to Danny.

"You- you're-"

Danny blinked. He's a what? Wait, not the time to dissociate-

"Is... Is that bad?" Danny hesitantly asked.

"No! Not at all- I just- I've always believed in you, it's just that- Seeing an idol is a bit of an experience-"

"An idol?" Danny questioned, looking up at Orm. He was still kneeling, doesn't that hurt?

"Well, I've heard stories about how you'd battle against the sun gods and sent blessed rain to heal those under incurable plagues. That you split your own soul to assist physically on this world to help those that roamed on it! I've traveled to different places on the land just to see your descendants. And what beautiful white features they have. Did you know that humans call them albinos?"

"Really?"

"Yes! They deserve a better name that fits the position of blessed descendants! The fools!"

"I-it's fine, really! I'm glad they're doing ok and- and that my blessing still lives on."

Orm sighed and stood up.

"You're much too kind. Even after they replaced you, you don't hold it against anyone."

Oddly enough, he felt his chest tighten. It was as if...

"Someone has to do my job in controlling the currents, right?" Danny smiled sadly.

The others seemed to feel sympathy for the spirit, Kaldur going over and pulling him into a hug.

"It's alright. The ocean will stand by your side. Forever. They still worship you even now. So don't think you were only a tool, ok?"

Danny nodded. "Ok.."

He fought back against the tears.

-----

A/n: well, that was a bit longer than the last one. I was planning to write more for this chapter, but I'll just add it to the next one. Sorry if it seems a bit stiff, it'll be better eventually... hopefully.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed.

[wyllsravengard]

there's a lot of discussion and speculation about the fact john doesn't speak of arthur in rdr1. logistically it's not hard to understand that rdr1 just came out years before rdr2 and thats why but . But.

but when you think of rdr1 with the additional context two, there is something quite... in line with john trying to forget arthur. wanting to. or burying him. not just in metaphor or in soil but in his memories and in some way failing to do it but in another succeeding

you think of john and his commitment to his son and wife and you think of his willingness to do anything for them. moral or not. righteous or not. and you think of the fact that john didn't know at the time the sort of man arthur believed him to be, but he perhaps modeled himself in the image of his older brother. near incidental. he has so little in common with arthur really. john's broody and lacking remorse and at twenty-six he's inconsiderate entirely in a way arthur never was.

but time is a thief and one day, he turns 38. he's older than arthur when he dies. and john doesn't remember well what he looks like, and all he can feel when he thinks of arthur is grief. grief that never ends. thats the thing about all of it, you'll realize - is that john knows arthur best in the retroactive.

the sort of complicated, odd man arthur was revealed to him in the creases of pages and keepsakes. in the carving of his guns that john finds after arthur is gone. in the ring of the woman arthur loved long ago. in the confessionals to his son isaac and the regret in the letters he wrote to their psuedo father. you realize john knows more of arthurs stagnant ghost that can't guide john into manhood the way he so desperately needs. and it's all he has to go by to make a man of himself.

john never finds out what kind of man arthur believed him to be and he has to infer the real good man arthur was. in grief there is love. john loved arthur enough to want to be like him. and in burying the living, breathing man arthur was he's forced to cling to his spirit. has to piece together the kindness of his older brother through memories and diary entries and secondhand stories. and that's how he models himself in rdr1 to me. where arthur is moral john becomes dutiful and where arthur is kind, john is helpful. he becomes the shadow of arthurs best qualities. he can never be arthur. no one could ever be arthur, even if arthur had given them the page by page instructions of how to do so. this is all he has. all he knows. all he can do.

john misses his brother. so he tries to embody him. but he can't really in the same way he can't grieve him. so he makes a home for arthurs ghost to return to in himself. john never mentions arthur because it dregs up painful what-ifs, but they share so many mannerisms and bastardized qualities. john has fashioned himself based on those loose memories.

one day, a stranger meets john and says. "why would you remember me, friend? you've forgotten far more important people than me" and john will remember all the ghosts he's ever loved briefly. there will be a blurry face and a forgiving voice and it will sound like a memory and it will linger in johns ribcage like a moth. and john won't remember. he won't. he can't. he buried his brother without ever doing it.

john says a lot of things. feels a lot of things. he shoots his gun to the stranger who calls his memory into question and the thing jams and the bastard roams free. john will taste blood in his mouth. he'll feel a cough in his lungs and well, he won't remember his brother still. buried men must stay buried.

of course. of course john never mentions arthur. he can't remember him, even though he's inherited so much of his manner. to speak it of him would be admitting to his existence. its admitting: i miss you. im sorry. it was my fault.

of course john never mentions arthur. he's made all this effort in forgetting him that even when his body and his gesture and his character betray the fact he's forgotten - his mind will soothe the pain and blur out his face.

and instead of remembering in life even once, he'll die the same way arthur did. alone. protective. contented. redeemed. john loves arthur like most brothers do - with muscle memory.

even if john cuts the necrosis of arthurs memory off of him, his body will twitch at the phantom feeling of his existence. john remembers even when he can't. arthur his only brother. the most important man he's ever forgotten.

[johnpriceslamb]

𝓽 𝓱 𝓻 𝓮 𝓪 𝓭 𝓮 𝓭 𝓮 𝓵 𝓮 𝓰 𝓪 𝓷 𝓬 𝓮

🪡 Before you joined the gang, you used to be a tailor. An event was coming up soon which involved looking fancy, meaning that you had to take his measurements for a new suit.

𝓑𝓔𝓕𝓞𝓡𝓔 𝓨𝓞𝓤 𝓟𝓡𝓞𝓒𝓔𝓔𝓓 ! ⋆ female ! reader ⋆ hyper-feminine ! reader ⋆ very suggestive content w/ javier ⋆ close proximity ⋆ reader is mentioned to be physically smaller than said chars ⋆ poorly google translates spanish >.> ⋆ not proof read nor edited ⋆ wrd count/1.2k

🪡 arthur morgan ⋆ charles smith ⋆ john marston ⋆ javier escuella (sep) x f! reader

🪡 𝓪𝓻𝓽𝓱𝓾𝓻 𝓶𝓸𝓻𝓰𝓪𝓷,

“stand still!”

You prattle on for the umpteenth time this evening. The loyal enforcer of the gang grunts at the feeling of the cold tape measure wrapped around his bare waist, as he begrudgingly lifts his arms up to avoid messing up the measurements.

“For someone so little,” He groans at the feeling of the flexible measure tightening deliberately around him, “You sure do have a lot of attitude.”

You ignore him, of course. You scribble down the exact number of his measurement down on a piece of paper with a slight hum. The beads of your delicate necklace hang delicately off your neck as you bend over the edge of the table a bit, elbows propping your demure head for support. Arthur couldn’t help but boredly take a peak of what you were writing down, before ultimately sighing as he hopes for this to go a little quicker.

the cigar in his mouth hangs low on his bottom lip, embers flying out from the tip. He takes another slow drag, before letting it out with a gentle sigh- to your direction. You throw the man a puffed-cheek glare, your little nose scrunching up at the smell.

He wouldn’t admit the fact that he felt warm when your fingers would touch his body so subtly when measuring him. Or when your face was so close to his ragged skin, he could really feel your soft breath. Did you always look that pretty when you’re concentrated?

“Hey, Arthur?” That familiar high-pitched voice catches his attention. His hands lazily grab ahold of his low-hung belt, before leaning in.

“Mh?” He lowly grunts, squinting his eyes at the sight of your beady eyes staring up at him. He chews at the end of his cigarette, letting out a huff when the smoke unexpectedly enters inside his body.

You cheekily smile, tinkering your dewy lashes at him to feign innocence. The pencil in your grip is tapped multiple times on the paper, “Wouldn’t pink be a suitable colour choice for your suit?”

“[name].” You’re lucky you were blessed with a cute little face, otherwise he’d have no issue throwing you in the lake nearby.

🪡 𝓬𝓱𝓪𝓻𝓵𝓮𝓼 𝓼𝓶𝓲𝓽𝓱,

“..I’m not familiar with getting measured, I apologise if I make anything difficult.” Charles quietly explains to you in that baritone voice he had. You can’t help that sweet fluttering in your chest at the apology.

“Nonsense!” You wave him off with a toothy smile, “All you’ll have to do is stand still.”

The gentle giant in-front of you slowly nods. He’s not uncomfortable, but he’s kind of on the edge since this was new to him. But since it’s you, he can feel some of the tension in him melt. Usually, he tends to avoid interacting with other people at camp.

But you? Something about you made him draw closer.

“Just a matter of standing still? I think I can manage with that. No trouble with me.” A ghost of a smile slowly etches onto his dark skin at your expression. Almost.. puppy like.

You’re about to measure his full height to ensure the exact proportions of the suit are balanced, only to realise..

Your height (lack thereof.. oops.) comes in as a bit of an issue here. For plot purposes, there aren’t any stools around nor could you go on your tippy toes to measure him fully.

“..Ah.” Charles blinks at the situation. Amusement crosses his face, before gesturing to hand over the end of the measuring tape. He holds it just at his head, patiently watching you peak at the number it falls down to at his ankles.

“Oh my..” You let out a tiny squeak at the number, a shy smile appearing on your sweet face before scribbling it down on a piece of paper nearby.

“Oh my?” He repeats you, “What? Is that.. Is that bad?”

“No, no!” You stammer, meekly brushing your hands over your light pink petticoat, “You’re just.. Y’know. You’re tall.”

“Oh?” He smiles lightly, lovingly looking at your light expression, “I hope that won’t be too much of a problem.”

“It’s not a problem. Quite the opposite, actually.” You quietly mumble the last part. Oh dear, you can feel his gaze, practically warming up your soul, staring at you as if you hung the stars. You feel your cheeks heating up.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing!”

🪡 𝓳𝓸𝓱𝓷 𝓶𝓪𝓻𝓼𝓽𝓸𝓷,

never in your life have you wanted to smack a man in the face so badly.

“Woah,” John grins like a newly wet dog from running through a puddle, “Y’here to take my measurements or to feel me up?”

All you did was just wrap the tape around the swell of his hips. Your cheeks puff out, purposefully tightening the tape to get your point behind.

“I mean, I wouldn’t mind either way.” He cheekily smiles, before scoffing at the feeling of the measuring tape deliberately tightening around him.

You swear you can smell the scent of booze. You ignore it, before straightening your back to measure his waist. What you can’t ignore however, was that raspy drawl his voice had which somehow makes you fall for him over and over again.

He may be as dumb as rocks, but his little antics drew you in.

“Hey,” He calls out to catch your attention. You sweetly tilt your head up, and to the side when he looks down at you.

“You gon’ pick the colours of my suit, or do I get to?” He asks curiously.

You ponder, “Well.. Do you want to?”

He thinks about it for a moment, before coming up with an answer. “Nah. Reckon you should. You’re the professional, after all.”

You can’t help but let out a soft giggle, “I wouldn’t go that far.”

When you’ve finished his measurements, you excitedly turn to him to discuss the colour choices which’ll be appropriate for the event coming up soon. Both of your eyes meet and he peers down at you with a loving gaze, it catches your breath a bit before you force yourself to look down at the notes which contained your notes.

“I think your suit should have a low v cut to really show that upper-body of yours. Perhaps a classic navy blue as your primary colour, and— Hey! Are you even listening to me?”

He blinks a few times, a bit sheepish. “I am, I just don’t got a clue on what you’re saying, sweetheart.”

You can feel your hand tighten.

🪡 𝓳𝓪𝓿𝓲𝓮𝓻 𝓮𝓼𝓬𝓾𝓮𝓵𝓵𝓪,

“Ah.. Quite close there, aren’t you?” He has this.. devilishly handsome smile you want to wipe off badly. He peers down at you as if you were nothing but a little dollie while you measured his chest.

“‘M not trying to be!” You whine, going just a bit lower to wrap the measuring tape around his waist now. You hum delightfully as you find the exact number, squinting your eyes to see where the tip of the measurement tape lands on.

While you’re busy with your own little thing, you don’t notice the way Javier admires you from above. He can’t help but comment on it too.

“You know,” He starts of with a slow, lazy smile. Mischievous, even.

“You’re looking very pretty working down there.” He puts a lot of emphasis on the word ‘very’ in his sentence. It’s subtle, but if you were to be paying attention to him you’d get it immediately.

You tilt your head up to innocently thank him with a small smile etched on your pretty little face, before realising what his words were implying. That little..

“Javier!” You scold him with a very high-pitched tone. You feel your dignity fading away as soon as he replies with a mocking laugh to your whining.

“You know I’m just playing around, chica. Don’t take it so seriously.” His hand goes down to cheekily pinch your squishy cheek to get his point through. You frown.

“You’re horrible.” You babble, begrudgingly taking his last measurement. You’re very tempted to give him the cold shoulder, but decided against it.

“You’re too kind.” He sarcastically replies, that same lazy grin on his face from the start as when he sees you scribbling down some notes about his measurements and preferences. You throw a tiny glare at him, “I’m the one creating your suit here, be nice!”

“Mhm? I haven’t gotten to express my gratitude yet have I?” He takes the notepad away from you, setting it aside before easily picking you up by the waist and setting you on the table, your legs dangle off the edge easily as he nears you.

“Permiteme que, querida.”

[vintagegeekculture]

The Evil Little Hairy Cave People of Europe in Pulp Fiction

From the 1900s to the 1940s, there was a trendy theme in occult and horror stories that the explanation for widespread European legends of fairies, brownies, pixies, leprechauns and other malicious little people, was that they were a hereditary racial memory of the extremely small non-human, hairy stone age original inhabitants of Europe, who still survive well into modern times in caves and barrows below the earth. Envious of being displaced on the surface, these weird creatures, adapted to the darkness of living underground and unable to withstand the sun, still mean mischief and occasionally go out at night to capture someone.... usually an attractive woman....to take to their dark caves for human sacrifice.

Displaced by the arrival of Indo-European language speakers at the dawn of the Bronze Age, these original, not quite human stone age people of Europe were driven deep underground into caves and barrows below the earth, where they went mad, adapted to the darkness and acquired a fear of daylight, became extremely inbred, in some cases acquired widespread albinism. It is these strange little people who gave the descendants of Europeans a haunting racial dread of places below the earth like mines and caves, and it also is these strange, hairy troglodytes who originally built the uncanny and mysterious menhir, fairy rings, and stone age structures of England, Scotland, and Ireland that predate the coming of the Celts and Romans.

In some cases, these evil troglodytes are usually identified with the mysterious Picts, the pre-Celtic stone age inhabitants of the British Isles. In some cases, they are identified with the Basque people of Spain, best known as the inventors of Jai Alai, and the oldest people in Europe who speak a unique language unrelated to any in the world.

The original codifier of this trend was Arthur Machen, a horror writer who is less remembered than his contemporary, Henry James, but who may be the best horror writer in the generations between Poe on the one end and Lovecraft/CL Moore/Clark Ashton Smith on the other. His story, "the White People" from 1904 (a reference to their strange cave albinism) was a twisted Alice in Wonderland with a girl who is irresistibly attracted to dark pre-Roman stone age ruins and who is eventually pulled underground.

In addition to being a great horror writer, Arthur Machen was a member of the Hermetic Society of the Golden Dawn, an occult organization, and was often seen at the Isis-Urania Temple in London. Many of his works have secretive occult knowledge.

H.P. Lovecraft in particular always pointed out Arthur Machen as his single biggest inspiration, though he combined Machen's dread and occultism with Abraham Merritt's sense of fear of the cosmic unknown, seen in "Dwellers in the Mirage" and "People of the Pit."

Another and scarier example of this trend would be "No Man's Land," a story by John Buchan, a Scotsman fascinated by paganism and horror, who often wrote stories of horrific discoveries and evil rites on the Scottish moors. He is often reduced to being described as a "Scottish Ghost Story" writer, a painfully reductivist description as in his career, Buchan wrote a lot of thrillers, detective, and adventure stories as well. In later life, he was appointed Governor General of Canada, meaning he may be the first head of state to be a horror writer.

It was Buchan who first identified the cave creatures with the Picts, something that another Weird Tales writer decades later, Robert E. Howard, would roll with in the 1920s.

Howard is a very identifiable kind of modern person you often see on the internet: a guy who talks tough, but who was terrified to leave his small town. He created manly man, tough guy heroes like Conan the Barbarian, Kull, and El Borak, but he himself never left his mother's house. It's no wonder he got along well with his fellow Weird Tales writer and weird shut in, HP Lovecraft. With 1920s Weird Tales writers, despite your admiration for their incredible talent, you also can't help but laugh at them a little, a feeling you also apply to a lot of Victorians, who achieved incredible things, but who are often closet cases and cranks who died virgins ("Chinese" Gordon comes to mind, as does Immelmann).

With Howard, his obsession with the Picts and the stone age cave dwelling people of Europe started with an unpublished manuscript where at a dinner party, a man gets knocked out and regresses to his past life in the Bronze Age, where he remembers the earliest contact between modern humans and the original inhabitants of the British Isles, the evil darkskinned Picts. This is a mix of both the "little cave people" story and another cliche at the time, "the stone age past life regression novel," another turn of the century cliche.

Still with the Picts on his mind, Howard would later create Bran Mak Morn, a Pict chieftain, who predated Kull and Conan as his Celtic caveman muscle hero. Howard was of Irish descent and proudly anti-Colonial and anti-British, with his Roman Empire and Civilized Kingdoms as a stand in for the British and other Empires, which he viewed as rapacious and humbug, a view shared by his greatest inspiration, Talbot Mundy. His "Worms of the Earth" gets to the heart of why these little cave people scare us so much: they remind us that we live on land that is impossibly ancient and we don't fully understand at all.

It was another Weird Tales Writer a decade later who wrote one of the last stories about the little hairy cave people of Europe, though, Manly Wade Wellman in 1942. Wellman was mainly known for creating the blond beefcake caveman hero Hok the Mighty set in stone age times, and for his supernatural ghost stories of Silver John the Balladeer set in modern, ghostly Appalachia (like many ex-Weird Tales writers, he made a turn to being a regional author in his later career, in the same way Hugh B. Cave became a Caribbean writer), but Wellman also had a regular character known as John Thunstone, a muscular and wealthy playboy known for his moustache who used his great wealth to investigate the supernatural and the occult. Thunstone had a silver sword made by St. Dunstan, patron of Silversmiths, well known for his confrontations with the Devil.

Most John Thunstone stories featured familiar stories, like a demon possessed seance and so on, but one in particular featured a unique enemy, the Shonokins.

The Shonokins were the original rulers of North America, descendants of Neanderthal man displaced by American Indians. This fear that the land we live is ancient and unknowable and we just arrived on it and don't know any of its secrets is common to settler societies, who often hold the landscape with dread, as in Patricia Wrightson's fantasies of the Australian Outback. It was easy enough to transport the hairy cave people from the Scottish Moors to North America. I suspect that's what they are, a personification of a fear shared in the middle class, that in the back of their minds, that everything they have supposedly earned is merely an accident of history, built by rapacity and the crimes of history, and that someday a bill will come due.

A text page in the May 1942 issue of Weird Tales gives strange additional information on the Shonokins not found elsewhere:

Since then, there have been too many examples of evil cave people who predate Europeans. Philip Jose Farmer's "The All White Elf" features the last survivor of a pre-European people who live in caves. A lot of other fiction of course has featured the Picts, but according to our modern scientific understanding, which describes them as much, much less exotically, as a blue tattooed people not too different and practically indistinguishable from the Celtic tribes that surrounded them, and which they eventually blended into.