Chapter Text
It started off innocent enough when it first happened. Charles had heard word of an overly large Elk up in the mountains, and with nothing better to do (and a little stir-crazy), he set out to find the creature.
In the end, it was unsuccessful. His eyes honed onto every little detail in the dirt and gravel but it gave him nothing, no evidence of any hoofed creature even passing through. Which was strange in and of itself, but maybe the thing had never existed in the first place.
Charles decided he would settle for a couple of rabbits for now, but if he came across anything on the way down, he’d gather that too.
He was nearly halfway down the mountain when he saw it.
A horse darted down the path about thirty feet in front of him, and Charles moved Taima to be obscured by thick tree trunk. There was a boy on the back of the horse, and though a Charles couldn’t see his face, from his size and lack of muscle showing through the dirty white robes that flapped in the wind as he rode he couldn’t have been any older than twenty or so.
Then, a familiar voice, “Jamie! Get back here, damnit!”
Arthur’s horse hurried down the path as well, the familiar chestnut and white of her coat glowing in the sun.
The pair bounded down the gravel, gradually getting further and further away until their shouts were nearly incoherent.
Ah, hell.
Charles directed Taima to a steady canter down the path and followed the pair.
Charles stayed a good distance away from the pair as Arthur shot a revolver out of the boys hand, which he learned was Jamie. He was relieved to see Arthur’s quick reflexes—as always—but particularly this time because even from the gap between them he could see as the boys hands tried to flit up to his own head, barrel pointed straight at his cranium.
It was interesting, seeing how Arthur interacted with people who weren’t part of the gang. Charles didn’t see it much, if at all, but Arthur also seemed to have a bit of familiarity with the boy. He obviously cared for him. Arthur made no gruff comments nor had that rough and playful physical posture he always had when poking around with the gang. Actually, it seemed he did his upmost to be as gentle as he could—like if he was too rambunctious the boy would simply slip off the horse and run away again. Charles didn’t think the boy would. Jamie’s posture was slack against Arthur’s as he held onto him with familiarity.
Charles didn’t know if he should refer to him by day. The boy had a name, after all, but Charles felt that he was intruding and interrupting the flow of the particularly intimate flow of the scene before him. The whole thing, following Arthur without his knowledge, referring to Jamie by name in his own mind as if he knew the boy personally.. he felt like an intermeddler.
But maybe it wasn’t all that bad, as long as he didn’t get involved in Arthur’s affairs or get caught. What you don’t know, won’t hurt you, right? At least, that’s what his father said sometimes.
Plus, Charles didn’t count on this happening again. It just so happened by chance—Charles stumbling onto the two. He himself still had no clue why exactly he decided to follow them for the good at least couple miles that he did.
It wouldn’t happen again, he had thought.
Charles Smith didn’t make a habit out of lying to himself, but at the time, it had not seemed like a lie.
With the new camp at Clemens Point, tension began to stir. People were starting to get restless, and Arthur was gone more and more—sometimes for weeks at a time—which Dutch, already delirious and constantly rubbing his grubby hands together while muttering whispers about ‘plans,’ and ‘big scores,’ did not appreciate at all. After about half a week of Arthur being gone, Dutch pulled Charles aside and clapped him tight on the shoulder.
It didn’t take long to find Arthur. A large brute (though, that’s not quite what Charles would call him), often doing odd and charitable jobs—it often made people talk. It was unexpected, of someone who looks the way Arthur does and the caries the things that Arthur does. Gun holsters and Bandoliers and rifles slung over shoulders thick with muscle fetching an old man’s horse or buying lumber for a family struggling to finish their build. (It reminds Charles of the strange Photographer, he can’t remember the name of, that Arthur seemed to have helped a couple times before. Absentmindedly, he wonders if that picture ever got to the camp before they had to pack up and get a move on).
The first place he checked was Rhodes. Charles hadn’t been into town very often, only hearing of the supposed blood feud and the badge that was clipped snuggly against Arthur’s breast, which jingled every so often when Arthur moved a little too strenuously.
He didn’t talk or ask around at all while in town, sitting strategically at the bustling saloon and straining his ears to pick up anything that even remotely sounds like a strangely helpful outlaw on the loose.
There was a whole lot of nothing, just women talking about what new way their husbands found to annoy them, heated arguments about Grays and Braithewaits that Charles didn’t care to listen to, and a particularly upset man—muttering about a ‘filthy-no-good-hick who burned his beloved possessions.’ That was the first thing that tipped Charles off.
He talked to the man, which he came to learn was named Jeremiah Compson, and was not very enthusiastic to be talking to someone of Charles’ complexion. He did his best to ignore it, for the sake of finding Arthur. With no small amount of disdain, the man made mention of where his camp was, where said outlaw had rudely burned up his ledger. Charles had no sympathy to give to the man and his lost possessions because for one, he himself was at the wrath of the man’s scrutiny just because he happened to not be a white man, and two, Arthur had clearly destroyed whatever the ledger held for good reason.
With snuffed out campfire and tracks in the overly thick, red clay that covered the stretch of land that was Lemoyne provided enough evidence of Arthur for Charles to track. It had been only maybe a day since the event between Jeremiah Compson and Arthur, so he couldn’t be too far away.
It took only until dusk for Charles to find Arthur. Arthur was hunched over his sketchbook in front of a newly lit and roaring campfire. It wasn’t far from Clemens Point (only a couple miles southeast from Rhodes), and Arthur could’ve easily just gone back to camp but he very deliberately chose not to.
Charles hitched Taima up nearly a hundred feet from Arthur’s campsite, but Charles himself sat himself in the obscuring bushes that surrounded said campsite, but still offered a good view of the occupant.
He didn’t have any intentions of doing anything, he just wanted to.. watch. Uninterrupted by the need to look away because he got caught staring. Arthur was a riveting creature, a graceful and intelligent one at that and he deserved to be studied and observed as one, and Charles thought himself worthy enough. Arthur’s beauty was lost to the demanding eyes of Dutch, the hatred that Micah carried for him in his own, the wanting gaze of working girls in saloons. Maybe it was selfish to think that way.
Maybe, actually no—it was a definitive and resounding absolutely no—Arthur didn’t want anyone looking at him in anyway. It was this thought that made his run a grimy hand down his tired face in embarrassment. God, he felt like a creep.
They sat in unknown (for Arthur) synchrony for about an hour, Charles whittling away quietly at a wooden buck and Arthur still sketching away in his sketchbook until Arthur suddenly sat the book down, face up, and rubbed tiredly at his own face. He stood up to snuff out the roaring flames and set out his bedroll, which in turn knocked Charles out of his concentration.
His eyes wondered everywhere, searching for any threats and settling down when he realized it was just Arthur. Buckling down again in the comfort of being hidden away by the bushes, he let his eyes wonder again. To the journal, lying open, almost like it wanted Charles to peek. And God did he feel the guilt gnawing at him as he looked.
At this distance, some of the details were lost and smudged but Charles could clearly see his own face looking back at him. His hair was down and it covered the expanse of the page. His scar was nearly the highlight of the drawing, stark against the dark of his hair and the light graphite coloring of his skin.
He began to feel his ears and cheeks warm, and an openness in his chest that felt close to inebriation, but it was gone quickky after Arthur snapped the book shut and stuffed it into a saddlebag.
The next morning, Charles would pretend to run into him, telling him about Dutch’s worries, as if he hadn’t spent all night with him. Arthur nodded dismissively and they made their way back to camp together.
It weren’t his fault—Dutch had been the one that sent him. (Even if he wasn’t naive enough to believe in a selfish thought like that). But, so what if Charles had indulged himself a bit, it wasn’t often he got to do so.
The next time Arthur went out, Charles was close behind.
After that, Charles saw him in Saint Denis after Charles had gone to stock up on things he couldn’t make himself.
And after that, Charles watched as Arthur beat the death out of two men who refused to heed his warnings about entering the church yard in Rhodes.
Soon after, Charles nearly got himself caught when he shot down a man in a gang that Arthur had foolishly decided he’d take on all by himself to get a medicine cart back. It touched Charles’ heart all the same, despite his urge to reprimand the man for his idiocy, even if he knew the other was more than capable.
After that, Charles decided it was enough—he had indulged far too long, guilt gnawing away at him for his own objectification of Arthur. Drawing on a sharp breath, his heart skipped a beat as he drove Taima hard back to camp.