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Hosea recalled a floral scent in his dreams, a fragrance clouding his mind and so wonderfully intense that a sigh of relief escaped him. He stirred awake, momentarily paralyzed and blissfully intact as he remained prone on his cot. One whiff of his surroundings and he found the smell hadn’t dissipated but rather lingered like an invisible haze around him.
He sat up, surprised to see a bouquet of the richest shade of red roses that he’d ever seen lying next to his photo of him and Bessie. He stared in a daze, the sleep slowly ebbing away from his body as the roses overwhelmed his senses.
A curious smile graced his lips, and he reached over towards the barrel where the bouquet was sat upon. It was wrapped finely, a soft fabric gently cupping the bundle of flowers as his eyes caught onto a small scrap of paper fluttering downwards from the confines of the linen.
Intrigued, he set the roses on his bedside, picked up the note folded into a neat square and ran his eyes over it.
‘Like a gentle sunrise, I find you like the dawn of my morrow,
Though I fear this passion will only end in my sorrow.’
Hosea blinked, skimming the note again and still without a trace of a name or a hint of the sender. His eyes wandered over the rest of the campsite, nothing worthy of note aside from the crackling of the dying bonfire.
He stuffed the card into a pocket, doing up his belt before starting for the edge of the overlook. The dewy grass was slightly wet as he waited on his haunches for the morning to pass, contemplating the roses in his mind while the humid weather wrapped around him like a blanket.
Hosea pulled out a cigarette, swiftly lighting it and taking several puffs. He relaxed as the smoke settled in his lungs for a moment, a second passing before exhaling heavily.
He wasn’t an idiot. There was no reason to deny who it obviously came from. The card was laced with the sickeningly sweet dulcet tones of Dutch’s charms attempting to lure him in. He gritted his teeth, rolling his cigarette in between two fingers before pulling the scrap of paper out again. Stupid, he thought, so like Dutch and unlike him all at once to do something like this.
The cigarette dropped to the ground, a boot crushing it harshly into the wet dirt.
How was he supposed to react to this? What exactly was Dutch playing at?
Hosea sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. He was unsure why he was working himself up so much over this. It was a matter of a simple yes or no, yet what he felt for Dutch was rooted deeply in something more complex, so incomprehensible that even with his skilled way with words, he failed to twist his emotions into a tangible form that held a semblance of meaning.
In short, their relationship was fucked up.
So he sat and waited for an answer that wouldn’t come. And neither did Dutch, to both his relief and disappointment.
Hosea went to bed, heart heavy with the guilt creeping inside him. He was a coward for avoiding Dutch all day. Nothing but swift glances exchanged, passing gazes that drifted between them which could have meant anything at all.
His vision blurred in the darkness, the firelight dancing in waves across the bouquet of roses the last thing visible in his mind as sleep claimed him.
He woke up once more just before dawn, and immediately his eyes darted over to his belongings and widened in size as he took in the sight of more flowers. Another bouquet, this time filled with a sea of morning glories and bright yellow tulips sitting innocently next to the roses from yesterday.
He leaned forwards from where he sat up, trembling fingers grasping for the bundle. This time the card was planted delicately atop the bed of flowers.
‘You, like a perilous channel of riverbends;
And I, the waterfall your path descends.’
Cocky, he muttered under his breath, and the sense of finality the words radiated angered him.
He took the bouquet, grip overly forceful against the stems, and blazed a trail to the same spot he’d taken up at the edge of the overlook the day before. His arms reached out, ready to drop the offending flowers off the cliff’s edge just as the orange glow of the sun broke through the horizon.
Hosea watched in horrifying fascination as the morning glories bloomed. The petals slowly unfurled, revealing in its core a seemingly white glow flecked with patches of blue. Astonished, he took a step back, almost dropping the bouquet as he fumbled with his grip.
He swallowed, letting himself collapse to his knees, the bouquet a dazzling gleam in his lap but his mind elsewhere.
He thought of Dutch and those perfect curls he loved. He thought of Dutch’s sharp features, that strong body held with so much charisma and confidence. He thought of the slight twitch to Dutch’s mustache when the man was deep in thought, that intelligent mind he loved to banter with.
And all the same he remembered the darker parts the man was capable of. The side that could kill an innocent woman in cold blood, the recklessness that led to the deaths of so many of their own.
Bessie flitted across his mind last, feeling his heart break all over again and then be grounded into fine dust. What would she want for him? Would she approve?
He ran a hand through his graying hair.
Too much. This was all too much.
Hosea stood abruptly, leaving the flowers to rest on the ground. He marched straight to Silver Dollar, mounting his horse before starting down the woodland path in a wake of thundering hooves.
He slowed his horse’s pace halfway to Valentine, arriving sometime mid-morning. He hitched his horse to a nearby post, wrinkling his nose at the farmland smell and fled into the inn where he spent the rest of the day.
There was no fragrance hovering in the air when Hosea woke up, only the smell of musty wood assaulting his nose. There was no colorful mess of flowers on his nightstand, and no card waiting to rip his heart a new one. He stayed in bed for several hours, feeling conflicted as a gnawing ache churned in his stomach.
The loneliness in his soul chipped away at him, his dim room free of the sunlight feeling utterly suffocating.
And most of all, he found himself missing Dutch, afraid as he was to acknowledge it. Because doing so meant he was opening himself up to hurt, another loved one lost, and another year under the grip of whiskey.
The silence drowned him in his thoughts, unable to resist thinking about Blackwater. He was partly at fault for what had happened, for the mess that had befallen all of them. Too busy as he was moaning about the old days, he missed the signs, failed to realize the weight of the pressure driving Dutch deeper into madness.
Hosea knew the man better than anyone and in that regard he failed them all, especially Dutch, when he began to distance himself from the gang after Bessie passed.
He swallowed heavily, a boulder tumbling down the walls of his esophagus and splashing into a pit of acid. He should’ve tried harder, pushed for Dutch to see where this was all leading up to.
The sun had risen to its peak by the time he had left the inn, trudging dejectedly through the muddied streets to where he hitched Silver Dollar last. Hosea pulled the brim of his hat low over his eyes, unwilling to make any contact.
The unmistakable scent of flowers entwined with the knots in his chest, a fresh breeze carrying the fragrance and delivering to his nose an assortment of smells both familiar and foreign to him. His heart skipped a beat the moment he laid his eyes upon the flower stand, unable to stop his legs from inching closer towards the elderly woman tending to the plants.
“Afternoon ma’am.” His voice was scratchy, and he coughed into the sleeve of his coat. He held on with an iron grip to the wooden table in front of him, attempting to steady his balance from his slightly buckling knees.
The lady turned to greet him. “Good afternoon, sir. How may I help you?”
He chewed on his lips, unsure of what his mind was screaming at him for. “A young gentleman, ‘round my height and finely dressed. Have you seen anyone like that?”
“Oh, Mr. Kilgore, yes. A fine young man. You know him?”
“Ah, well, he’s a ... friend of sorts,” he stammered, feeling sick to his stomach. “He buy anything from here?”
“A few things, mostly expensive gifts. He’s very easy on the eyes, you know, his special someone’s very lucky to have him.”
A bitter laugh escaped him, unable to help himself.
“And you, sir? Lookin’ to impress someone yourself? It’s Valentines Day, you’re never too old for love.”
Hosea mentally facepalmed. How could he forget? And then he remembered that the last person he'd spent it with was currently six feet under.
He pushed away the grief threatening to consume him.
“I … messed up. I need to make things right with someone again.”
The old lady nodded and went to the back underneath a tarp that sheltered more flowers. He watched as she crouched, plucking a few flowers from outside his view. She returned a moment later with a handful of yellow star-shaped flowers.
“Daffodils,” she explained, “a fresh start.”
Hosea’s hands went to his pockets, already fishing out a few coins when the florist waved him off.
“No, no, there’s no need for that.” She wrapped the bouquet in the same fine linen his other gifts had come in.
He blinked, dumbfounded as she pointed somewhere over his shoulder and he hesitantly looked to where the saloon was in the distance.
“Mr. Kilgore left for the bar just recently, you can’t miss him.” She smiled at him, eyes reflecting a gentle warmth and understanding.
He nodded, whispering a quiet thank you with a smile of his own before slipping the bouquet into his inner coat pocket.
The saloon wasn’t too far, about a minute’s walk away. But Hosea felt the atmosphere around him change, the hairs on his neck raising as someone approached him from behind. He froze as the barrel of a gun pressed into his back, a voice hissing into his ears.
“Mr. Matthews, I presume?” The gun ushered him forwards. “Keep walking, take us to Mr. Van der Linde.”
He swore in his mind, raising his hands slightly in front of him. Pinkertons, he figured, spying more of the agents in uniforms standing idly by the saloon.
He stopped a few inches away from the establishment when the gun stabbed into his back again.
“Dutch van der Linde! We know you’re inside, come quietly now. There's no need for anyone to die, especially Matthews over here.”
Hosea looked around, finding not just The Count hitched nearby, but also Arthur’s steed.
Shit.
His surroundings shifted in color, a grey substance coating over everything within view as time slowed to a crawl. He heard the Pinkerton call out again, a whispered threat compared to the sound of his heart hammering against his ribcage. His eyes trained on a figure approaching the swinging doors, and he tensed as Arthur appeared, revolver raised in the boy’s hand. He counted down the shots resounding in the air, six in total and one of them finding its way into the head of the Pinkerton behind him.
The adrenaline in his veins kicked into overdrive as time sped up and Hosea immediately dove for cover behind a wheelbarrow, the gunfire picking up. His lungs ached faster for air than his body could breathe.
“Hosea!” Arthur called, Dutch on his heels.
He took a moment to observe Dutch’s wellbeing—a fatal mistake.
“Look out!”
The assailant sprinting towards him went unnoticed, his arm drawing his pistol and pulling the trigger far too late. His body seized as a blade sank into his chest while his gun fired simultaneously, the pain blossoming close to his heart. He stared at the knife embedded in his body, head swimming around from the shock and barely hearing his gun clatter to the ground along with the Pinkerton.
“Shit!”
The sounds seemed farther away, muffled by a white noise deafening his hearing. Everything blurred, distorting into thick waves and left him seeing doubles.
Hosea looked up to Arthur’s face and then to Dutch’s, letting his right arm be tugged over a shoulder. He heard them yell over the cacophonous sound of gunfire, echoing in his ears and indistinguishable from one another.
The world spun as they began to move, and he felt the metallic taste of blood oozing its way up his throat, slowly choking him. On instinct, he hacked a bloody cough and gasped for air, moaning at the pain shooting through him. The ringing in his ears stopped, suddenly being thrusted back into reality.
It felt as if a horse trampled over him several times and then repeatedly had his insides be kicked into a pulp. He curled in on himself, eyes slipping shut as the pain truly settled.
“Stay with me, Hosea!” Dutch screamed into his ear.
They were pinned, bullets hailing down upon them.
He remembered the flowers tucked into his coat, a surge of determination clawing at him, pushing him to resist against the weight his eyelids imposed. If not to survive, then to at least see Dutch once more in his final moments.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, just in case,” he gurgled, spitting a mouthful of blood to the side with a grin. He watched as Dutch’s eyes glistened before reaching inside his coat to pull out the bouquet of daffodils. Hosea frowned as they came out bloody, smushed amidst the chaos.
“Dutch, there’s a wagon here we can use!” Arthur shouted in the distance.
“It ain’t over yet, old man,” Dutch’s voice broke. The flowers were pushed back into his hands. “We’re gettin’ outta here alive and you can give it to me then.”
The words flew by him, failing to register in his mind as Dutch desperately called his name, finally succumbing to the increasingly inviting darkness.
A dark nothingness was all to be found. It was surreal, a noiseless dreamscape as he floated. Hosea wasn’t sure how to describe it. The sensation felt off with the sense of time trickling by, of being there presently but not really there all at once.
It unnerved him, the peacefulness of it all, even stranger that he was able to hear himself think. He was never a religious man, though he expected the fires of hell would be an agreeable place for any good god to ship him off to.
And if he was dead then his only regret was selfishly leaving Dutch with his corpse after having said his peace.
The time passed for what felt like an eternity and his fear only grew in tandem. He was stuck here in this neverending limbo, and he felt his body tense. His nerves went into a frenzy and he feared for what was going to happen until slowly, his eyes opened to the waking world.
Exhaustion weighed him down and he blinked his tired eyes narrowed into barely open slits as he took in his surroundings. His torso was wrapped in a bandage, and above him were several layers of blankets as he laid on a cot.
A hand was wrapped around his own, and his eyes trailed over to where Dutch was slumped in a chair, sound asleep.
The man was a mess; Dutch's hair unkempt and clothes ruffled with the lines in his eyes more pronounced.
Hosea turned his head further, spotting the daffodils he’d given Dutch. They were nestled in a vase, shriveled, and most likely had seen better days, but it was alive.
Alive.
He was alive.
He squeezed Dutch’s hand, feeling the younger man stir, the fingers gripping his palms rubbing soothing circles.
Their eyes met, and Hosea watched as Dutch’s breath hitched.
"I thought," Dutch hiccuped, “I thought you were gone for good.”
"Poems? Really now?" he scoffed, wincing slightly.
"Hosea," Dutch's voice hardened, a fine line being drawn that Hosea was being dared to cross.
"What are we, Dutch? You're asking for something ... something dangerous in our line of work."
"I know."
"We've gone through the whole process before, you know what it's like to ... to—"
"—I know!"
They were both coming undone, the flurry of emotions winding into a hurricane.
Hosea closed his eyes, frustrated. "Then tell me what we are."
Silence. The winds died in his mind.
The lack of a response hurt more than any rejection ever could until Dutch leaned in close, the scruff and the younger man's mustache scraping against his skin in a pleasing way.
"Partners. Forever, that's what we are." The words glided over his skin.
A spark bloomed from within, a seed of hope taking root in their hearts, and they both flourished together as their lips locked.