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“I’M TIRED SEEING him over there lookin’ like a knot on a log,” Karen laments, looking past the dancing couples and over the fire at Arthur —sitting by his lonesome even with the camp revelries. He’d been in a foul mood all day over something Micah had said before heading off to hunt at the break of dawn. Karen knows how to sweeten his night and remedy his mood, though. Most people in camp know how to too. Send the person he has the biggest soft spot for, you. “Go ask him to dance,” she tells you, nudging your side.
Part of you believes you know what Karen and Mary-Beth are up to —always telling you to dance with Arthur or try cheering him up when he gets into those brooding moods of his or help him shave when camp wasn’t near a proper barber. It’s all excuses they’ve made to get the two of you to spend time together ever since you made an offhanded compliment about Arthur being a fine and handsome man. Just about everyone in camp seems to be playing matchmaker between you and Arthur now. Karen smiles when you stand up from the crate and make your way to the wagon wheel he’s leaning against.
“Arthur–” you hold your hand out toward him “–will you dance with me?” He looks up, running a hand through his messy honey-brown hair. It doesn’t matter what you ask of him, Arthur Morgan cannot say no to you —he never had been. The girls tease him about it too. Why else would the man who’s willing the wear the same dirty and smelly shirt for weeks on end be so eager for a trip to town unless it’s for the girl he’s gone sweet on? He stands, brushing off his pants before taking hold of your hand and leading you back to the heart of camp.
A record plays from the beat-up gramophone —a slow duet between a piano and weeping viola. You drape your hands across Arthur’s broad shoulders, and his finds a place on your waist as you both start swaying back-and-forth to the music in a loose figure-eight pattern. Smiling, you rest your forehead against his chest. With a quiet sigh, Arthur presses his cheek against the crown of your head —the scent of roses and raspberries tickles his nose. The gramophone fills with static before the music stops, and a moment later, you and Arthur step apart, but the silence doesn’t last long as Mary-Beth changes the record fore rejoining Charles.
The beat is quicker this time, and Arthur can’t help but smile as you pull him back into a faster-pace dance. “And you try saying you have two left feet,” you laugh, spinning back into his chest after he twirls you around. Two left feet was the excuse he used when you asked him to dance with you for the first time.
“Helps havin’ a partner pretty as you,” he counters, wrapping an arm around your waist and dipping you back but pulling you up a little too quickly.
There’s a moment when your heart tightens —beating faster— and heat rises to your cheeks, but you shake your head and grip onto his bicep as you steady yourself. “Now Arthur,” you chide, “don’t go talkin’ sweet if you don’t mean it.”
“I do mean it, though,” he chuckles, drawing you a little bit closer. Given the chance, Arthur would dance till sunrise, if only to have you this close for a while longer.
THE TIPS OF his fingers are black and slick from the piece of charcoal in his grasp as he sketches in the journal open across his knee. A shadow crosses over the off-white page before she approaches. “Mary-Beth,” Arthur greets, looking up with a nod and faint curve tugging at his lips.
“Whatcha doin’?” She asks, sitting on a crate next to him and peering over his shoulder, catching the outline of a familiar face taking shape. Arthur glances up, gaze focusing on you as you play a game of cards with Sean. He stares for a moment too long, and Mary-Beth smiles, shaking her head. He’s lost in the golden rays of sun kissing your cheeks, the furrow between your brows as you look down at the hand of cards, and the twist in your lips when you see the card Sean plays next. If he were a true artist, you’d be his muse. Mary-Beth knows, so does Tilly and Karen and Grimshaw and Uncle and even John. Arthur Morgan had gone soft for the sweetheart of the camp. “Are you ever gonna tell her, Arthur?”
He sets down the charcoal and wipes away the sweat beading on his brow with the back of his hand. Arthur glances over at Mary-Beth, taking in a long breath and preparing his excuse for why he won’t listen to what his heart is saying. “Ain’t found the right time,” he says with a shrug. Two damn years and still too chickenshit to do something, let alone say anything. The thought of love makes him nervous —he’s not a good man, and given his past, he hasn’t had the best of luck with any woman he thought he might could love. Last thing Arthur Morgan wants to do is chase away the only girl who’s looked at him the way you do with his own foolishness.
“What’s wrong with right now?” Mary-Beth challenges, laying her hand on his arm to break him of his trance. “We don’t have forever, Arthur, that’s why every moment’s precious.” He sighs, watching her leave to help Tilly finish hanging clothes out to dry on the line, wondering how a young thief could be so wise.
HE WON’T THINKING straight when he handed you his journal after you asked to see the raven he’d been sketching, but if he snatched the journal back, that’d be even more suspicious than if he hadn’t let you look in the first place. Arthur feels his stomach twist, his heart pounding in his chest as you turn another page. What are you? He scolds himself with a scowl. A lovesick boy? He knows the answer is yes. One smile from you, and he’s a goner every time —you have Arthur wrapped around your pinky without even knowing it. You skim over the little doodles of a fox, deer, dog, and a small girl you both seen in passing in a field of summer wildflowers on a windy day with a red kite. “These are wonderful,” you tell him, leaning closer.
Flipping over the page, your attention’s drawn to a short line scrawled at the top. No mountain, nor sea, can keep me away from thee. He watches the smile spread across your lips and then slowly recede when you look at the sketch below the rhyme —a woman standing over a pot slicing a potato or onion for a stew. It could have been Karen or any of the womenfolk of camp, but it’s the bow in the hair that tells you who it is. It’s me, you think, brushing your fingertips over the page, careful not to smudge the charcoal lines and shading. “This is…me?” You question softly with a dusty rose flush as you meet his gaze.
His throat and chest feel tight, words dying on the tip of his tongue. All he can do is nod, wearing a bittersweet smile as you turn another page. “I remember this night–” you grin, looking up at him with that twinkle in your eyes he’s come to adore. It was after the gang had a successful run on the stagecoaches transporting goods to Saint Denis in the name of one Bartholomew Stanton. Weapons, clothes, and other fineries ripe for picking. The small sketch has you sitting next to Javier and holding his guitar —he was going to teach you to play, a failed endeavor in the end, but a good time, nonetheless.
Arthur remembers that night too. A wistful look clouds his blue eyes as he recalls the night he sold his heart to you without even realizing it. “You were wearin’ a blue dress with daisies in your hair.” Tucking a strand of hair behind your ear, you look back down at the journal —hiding your smile and flush of pink blooming on your cheeks. You danced with him even after the music stopped, head resting on the center of his chest, almost falling asleep on your feet to the slow swaying. He carried you to bed, tripping over coiled rope along the way. Half-drunk and asleep, you pulled him close by the handkerchief around his neck and kissed his cheek, bidding him goodnight with a siren’s smile.
The next sketch is just from the other day when you and Sean were playing cards. You close his journal, sitting it aside, and shift on your knees to face him. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance the feelings you’ve buried deep down for him are returned. “Arthur,” you breathe, cupping his jaw —thumb grazing the scars on his chin as you tilt his troubled eyes back up to meet yours.
Part of him knows what you’re thinking, knows what you’re about to say —and he can’t let you do it. Being tangled in webs of Dutch’s gang and schemes was more than enough. You didn’t deserve to be entangled with the likes of him too. “Don’t,” he rasps, shaking his head and pulling your hand away, “I’m no good.” Arthur doesn’t know how many times he’ll have to tell himself that for the lie to become truth.
“Well, I beg to differ,” you say with a budding smile, reaching for one of his calloused hands. Nothing you’d ever seen Arthur Morgan do could make you call him a bad man. A bad man doesn’t go out looking for your mother’s pearl necklace after a trip into town with the girls took a turn south. A bad man doesn’t drop everything on a whim to go on an afternoon stroll through a meadow only caused you asked. “You’ve been good to me.”
Arthur looks between you and the clear night sky and steels his resolve —he couldn’t be sure he’d live to see another moment like this, and the last thing he wants to do is die with the regret of not telling you. “There’s something I been meanin’ to tell you,” he starts, rubbing the back of his neck as he does when nervous about things, “and y’know I ain’t good with words.” Arthur sighs, glimpsing your entwined hands resting on his knee.
“Guess what I’m tryin’ to say is I like you,” he says, but mentally he’s shooting himself in the foot for sounding like a fool —why can’t you say you love her, bastard. He dares to lift his gaze, but you’re already smiling at him, a look he’s seen hundred times over but just now realizes what it means. “A lot,” he adds.
“If that’s the case–” you move closer to him “–I like you too, Arthur.” Sliding your hand from his, you cup his face —leaning toward one another at the same time without spoken word. It’s a kiss the two of you have only ever dreamt of on lonely nights, looking up at the same night sky separated by only an old wagon. Arthur’s lips are soft, if not a bit rough, just like him and so sweet it makes your heartache. He settles his hands on your waist and feels your lips curve upward against his. “A lot,” you breathe against his cheek upon parting, fighting to hold back a laugh behind a widening grin.
“C’mere,” he laughs, pulling you into his arms and across his lap —he chases another kiss, this one shorter but still just as sweet, affirmation he isn’t dreaming. You lean your head against his shoulder like you’ve done a dozen times before, but this time your heart doesn’t ache as much from the quiet longing as you look up at him and a clear night sky beyond. He turns his head, lips ghosting over your forehead as he reaches for one of your hands to hold. Arthur gives a soft sigh, knowing he’s one lucky fool.