Work Text:
“First, I get some imbecile shit kicker callin’ me pretty boy before I manage to knock all the sense out of him, and then you—“ Arthur’s thick finger thrusts so hard against Kieran’s breastbone he swears it’s going to bruise, “Are saying I have nice lips?”
Low enough in his chest that Kieran can feel it rumble, Arthur growls, “What kind of person says that?”
Kieran wonders himself, sometimes. The answer is someone as stupid and foolhardy as only he and few other men. Fear is an acrid taste Kieran Duffy is too familiar with recently; and yet, even as Arthur bears down, a snarling wolf, it never comes. When he takes Arthur’s hand, wraps his fingers around his wrist and presses his thumb to the wild pulse beating there, there is no fear.
Because it was Arthur who came to him; Arthur who cornered him more than a week after a stupid, stupid off-handed comment made between them and only the horses in the pasture as their witness. What kind of person says that? Not a smart man, that’s for sure.
But, in turn— what kind of person thinks of it, mulling it over night after night, silently staring at the canvas roof of their tent? Thinks about it enough to go confront the person who said it to him, alone, just out of sight of the rest of camp?
“You have a point to this?” Kieran steels himself, looking Arthur straight-on from under the safety of his hat’s brim. It douses all that fire and rage in Arthur’s eyes; and Kieran recognizes that look behind it, the way Arthur’s hand wilts in the warm grasp of his own, the way his heaving shoulders settle.
He wonders what Arthur tastes when he surges in, desperate; presses him up against the tree, his hat falling off as Arthur grabs his face, calloused thumbs to his cheekbones. Not fear, though Kieran tastes it in Arthur’s mouth when he licks into it, tastes it on those pretty lips of his, in the desperate slide of his tongue. It feels like less of a notch in his belt than it should; there’s something Kieran is braver than Arthur Morgan about, five thousand dollar bounty Arthur Morgan, wanted in too many states to count Arthur Morgan.
When they part, Arthur’s pinker than a Rhodes’ peach, still holding onto Kieran’s face like a lifeline.
”Don’t you—“ The gravel in his voice falters, and he has to clear his throat. Kieran turns his head, presses his lips to Arthur’s palm, and Arthur barely manages to growl out, “Don’t you tell no one.”
Kieran’s lips quirk. ”Same time tomorrow?”
Arthur sucks in a breath, grows a little pinker under all that wild beard and mustache of his, the same one that had just tickled Kieran’s lips. He doesn’t say nothing before he leaves, but he doesn’t need to. He’s back by the same tree the next day; early, even, waiting just for him.