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When Mary Gillis first meets Arthur Morgan, she’s more than a little intimidated. He’s tall and broad and strong, and his hands are so calloused already. He keeps his hat pulled down low and his stare can be intense, with those blue eyes that are so rare among the lower class and scruff that he doesn’t bother keeping tamed, though it needs a few more years before it can grow into something substantial.
Her father hates him. Jamie thinks he’s cool. Wants to learn how to ride a horse like he does. Her friends think he’s handsome in a rugged way, though they admit they’d never take the risk. There’s too much at stake for girls like them.
She doesn’t think he’s much different than the other outlaws she’s met. They rob and steal and shoot. He does the same. She can just tell.
Him and his group go to the saloon, the hotel; they haggle with the bartender and talk up the working women. She doesn’t see him take any of them but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t. That dark haired man he’s usually with always has a woman on his arm, after all, so it’s not like they’re being avoided.
So, Mary ignores him and goes about her business. Obeys her father. Keeps an eye on her brother. Does absent, boring hobbies around the house, wondering when she fell out of love of them and started thinking of them as time-wasters. She talks to the help, gets the newest gossip, then pretties herself up to go out with her higher class friends. Drinks tea and speaks respectably.
Does her best to not think of Arthur.
It’s like he’s lurking in the back of her mind. She ponders on it. Is it because they’re close in age? Because of his eyes? Her friends’ comments? Perhaps she thinks of him just to spite her father, who spits angrily about this ‘Van der Linde gang’ as he reads the paper.
High class fools, she tells herself, staring out of the window of the carriage as it rolls down the street. They were all just playing dress up. Playing pretend. She felt like a doll more than a human these days.
When she comes face to face with Arthur next, he’s standing in front of the general store with a piece of paper in his hand and a boy no older than a teen glued to his side. The boy stares openly, unashamedly, and she hates to admit that it raises her hackles a little bit. Arthur’s hand lands on top of his head and shoves him back as he greets Mary with more respect than most outlaws would bother. He doesn’t even leer.
“Errands?” She asks lightly. He nods, glances to the side, then back up at her. “Who…” She doesn’t get to finish her sentence, because the topic of it has had enough of being quiet.
“Who’s this lady?” His voice is tinny and scratchy and she barely resists a wince. He yelps when Arthur whallops him upside the back of the head with a glower. “Ouch-! The hell’s that for, Arthur?!”
“You gotta be so damn loud all the time, Marston?” Arthur hisses down at him. “And don’t point- it ain’t polite.”
“When’s you get so stuck up about bein’ polite?”
Mary knew she should be offended. But the sound of their drawling accents were so refreshing that she didn’t really want to stop the bickering. They snipped back and forth like siblings would and it made her remarkably jealous. She’d never be able to interact with Jamie like that.
“Er, this’s John,” Arthur manages finally, clamping a hand down on the boy’s head and forcing him to stay still. “John, this’s Mary.”
“Your girlfriend?”
The resounding sound the punch made had her wincing. Arthur’s ears were bright red as he, once again, hissed at the boy to shut up. A few people passing by glanced over but went back to their business at the sight of the revolver on Arthur’s hip. She couldn’t blame them.
“Is he your brother?” She asks, carefully. They both stare at her for a long moment and she quickly corrects herself. “Or not? I-”
“No, he-” Arthur clears his throat. That taken-aback expression doesn’t look too bad on him, she thinks. “Just some stray Dutch picked up. Makin’ me watch over him like some keeper. Makin’ sure he ain’t gonna tear the place up or somethin’.”
“I see,” she murmurs. “Jamie used to be similar.” It’s only a half lie. Jamie was never as bad as an outlaw. Especially not one that looks like a mangy raccoon like this boy. Still, the comment makes Arthur relax.
She feels a bit like she’s coaxing a deer out of the bushes.
“You sure she ain’t your girlfriend?”
“Get in the damn store,” Arthur all but manhandles the boy into the door. His ears are still red and there’s a flush starting at his neck now. The boy protests, grappling at the doorframe, but relents when he’s offered some sort of treat. Arthur scowls and readjusts his hat, this time high enough that she can see his face clearly. It’s impressively smooth for someone living in the dirt. It looks like he’s even shaved recently. “Sorry ‘bout him. He still needs some conditionin’.”
She laughs before she can stop herself. Even as she instinctively covers her mouth she can see his face light up a little. It makes her stomach do funny flips. She glances to the paper in his hand and can see some scribblings of food and supplies. “...you’re leaving soon?”
He wilts. “Uh, yeah. Movin’ on. Other jobs, that kinda thing.” He shuffles his boots in the dust and works his jaw back and forth. Doesn’t seem to know what to say but doesn’t want to turn away. Just like her.
When a few horses go by and kick up even more dirt, he motions her into the shade between the stores and they spend a moment dusting themselves off. She doesn’t think he really cares about the state he’s in but he seemed to be polite at heart, so she doesn’t comment on it.
They still don’t talk as they settle down. He tugs his hat off and fiddles with the brim.
Arthur’s kind of pretty, she thinks now, looking him over in the cool light. With his smooth, freshly shaved face, the blush tinging his tan skin. His hair is treading the line between dirty blonde and light brown and looks soft to the touch- if she were a braver woman, she’d reach out to brush some of the stray strands out of his face.
He peeks up at her through impressively long lashes for a man. They frame his stormy eyes perfectly. Bright, shocking blue that studies her almost as intently as she’s studying him. She can see the uncertainty in them. She saw a similar color in that expensive jewelry shop her father had taken her to the other day. Now she’s wishing she’d bought those earrings, if only to pretend she’d stolen his eyes. To flaunt them in front of the outlaw as if to say ‘look, I’ve been thinking about you, aren’t they pretty’?
She wonders how red he’d get.
The only thing that offsets the soft expression on his face is the scar that cuts across his square chin. It’s small but deep. She doesn’t remember it from before; it must’ve been hidden by his patchy beard. If she asked, would he tell her how he got it?
He doesn’t deserve to be in those ratty clothes, with those looks. With those eyes. She wants to steal him away from that smarmy, silver-tongued man and hide him away. Put him in the finest clothes, the finest fabrics, with the finest haircut. Shower him in gifts and toys and whatever he wanted. She’s never felt so desperate to use her status. Her money. Her father’s money.
She must have a funny look on her face because he clears his throat again and speaks, quiet and nervous. “Uh, sorry about him,” he says again, like he’s stuck on repeat. “Wasn’t thinkin’ I’d run into you here, since it’s so-” He motions at the disheveled state of the town. She nods. “Can’t really stay long, either. Gotta pick up this shi- this stuff, then get back to the others so we can pack up. Don’t wanna keep the horses waitin’ too long, either.”
Mary watches him ramble for a good few minutes, dodging curse words and eye contact, rubbing at the back of his red neck and the cheek of his reddening face, and she has one striking thought that accompanies her observations about him that she’s sure her hoity-toity friends won’t agree with.
Oh no- he’s really, really cute.