Chapter Text
The snow up at Colter didn't fall so much as it arrived, all at once and without apology, and it didn't leave. Arthur Morgan had stopped expecting his boots to be dry by the third day. By the second week, he'd stopped expecting much of anything except the cold finding new places to get into him — his collar, his gloves, the space between his shoulder blades where the wind seemed to know exactly how to slip a knife.
He found Charles Smith outside the old mining office near dusk, crouched by a lean-to he'd rigged out of scrap boards, skinning a rabbit with the unhurried patience of a man who didn't believe in wasting motion. Charles didn't look up when Arthur's boots crunched close. He never seemed surprised by much.
"Dutch know you're still out here?" Arthur asked, more to have something to say than because he cared what Dutch knew.
"Dutch knows I'll come back when there's meat," Charles said. "That's usually enough for him."
Arthur snorted and lowered himself onto an overturned crate, close enough to the small fire that the front of him started to thaw while the back of him stayed a block of ice. That was mountain living. You picked which half of yourself you wanted warm.
"You ever think we picked wrong?" Arthur said. "Comin' up here?"
"Every day." Charles's knife didn't slow. "Doesn't change that we're here."
That was Charles all over — he'd give you the truth plain, no cushion on it, and then hand you the rabbit anyway. Arthur had known a lot of men who'd tell you what you wanted to hear and precious few who'd just tell you the thing. He'd come to depend on Charles for it the way he depended on his horse not to bolt at gunfire: quietly, and more than he liked to admit out loud.
"Hosea's worried," Arthur said. "'Bout Dutch. Says he don't sound right since Blackwater."
"Hosea's not wrong." Charles finally glanced up, firelight catching in eyes that always looked like they were doing arithmetic on a man before they decided whether to trust him. He'd decided about Arthur a long time ago, whatever the sum had come out to. "You worried?"
Arthur thought about lying. It would've been easy — a shrug, a we'll be fine, the kind of thing he said to Lenny or to John to keep them from asking more. He didn't lie to Charles. He wasn't sure when that had become a rule, but it had.
"Yeah," he admitted. "I'm worried."
Charles set the rabbit aside on a flat stone and wiped his hands on his trousers, unbothered by the blood freezing there. He didn't say anything comforting, didn't tell Arthur it'd be alright, because they both knew better than that by now. Instead he just shifted over on the log he was using as a seat, making room, and after a second Arthur understood the invitation for what it was and moved closer to the fire — and to him.
They sat like that a while, shoulders a few inches apart, close enough that Arthur could feel the warmth coming off Charles same as the fire. Neither of them said much. Charles wasn't a man who filled silence for the sake of it, and Arthur had learned there was a kind of company that didn't need talking to be worth something. Down at camp, surrounded by the others, Arthur felt like he was always performing some version of himself — steady Arthur, reliable Arthur, the one who did what needed doing so nobody had to ask twice. Up here, with just Charles and the snow coming down slow through the pines, he didn't have to be any version at all.
"You're staring," Charles said, not looking at him.
"Ain't staring. Thinkin'."
"Loudly."
Arthur huffed something that was almost a laugh, and the sound surprised him — he hadn't laughed, even a little, in longer than he wanted to count. Charles turned his head then, and for a moment the two of them just looked at each other in the dying light, close enough that the space between them felt like something with weight to it, something either of them could have crossed.
Arthur thought about it. He thought about the calluses on Charles's hands and the steadiness in him that Arthur didn't have and wanted, badly, the way a man wants heat when he's been cold too long. He thought about what Hosea would say, what Dutch would say, what the whole rotten world outside this mountain would say if it ever found out — and for once, sitting there with the fire cracking low and the snow hissing against it, he found he didn't much care.
"Charles," he started, and didn't know what was going to come after the name.
Charles waited. He was good at waiting — better than Arthur, who'd spent his whole life running toward whatever came next because standing still felt like dying. But Charles just watched him with that patient, arithmetic look, like whatever Arthur said next, he'd already decided he could carry it.
"Nothin'," Arthur said instead, losing his nerve at the last second, and looked back at the fire.
Charles didn't push. That was the thing about him — he never pushed, never made a man say more than he'd worked up the courage for. But after a moment Arthur felt a hand settle against his shoulder, warm even through the wool of his coat, heavy and certain, and it stayed there.
"Whatever it is," Charles said quietly, "I ain't going anywhere, Arthur."
It wasn't a promise about forever. Men like them didn't get to make those, not with Pinkertons on their trail and Dutch getting stranger by the week and a whole world set on grinding outlaws down to nothing. But it was true for tonight, and maybe tomorrow, and Arthur decided that was worth more than most of the guarantees he'd been given in his life.
He let himself lean into it — into Charles's shoulder, into the quiet, into the small and unlikely warmth of being known by somebody and not found wanting. Above them the snow kept coming, soft and endless, burying the mountain a little deeper with every hour, and for once Arthur Morgan didn't mind the cold so much.