erron_black | thread starter for arthur morgan

thread starter for arthur morgan

Erron had a problem.

It was clear to him now sprawled out on the bed ever so welcomingly provided him by the proprietor of the Old Light Saloon, threadbare sheets itching him where he swung his arm out to flick the ashes from his cigarette onto the rotted out wood floor. His bright idea to travel further north in search of lucrative opportunities had been scuppered by ice and snow unabated by neither time nor patience — and he only possessed one of those things in spades. He told himself it was for the best to turn back while he was still ahead; cut his losses before they had the chance to cut into him instead. It was bad enough the man with the bear living in him could have been the end of the line.

An ignominious final destination for the likes of Erron Black — chewed up and shit out by a man eating grizzly bear in the ass end of nowhere. Unloved and unmourned; forgotten by time in the frozen wastes.

That's not what happened, but it could have. He'd not never been the brightest star in the night sky, but he could take a hint from lady luck better than most. There was a time to press and another to finesse. So it was that he'd sauntered back south to insinuate himself back into another robber baron's cortege; easy work, that, mean mugging on their dime after seeing just how much damage he could do. Easy, and dreadfully boring between bouts of baronial infighting. It wasn't long before he succumbed to wanderlust for the filth and the squalor of the streets of Saint Denis and, rather more importantly, the cutthroat zeal inherent to the gangs that carved out a living there instead.

Where the robber barons sat at their desks scratching out letters of great import while everyone else did their work for them, up to and including himself, the city gangs were vibrant vipers nests of volatility and they always had dirty work to be done they couldn't be seen doing. Erron didn't care much for either of their political machinations, but neither of them thought he was smart enough to understand on account of his country upbringing anyhow. They were wrong, of course, but that was fine by him if it kept them from their campaigning and he could surreptitiously read everything they left lying around. Everything was going well until it wasn't.

There weren't many things Erron wouldn't do for money. He refused on principle to waste his time on anything less than large sums, preferably upfront and all at once, but he'd settle for cumulative on pain of death if his employer got any funny ideas. It was just good business sense. He wasn't without his quirks, though. Namely, his aversion to women not cut out for him and children. It wasn't that he was too high and mighty for it — he could claim no kind of moral high ground.

It was that they made him think things he didn't want to think; feel things he didn't want to feel.

Erron had been smack dab in the middle of rousting a business owner into compliance when he caught sight of tiny, slender feet at the staircase landing leading up to the man’s living quarters. He wasn’t so naive as to believe none of the people he terrorized didn’t have families, didn’t have nobody what cared about them, but he was careful, he was precise. And that’s why the only cracked teeth in his knuckles that night had been his employer’s — with many more to follow as the rage in him burnt white hot and inconsolable. He bid Saint Denis adieu at the bottom of a bottle with a pair of stinging, split knuckles and a vicious disposition. All the colors of his recollection from there running together misery red, flush with time and luck and money and not a whole hell of a lot else. He gambled and drank and caroused with other ne’er-do-wells in Van Horn; fought bare-fisted down in the mud for entertainment and money with the miners of Annesburg.

He wondered, as his traitor mind was wont to do in the quiet moments, whether the man with the bear living in him ever made it to that cabin by the lake.

It became ridiculous after a point — pacing along the river like a caged animal. He didn’t know quite why, but thoughts of Arthur had become ever more ubiquitous and alluring since the incident. Even now, his eyes drifted closed and his nostrils flared at the fragments of memories he treasured most, held so close to his chest not even the very man in question might suspect. Erron fished out the gold pocket watch he’d collected at the end of a grueling card game the night before and cracked his eyes to inspect the time; the ornate hands rapidly closing in on three-thirty ’o’ clock in the morning. He could reach the lake by sunrise.

So it was decided.

Erron hauled his aching body astride his beloved blood bay thoroughbred mare with an affectionate scratch of her dark mane, her saddlebags loaded down with all his winnings and worldly possessions which weren’t cached, and set about the lake in the dead of night. The number of souls out there with him were few and wary, clutching the grips of their firearms tighter at the sight of a lone stranger on the road that late at night and so very close to Van Horn. He was clean shaven and well dressed at the very least albeit a bit bruised and disheveled in a charcoal grey vest over top a black button up with matching trousers.

If he listened hard enough in the gloom, he could just about hear their sighs of relief when they passed him on by without incident. Soon, he was the only soul cutting through the dark.

He must have dozed in the saddle a good while because, with a sharp breath through his nose, he looked up and suddenly became aware of the sun having begun to rise above the horizon. Sugarlips flicked a curious ear in his direction as he stretched and adjusted himself in the saddle, but otherwise continued on down the road looping around the lake at her leisure. A thin plume of grey smoke rose from the chimney of the cabin situated at the edge of the water ahead. Erron leaned back in the saddle with a minute squeeze of his thighs to halt his mare’s stride a good distance away, the hand not on the reins dangling deceptively casually nearby his holstered revolver in case the occupant wasn’t who he was expecting it to be, and let out an ear splitting whistle.

Sugarlips held steady at the sound, familiar enough to hold her ground until he indicated otherwise, but chomped noisily at the bit beneath him nonetheless at the prospect of anticipatory flight.

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Thinking back on his experiences with Van Horn — and he'd had plenty enough — there had been an unusual air to the place that he'd not never seen there before. You could always count on Van Horn to come to life just as soon as the sun set, but about all there had been to do was deal cards and privately wager on whom would lose their temper when they lost. Erron won more than he lost and the worst of it had come down to sourpuss grumbling. The miners with the funny accents over in Annesburg were rowdier in the end.

"Pinkertons, eh? I don't cotton to them. They got ten dollar hats on five cent heads — and they lie like rugs." His contempt was apparent in the confrontational tenor of his voice, the derisive curl of his lip. "Least I'm honest 'bout what I do."

Erron crossed his legs at the ankle and sipped from his cup with a contemplative hum at the predicament Arthur presented. It was a damn sight more casual than he felt; relief a tangible presence working knots of tension loose all throughout his body. "Followed after you before," he remarked after some time. "Reckon it'd be a good opportunity to learn the lay of the land."

Pinkertons had been on his ass for quite awhile, real troublesome scummy bunch. If he saw one another, it'd be too soon.

Arthur chuckled, "If you wanna follow my furry ass around all night ain't gonna stop yea, though of course don't need to remind you to come armed. Lot of creatures in these hills that are meaner than me"

He finished his coffee and set his cup aside, coming over to Erron and picking up his hat from his head, having a look at it. He still hadn't gotten a new one of his own. He'd given his father's old black gambler to John before they parted and while he'd tried a few on when they went shopping for his clothes, none felt comfortable like that old thing.

"So, how long you gonna stay out here before carrying on?" he asked, plopping the hat on his head and having a feel of it. Smelled strongly of the other man.

Edited 2021-07-19 09:13 (UTC)

Erron grunted his acknowledgement, but his mind had already gotten to racing every which way despite the stillness of his demeanor. Inventory was as ever at the forefront — which of his rifles to take with him, whether to take one or both of his revolvers, how much ammunition he might need. Practicalities simple enough to resolve swiftly and decisively down to the last drop of clean water in his canteen. The back of his mind, however, was a great deal more fanciful. Filled with abstractions. Ever since he could remember, he’d always been the quick-witted and inquisitive sort, both of which proved an incessant irritant to everyone around him when he was a boy.

Knee high to a grasshopper and already a disobedient devil of a child, as his ma was so very keen to remind him whenever she was around, but especially now that she wasn’t.

What did Arthur get up to when he couldn’t live as a man? What sorts of thoughts ran through his mind in his wanderlust? What did he know that no ordinary man could ever hope to?

“Question ain’t whether they’re meaner n’you. It’s whether they’re meaner than me — and I reckon they don’t make ‘em any meaner out here than they do where I come from. Ain’t nobody and nothin’ nice and soft where I come from,” he murmured, swirling the last swallow of his coffee in his cup just to avoid having to look at himself before he knocked it back. Arthur made a mean cup of coffee all right; no bitter sediment at the back of his throat but his own bile.

The nicer parts of Ambarino might as well have been the garden of eden by his estimation. Arthur couldn’t have chosen more wisely, easy as it was even for someone such as himself to be gentled by the beauty of it. He didn’t so much as stir at the creak of wood or the soft susurration of cloth beside him; the morning light on his eyelids darkening as Arthur shifted to stand in front of him. Erron blinked up at him, his hand reflexively raising to rake through his hair as the old black stalker hat he’d taken to wearing for years was lifted up and off. It was nothing special, not really; he couldn’t even recall where he’d come by it now.

He hadn’t never been much for personal touches beyond his arsenal neither, but boredom encouraged creativity in him and at some point he’d taken to decorating the band with spent rounds to mark occasions where he’d been anything but.

“Ain’t fixin’ to go nowhere no time soon...” Erron trailed off at a sudden and unexpected loss of words, uncertain where to even begin trying to convey why not, gaped like a goddamn guppy for a beat before giving up. He licked his lips and changed the subject: “Brought ya somethin’.”

Probably not as much as Erron thought. Most days Arthur was content not thinking much at all, just casting a line into the lake or cleaning his saddle. The simple life he'd come to hope for in the gang was here and now.

"Good to know" he smirked, happy to have Erron's company, in general, and looking forward to when they could share a bed again. Maybe later, before the moon.

Arthur took the hat off-smelt nice, but felt weird, not a fit for him-and set it back on the other's head. "A present?" he chuckled "What in the hell for?" he wasn't much for gifts, figuring the money could be used elsewhere or whatever the item was was too extravagant.

"Yourself is nice enough ya know. But okay what is it?" he asked

“Now what kinda guest would I be if I turned up empty-handed? I wasn’t raised in no barn — snappin’ my suspenders, spittin’ in front a ladies and actin’ an ass.” Erron’s indignance was only partially feigned after having spent so long dealing in the kind of folk to look at him like he could take a piss on their pantleg or scoot on their expensive rugs at any moment. A man had his pride and his dignity, even when he had nothing else, and if not he was no man at all. It’d been one thing for them to assume he was illiterate, too stupid to grasp their lofty machinations, but Erron prided himself on being fastidious and mannerly.

“I got manners,” Erron grumped beneath the brim of his newly returned hat, adjusted it to rest further back on his crown before leaning over the side of his chair to root through his saddlebags. “I wipe my feet, wash my face, and clean my plate. Just don’t tell nobody or they’ll get the wrong idea. I might be respectable, but I ain’t no dandy gentleman frettin’ over their ascot neither.”

He’d been more than a little drunk when it came time to pack for his journey, resulting in a haphazard pile of miscellany every which way, but he’d taken care to wrap the glass jar in one of his shirts and stow it away in a compartment where he wouldn’t have a sticky mess on his hands later. The sight of the thing on the shelf in the general store of Saint Denis had made him laugh, reminded him fondly of his encounter with the man with the bear living in him, and he’d bought it on a whim and carried it with him ever since. Even now, after so long, he chuckled when he unwrapped it and held it up to the light. “I reckon you’ll like this a damn sight better.”

The honey contained within cast golden rays along the porch in the morning sun, interrupted only by the shadow of the sliver of honeycomb just thin enough to clear the corked circumference of the jar.

Mannerisms that Mary's family tried to drill into him, make him into something he wasn't and couldn't be. Beyond general politeness of course. Miss Grimshaw always drilled into them about general manners, but stupid small talk and fretting over things that didn't matter, like ascots? Only those who didn't have anything to worry about worried about that sort of thing.

As for pride, he didn't put much stock in it. Too many folk died for it. He didn't care if he was seen as some dumb country boy. Either they left him alone, or if they didn't, he punched them until they did.

"Okay okay tough man." Arthur laughed, watching, peering over his shoulder as he dug through his bag, wondering what the other man could have possibly-

Oh.

Arthur looked at the precious gold-filled jar, then carefully took it. Not so much as a hairline crack in it, filled with delicious sweetness.

"You rode all the way up here with this just bumping about in your bag?" he smiled, cupping the other man's face, "What a gift. Thank you darlin'" he pressed a kiss against the man's forehead.

Erron had danced around the reason why something so simple as a jar of honey managed to lodge itself good and warm in both his mind and his pack for so long. He’d not never been much for sweets — not like the other guttersnipes who couldn’t ever seem to get enough of them anyway. Looking back on it now, he reckoned it was just the first time he allowed himself to admit he’d be circling back around to that man in the mountains one way or another. The honey wasn’t going to eat itself, after all, and it felt an awful lot like a justification for the way his mind got to wandering in the absence of all else. He’d told himself it’d be funny in that cavalier way he’d been as a young man when the world and everything in it hadn’t seemed so damned complicated.

There hadn’t been many problems that couldn’t be resolved in an instant with one quick muzzle flash back then, but then he’d done gone and hared off into brambles and the briars and gotten himself ensnared in the entanglements of others. The shots he didn’t take were always the ones that haunted him in the end — and the man with the bear living in him was no different. It came back to him all at once with Arthur’s hand on his face, kissing him in a way he couldn’t recall ever having been kissed before by anyone. Erron had tried in his sleepless nights to think of Arthur in that stirring way which made his blood quicken in his veins and run south, tried to recapture the heat and the passion of the thing.

Erron’s traitor mind lingered on dozing for what must have been half the night pressed up against him instead, the taste of smoke sweet in his mouth and throat, their skin sticky with shared warmth beneath the furs. A rare splinter of peace out of a lifetime of violence and cruelty buried so deep, he was beginning to suspect it’d never come out.

“Ain’t nothin’...” Last time he’d had occasion to say something like that been when he was a boy, cringing away from gratitude to stare at his dirty toes and wish more than anything he had shoes to fidget with like some of others. Erron reached out to hook his fingers under the waistband of Arthur’s trousers and tugged him closer, close enough for him to press his cheek to the soft curve of Arthur’s belly just above his hip. Arthur’s skin was pleasantly cool in the crisp morning air. “How much time y’reckon we got?”

The repeated nights where Arthur dreamed, imagined, or dozed off to the memory of Erron were countless as well. The feel of the other man against him in that damned cold cabin was a memory he drew on when his blood ran hot, or his mind full of despair and loneliness. After Eliza, and then Mary, he never thought he’d feel this way with another person again, let alone with a man.

He didn’t know, not until he saw him ride up just a little while ago, but he did now. He loved Erron, if he’d ever say it aloud, maybe not. However, he knew what he had with the man was special as anything he’d had with Mary. No commitments, no fear of old age, their eternities could be shared together, while also going about life as they wanted to. Erron was a wanderer after all, he knew that life, and Arthur didn’t expect to tie him to him. If he saw him occasionally throughout the years, that’d be enough.

The gift was not only appreciated for what it was-deliciousness that he’d savor on toast or just the occasional spoonful-but also that it came from Erron, that he thought of him when he bought it.

Arthur held the jar to his chest as Erron pulled him close, feeling the prickle of stubble tickle his stomach. He stroked his fingers through the man’s dark hair, grinning at the question.

“Until sunset. Want to fool around?” He asked, fingers dipping down the other’s collar to his back, caressing the skin.

If there was one thing Erron learned and learned early, it was how to give himself the run around. There was no good in dwelling in the past, not when his life was so frequently at stake in the present. He made few exceptions; diversions kept brief. He committed himself to putting one foot in front of the other down the same old dusty road time and time again. Like any other road, he occasionally came across others along the way and sometimes they might spare a moment out of their own lives to follow him a while, but...

Time marched, and so did Erron Black.

No point in turning back just to retread old tracks.

That's what he told himself anyway, if only to curb the worst of his impulses, the ones which inconvenienced him the most in the end. It'd always been a dangerous unknown, lying with another man, and while that thrilled him in the moment he'd never lain with the same one twice. Never felt the need, the impulse, to linger nor return once he departed. Arthur was different. Arthur had nettled him good, smashed the mold, offered him something he coveted enough to snarl and snap at his own hands.

Arthur's touch made the fine hairs at the nape of his neck stand on end, spread throughout the whole of his body in one great shiver. Erron reached up to remove his hat and set it aside with his free hand while he coiled his arm around Arthur's thigh to grasp at it with the other. Behind closed eyes, they were back in that cabin again, tangled up in one another in the silence and isolation of the mountains. He scrubbed his face across the soft expanse of Arthur's belly, filled his lungs with the familiar scent of his skin, breathed out all his burdens into the groove of his hip.

Erron grinned, wolfish, his blood quickening with excitement at the memories Arthur's question evoked in him then. Let it hang in the air a while, long enough to taste in his mouth, on his tongue. It tasted like Arthur pressing him down into the mattress, the weight of him just enough to steal his breath with each writhing thrust, just enough to make him have to work for it, to feel alive. Erron sunk his teeth around the jut of Arthur's hip with a groan that sounded an awful lot more like a growl, his arm cinching tight around the meat of his thigh. A sharp, grinding nip of blunt white teeth.

"I reckon I wanna roughhouse."

Arthur continued to curl his fingers in the man's hair as he waited on an answer, sliding along his back and up into his hair affectionately. He inhaled sharply with a laugh when Erron bit him.

"Roughhouse huh?"

He gave his hair a hard tug, leaning down to try and catch him for a kiss, but stood upright again as he almost dropped the jar. He clutched it more tightly, bumping his knee against Erron's chest to shake him off.

"Hey! Let me put this down first you horny bastard!" he laughed again, pulling away to bring it inside and set it on the counter.

Erron's eyes brightened with excitement when Arthur clamped down on a hank of his hair and pulled, drifted across the thick cord of muscle in his arm, the tendons of his wrist and forearm strung taut at the corner of his eye. Arthur surely was handsome even as pale and lean as he'd been up in them mountains, but he'd thickened up some since having traveled down into the basin. The color had returned to his face, Erron noted upon closer inspection, his cheekbones and the bridge of his nose faintly pink with the threat of sunburn. Arthur looked mighty fine indeed.

He was dimly aware he must have looked like hell in comparison, bruised and battered and worn down by wanderlust and road dust as he was, but Arthur didn't seem to mind it none. He'd only just barely brushed the tips of his fingers against Arthur's neck in anticipation of a kiss when Arthur jerked back and squeezed the jar closer to his chest. "Now, what did I tell you?” He chuckled with a look eerily reminiscent of the cat who got the cream on his face. “My lips might be sweet, but they ain’t sweeter n’that."

Erron, being the wicked man that he was and always would be, leaned right on back down and peppered the soft of his belly with kisses until Arthur saw fit to raise his knee in an effort to prise him loose. He took the liberty of a mouthful of Arthur’s navel with him, teeth dragging gently across his skin before he was well and truly bereft. “Told you so,” Erron called after him as he stomped into the cabin to secure his prize. A moment of indignation later it occurred to him to inquire: “What y’mean ‘you horny bastard’ anyhow? Yer the one that asked!”

The kisses and scrape of teeth were going right to him too. He'd had no one since Erron in that cabin, no one but his own hand and imagination, so, yea, he wasn't much better but the human reeked of want.

"I can smell your arousal from here, don't be givin' me that." he reprimanded, setting the jar down safely and returning to the porch and giving Erron's hair another caress through before swinging a leg over and sitting in the other man's lap, pressing close and giving his jaw a kiss.

"Lord how I missed you" he breathed. Erron smelled of the road and of dust and probably could use a bath and some decent food and sleep, but he was perfect to him.

Erron had heard a whole lot of tall tales and strange things in his life which, according to most had already dragged on longer than they liked, but he'd never been told nothing like that before. It made a peculiar sort of sense, he supposed, on account of how animals could scent better than any man, but Arthur weren't no bear. Not yet. Arthur returned before he had much more time to mull it over, his curiosity swept aside by the hand at his hair and the boldness with which Arthur settled himself down on his lap.

A deeper, darker curiosity was in the lack of alarm at being pinned down in his seat by a man he suspected strong enough to tear his head clean off his shoulders if he was of a mood to. How it made his heart race in his chest not with thoughts of danger, but with excitement. Erron licked his lips, his breath hitching slightly in his chest at the satisfying rasp of Arthur's whiskers along his neck, the warmth of his lips on skin tender still from the lucky sonuvabitch in Annesburg. The tip of Arthur's nose was cool against his cheek, from his own breath and the crisp morning air both.

"Y'been thinkin' 'bout me, Arthur?" Erron's head lolled back against his shoulders with nary a whisper of a rustle from the part of him that got to hissing and squaring up about exposing his throat. His fingers didn't quite slot into the divots between Arthur's ribs the same way as the first time, he noticed, the knobs of his spine less prominent along the palm of his hand.

His senses as a bear were the same as those in human form, he could pick up on Erron's heat as easily as the taste of coffee on his breath. Even if he concentrated hard enough, focus in on the smell of the man who'd struck Erron. But he only wanted Erron. His kisses, his scent, his...everything. Christ he was hungry for him!

"Mmhm, a lot more than I care to admit" he said, suckling his exposed throat, the submissive gesture making him all the more needy for him.

Arthur settled comfortably in his lap, shifting foreword enough to feel Erron beneath him. His fingers curled into his hair again, tugging lightly as he scraped his teeth along his skin.

A choked off sort of sound caught between a sigh of relief and a low, rumbling growl drifted out of him underneath the searing wet heat of Arthur's mouth at his throat. Erron had kept himself knee deep in work since the costly setback in the mountain pass, too busy to trouble himself with baser desires than a warm revolver and split knuckles, drinking and gambling aside. He never cared much for painted ladies beyond conversation, whether it be for entertainment or information, and there hadn't been no upstanding ladies worth a good goddamn.

No other men neither, but that was just a fact of life.

Erron didn't like to think about the times he took himself to hand; how he couldn't never bring himself off until he went back to being tangled up with Arthur in a too small bed instead of fucking. How even now it made him swell to attention and buck up for friction til' the chair creaked beneath them.

It'd been too long a dry spell, that's all.

"You touch yerself? Make a mess thinkin' of me?" Erron raked blunt fingernails down either side of Arthur's spine none too gently and squeezed his ass through his britches. "I make y'wanna be a little wild, Arthur?"

Arthur gave a low growl when Erron squeezed his ass, clenching and pressing close, recalling the memory of him beneath him, buried...

"More than I can count." he confessed, tugging his hair harder. "Ain't the thought of anyone but you gets me wild no more..." he breathed, meeting Erron's lips for a kiss, great need in the gesture, teeth and tongue too.

What was worse was it was the full moon, when all was heightened and his hunger was at a peak.

The thought of Arthur lying awake in the dead of night, deep in imagination with his cock at hand sent a frisson of desire through him so hot the chill in the air felt merciful. Erron remembered all too well the weight and shape of it in his own hand in the twilight hours of a day spent staving off thoughts of Arthur in the shadows cast by the campfire; nothing but brief hints and suggestions of something he decided right then and there that he wanted bad enough to keep close. He remembered Arthur tasting like triumph and dumb luck both on the palm of his hand.

His hair stung something fierce at the root where Arthur clenched his fist just that little bit tighter and Erron let out a moan he really ought to have been embarrassed by, but Arthur devoured it like a man starving and he could relate. Erron kissed him 'til his lungs screamed louder than the sound of his own blood in his ears and there were stars bursting behind closed eyes; kissed him 'til he couldn't rightly remember whatever became of his hands just to find they'd gone and gotten themselves tangled up in Arthur's hair.

Even still, he couldn't keep from nipping just to keep Arthur a hair's breadth from him a little while longer, waited until Arthur's lower lip tugged itself free of its own accord.

It took him a long time to catch his breath enough to sound as smug as he did: "What now, handsome?"

Arthur groaned as his own hair was tugged and he wanted little more to feel him tug it harder as he went down on him...or to ride his fat cock again or...Christ, anything!

"Anythin' you want darlin'" he breathed running a hand along Erron's chest, opening it up enough to slide inside and touch the expanse beneath, brushing over a perked nub.

The bear growled and lightly bit Erron's lip, the hand teasing and pinching a nipple moving to his own fly and undoing it to allow his cock to spring free, working Erron's own next.

There was no rush. No cold outside, no one for miles yet again. But he hungered for the man like no other.

It struck him, not for the first time, how much of a contradiction Arthur was for his size and stature. His hands were as broad and powerful as the bear paws Arthur would be rooting around in the dirt with later on in the evening, Erron reckoned, yet his fingers could be every bit as soft and nimble as Erron's own when he was of a mind. Arthur must have driven many a lucky woman to distraction in his lifetime the way he was teasing with that mouth and those fingers of his; the top half of the buttons of his shirt undone with precision that made Erron wonder, most importantly, just how good he might've been with that revolver of his at hand.

Erron unfastened and shrugged out of his vest whilst Arthur set about their britches, his own hands flying down the front of himself to unbutton and spread out the rest of his shirt. Faint yellowing bruises littered his ribs and abdomen from wrestling men down into the mud, from boots skidding around for traction and, failing that, tumbling down onto his side. Erron had had himself a good old time ⁠— but this was better, more visceral by a country mile.

A rare and thrilling pleasure to reach out and wrap his hand around another man's cock, feel it harden against the palm of his hand on the upstroke, stem to stern 'til the tip was blood warm and pink as he pleased. Erron hadn't had the time before to figure out the particulars, the subtleties in how Arthur liked best to be handled, but he was confident enough always in spectacle and spectacle he could do.

"Thought about you too, handsome. Thought about you every which way..." Tried to anyway, just to find himself haring straight back to where his traitor mind always got off to when he didn't discipline it good and proper, but Arthur didn't need to know that. He just needed to see Erron reaching back with his free hand to brace up against the back of the chair, feel it when he brought their cocks together and thrust himself upward in the circle of his hand.

He didn't get the chance to watch for Arthur's expression, the silk soft glide of the underside of their cocks too great a sensation not to screw his eyes shut and chew at his lip to stifle the growl rumbling up out of his chest. He bucked up again, sinuous as a serpent in spite of how hard his muscles had to strain just to lift Arthur less than an inch, the downswing artless by way of comparison but for the slow drag of Arthur alongside him.

Erron swore under his breath the second his jaw loosened up enough to let his lip slip free from between his teeth and confessed as men only ever did when the all blood shrank away from their higher faculties: "I reckon I want to make a mess. I want y'to give me somethin' I can feel, handsome. I want y'to make me remember when yer through with me."

He was a human before he was a bear, the animal side to him had just added to who he was and what he could do. How long he would live...which he wasn't sure on either.

He gasped as his cock was handled, and he rocked into the touch, groaning as Erron rocked against him, rutting his own thick length against his own. He helped out, rolling against him, hand on his shoulder eyes settled on the hand engulfing them both. What a wonderful sight that made.

At the statement, Arthur chuckled, "I weren't gonna forget yea before you sidled up this mornin'." he stated. He buried a hand in his dark hair, leaning in for another kiss, nipping the man's lower lip as well, a low rumble building in him as he ached for release already. "Have me any which way you want..."

There were few things Erron hated more in life than the thought of being forgot, and fewer pleasures more deeply ingrained than being wanted for something more than just taking lives. He didn't run across folk who wanted him around a moment longer than he had to be every day. Hell, sometimes not even in years. They knew what he was, the kinds of things he did for a living, and either found him wanting or of limited service. It was a lonesome life he lived; life in spite of itself ⁠— and everyone else, too.

Arthur was different, in more ways than just the most apparent. He hadn't turned his back or gone running off on him when they'd finished, abandoned him to his own devices in that cabin upon morning light. Arthur hadn't done nothing he'd become accustomed to, and Erron hadn't done nothing he'd become accustomed to doing neither. "I wear my memories on my body," he murmured hazily against Arthur's lips, his breath hitching as a tendril of slippery warmth trickled down his shaft to ease the way. "always have, 'cause it's all I got to mark the occasion."

Erron turned his head to drag his lips along Arthur's jawline and then nosed his way down the side of his neck. "But you don't work that way no more," he bit into the crook of his shoulder, hard, hard enough to leave his mark a second time.

Arthur gasped and then hissed in a mix of pain and pleasure as Erron but him none too gently. He buried a hand in his hair, tugging, encouraging the bite. He wished it could last, leave something permanent behind, but it’d heal by the time they finished.

Still, Arthur made no question he liked it as his cock gave a throb against the other man’s own.

“I’ll just have to keep a sharp memory...” he breathed. Not that he'd forgotten anything of what happened between them before. The image of Erron plowing him into the makeshift bed in the cabin was one he returned to often.

Erron wondered how long he would have to enjoy the angry red marks his mouth had made, the traces of himself scattered about Arthur's body before they faded down to nothing. Arthur had risen up out of the furs untouched by morning before, with a spring in his step that left Erron a little envious deep down, especially on account of all the trudging around in the snow on sore legs after a real animal afterward. Exertion hadn't never done him wrong though, not really, not when his mind would otherwise have gotten to racing like some kind of overbred high-strung horse.

In the absence of Arthur, he chewed his own lips instead, his brow drawn tight with the concentration it took just to keep a steady rhythm into his own fist. Arthur felt good pressed up against him, the rigid column of his shaft slotting in right alongside him like they belonged that way. More than that though, the silk smooth sensation of the head of Arthur's cock nudging up against the bundle of nerves just underneath the crown set the base of his spine to tingling.

"I'll give you somethin' to remember," Erron murmured into the thick cord of muscle in the side of Arthur's neck and adjusted his grip to gently roll them from side to side instead.

Arthur found injuries varied in how long they lasted. For the more serious, they instantly began to heal, for something like what Erron was trying to mark him with, would likely last until tomorrow at the least. It also took a lot to exhaust him, but when he was, he recovered with a decent night’s sleep.

Years later he was still figuring this sort of thing out about himself. But at least now he could figure it somewhere more comfortable than in the snow.

He clutched at the older man, holding tight to him, nails biting his shoulder and back as Erron stroked them together. A thin line of precum began to dribble from the tip of his own cock, making the other’s hand wet with it.

“Ah...Erron...” he groaned, pulling back enough to kiss him again.

There was something oddly intimate in the moment that Erron hadn't never experienced with any other man before. The last time he'd brought himself off like this with another man there hadn't been no kissing nor even a proper embrace; they'd just huddled up close to one another and done their best not to make any unseemly eye contact. It'd been the dead of winter out on the plains then, their labored breath white plumes of steam as they stared out over each other's shoulders, hollow-eyed and impersonal.

Arthur kissed him like he meant it, like it weren't just scratching an itch in the absence of nothing and no one else more worth his while for miles, and something about that made Erron ache.

He smothered the sudden and unexpected tension in his face against Arthur's cheek, out of sight but not entirely out of mind, the rhythm of his hand stuttering briefly around them. There was nothing impersonal about none of it between them, and that was about as thrilling as it was unnerving. He reckoned that was why a groan came guttering out of him regardless, discomfited as he'd been, caught out at the crossroad of conflicting instincts.

Arthur had let him touch him with abandon before; long caressing strokes of the palms of his hands along the length of his bare body, tucked up and dozing in the dying firelight. Erron didn't know why, exactly, he chose to lean into the ache 'til it started feeling good in the end. It felt good kissing his way down Arthur's cheek to the corner of his panting mouth, the circle of his hand slippery with their desire while the other slid down from the back of the chair to touch.

"Christ..." Arthur's skin was softer than Erron could have ever imagined; that, too, had been something he'd learned that night, but he was more daring this time around. He swept the pad of his thumb across one of Arthur's nipples just to see, just to feel it tighten up before slipping down and over the curve of his hip to squeeze a handful of his ass.

"Touch yerself here too? Thinkin' of me?" His voice was unsteady where his hands were not, shameless and unwary, middle and ring fingers delving down between Arthur's cheeks to rub at his hole. Erron had thought to quickly wet the palm of the other with his tongue and then gather them back up again, but found himself lingering a while on the taste of them together instead.

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erron both likes *and* dislikes yearning for basic human affection

erron both likes and dislikes yearning for basic human affection