thread starter for arthur morgan

[erron_black]

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.

Comments

[erron_black]

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?"

[unshakencowboah]

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.

[erron_black]

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."

[unshakencowboah]

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..."

[erron_black]

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.

[unshakencowboah]

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_black]

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.

[unshakencowboah]

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.

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

[erron_black]

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.

hehe

[unshakencowboah]

Arthur meant it with all his being. he'd never had a partner like Erron before, and he'd be content to never have anyone else ever again. He made him feel alive, like before everything went to shit, but even more because he could be himself with him. No hiding, no uncertainty. Just hunger and contentment.

He rolled his hips, the chair creaking with the movement, eager for more attention, on the edge of cumming already, making a wet mess with his pre mixed with the other man's.

The tease of his rough thumb over a nipple made Arthur's breath hitch and he groaned, holding the other man's shoulders as he teased. And then his fingers were teasing further back and he groaned aloud. "Ah...oh lord..." he breathed.

Did he touch himself thinking of the other man? "You're all I think about darlin' when I need to get off, when I remember...how you taste and smell and feel against and inside me..." he confessed without second thought. "Want you again and again..." he rumbled in his ear, a hint of a growl in his voice.

my original tag got flung into the void and i am a murderous salt mine rn

[erron_black]

Listening to Arthur talk about bringing himself off to the thought of them together made Erron's blood flow hot and sluggish in his veins. It was another first in a long line of firsts since they'd laid eyes on one another in those mountains. He'd seduced plenty of women willing to confess to such a private, forbidden thing before, but there hadn't been no man willing to admit to nothing never. He never got the chance to ask — reckoned he wouldn't have dared even if he had — and they took it to their grave.

There was just something about Arthur that got him to wandering down paths untraveled; got him to losing true north and forgetting which direction he'd come from. A dangerous, thrilling habit to get into.

"Again. Say it again," Arthur's heart thundered just as hard and twice as fast beneath the tip of his tongue, face tucked in the crook of Arthur's neck, as his very own. Erron knew because he could feel it throbbing acutely between his thighs, out of time like a musical round with the vein he traced with his mouth. His palm was slippery when he returned it to its task, adjusted his grip to twist the web between thumb and fore at the crown on the upstroke, just the way he liked it. "Say y'want me. Say it."

His cock kicked hard in his grip with a hot, wet sensation of slick welling up at the tip and then spilling over into his fist, the sound his hand indecently audible now above the din of breath and half-stifled groans at the back of his throat. It wouldn't be long before his balls drew up tight on him and he saw white, spent himself all over the both of them, but Erron wanted it to be to that ragged ache in him when Arthur told him the truth. "Say it," he whispered.

big rip :<

[unshakencowboah]

Arthur's fingers tugged and buried in the other man's black hair as he felt his breath and words against his throat, the occasional lap of his tongue over his pulse making his breath hitch and his Adam's apple to bob when he swallowed. He wanted him to sink his teeth into him there, bite and hold him as they rutted their dicks against one another...largely out in the open.

Wasn't like his cabin was out in the middle of fuck all, he occasionally got riders and the like down the road. But, here they were, him in Erron's lap in the chair, sun and wind around them. The idea they could be caught was all the sweeter.

He felt Erron speak against his neck and it took a moment for him to register what he asked.

Again. Again. Again.

"I want you Erron, I want all of you" Arthur rumbled just after he felt the other man's cock pulsed and shot over them both. The rough thumb on the head of his length and the fingers teasing his backdoor made him quickly follow with a guttural groan.

He shuddered, dropping his head down against his as he panted, still clutching him.

[erron_black]

The first thin stripe of his own spend to trickle down his wrist caught him by surprise — like the jolt that followed having misjudged a dismount in the dark. Arthur's low, rumbling voice repeating his desire was the last thing Erron heard before the second and then the third scorched their way out of him. A small, distant part of him was dimly aware of the way he snarled like a wounded animal around a mouthful of Arthur's neck as his vision whited out and then went dark, but the greater concerned itself only with the harsh, erratic squeeze of his fist wringing himself out.

Raw, sharply oversensitive nerves alerted him to Arthur’s own climax seconds before the telltale swell of his cock. Erron could just about sense it rising right up out of him from somewhere deep in his gut all the way to his lips a long and rattling groan that dragged a punched out sound out of him, too. Each searing line of Arthur’s spend felt molten against his bare skin; ran down his chest to pool in the shallow divot of his navel as he pressed a series of wet, open-mouthed kisses just under the point of Arthur’s jaw.

Erron coaxed the pleasure from them both with his hands until the friction became just shy of unbearable, carefully slipped them away when Arthur got to shuddering just to languish a while in the feeling that he might shake apart. A private, secret part of him wondered if he might not have been broken — hadn’t never been with another man that liked being messed with after the fact before to know for sure. All Erron knew for sure was that it felt good to tease himself ‘til he wanted to holler and shout and jump right out of his own skin.

“Made a mess a you, now, didn’t I?” Erron murmured upon regaining his breath and faculties both, his smile slow and unmistakably wolfish above the most recent of the reddening crescent weals along the side of Arthur’s neck.

[unshakencowboah]

The bear held tight to him, crying out again as he was bitten and he tugged his hair, encouraging the roughness before falling limp in his arms, panting heavily and shuddering again from the powerful climax.

He groaned as he spoke, pressing a tender kiss against the other's neck and sitting up to look at him, chuckling and running his fingers over the new mark that would be gone in a little while. But until then, he could enjoy the ache and the feel of it there, marking him.

"Mmhm" he agreed, looking down between them at their cum spattered mess "What a wonderful welcome home gift though" he grinned

[erron_black]

Back in Annesburg, fighting in a place where mud and black rock and human misery were currency, the closest Erron had ever come to peace after the incident in Saint Denis came toward the end of a brutal fight. The devil must have gotten into his opponent that evening, he reckoned, if the look in his eye when he volunteered had been anything to judge by. Whatever lived or perhaps even expired inside of that man got his blood up something ferocious, made it sing above that of the clouds and the thunder and the rain and the shouting of the miners with bloodshot eyes. It was a curious thing — the things men shared between them without a word when the gloves were off and the money down.

Erron hadn’t had a whooping like that since he’d been too weak with hunger to fight back with anything even distantly resembling conscious thought. On his knees in the muck, blinking rain and stars out of his eyes, he’d realized he’d managed to take the man down with him. There they’d been, arms coiled like snakes and leaning up against one another, gasping for each lungful of breath between bruised ribs when it occurred to Erron that his blood finally ran cold and silent as the grave.

They’d wallowed a while like a pair of hogs in the mud ‘til such a time as it was determined a draw, but they’d both known the fight couldn’t last. It never did.

Arthur made his blood sing, too, but the tension that came bleeding out of him lasted. Erron heaved a long, unsteady sigh and crumpled back in his seat when Arthur finally straightened to gaze down at him. It was just as well, he reckoned, because if they’d been locked together any longer the respite coursing thick and sweet as molasses through his veins might’ve pulled him under. “It’s just like I said,” he mumbled, the scent of sex eddying up from between them drawing his attention to the state of them, slowly wilting yet no less lurid and alluring. “I got good manners where it counts.”

Erron reached up with his unsoiled hand to idly paw the soft expanse of Arthur’s belly, thick with hard-won muscle and sinew just underneath, caressed the length of his flank with the backs of his fingers. “Speakin’ of,” he flicked the tip of his tongue across his lips, searching for a reason to keep Arthur seated for a little while longer. His saddlebags were within reach, unceremoniously piled up against the leg of the chair. “You mind reachin’ into my saddlebag there fer a handkerchief?”

[unshakencowboah]

He'd love a bar fight again, something thrilling and fun about walloping drunkards, drunk or not himself. Though the last real big one he was in he got real pissed at one guy, and was even thrown out the damned window. Ended up covered in mud and hurting for a few days, none other than Thomas Downes having stopped him from beating big Tommy into the street.

Arthur pressed another kiss to the man's lips before nodding and reaching down to grab Erron's bag. He set it on the arm of the chair to avoid it getting stained too and rifled through it, surprised at what he found. The man carried some items he'd easily make some good money from either a shop or the Fence.

"Carry some pricey cloth on yea. You rich?" he asked, a tease in his voice as he pulled out a more handkerchief and handed it to him before setting the bag down again.

[erron_black]

"Not if I can help it," Erron answered easily enough from behind closed eyes, his head lolling absently against the back of the seat. The heavy warmth of Arthur's presence in his lap seemed to seep down deep into his bones, bring him back to that place in his mind, the rare golden hours of comfort and safety. He heard the whisper of cloth pulling free, the soft thud of the saddlebag returning to the porch, and cracked his eyes. "I used to think I'd be livin' like 'em by now — back when I was too young and hungry to reckon I knew nothin' 'bout nothin'. Then I saw what they were really like — how they lived out their lives."

"Been all by my lonesome all my life besides," Erron scrubbed the worst of the mess off his hand with the handkerchief, balled it up and leaned up with a grunt to start in on his belly. "Ain't like I got nobody to leave it to when I die. I'm all I got — so I reckon I might as well act like it."

It was never the amount of money that counted; he had far too many bolt holes and caches scattered about to count anyhow. The thrill was in the acquisition of it — always had been, and always would be. Erron loved money, no doubt about it, but he loved spending and gambling with it more. Creature comforts and a well maintained arsenal were all he needed.

[unshakencowboah]

"Thought you said you was immortal?" he asked, helping clean up the mess before getting off his lap, legs protesting at the movement at first.

He picked up his clothes and headed inside, stoking the fire and waiting for Erron to join him.

"We had a lot of plans in the gang, then "when we get rich" sort, not just Dutch's plans of stealing a stagecoach or the like. Some wanted to own a ranch or farm, others wanted to live in a grand house." he sat down on the bed, inviting the other man to sit with him. "Me? I liked the idea of a ranch. Maybe someday I still will, lot to do for one and I'm just one man. Never however dreamed of being the sort of folk we robbed from. Even when I was going to marry Mary I didn't want to live like her. Confining life, dull small talk all the time, not for me"

arthur and mary sittin' in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g

[erron_black]

It'd taken him an impressively long time to notice something weren't right with his reflection in the mirror when he shaved his face. The bizarre encounter with the man who wasn't a man out in the desert had been so long ago, yet day after day, year after year ever after his mean old mug remained the same. It irked him something awful at first, his own face utterly foreign to him in its familiarity, like looking at a stranger wearing his skin. Erron hadn't given the experience much thought until then, had chalked it up to having fallen prey to some sort of carnival trickery.

A series of panicked thoughts stirred feelings better left unexamined in the wake of the revelation that although his body had undergone an involuntary and irreversible change, change was still possible. Erron idly traced the gnarled knot of a love letter carved into his chest as Arthur gathered himself up and stretched his legs. "No," he muttered, momentarily lost in thought. "No, I reckon I can still die, just won't be a dodderin' senile old man when it happens."

The cabin was a damn sight warmer and more inviting than the last one they'd holed up in back in the mountains. It had been lovingly tended to and smelled strongly of herbs and wood smoke, the furnishings somewhat sparse and a little worn yet comfortable enough. Erron got the sense that Arthur had settled there like he belonged rather than a squatter on a dead man's property. They'd been friendly, after all, if his recollection served him. Curious, he wandered a while yet, observing the little ways Arthur seemed to live out his life in the place while he listened.

"You almost got yerself hitched?" Erron turned toward him with an approving albeit amused grin before finally depositing his things on the floor by the foot of the bed and taking a seat next to him. "All prim and proper-like in a church full up on folk who hate you," he drawled near enough to Arthur's ear for a conspiratorial whisper. "hopin' ain't none of 'em object so y'don't gotta beat the tar outta them in front of god?"

lmao you know marston would have done that

[unshakencowboah]

Arthur had lived on the road for most of his life, never settling, never thought he could, but Hamish's place provided an opportunity to try, even just temporarily. It was well enough away from any and all towns and cities, the woodland and lake provided all the game he could hunt, and he was in solitude for when the change to a bear was inescapable.

It was no Tahiti, but maybe arguably better.

He wasn't sure if he'd remain long term. He still dreamed of returning further west, seeing the ocean and the land where he'd spent his time as a kid. But as he understood it, it was getting mighty busy out there and wouldn't be much different than this place.

While he wasn't sure he was immortal to the same scale as Erron, he knew this curse of the bear had given him longer life. He hadn't aged since he was bit, though he probably wouldn't know for sure the extent of the curse was for another fifty.

Arthur watched the other man walk around, pants pulled up but still unfastened, giving a hint of dark hair and skin. Another benefit of living out here, no one could judge folk like him, openly or not.

At the statement he chuckled and nodded, "Yea, almost." he scratched the back of his neck. "Was willing to leave it all behind, the gang, thievery, and everything in between for Mary. But her daddy wouldn't give me half a chance, in the end he said no, and she wouldn't go against him."

shattered dreams, shattered dreams for *erryone* :{

[erron_black]

Arthur hadn't never struck him hot-blooded for the lady folk like himself; rather the sort to unknowingly stagger his way into endearing himself to them. Hapless and without guile like a right and proper country boy trying to remember not to wring his hands or show them the whites of his eyes. Arthur was surely easy on the eyes and possessed of an even easier temperament when he was of a mood, but Erron doubted it was nothing deliberate on his part. Learning how to convince ladies to let him stick his hand up all them skirts had been a beloved pastime of his ever since his balls dropped and that was all Erron could rightly think about.

That, and how best to kill a man.

"The nerve on you, tryin' to make off with a lady above yer station." Erron teased, but the lopsided slope of his grin was sly with admiration. He leaned down to fish around in his saddlebag for his cigarettes and matchsticks, had to slip his fingers down multiple interior pockets before he found what he was looking for — and then some.

"You ever think 'bout what it'd be like to have a daughter?" An odd question, and an even odder thought. Maybe it was all that heat and tension bleeding out of him for the first time in months, or the question of his unnaturally long life and mortality that had gotten into him all the sudden. Erron plucked out a cigarette and put it between his lips, scraped the match head against the floorboards and then pitched it into the fireplace once he'd finished with it.

"I thought about it," his voice was strained as he hauled himself across the bed to lean his back up against the wall, reached across to offer Arthur a drag off his smoke. In his other hand, he thumbed a yellowed photograph creased ten times over and fraying around the edges. "'bout settlin' down and havin' myself a little devil of a baby with a face like an angel just like her mama," he murmured. "Small enough to fit in my own two hands."

[unshakencowboah]

Arthur chuckled and nodded again. "Yea shame on me. Want to try for a better life but, all that parlor talk and fancy suits ain't me. Even if Mary's father had given me a chance and approved us marryin', I doubt I would have been happy in that world."

He declined the cigarette and instead got up and fetched a pipe and some tobacco from the mantel. More of Hamish's old stuff but he'd come to enjoy it too.

As he packed his pipe, Arthur paused at the sudden question, eyes resting on the photograph which must have been as old as photographs were.

He continued his work. "No, but I had a son once." he answered at last before striking a match and lighting the pipe.

[erron_black]

Sentimentality had never been something he partook in over the course of the long track his life had taken. He'd not been raised with much in the way of worldly possessions to start, much less after his ma and pa well and truly splintered apart from one another. What little he'd been left when they were gone, he'd struck a lucifer and watched burn 'til such a time as the morning sun pinkened the horizon. Erron decided right then and there he didn't have no home and hearth nowhere, took his pa's old sidearm and fenced it for a newer, better one of his own. It, too, was replaced some few years later.

All Erron hung onto was his hat, his mare, his lucky silver dollar, and the pictures of the sharp little stiletto with the jeweled grip that cut into his heart every now and again. Ain't nothing was forever, though; not even him.

Erron's eyes drifted shut on a long drag off his smoke, let the past tense of the answer creep through the air between them and sink into him a while before exhaling it from flared nostrils. "With yer Mary?"

[unshakencowboah]

"No, no never touched her like that." he said.

He took a few puffs from his pipe, still getting used to the thing.

"I met a waitress, Eliza. We talked, got intimate, and she got pregnant. She knew the life I led, I weren't the settlin' sort, and so expected little of me. Still, did what I could for her and the boy, Isaac. Returned to her often as I could with money and toys later on. Spent time with her but mostly the boy, even taught him to fish." he smiled, exhaling smoke "He was a good kid."

Arthur shifted to sit more comfortably beside Erron, "I came back one day, saw two crosses outside the house, learned from a neighbor that they'd been killed in a robbery."

my god, these two fools

[erron_black]

Erron had been around long enough to have overheard many a sad tale; tragedy was something of a fact of life for those fortunate enough to have not become one themselves yet. It was only a matter of time for most, if not all of them in the end. From what Erron had been able to gather from his ma, back when she'd still been lucid enough to be furious with him and honest with it, he drew breath only by the grace of god because it surely hadn't been her doing. His pa weren't divine, no matter how faithfully his ma had worshiped the ground he tread upon.

He wondered what it might've been like to have been that boy, wanted and beloved, his passing mourned.

It was an unsettling thought that stirred the sediment of brackish water that’d lived within him since the incident; rippled outward like alligator spines breaching the surface. Erron pulled sharply off his smoke, the smoldering red ember crackling bright before he pulled it free of his lips to idly thumb the tobacco flakes at the other end of it. "Job went wrong down south," he announced, his jaw flexing with resurgent tension. "Kid wasn’t supposed to be there. I look up and sure as shit there she is, whiter than a sheet, watchin’ me beat her daddy fer some reprobate in a suit’s protection money. I wasn’t there to kill 'im — just knock him around some, give him somethin’ to think about, somethin’ to fear next time. Easy money.”

“She didn’t know that. She didn’t know nothin’ but her daddy’s blood on my hands,” Erron licked his teeth like a snarling wolf, his breath the hiss of a sidewinder between them as he recalled the rage that’d filled him up and wouldn’t let him go. “So I turned tail and knocked that lyin’ sonuvabitch’s teeth out instead and then I just kept punchin’ from Saint Denis all the way to Annesburg.”

“Ain’t no hands like that fit fer touchin’ babies,” his head lolled lazily along the wall to look at Arthur sidelong, the fight in him exorcised like a curl of cigarette smoke between his lips. “But at least I can go to my pine box knowin’ I ain’t that kind of monster.”