dare to dream

Arthur leaves you in the river, sunlight catching around your ankles.

He does not mean to look back more than once, but of course, he does.

He tells himself this as he walks up from the bank toward the cabin, boots pressing into sandy soil and dry grass, hat brim low against the afternoon glare. The San Luis moves behind him, water sliding over stone, reeds moving at the edges. He can still hear you laughing softly to yourself, splashing like the world has given you something precious.

It is a sound he wants to remember, keep tucked away in his heart.

That’s the trouble.

He has started collecting pieces of you without meaning to. Your laugh. Your stubborn chin. The way your eyes shone when you pointed across the river and said "Mexico," as if it were not a place but salvation itself. The way hope had lit you from within until Arthur could scarcely stand to look at you.

He pushes the cabin door open with one hand.

The old, rusted hinges complain loudly.

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters to the wood itself, “I hear you.”

The old place has not weathered kindly. Dust lies over everything. The air inside is dry and stale, warmed through by years of heat trapped in wood. A narrow cot rests against the far wall, its blanket stiff and useless. A table tilts on one stubborn leg. A broken chair keeps company with a cracked wash basin. The corners are cobwebbed thick as old lace.

Still, it is shelter.

Arthur steps in, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness. He has slept in worse. He has healed in worse. He has bled into dirt that showed less hospitality than this.

“Could do for a night,” he says, mostly to himself.

He sets about it because work is easier than thinking.

First, he shoves the door wide to let air move through. Then he drags the broken chair outside and tosses it near the woodpile with a sharp clatter. He takes the blanket from the cot by two careful fingers, grimaces at the smell, and shakes it outside until dust explodes into the sunlight. He coughs, swears, and throws it over a low rail to air out, though he doubts anything short of setting it on fire will improve it.

When he goes back in, he uses his boot to push aside old leaves and rat droppings. There is a broom in the corner, bristles worn down to almost nothing, but it serves well enough. He sweeps the center boards clear, each stroke raising more dust than it removes. The work steadies his hands. The plainness of it steadies his mind.

Sweep. Check the window. Test table.

Do not think about you in the river.

Sweep. Clear cobweb. Kick mouse bones beneath the wall.

Do not think about your bare feet in the water.

Sweep. Look anywhere but the open doorway where sunlight flashes off the San Luis and your pale skirts catch against your calves.

He fails, of course.

He looks.

Through the doorway, beyond the weeds and scrub and down the bank, he can see you standing mid-shin in the river. Your shoes sit abandoned in the dirt. Your skirts are gathered up enough to keep them from the water, one hand holding fabric at your thigh, the other stretched out as you test the current with delighted caution. 

Arthur’s chest tightens.

Love, he thinks again, and the word is still too new to feel comfortable.

He turns away sharply.

“Clean the damn cabin,” he grumbles, as if he needed to remind himself.

The table is more trouble than it’s worth. One leg has warped, so he wedges a flat stone beneath it and presses down until it sits mostly level. The cot creaks under his hand, but it holds. Good enough. He checks the small fireplace next. Old ash sits cold. No nest. No snakes. He scrapes it clear with a bit of broken plank and nods to himself.

A night, maybe two, if they need it.

Not that they really need it.

They should ride back. Tell Dutch. Tell Hosea. Explain the pass, the river, the way around Blackwater. Make a plan. A proper one.

But all he can think is that you looked happy in the water, and he cannot remember the last time he saw you without a care in the world like that.

He moves toward the chimney, checking off in his mind that folks usually will hide valuables there. He reaches up, blindly, and feels something solid. Grunting to himself, he pulls it out, a small cloth-covered object.

Inside, wrapped in brittle cloth, is a little stone figure.

Arthur stares at it.

Then he snorts, “Well, now.”

He lifts it carefully, holding it up in the dusty bar of light coming through the window. It is crude, old, and surprisingly heavy. A male figure carved in dark stone, broad through the chest, hips thrust forward with no modesty whatsoever. The cock between its legs has been shaped with blunt intent, thick and obvious, proud as a rooster in a churchyard.

Arthur chuckles despite himself, low in his throat.

“Ain’t you somethin’.”

The little figure says nothing, of course. It only sits there in his hand, smug in indecency.

He turns it over, studying the base. There are marks carved along one side, worn nearly smooth by age. Not letters he recognizes. Not anything useful.

“Could get a few dollars for you,” he says.

He should leave it. That is the sensible thing. It is a strange, dirty trinket in an abandoned cabin at the edge of the country, and Arthur has lived long enough to know strange things tend to gather consequences.

But he is not thinking of the consequences.

He is thinking of fences. Of money. Of one more small thing to bring back to camp and toss in the box. He is thinking, too, that you might laugh if he showed it to you, and the thought of making you laugh feels dangerously close to something he wants more than he should.

So he wraps the little figure back in its cloth and slips it into his satchel.

The leather flap falls shut.

For half a second, there is warmth against his hip.

Arthur stills.

He looks down at the satchel.

Nothing moves. Nothing changes. The cabin remains dusty and quiet. A fly drones at the window. He waits a heartbeat longer, frowning.

“Too much sun,” he mutters.

He finishes tidying the cabin with a little more speed after that.

The cot gets dragged closer to the wall. The old basin gets carried outside and rinsed with water from his canteen. He wipes the table down with a rag until more wood than dust shows through. He checks the roof by eye, looking for holes large enough to matter. Not perfect, but dry enough if the weather holds. He finds a couple of empty bottles beneath the cot and tosses them outside too, where they clink together in the weeds.

By the time he is done, the place is still poor, still lonely, still filled with the staleness left by whoever abandoned it.

But it is usable.

Arthur steps into the doorway and brushes his palms together.

He means to call down to you. He means to say the cabin will suffice for the night. He means to ask if you want coffee, or food, or if your feet have gone numb standing in that river like some little fool.

He sees you.

All thought leaves him.

You are bent slightly, one hand skimming the surface of the San Luis. Sunlight runs silver over the water and breaks around your legs. Your skirts are damp at the hem now, clinging darker where the river has kissed them. A strand of hair has slipped loose and lies against your cheek. You look warm. Open. Alive. Joyful. 

Arthur’s body reacts before his mind has any say in it.

Need tears through him.

Not desire as he knows it. Not the slow, shameful want he has been carrying for weeks, not the ache he has learned to bury beneath discipline and distance. This hits like a thrown match into gunpowder. One moment he is standing in the doorway thinking of coffee and shelter, and the next his cock is hardening so fast it hurts, thick and immediate in his pants.

He grabs the doorframe, suddenly lightheaded from all of his blood rushing southward.

Arthur’s breath catches. You straighten in the river, turning as if you feel his gaze, and smile up at him.

It ruins him.

The smile is not coy or knowing or sensual. That makes it worse. You are simply glad to see him, glad to be here, glad to have found a road south that may save the gang from iits precarious situation.

Arthur’s cock throbs so hard he nearly grunts aloud.

“Hell,” he whispers.

You call something to him, but the river’s bubbling takes half the words. He only catches his name.

Arthur.

Said in your voice.

His hand tightens on the doorframe until the wood groans.

He cannot stand here. He cannot let you see him like this. He cannot walk down to you with his pants straining obscenely, with heat simmering under his skin, with thoughts in his head that would make him unable to meet your eyes for the rest of his life.

The satchel feels too heavy now, pressed against his hip.

Arthur tears it off his shoulder and tosses it hard into the dirt just outside the cabin. It lands with a loud thud next to where you tossed your own bag, not terribly far from the horses.

You blink at the sound, still smiling but puzzled now.

“Arthur?”

“I’ll be right back,” he calls, too fast, too rough, “Got- gotta piss.”

Your expression shifts, concern beginning to crease between your brows.

He does not wait for the question.

Arthur turns and moves.

Not quite running at first, because some stubborn scrap of pride still clings to him, but close enough. He strides behind the cabin, through dry brush and down a narrow game trail cut between rock and mesquite. The burning heat in his blood does not lessen with each step away from you. It grows. It bursts into something blinding, dampening his skin with sweat beneath his shirt even though the breeze off the river is cool.

His cock strains against his pants, heavy and furious, every step dragging fabric over the swollen length of him. The friction is torture. His balls ache. His belly tightens. His jaw clenches so hard it hurts.

“Get a hold of yourself,” he growls, as if his cock would listen to him.

His body answers with another savage throb.

The river bends farther upstream, hidden from the cabin by scrub and a low shelf of stone. Arthur half-stumbles down the bank, boots sliding in loose dirt. He catches himself on a cottonwood trunk, breathing hard through his nose, then looks back once.

No sign of you.

Good. Good.

He yanks his hat off and drops it on the bank. His gunbelt follows, each movement rough and urgent. He does not undress fully. He can’t even think that clearly. He only wades straight into the San Luis, boots and all, until the water reaches his shins and curls cold around his boots.

The shock should help.

It doesn’t.

If anything, the cold makes the heat more obscene. It sharpens everything. The water rushes against his feet while his body burns like a fever above it. Sun glints off the river. The current breaks around him. Somewhere downstream, you are standing in this same water.

That thought nearly makes him drop to his knees.

He fumbles with his suspenders.

“God damn it,” he breathes.

The hook fights him. His fingers are too clumsy, too desperate, but finally the metal gives. He gets his pants open with a harsh tug and shoves the fabric of his union suit aside, freeing himself into the sun-warmed air.

His cock springs hard into his hand, swollen and flushed, the tip already wet. The sight of it makes shame cut through him, but the shame is nothing compared to the need. 

Arthur wraps his hand around himself and groans.

The first stroke nearly has him come.

His head bows. His shoulders hunch. Pleasure runs up his spine in a white-hot flash, too sharp, too immediate. He squeezes at the base, trying to force himself to slow down, to take control.

But control feels far away at this moment.

He strokes again, firmer this time, dragging his palm up the hard length of him. His breath comes out in a ragged pant. The water curls around his boots, his free hand grips the front of his shirt, twisting the fabric in his fist.

He thinks of you in the river.

Your bare feet on wet stone. Your skirts gathered in one hand. The bright look in your eyes when you pointed south. Your voice saying there, that is the gang’s salvation.

He imagines stepping into the river behind you.

No.

He shuts his eyes hard.

That only makes it worse.

In darkness, the fantasy burns bright in his mind’s eye.

His hands on your waist. Your back against his chest. Your breath catching when he bends his head near your ear. The wet drag of river water against both of you, the world narrowed to sunlight and skin and your voice saying his name without concern, without shame, wanting him there.

Arthur’s hips jerk forward roughly into his fist.

“Goddamn,” he groans.

He strokes faster.

The sound of skin on skin is nearly lost compared to the rushing of the river, but he hears enough to feel filthy for it. His palm moves rough and sure, slick now, sliding from

He tries to think of anything else.

Horses. Guns. The route back. The pass. Dutch’s face when Arthur tells him there may be a way south. Hosea’s careful eyes.

You, smiling.

Always you.

The thought of you will not leave.

It changes. You are not just standing in the river anymore. In his mind, you turn into him. Your hands come to his shirt. You look at him with the same fire that had filled your eyes during the dance at MacFarlane’s, the same softness from that goodnight kiss that had nearly given him a heart attack.

He imagines you rising on your toes.

He imagines your mouth at his.

A hoarse sound tears from him.

He plants his feet wider in the river, bracing himself against the current and against the force of his own body. His fist moves faster now, rhythm broken by urgency. The ache in his balls draws tight. His belly knots. Heat gathers low and brutal, dragging him toward the edge with frightening speed.

He should stop.

He should stop before he barks out something, before the river carries some sound downstream, before you wonder where he has gone and come looking.

The idea of you finding him like this sends a fresh surge through him, shame and need tangled together.

You would see him. See what you do to him. See the thick length of him in his fist, see his pants open, see how badly he wants you. He imagines shock on your face. Then want. Then your eyes dropping, your lips parting, your hand reaching.

Arthur snarls under his breath and strokes harder.

He is close. So close.

His breath stutters. Every inhale burns. Every exhale comes with a low grunt he cannot swallow. His hips thrust into his fist now, short and helpless, water splashing around his boots as his body chases release with a desperation that humiliates him.

Arthur Morgan bows forward, fist tightening around himself, and comes hard into the river.

Pleasure slams through him, fierce and bright, dragging a broken groan from deep in his chest. His cock pulses in his grip, spend spilling hot into the cold rush of water, white pulled away almost instantly by the current. He shudders with it, hips jerking, shoulders trembling, his hand working through every harsh wave until there is nothing left but aftershock and shame and the pounding of his own heart.

For a few seconds, Arthur cannot move.

The river keeps going around him as if nothing has happened.

He stands there with his head bowed, breath ragged, water tugging at his boots, his hand still wrapped loosely around his still-hard cock. Sunlight is warm across the back of his neck. The trees whisper. Somewhere downriver, you are waiting.

Arthur swallows.

Then, helpless and wrecked, he exhales your name.