“We gotta stop meeting like this.”
The wind bit at Dutch’s face. He stood on the cliff’s edge. Rocks, grey, dirt, grey, snow, grey, the prodigal son… everything grey. The drop behind yawned wide, a hungry mouth waiting to swallow him whole. There weren’t no salvation there. No chance of survival. No odds. He’d always beaten the odds, beaten everyone – hell, he’d laughed in their faces while doing so – but this wasn’t about odds. This was about choice.
The silver ring felt heavy against his collarbone.
The kid groaned, deeper now – a grown man, a real one, “You’ve always got a plan, Dutch.” He sounded strong, confident… and exhausted in that way that was too familiar… the way Arthur had started sounding towards the end.
The blonde's voice, rough, rich, flickered through his mind like a half-remembered dream. The way he'd drag out the vowel every time he said Dutch’s name, pleading, or cursing, wary, or desperate. The older man looked to his left...
...but the boy wasn't there. His jaw clenched. That had been a different cliff, a different time. Arthur had been beside him then, breathing hard behind his bandanna, sweat streaking through the dust on his face.
Dutch waved his gun, meaningless. He looked back to John, tossing the metal aside, “… This is a good one.”
John lowered his own gun, “I don’t doubt it.”
“We can’t always fight nature, John,” Dutch started, the same words felt poetic - felt right on his tongue. “We can’t fight change… We can’t fight… gravity.” The string around his neck was too damn heavy. “We can’t. Fight. Nothin’.
Dutch heard the brunette suck his teeth, clearly too tired to listen to another one of Dutch's sermons. The kid knew him well, after all. “Then give up, Dutch.”
Dutch swayed at the cold breeze. “But I can’t give up, neither… I can’t fight my own nature.” He watched the brunette’s frown curl into a sneer at that. They both knew what he was really talking about. Dutch smiled, breathing heavy, “That’s the paradox, John. You see?”
The younger man held back the growl in his voice, clearly trying not to give Dutch the satisfaction, “Then I have to shoot you,” he leveled.
Dutch’s chuckle came out, natural, “When I’m gone, they’ll just find another monster.” The look in John’s eyes clearly disagreed, but Dutch continued, “They have to… because they have to justify their wages.”
“No, Dutch,” John corrected. “Ain’t never met a monster till I met you.”
Dutch’s blood pulsed cold against the skin of his arm. The kid wasn’t wrong.
Dutch stood alone in the snow. He could almost hear the echo of hoof beats – The Count, Silver Dollar, Boadicea – the ravings of the reverend, the shouts of Susan, the ugly, off tune singing of those idiots that could barely pronounce a word of Spanish, the distant shouts of the posse who’d once trusted him, loved him. He’d been a god once, or near enough. Now he was just a man with nothing left to lose.
He looked to the sky. Lord, when had it all gone wrong? Why had it? This wasn't what he'd wanted. It used to all be… It used to all be so simple. When had he changed? Why had he changed?
The hate in John’s eyes looked almost like Arthur’s. But Arthur’s was never quite hate, not really…
“… Gravity…” he whispered. For himself.
“We can't fight… gravity,” again he parroted his own words from that time… That time.
That had been the first time… the only time he had ever experienced Heaven. When Arthur followed him at those words. No questioning it. And then…
Blue-green and fear stared into him – into his soul as they plummeted. Fear… but also some last vestiges of trust.
“YOU'RE MAAAAAAD!” That voice, rich, unique. Arthur.
Dutch couldn't help but laugh as he plummeted through air into river.
The water hit like a slap from God himself, cold and brutal. Dutch surfaced gasping, sediment stinging his eyes, but it was Arthur’s face he saw first. Not the rocks, nor the logs, nor the jagged teeth of the cliff above them.
The current carried them; Dutch found land, the odds ever in his favor.
“Come on, Arthur. Take my hand!” The blonde swam as best as he could along the current, his large body clearly slowed and weakened by its curse. “Here. Oh, don't give up now!” Arthur swam to him desperate, a lost child. Hot skin found Dutch’s; he pulled, “Come here, big boy... I got ya.”
He dragged Arthur onto the riverbank, his own muscles still screaming from the impact. The blonde coughed up half the river, chest heaving like a fireplace bellows. Dutch stared.
Water dripped from Arthur’s face; he rolled over, hair plastered to his forehead like a damn golden halo. The boy’s scent was even stronger now, now that the river had washed off the last vestiges of those sharp, cloaking herbs.
“We're okay.” Dutch laughed, heart beating a mile a minute, maybe from the jump, maybe from swimming through rapids and narrowly dodging those life-ending rocks, maybe from that scent… That scent that had been getting stronger the last two days, that scent that had helped Uncle Sam track them down and corner them so quickly in the first place. That goddamn intoxicating smell no one in their right mind would expect from his enforcer. Arthur Morgan, the 6 foot-something strong man with more kills under his belt than half the country's criminals combined. The boy panted. Coughed. Dripped. “… You're okay.” Dutch looked away.
“What a mess,” the blonde wheezed.
“I know… But a mess is what we need.” He didn't explain what he meant. He didn't need to.
Dutch stared at the fast-flowing water, weighing their options. The scent clung to Arthur like a second skin – honey, peach, rosemary – sweet and unmistakable. No amount of river water could wash away what nature had carved into his bones.
Dutch turned, eyes tracing the broad outline of the man spread out over sand and rocks, water still seeping dark from his clothes into the dirt. “Give me your shirt.”
Arthur's head rolled to him, brows furrowed. “The hell for?” His voice was rough, still catching on the remnants of river water in his lungs.
Dutch didn't smile, “Faith, Arthur.”
A beat passed. The blonde let out a sigh, then stripped his jacket and peeled the thin soaked fabric from his shoulders. Dutch took it without ceremony.
He tore the sodden shirt into uneven strips with his teeth, the fabric resisting before giving way with a wet rip. The honey-rich aroma in that cloth was warm, alive. Jesus fucking Christ, so good. He schooled his expression; thank God Arthur wasn't looking, too busy panting into the sky catching his breath, taming his biology.
“They want to follow the scent, let them try,” Dutch grumbled, tossing one scrap into the churning current where it vanished downstream in seconds. Another he wedged between jagged rocks further upriver, the third he rubbed against a tree branch before flinging it across the stream into dense brush.
Arthur watched him work through tired lids. “Ain't gonna fool 'em long,” he rasped, wiping at the incessant river water that continued to drip down his temples.
“Long enough,” Dutch countered, crouching to rub the remaining fabric against Arthur's bare neck. He paused then, fingers lingering a heartbeat too long on curse-warmed skin.
"Long enough for what… Dutch?"
Arthur’s pulse hammered under his fingertips, fast and insistent, and Dutch wondered if the boy even realized how hard he was breathing.
“Long enough for us to find a way out of this mess,” Dutch said, standing abruptly and tucking the cloth into his pocket for use further up the trail. He offered a hand.
After a beat, Arthur took it, hauling himself up with a grunt.
They moved upstream where the cliffs offered shadow and cover.
Arthur's bare back gleamed soft in the fractured light. Dutch watched the play of muscle under skin, the old scars he'd memorized years ago blending with the flush of exertion. Arthur had always been strong, always acted it. So this, this protective hunch, the way his body curved into itself, this was new.
Or maybe Dutch had just refused to see it before. It had only been, what? Two months? Maybe three? The boy had spent so long hiding his curse that the truth almost felt alien. Fifteen years. Fifteen years of herbs and perfumes and secrets and lies. Fifteen years wasted. Unfortunately, he understood why Arthur had made that choice. With their rough way of life. With Dutch’s expectations. With the way the boy always seemed so desperate to prove himself, desperate for respect, approval. Dutch's approval.
Still, though. He should’ve told Dutch.
“So, we going to get out of here, or are we just gonna wait around for them to come shooting?” Arthur threw his sopping coat back on, decidedly frowning into the dirt. Dutch hadn't realized he was staring.
The older man huffed a laugh, but his throat was dry. “Just making sure you're not drowning on land, son.”
Arthur's scent spiked - warmth, peaches crushed under boot - before he tamped it down again. The line of his shoulders tightened.
Dutch gauged the reaction; it had been a while since he’d called the blonde that – had been hard to ever since… well…
But that look the boy had always given him – like looking at a hero, an idol… that spark had been gone for a while.
Dutch watched Arthur's hands – those big, calloused palms that could break a man's neck or skin a cougar with equal ease – tremble as he wrung river water from his pant legs. The scent of him was thicker now, unguarded, curling into Dutch's lungs like smoke from Pearson’s cook fire after weeks of cold rations. It made his teeth ache.
Arthur snorted, flexing his fingers like he could will the tremor away. “Cold.”
Arthur's eyes snapped up, wide and blue-green under the mess of his damp hair. The words hung between them. Had the boy really not known how obvious it was? How strong he smelled? For a heartbeat, Dutch thought he might bolt, might actually turn tail and run from him for the first time in twenty goddamn years. But then Arthur's jaw set, that stubborn tilt Dutch knew so well, and he squared his shoulders like he was bracing for an insult.
“I'm,” the boy looked to the ground, “running low on red herb… Been running low… Been out…” he chewed on the inside of his mouth. “I need to head into Valentine and get—”
“We ain't heading near roads or civilization anytime soon,” Dutch leveled. “We gotta find somewhere to lay low till them troops cool down… or you do.”
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