Work Text:
Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound of fingers against the weather-roughened surface of a wooden table, a constant rhythm that is almost as even as the pitter-patter of the rain just outside the entrance of the cave. It’s become white noise by now, a numb sound that lies in the back of your brain as you try to focus on the blank pages in front of you.
Your fingers press too hard of the pen into the long-stained pages until the ink begins to bleed just a touch too much, leaving a dark mark betraying your lack of focus to the words you want so desperately to write down. Another day of travels, another day of setbacks–keeping the events written down seems to be the only thing keeping you sane nowadays, especially since it’s a much less lethal alternative than getting into a gunfight.
“Something on your mind?” A voice asks from beside you, echoing slightly against the cave walls.
It catches you off-guard for only a moment, dragging your thoughts back from the sound of rain and thunder that seems to fill the valley outside.
When you turn, it’s to look into the eyes of the man at the table, just slightly deeper in the cave. Joshua Graham is sitting at a makeshift desk, a hobbled-together piece of work with just enough structural integrity so he can focus on tending to the guns sitting upon it. It’s been two days now, and with the rain yet ready to offer mercy for the relocating tribe of the Dead Horses, your traveling partner saw it fit enough to keep himself busy in the meantime.
He looks at you with a mixture of stoic curiosity and concern, if only because you can’t see more than the expression hidden within his eyes, as the rest of his face is masked away with bandages.
You don’t share his gaze for too long.
“Just feeling a little antsy is all,” the words tumble out of your mouth in a cobbled-together mess, though they are mostly honest. “I’m so used to moving around, and yet I feel so out of place here. In the valley. Zion.” The words feel just a tad too awkward.
A second passes, and you can practically feel the gaze of the man just a few paces away. It is a hard look, and you can feel him attempting to peel back the layers of your words, tone and thoughts. It’s been this way ever since the two of you first met, a silent game of cat-and-mouse, one trying to extrapolate the inner feelings of the other.
Still, the feeling shifts when you guess he focuses back on his guns again, carefully checking, cleaning, and maintaining them one after another.
“The Dead Horses have considered you apart of their family and tribe for weeks now,” the man says simply. His tone is not cold, but he does speak with a level of bluntness; inviting you to correct him, to steer the conversation where you feel comfortable. “If any of them have made you feel otherwise, I’m sure it is a mere misunderstanding or perhaps even cultural difference you mistook.”
You debate leaving the conversation there and letting Joshua assume what he liked, but the desire to confide in the man, to share a moment of even simple intimacy, was enough.
“It’s not the people,” You say with a sigh. “It shouldn’t even be an issue anyway. I’ve been traveling for so long that new places shouldn’t feel so…uneasy.”
The book closes in your hands when you finally accept there’s nothing to write, your mind too jumbled and anxious to get much of anything down. You didn’t want to waste the precious resource either with scribbled-out nonsense, not when finding even a stained, but blank journal was a rarity in itself.
After a minute, you realize that there is nothing but silence hanging in the air. Where there had been the careful tapping of fingers or metallic shift of guns being maintained, there is instead nothing.
And Joshua is still looking at you. It takes a breath before you realize that he’s paying attention, very apt attention, to you and your words. It’s not him that bothers you, but the intensity of his look. When you turn to look, you almost feel a need to avert your eyes, if only so you weren’t looking directly into those icy blues.
“You’re unused to being in one place for so long.”
It’s no surprise he was taken on as such a high role within Caesar’s army, if a mere stare can render you metaphorically neck-bared and feeling raw, a mere statement practically a thunder.
He wasn’t entirely wrong, and you didn’t have a desire to lie to him.
Instead of your lips trying to form a reply, your head nods, finally breaking the eye contact between the two of you.
Joshua makes a noise for himself, satisfied that he seemed to get the guess right enough, but was it a guess when he was obviously right on the first try?
“It’s not hard to see, if one looks close enough,” The man picks up a gun and gently moves it between his hands, the motions careful as though he was handling an old photograph ready to crumble. “You nearly remind me of a caged animal. Nervous and on edge–was it due to your time as a courier, or is there another reason behind it?”
What had begun as an explanation trailed off into a personal musing, and it was clear that Joshua wasn’t talking to you directly. He hummed at his thoughts, then finished checking the weapon with a careful sound of metal hitting wood.
“I’m…” There is a thick lump in your throat as you try to find words. Being so earnest with another human was still coming with some difficulty. “I’m afraid of stopping.”
You peered towards the mouth of the cave, hoping that the motion seemed natural, perhaps even casual. Still, it felt stiff and forced, and helped none in making the feeling of the man’s eyes feel any less piercing on you.
He didn’t speak, merely looked. You don’t know what he was trying to get from that alone, but the brief silence was a bit of a respite from talking about emotions that were confusing at best. When was the last time you opened up to another person? Memories were still shattered to pieces like broken glass, but you wagered that it was a long time due to how your thoughts felt the equivalent of rubbing a raw wound in the hot desert sand.
Hilariously, Joshua didn’t even need to ask for an explanation. Your words bled from that raw, emotional wound as you forced it down to the earth.
“I mean–I know it’s stupid, really stupid actually–” You tried not to sound over energized when you threw your hands up in exasperated acceptance that it was, regardless, going to sound stupid no matter how much you prefaced it. “I killed Benny for god’s sake, but I still feel like–I don’t know. Like he’s going to find me if I settle down too long, come get revenge or something and I–”
You were almost hyperventilating.
A breath carefully moved past your lips, a slow and decisive intake of air to help slow down your thoughts.
“…I always feel like something is coming to get me. If I wait too long, then…”
The words trail off, but you hope that they’re enough to explain the emotions welling in your chest, or the nightmares that crept into your sleep at night, when you feel the most alone.
Though Joshua is a rather good man, you wouldn’t have assumed more of him than to offer you a little bit of advice, perhaps even say something from his religious text to perhaps help your woes with wisdom. You expected these things, but instead of mere words, you suddenly felt the touch of a hand on your shoulder instead.
It nearly made you jump. Your hands clutched tight to the journal, pulling it to your body in a frozen moment of fear.
Of course, it was only Joshua.
He sat down wordlessly beside you, having moved from his desk somewhere in your distracted explanation.
“Didn’t mean to frighten you,” is all he said, settling himself next to you against the cave wall. His hand lingered on your shoulder for a few seconds more, lingering with a warmth that you found yourself enjoying–the touch of someone else. Someone who seemed to care about you.
Somewhere in your head, you at least remembered how nice it was to have people who worried, who cared. You remembered what it felt like to feel strong, warm arms wrap around your body, capture you in a bearhug so tight that nothing could dare harm you at all.
It took you a moment to realize how much you wanted that, right then. How much you wanted the comfort that Joshua could offer you, the protection of him and his chosen family–you wanted to be apart of that family.
It took you a few moments to realize the warmth on your cheeks were tears, gently rolling down and dripping from your chin.
You felt embarrassed for how the whole scene must have looked.
“Joshua…”
The man hushed you, then moved his hands and, before you knew it, he had pulled you against his chest.
He was so warm.
“No harm will come to you here,” The man spoke, voice soft but as sure and firm as the mountains protecting Zion Canyon. “You have protected my family with your life, and for that I will offer the same–If anyone wishes to do harm to you while you are in Zion, they will face the wrath that only you managed to restrain with Salt-Upon-Wounds.”
The words shouldn’t have sounded so smooth, the promise not at all genuine, but from Joshua’s mouth you couldn’t have been more comforted from the fear that seemed constant in the back of your mind. It sounded almost binding, like a contract, and something about it made you move your eyes to look up at him again.
It was one thing to meet Joshua Graham’s gaze from a distance. He seems passive, cold, coordinated with his thoughts and actions in such a manner that he nearly seems robotic in his efficiency.
Seeing his eyes up close is nearly breathtaking. What seemed passive were curious, cold were careful, piercing were passionate.
He met your gaze without a word, but his arms, wrapped around you, did not move.
In the moments of frozen silence, a question crawled its way into your thoughts. It worked through them like smoke before moving to and out your lips before you had a chance to stop them.
“Can I kiss you?”
The words made the man still. He didn’t move, didn’t avert his gaze, but you could still detect the shift. It was only then that you felt a wave of embarrassment move over you, creeping up your cheeks in a rosy flush.
Out of place, over the line, completely unwarranted. You quickly chastised yourself for the festering, childish crush, citing a numerous amount of reasons why the words and emotions were as useful as the dirt beneath your boots–not to mention that Joshua himself had more things to worry about than flitful feelings of affection, especially to someone who, for all intents and purposes, he barely knew.
You had been with him and the group for a few months now, which was longer than you’d ever remained in one place before, but you could hardly label your relationships as something deep enough to-
Before you could finish your own thoughts, you saw darkness moving over your eyes. Joshua covered them with a quick, gentle movement of his hand, blinding you.
You could feel the rough texture of the bandages against your skin, and could feel the shift of the man’s body, the sound of shuffling cloth–it only took a moment to realize that Joshua was adjusting something on his face.
A moment later is when you felt a kiss.
With his hand still covering your eyes, you focused solely on the sensation, fleeting but intimate, of the kiss shared between the two of you. The man’s lips were rough, obviously scarred to hell and back that you could tell from the kiss itself–you wondered for but a soft, quiet moment to yourself if it hurt him at all to do this.
Despite it, you could feel the man in a way you hadn’t before. He was warm, careful but not tensed or stiff. He seemed to treat the gesture as if you were fragile against him, with his hand barely pressing over your eyes and his lips trying to remember what it must have been like to share a moment of romantic intimacy with another person.
It must have only been as long as a couple heartbeats, but the kiss ends slowly, almost shyly, as the two of you still and foreheads almost pressed to one another (if Joshua’s hand wasn’t still covering your eyes).
“Keep your eyes closed,” The man murmured. He didn’t wait for your answer before removing his hand from your eyes–which were indeed closed–and moved them back to his face to adjust something. He made a noise after a moment and touched your face, and only then did you open your eyes again.
The deep, enigmatic blue of Joshua’s eyes met yours. They looked even more striking up close, filled with a past you realized in the same moment you wanted to learn. So much more to the man than the fiery rage you quelled when you met and aided him, so much more than the pain and suffering he attempted to hide.
“I am a man of many sins,” Joshua finally said. His voice sounded careful and measured. “I have committed horrible things in my past and will face many challenges because of what has happened to me. I…cannot afford a fleeting affection if that is what you’re after. I can make no promises more than what is granted by god himself.”
It took a moment for you to realize just how serious he was being–how his words felt as heavy as stones, how his eyes didn’t look away from yours for even a moment. He looked for an answer, an assurance, words that you didn’t know hang in your heart until that very moment.
“I don’t think anyone can in a world we live in,” Before you could stop it, a smile slowly worked over your lips. “But it’s good to be close to those who care about one another.”
Joshua looked at you for a moment, going over your words as if there were some that were correct or not. After that, though you couldn’t see his lips beneath the bandages covering them, there must have been a smile that mirrored your own. A weary smile, one that had little practice, but a smile all the same.
“And you’re apart of that family of people now, remember that courier.”
After a few silent seconds, Joshua gently tugged you against him. The two of you spent some amount of time together like that, listening to the falling rain outside the cave with your head tucked beneath his chin and hearing his heartbeat sooth away your worries.