Chapter Text
Bluegill scales cover the oak slats like a scatter of half moons. Or, viewed through the lens of your current mood, a scatter of torn fingernails, each one ripped clean. Glancing up at the man at the other side of the table, you drag the back of the knife viciously against the dead fish’s decimated mail , and another shower of parts falls against the notched wooden surface like a morbid spray of rain.
Micah asks. “You and Morgan still fucking?”
He says the words loud enough to carry across the whole of what ragged remainder is left of the camp at Beaver Hollow. The two strangers sitting by the cave’s open maw look up from their card game, and you feel a faint, falling sensation in your chest. The kind that flutters through when you miss a step going down the stairs.
Keeping your head down, you continue scraping at the bluegill.
“Nah, can’t be. Doubt that miserable bastard can even get hard, the state he’s in now. And even if he could, can’t see him lasting more’n two minutes without, y’know…” Micah wheezes dramatically, adopts a wet , hacking cough that sounds despairingly close to the real thing.
You put the tip of the knife to the seam of the bluegill’s belly, then rip it open with unwarranted violence. Droplets of fish blood spatter against the front of your dress.
“Now, if what you’re looking for is satisfaction, I’d suggest you head on down to my tent.” From the periphery of your vision, you can see Micah jab his thumb towards the lean-to set up in the shadow of Dutch’s tent. A hint of bile rises to the back of your throat. “I’ll show you how a real man fucks a woman.”
Come any closer and I’ll show you how to skin a snake, you think, groping for innards with your fingers. Grasping the bluegill’s pebble-shaped heart, you yank out a string of entrails that glistens dark red and gleaming, and let it drop from your hand onto the table with a wet plop .
“Best time to do it’d be now, while Morgan’s out gettin’ himself killed.” Micah says this affably, as though you’ve acquiesced. “And on the off chance that he does come back, what he don’t know won’t hurt him, right?”
You lever up the flap adjacent to the fish’s cheek with the tip of the knife, then reach in to tear out the gills. The fanned red edge nicks the pad of your thumb. Wincing, you jerk your hand away to check the cut.
“Aw, didja hurt yourself? Here, let me see—”
The moment he steps towards you, you flinch and brandish the knife like a weapon. “Alright, alright,” he says, holding up both hands, retreating. Under his breath, he mutters, “Goddamn touchy little bitch.”
Beside the mouth of the cave, the shorter of the two strangers (what were their names? Joe and… Clem, or something?) stands up and rests his hand on the hilt of his holstered gun.
You flick your eyes towards the overturned soapbox beside the campfire. There, Dutch glances up from the book in his hand and holds your gaze just long enough to acknowledge your plight. He raises his eyebrows, then deliberately turns his head away, r eturning his attention to what might be his millionth perusal of Evelyn Miller.
All of your potential allies are either departed or well out of sight: the girls at the river, Charles on the hunt, Sadie on guard duty. John, scoping out a potential lead up north somewhere.
And with him, Arthur.
With exaggerated precision, you lower the knife and lay the edge of its blade at an outward slant adjacent to the bluegill’s puckered mouth. You lift your head to look Micah in the face, then slam your hand against the dull heel of the knife hard enough that it decapitates the fish in one swift motion, slicing through scale and muscle and bone with a beautifully crisp thunk .
He doesn’t seem impressed. Micah says, “You really gonna keep on pretendin’ you can’t talk? I heard you well enough the other night, while I was sittin’ out here on guard duty.” In a high, breathy voice, he squeals, “ Ohhh, Arthur! ”
Blood rushes to your cheeks. Hot with shame and anger, you duck down and glare instead at the dead fish. Its round, sightless eyes stare pointlessly back at you.
“Alright. If you’re still gonna play at bein’ a deaf-mute, lemme spell things out real clear for you.” Micah makes an obscene gesture, points at himself, then rubs his fingers together to indicate that he has money, all the while enunciating loud and slow, “HOW… MUCH… TO… SUCK MY—”
“I am not for sale,” you snarl. “And I would sooner cut off my own tongue than put it anywhere near your diseased prick.”
“So she can speak,” he says, unfazed by the insult.
“Probably speak better than you and every other contemptible fuck in this camp. Van der Linde included.”
“Wouldn’t say that if I were you. If word got to Dutch that you were disrespecting him— well, ain’t no telling how he’d react. Might even find it… disloyal. And I’m sure you wouldn’t want that.” As he speaks, he nods towards the northern stretch of woods banking the cave, where the blackened and twisted branches left from an impromptu pyre still lie scattered. And beside it, the shallow grave of what little had remained of Molly O’Shea afterward, unmarked and unmourned.
A cold trickle of fear runs down your spine. “Arthur wouldn’t—”
“Arthur this, Arthur that.” Micah pronounces the name as though it were something foul in his mouth. “Open your eyes, you dumb cunt. Black Lung’s gonna be dead within the week. If not from the fuckin’ plague , then for sure by the Pinkertons. Just look at him. He can barely walk .”
Within the week. God. No, he’s not… he’s not quite that bad…
( not that bad yet, a voice murmurs from inside your head)
“And when he’s six feet under,” he continues. “You’re gonna have nobody on your side. That is, unless you start courtin’ new loyalties now .”
Micah Bell has laid all your worst fears out in front of you as frankly and bluntly as an assortment of dead fish at market. And to this, there is but one response. Not denial. Not anger. Only the deepwater chill of utter despair.
“You ain’t that stupid. I’m sure you can see the writing on the wall.” His voice smooths to something unctuous and oddly familiar. It takes a second for recognition to click. This is the same voice he uses when flattering Dutch . “So what’s it gonna be? You gonna cast your lot in with a corpse, or you gonna make the smart choice and go with the man with the highest chance of making it outta this place alive?”
“I’ll go to the grave with him before I go to bed with you,” you hiss.
Micah laughs. “Oh sure, you’re all bravado now, but we’ll see what you really are when the shit hits the fan. A whore. Just like every other cunt here.” He raises a hand in farewell and starts walking away, calling over his shoulder, “You know where my tent is, honey. Come find me after you ditch Morgan.”
With a great deal of effort, you force yourself to train your focus back on the bluegill. You slip your knife to a space just above its spinal cord and angle the blade parallel to the table, then begin carving its pale meat away from the thin, clustered bones.
Filleting has always seemed inordinately wasteful to you– throwing away perfectly good meat, that’s what it is. A stupid and tedious method, and truth be told half the reason you hate doing it is because you’ve never been particularly good at it— but Arthur always complains about spitting fish bones otherwise, so… so…
The realization sifts in as soft and cold as autumn rain. So soon I won’t have to do this anymore.
No. No, no, no— that’s not true at all— you’ll be filleting fish until your dying day, and you’ll roll your eyes and sigh all the while, and he’ll be just as annoying, asking melodramatically whether you want him to choke to death on a fish bone, and… and…
A teardrop falls onto the back of your hand. Another falls onto the half-stripped bluegill, then another, and another, all raining down in rapid succession until you have to put the knife down to wipe at your eyes with your sleeve.
— — —
You hurry to the hitching post at the first, faint rumble of hooves, standing next to the grazing horses straight-backed and overeager. The light blue dress you’d borrowed from Tilly looks nearly white in the pines’ damp shadows, and it cuts through the gloom so starkly that when John emerges from the woods, he startles.
John is alone.
“It’s alright,” he says, answering the anxious, searching look on your face. “Arthur’s just a little ways back. Shouldn’t be more than a minute.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothin’s wrong. Said he was gettin’ somethin’.”
A white-hot curl of contempt coils tight in your chest. You narrow your eyes. “Dutch is sending him out on another errand before he’s even back from this one?”
“What? No, nothin’ like that. S’cuse me,” he adds, swinging his leg over the saddle to dismount.
Gathering your skirts in your hands, you hastily backstep a few paces away to give him space enough to maneuver. “Shit, I’m sorry,” you apologize. “I’m pelting you with questions before you’re even out of the saddle—”
“You don’t gotta apologize,” John interrupts. “You ain’t done anythin’ wrong. And hey, uh…” his voice drops low with the gentle lilt that seems to always accompany well-intentioned white lies. “He’s… I think he’s doin’ a little better. Weren’t coughin’ as much as he usually does.”
Over and over again, you’ve played along with these small farces. Little fictions woven for your benefit. The only one who’s taken it upon himself to tell it to you plainly is Micah, and in a sick, bitter way you’re almost grateful for it.
You force a smile. “I’m glad to hear it.”
John sighs. He looks at the thin path that picks through the mountains and into camp and sets his mouth to a stubborn, flat line. “Listen,” he says, and there is conviction in his words now, whether true or misguided not for you to determine. “Arthur’s gonna be alright.” Awkwardly, as though sympathy were an undertaking largely unfamiliar to him, he pats you on the shoulder. “He’ll pull through,” he says. “He always does.”
It’s another twenty minutes before Arthur finally arrives, his clothes gritty with buffeted dust and his shoulders slumped with apparent exhaustion. Bedraggled and drained, and when he spots you standing by the hitching post, his smile is weary, worn thin by the long miles he’s traveled.
“Hey there,” he calls out.
“Hey,” you reply. “What kept you?”
“I’ll show you in a bit. C’mere.” He sets himself on the ground, and pulls you into what’s clearly meant to be a quick embrace before he unsaddles Athena. But when he lets go, you don’t. Bemused, he rests his gloved hand on top of your head, runs his fingers through your hair. “Everything alright?”
“Yeah,” you say, hiding your face against his chest. “I’m just glad you’re back, and not— shot full of holes, or skewered, or something.”
“Course not. Just scopin’ the place out for now. Gettin’ shot full of holes and skewered comes later.”
You raise your head to fix him with a severe, unamused look, and his smile quickly fades. “You’ve been cryin’,” he says, frowning. “What’s wrong?”
What isn’t wrong? The blood flecked at the corner of his mouth and shirt collar, the quietly pursuant eyes of the strangers by the cave, the cold portent of what might come next, all of it building up day by day like a red rime of rust.
“Nothing’s wrong.” With a note of mechanical cheeriness, you tell him, “Hey, that net Charles set up in the river finally worked out! Caught a bluegill, so I—”
From the staging ground behind you comes Dutch’s voice from on high, shouting his name. A master calling for his errant hound. Arthur doesn’t even look up. “Tell me what happened.”
You shake your head. Reluctantly, you step away from and gesture towards camp with an unenthusiastic wave of your hand. “He won’t be happy if you keep him waiting. Especially on my account.”
“Dutch,” Arthur says, and he sounds more tired than angry, as if even resentment has been ground out of him by the sheer weight of his fatigue. “I won’t be long,” he says. “Meet you at the tent.”
— — —
His cot is uncomfortable without him in it. Especially these days, as the first tinge of autumn begins to assert itself. The evening chill that much sharper, the afternoon that much darker. Pulling one of his jackets over your shoulders, you sit yourself on the cot’s rickety edge and lean towards the crate set at his bedside, gently lifting the chipped saucer you’d covered the plate of roasted bluegill with to keep it warm.
It’s long since gone cold.
With the tent flaps drawn down, everything here dims to an ambient blue, tinted by what light manages to filter through the navy canvas. Rather gloomy, really. Near impossible to read anything without squinting hard at the print.
But with the tent flaps up, they’ll accuse you of eavesdropping. Which is an activity that you’d partake in enthusiastically, you admit, were it not for your precarious position in camp. A position predicated solely on Arthur’s wellbeing and Dutch’s (extremely conditional) goodwill.
They’re having some sort of protracted argument up there on the ridge. An argument which has lasted— you check your pocket watch, peering irritably into its cracked glass face— about sixteen minutes now. It takes some effort to make out who exactly the participants are. Dutch, of course: his booming baritone is difficult to mistake. And Arthur, and John, and… Bill? Micah, too. And a voice you don’t quite recognize.
Bill shouts something that carries the tone of accusation, and Arthur snarls something in reply. And… now it seems like they’re all yelling. Then Dutch again, cutting in to mediate.
Things quiet down after that, diminishing back to just a muted murmur of dissent. You hear Arthur’s heavy, plodding footsteps a short while afterward, crunching against hard-packed dirt and the scattering of dead leaves that have begun to fall. He pulls up the tent’s left flap and pins it back and you throw a hand up to shade your eyes against the blinding mid-afternoon sun.
Against that brightness he is momentarily cast in silhouette. In that shadow, he is imposing still, his broad shoulders and looming height undiminished. But when you’ve blinked the dazzle out of your eyes, it’s just Arthur again, looking well and truly expended.
He doesn’t even bother taking off his coat or setting his satchel down before he sits down beside you. The cot’s metal frame lets out a pitiful squeak.
“What was that all about?” you ask.
“I ain’t sure myself.” Idly, Arthur presses a palm between your shoulder blades. Tentative, then firm, as if feeling for a solid surface in the dark. With things gone to vapor, something to hold onto, to follow through to the end. “Lot of bluster. Lot of talk about ‘loyalty’. And faith.”
“I thought I heard you snap at Bill.”
“Yeah. He called you a Delilah.”
That’s a new one. “A Delilah,” you repeat, smiling a little. “That’s surprisingly literate, for Bill. I’m almost impressed.”
Arthur’s voice is quiet and worried. “He sure as hell didn’t come up with it himself.”
“Then who do you think…”
He doesn’t answer this. Just briefly curls the hand at your back into a fist, bundling the cloth there between his fingers. Holding on tight before he lets go in that way that says, later . “Anyway,” he says. “I got you something.”
“Arthur, you don’t have to—”
Rummaging through his satchel, the straps and leather of the thing just as battered and scarred as himself, he pulls out something small and round, and tosses it into your lap.
An apple.
“Found a little cluster of fruit trees not too far from here,” he says. “Someone’s attempt at an orchard, looks like. They’re only just comin’ in to season, and most of ‘em are still green, but I found a few ripe ones. Could take you there later today, if you want.”
“You were late because you went apple picking ?”
“You’re always whinin’ about how much you miss sweets, and I figured this was the next best thing.”
Ah. He’s caught you. As he does again and again. Without even meaning to, he’s trapped your heart in his hands like a child catching a grasshopper: guilelessly, heedless of the desperate, dire flutter between his fingers. No escape, but you’ve never been more willing to die like this, so long as he keeps smiling at you the way he does now. Soft and focused, as though everything else has fallen away.
You bite your lip against the inopportune swell of emotion and argue, “Twice is not ‘ all the time ’.”
“Oh yeah?” His smile turns to a smirk. “Abigail said you keep openin’ that biscuit tin she keeps her sewing supplies in and lookin’ all disappointed. Like you think those needles are gonna magically turn to biscuits the forty-seventh time around.”
“It’s not a biscuit tin. It’s a macaroon tin,” you say, your voice petulant with longing. “I love macaroons.”
“Yeah, well. Eat your apple and pretend then.”
You run your thumb over the plump curve of the apple. Speckled gold and striated with crimson, it’s smaller than what you’d find at the grocer’s, but with a richness of color that makes it look like something plucked from a fairytale forest. You almost can’t stand to eat it.
Almost. When you bite through to the apple’s white flesh, the clarity of its sweetness catches you off guard. Like a last, golden taste of departed summer.
“It’s good, right?”
“Thank you,” you say through a mouthful of fruit. “I really… I— um… ”
It’s not something you’ve ever gotten good at, showing appreciation. With kindnesses like this, it’s all you can do to stumble through the words and lay your hand on his knee, hoping to convey with touch what you cannot do with words.
He lays his own hand over top, keeping you there. Arthur traces over the ridge of your knuckles as you gnaw the fruit down to its knobbly core, then asks gently, “So, you gonna tell me what happened?”
No use in putting it off any longer. He’s more persistent than a dog at a bone, with some things. You happen to be one of them. Staring down into your lap, at the apple’s yellowing hull held loosely in your hand, you say, “Micah told me I should fuck him if you… you know.”
“If I die,” Arthur says flatly.
You give a single, reluctant nod.
“I’m gonna kill him.” He says this calmly, as though it were a task as mundane as any other. Chop wood, draw water, murder Micah. Arthur starts getting up, and you have to grab at his coat to drag him back down.
“I told him I’d sooner die than fuck him,” you tell him. “And I mean it.”
At this, Arthur sours. He fixes you with a long, hopeless look, too exhausted to be angry but with just enough energy left for irritation, then sighs and passes his hand over his face. “You think I like hearin’ you say shit like that? Scares the hell outta me, the way you keep talkin’ like you’re gonna follow me to the grave.”
“But I—”
“But nothin’. Listen” he interrupts, and he drops his voice down to little more than a whisper. “I’ve been talkin’ to Sadie and Abigail. When I’m gone, you go to them and they’ll—”
“Stop it,” you say in a small, shrill voice. “You’re not gonna die. I won’t let you.”
And then you start crying so hard that your shoulders shake. Big, heaving sobs that you’re sure half the damnable camp can hear, but you’re past caring. Let them hear what they’ve done. How they’ve ruined you, ruined him until he’s become but the torn up shadow of his former self. An apple core chewed to its very stem.
Arthur pulls you against his chest. He tucks your face against the junction of his neck and shoulder, and you can feel the heave and fall as he draws in a deep breath, then lets it out shuddery and slow. “No,” he murmurs, gripping you tight as you soak the collar of his shirt with tears. “Of course I won’t.”
When your sobs abate to hiccups, he shifts to press a kiss to your forehead. Then another to your cheek, and another to your mouth. And though it begins chastely enough, it deepens almost immediately into something urgent and hungry. Clutching at each other as though drowning, your hands frantically working him out of his coat and the nip of his teeth at your neck— until abruptly, he shoves you back and turns away, shoulders hunched as he shoves his hand over his mouth and coughs.
Relatively speaking, it’s not so bad this time. Just a few frightening seconds of hacks and wheezes. The terrible whistle of air through his ruined lungs, and then the short, choppy inhales afterward as he tries to catch his breath. At this point, there’s nothing unfamiliar in it, but the sharpness of that newly ruptured horror— the jagged ridge of horror at that first glimpse of blood at his lips— splinters through with each iteration. The wounds of the past do not mitigate those yet to come, and so it is with this.
You scramble off his cot and start towards his trunk, but he grabs the sleeve of your dress and shakes his head. He’s not yet recovered enough air to talk. Panting hard, he holds out the hand he’d covered his mouth with and flips it palm up to show you the absence of blood.
“I still think you should take some,” you reply, frowning.
“…s’alright,” he gasps, not looking it at all— face flushed from exertion and eyes bloodshot, spacing every cluster of words with a strained and shallow breath. “Besides, we’re gonna… go through that bottle of tonic in no time if you… keep givin’ me a spoonful every time I cough.”
“Water, then.” But when you pick up the pitcher by his bed, you find it empty. “Goddammit, I keep on forgetting to— alright, give me a second,” you say, skirt flaring out like a dervish as you turn and sprint out of his tent.
The barrel of rainwater is a ways up the ridge, wedged behind the chuckwagon. On your way there, you run past Charles, who calls out to you as he carries a clutch of dead pheasants that hang from his hands like bloodied feather dusters. You return his greeting with a hurried “hold-on-i’m-getting-water”, then promptly slam into someone very large and solid and fall on your ass, dropping the pitcher in the process.
“I’m so sorry,” you start to say, but the last word dies in your mouth, because halfway through saying it, you decide no , you’re not very sorry at all, actually.
The black-coated stranger, the one who’d put his hand on his gun when you’d pointed a knife at Micah, looks down at you with an inscrutable expression on his face. The pitcher has rolled to a stop right beside him, and when you reach for it, he steps on its handle with his boot.
He, Micah, and that other skinny bastard. You’d like to gut them. You’d like to see them choking on the gallows, legs dangling and dancing feebly in midair. You’d like to fasten the noose yourself, see in their eyes the same fear you feel now. Instead, you smile very sweetly and say in as polite a voice you can muster, “I sincerely hope to see you get hit by a train someday.”
The man spits on the ground and the smile he returns resembles the rictus grin of rigor mortis. “Micah did say you had a mouth on you. See if we can’t put it to some other use.”
“I bite,” you reply tersely.
“Not without teeth—”
“That’s enough.” Charles interrupts, striding over. His voice is calm and forceful, in that quiet way those assured of their own strength eschew volume. He stands over you, and you find yourself face-to-face with one of the dead birds he’s carrying, its round amber eyes glassy and still. A compatriot , you think. Both your fates wholly dependent on the volitions of men with guns.
The stranger’s mouth tightens to a half-sneer, but he raises his boot. You snatch the pitcher away as though he might change his mind, clutching it to your chest like it’s precious.
For perhaps a second— a second that seems to stretch to minutes— he stares Charles in the eye. And though you can see neither of their faces very well from your place on the ground, you can well imagine the line of tension drawn between them, taut and electric as wire. Then he shrugs and steps to the side. He continues down the ridge, deliberately clipping Charles by the shoulder as he stalks towards the hitching post.
You wave away Charles’ outstretched hand and get to your feet by yourself, patting dirt from your dress in faint puffs of dust. “Thank you,” you say. The second time today that you’ve had to subject yourself to the uncomfortable ordeal of gratitude.
“Don’t know what Dutch was thinking, letting Micah bring in men like that,” Charles says in a low voice. “The way he looks at you and the other women…”
“Yeah, I… think I’ll stick closer to the girls from now on.”
“You do that.” He watches as the stranger’s back diminishes with distance, the black coat melting in with the shade of the pines. “And I’ll keep an eye on him.”
As he walks with you towards the chuckwagon, you wipe the pitcher clean with your skirt and briefly mention the day’s catch, the bluegill bright and iridescent in its panic as it had flapped against the netting. The foolishness of fillets. The abundance of wild game in spite of the dearth of everything else, and poultry dishes. But for all your blathering, you’re unable to steer the conversation away from the inevitable. All roads lead to Rome, and all talk leads to Arthur.
“I don’t know,” you reply dully when Charles asks after him. You balance the lid of the rain barrel against its wooden rim, and the reflection that stares back from the crescent of revealed water is dark-eyed and wan with uncertainty. You dip the ladle through the image like shattering a mirror and splash the water into the pitcher. “John said he was doing better. But I think he’s losing weight again, and he’s so pale , and…” Humorlessly, you huff out a bleak laugh. “He did promise not to die, so we’ve got that going for us, at least.”
Charles is quiet awhile. The rain water sloshes a little less noisily against the pitcher with each addition until it is nearly silent. Finally, he says, “I’ll see if I can’t convince Dutch to let me take on some of the scouting jobs in his place. Have him focus on hunting instead. It’d be easier on him. And he’d come back to you every night.”
The third thank you of the day, and by far the most meaningful. There is no simple phrase that springs to mind that doesn’t feel grossly inadequate.
“Charles,” you say, and the measure of trust you have in him makes him one of the perishingly few men you’d ever offer this to. “If there’s anything I can do for you, anything at all…”
“Just be well,” he says. “Both of you.”
It’s funny, actually. You’d made this same proposition to Arthur early into your acquaintance, and his answer had been much the same. A simply stated, don’t die .
When you get back to the tent, Arthur’s lifting the saucer and peering at the roasted fish with some curiosity. “You cut me a fillet?” he asks.
“Yeah.” You fill the tin cup from his mess kit until there is scarcely a millimeter between rim and ripple and set it carefully on the bedside crate.
“Well, thanks. Appreciate it. Guess I should be sick more often if it makes you this sweet.”
The possibility of future illness is dementedly reassuring. He’s clearly trying to needle you a little, drive you to irritation to distract from despair, and you have to bite your lip to fight down wretched sentimentality.
“I still think it’s a stupid way to eat fish,” you say.
“Right,” he replies, groping in his satchel for a fork. “Because it’s so much smarter to risk my life every time I want a cut of trout.”
“Only because you think it’s appropriate to try and inhale half the fish with a single bite. You’re supposed to take small bites. You ever heard of savoring a meal?”
“You ever heard of efficiency?” he asks, and you playfully kick at his boot in response.
He says something impolite about your general taste in food. Impractical , he snickers, before gracing you with the worst mispronunciation of “hors d’oeuvres” you’ve ever heard. And you fall easily into the old pattern of banter, an ersatz normality at best. Like a single strip of gauze over an axe wound, fragile and frayed, but it’s something. It’s something.
He drains the cup only after a considerable amount of coaxing, and you suspect that it’s rather on purpose. Caretaking has never been your strong suit. It must be bizarre, and not without a considerable amount of confused satisfaction on his part, to watch you fuss over him like this, trying hard to turn the reticent, abrasive impulse to something gentle. Like a porcupine pulling out its own quills, shedding that which has cloistered its taciturn heart for so long.
When the plate is empty, he sets it aside and wipes his mouth with his sleeve, then makes as if to set out again. You pull at his coat with both hands and state rather than ask, “What the hell are you doing.”
“Told you I’d take you out to that orchard.”
“Not when you’re half-dead on your feet, you’re not.”
He scoffs. “Can’t tell you how many times I been sent out on jobs in even worse shape than this.”
You say, “I know.”
“If you know, then—”
“It’s because I know!” you snap at him, a little spark of anger flaring like a sputter of hot oil. But not at him. “I’m not Dutch. I’m not about to ask you to drag yourself back on the road when you’re sick and exhausted and… and like this .” You sweep your arm horizontal as if presenting him for show. “And all for my sake.”
He stares at you like you’ve just recited something blasphemous to him. And him sitting there like a penitent silent to this new heresy. Not a word of denial.
“You keep doing things for me,” you say, voice breaking. Both your hands are balled up in your skirt, wadding up the worn linen with your knuckles white. “Even when you’re…”
Dying is the word that you won’t say.
… even when it’s supposed to be the other way around,” you amend. You kick his boot again. “You stupid man.”
The added insult has him quirking up the corner of his mouth. “Guess we’re well matched, then.”
“Two idiots.”
“Two idiots,” he agrees, kicking off his boots. Arthur shrugs off his coat and tosses it expertly against the back of his chair, where it hangs in a perfect parabola, then heaves the rest of himself onto the narrow cot, squirming to the left until there’s just enough room for you to lie sideways.
When you pull down the tent flap and crawl in beside him, he stretches his arm out to accommodate you, letting you rest your head against his shoulder as he unties the ribbon binding your braid with one hand. He loosely combs through the plait until your hair curtains your back, the ends still waved.
“I talked to Charles about fish bones today,” you say, cheek pressed against his shirt.
“What’d he say?” His voice is vague and drowsy. A good sign. It’s the nights he can’t sleep that worry you the most.
“He said fish bones are thin enough that you can just eat them if you chew long enough.”
“And what do you think?”
“I think it’s awful.”
“Thank god,” he says. “For a second there I was a little worried you might agree with him. And that I’d have to beg you to never serve me fish again.”
You flick him on the shoulder and he kisses the top of your head, which seems an appropriate microcosm of your usual interactions. And as he drifts into sleep, you lay there awake for a long while, listening to the cadence of his breathing. The slow in and out of it, and the occasional wheeze interspersed like an afterthought. By the time you’re able to fall asleep, the bright line of sunshine splashed at the gap beneath the tent flaps has deepened to orange, stained red by evening.