Chapter Text
When you shake the pocket watch, it rattles with the jingle of loose parts. You frown and set it back down on the table. “This is broken. Best I can do is three dollars.”
“Get outta here with that shit.” Arthur taps the metal casing. “This is real gold. You can do at least ten.”
You weigh the watch against your palm.
“Well?”
“Gold plated.”
“You’re kiddin’ me.”
“You know I don’t kid when there’s money on the line.”
“Lowest I’ll go on this is nine.”
“Four.”
He gives you a look.
“You think that yokel over in Emerald Ranch’ll give you a better deal?” you ask.
Seamus would buy this fucking watch for no less than fifteen fucking dollars. He’d give the thing a once over, offer a timid “I can give you five”, then buckle at a glare and go triple. And yet here he is. Following the whim of his cock and his own misplaced affections, like a bull with a lead strung through its nose.
“I’ll tell you what. Mr Kuang downstairs used to be a watchmaker. This thing doesn’t sound that busted, and he owes me a favor anyhow. I’ll do you four fifty.”
He raises his eyes up to high heaven and sighs. “Fine.”
“So adding up the rings, the pendant, the cameo, and the, uh… the teeth… I’ve got you totalling seventeen.” You slide a neatly penciled memorandum across the table. “Check my sums if you don’t believe me.”
“I ain’t botherin’ with that.”
“You’re the only one who doesn’t.” You sweep the little pile of stolen goods into a drawer. “Is it because you’re stupid or you’re sweet, I wonder?”
“Prob’ly the first.” He dips his head down to steal a kiss, but you press a stern palm against his shoulder and hold him at arm’s length.
“Not when I’m behind the counter.”
“Take care of this shit later.”
“Down.”
“C’mon—”
“I said down.”
So he steps back with his heart sunk one notch lower. Posts himself near the front door, arms crossed, hat brim tipped low, cleaning the dirt beneath his fingernails with a pocket knife as the rectangle of light spilled from the window begins to tick across the floorboards in a dimming dial. He presides over the thin trickle of customers and peddlers alike with a baleful eye, and it’s not until the bell tower in the square tolls five and you swing open the side gate in a flurry of swirling skirts that he can pull you in by the waist and sink into the frantic kiss that you press him with.
Locked door, shuttered windows. Hurriedly, you flip the sign posted against the glass from OPEN to CLOSED as he flattens your back against the wall and pulls the ribbon at your throat loose with a yank of his teeth. You sift your fingers through his hair, then grip hard, yanking his head back. “Three weeks without a letter, you bastard,” you snarl. “Thought they’d hanged you someplace out west."
“Aw, don’t tell me you was worried.”
“‘Course I was worried. You’re my best earner.”
The smile you flash along the slight is sweet and quick as a fleeting slip of riverlight, and he forces himself to smile back, but the truth remains that he has never come here empty handed. Still fearful of the risk that you might cut him with the same expectant look Dutch has at the end of deals gone wrong and scores lost.
Your eyes shut slow as you kiss him again. He runs his palm up your back as he finds and unclips the clasp of your blouse and the tension in your hand loosens like weakening resolve. It surprises him still, that gentling spread that flows arterial at the simple touch of his hand.
The room tucked behind the storefront is cramped and cluttered with belongings that you have only recently begun letting him examine. When you lead him in, it’s with your hands clutching his neckerchief like reins, tripping over the hazard of table corners and your lone, bystanding chair. You walk backwards into your unmade bed, and he lets you pull him atop you with an obedience he scarcely understands. You fumble to pull down his belt and he yanks down your skirt in a confusion of hands as you work to lay each other bare. “Did you miss me,” you murmur, and he answers not with words but with a violent jerk of his hips, relaying with friction what he does not know how to otherwise.
Arthur cups his hand to your cunt, trails his middle finger along the wet seam like tracing the crest of a wave. In red fantasy, he takes the time to prime you for him, spreads and sucks the soft furl of flesh with his mouth, but you have never had the patience for foreplay. It's as if the unselfish act of pleasuring you were a step too intimate; even in this, a necessary expectation of quid pro quo that you have not the inclination to entertain.
“Come on then, gunslinger,” you growl. Another kiss, fierce and carrying the admonishment of teeth. You jerk the fabric of his shirt up to reveal his chest, then stiffen and splay your hand over the filthy bandage wrapped there. “Christ.”
“It’s nothin’.”
The cloth is stained with old blood that has seeped from the locus of his wound like a rust colored bloom, and is grimy from sweat and travel. You stare at it with revulsion. “Morgan, this is disgusting.”
The prickle of shame that stretches up his spine has transitioned to sullen indignation by the time it reaches his head. “Didn’t figure someone in your line of work to be so goddamned squeamish.” He tries to pull his shirt back down. You grab his wrist.
“Keep this off,” you say. “I’m running you a bath.”