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Charles is not the first person awake in camp the morning after Sean Macguire’s welcome back into the fold, but he’s sure he’s the first person happy to be awake. As he gets his boots on and treks to the washing barrel, he can already hear some of the ladies over at Grimshaw’s encampment groaning, and either John or the O’Driscoll, whatshisname, is busy being sick over towards the bluff face. If the man falls over, Charles isn’t sure if he’ll laugh or try and help. At the very least, he’ll figure out exactly who he’s saving before he runs over.
Pearson is still asleep. Charles debates giving him a wake-up and decides against it. It’s an easy thing to get the fire stoked and set up the coffee pot. Priorities. It’s definitely the O’Driscoll over by the bluff, but he’s no longer in danger of falling over the edge, clutching his head and groaning against a tree. Charles shakes his head. He’s not a stranger to drink, he doesn’t dislike drinking, but at the very least he knows how much he dislikes the morning after, and he’s glad he made the decision the night before to go off and keep watch while everyone else emptied out the stolen crates of whiskey and beer that are now empty around camp, a testament to how the Van Der Linde Gang welcomes back a wayward son.
In his periphery, Charles sees a stirring from Arthur’s open air lean-to, and the man himself drags himself up to sitting with something like tenderness, scrubbing at his face with both broad hands. Charles crouches down by the fire and allows himself to watch from the corner of his eye as Arthur sighs, drops his hands, swings his legs around— fell asleep with his boots still on, an inherently Arthur Morgan of a move that Charles isn’t even surprised. Then Arthur is rambling on over with his slightly bow-legged stride that Charles doesn’t want to think too much about, hangover or no, and then Arthur is there, standing at the fire, every worn inch of him, leaning. Charles settles more comfortably on his heels and gives up any pretense of not looking.
“Morning, Arthur,” he says.
Arthur first grunts, then shakes his head and actually responds, “Mornin’, Charles.” He stretches his hands out towards the warmth of the fire, and the coffee should be done any minute now. Nothing to do but wait.
It’s a strange thing; in the past few weeks Charles has yet to really have the time or safety to sit back and dedicate a few calm minutes to thinking about how it became Arthur so quickly. There were others still in camp who had known the big man for far longer who still addressed him as Mr. Morgan, and Arthur likewise tipped his hat towards formality more often than not. And yet, somewhere along the past few weeks, something had changed. Charles has no idea when or how, but he’d found himself reflecting on how easy and thoughtless it was for him to say Arthur and how just as smooth and familiar-worn was Arthur’s use of Charles . It’s a strange thing, an unusual shape, for him, this feeling. An outline he’s unsure of, half-formed, hard to grasp. Sometimes, like now, he thinks he likes it. Sometimes it makes him want to pack up and leave in the middle of the night. The thought had crossed his mind, somewhat insubstantial, the night before, but now that it’s morning and he’s swapped to like , he’s glad he didn’t.
“Feeling last night?” Charles asks, with a hint of teasing. Almost on cue, the O’Driscoll loses his stomach once more, and by the clattering of glass, Uncle is awake and wading through his pile of discarded bottles, trying to find his way towards somewhere safe to piss.
Arthur nods his head, eyes on the tips of his boots, and scratches at one bearded cheek. Evidently a hangover is one of the few things that can stand between him and his shaving kit— this is one of the few mornings Charles hasn’t woken up to the sound of a razor scraping against Arthur’s face, the man humming beneath his breath as he tilts his head this way and that in front of his mirror. Not even shaving down to the skin— Arthur prefers a very deliberate layer of beard, not too little, not too much, and if the comment wasn’t likely to get him killed Charles would call Arthur a dandy. But it would, so he doesn’t— he just watches as Arthur so obviously turns over ideas in his throbbing head, moving unconsciously, and the smile that Charles feels growing on his mouth becomes shock-frozen when Arthur finally speaks.
“I looked for you, last night,” he says, and what the hell is Charles supposed to say to that . While he’s busy trying to think about what he could and should say, the coffee pot spurts, bubbling over, and he spends a frantic ten seconds rescuing it instead of responding. Into his silence, again, Arthur speaks up. “During the celebration, that is. Must’ve knocked my shins into every tree stump ‘round here. Thank you.” Arthur accepts the tin mug of coffee Charles passes up to him, and settles down beside him on the ground.
“Someone had to keep watch,” Charles says, and shrugs. “Pinkertons have probably noticed by now their federal prisoner has been pulled out of their grasp.”
Arthur snorts. “Hell, in that case, I’m glad I didn’t find you. Imagine, they storm the camp while we’re all of us shitfaced.”
Right, shitfaced. Because all Arthur was going to do was bring him a drink— that was all. Charles relaxes back on one elbow and nurses his coffee, watching the camp come into wakefulness around him. Arthur throws back his coffee, and before long the crackling of the firewood is matched by the gentle scratching of Arthur’s pencil against paper. Not for the first time, Charles tries to catch a glimpse of the famed Arthur Morgan’s journal, and not for the first time catches a very deliberate angle of Arthur’s arm that blocks his view. Arthur smirks, fully aware of Charles’s game, and with that smirk and the memory of how Arthur had said, a half-muttered burr, I looked for you, last night , Charles forces himself to stand up and go do something else, anything else.
He manages to do something, anything else for an hour at least, during which the entire camp drags itself late into the day’s work. Sean, stumbling around after Karen’s skirts, seems more drunk than hungover, and Charles manages to keep his temper in check as Sean insists on hugging and slobbering over him in gratitude for the save the day before. “And thank you Mr. Smith for convincing Arthur Morgan to embrace his softer inclinations and come after my sorry hide,” he says in a high lilt, and sloughs off. Charles watches him go and shakes his head.
Softer inclinations— again, from the run from Blackwater, to the grayer times before, Charles has never had enough free time and freedom of time to consider how much his perceptions of Arthur Morgan have changed over time. He has no idea when they changed, can’t point to the first time he ever saw Arthur throwing himself off of his horse to kneel down and pet a dog, but there’s the concrete fact: when he had first met Arthur Morgan, he had thought to himself that Dutch’s yes-man was a hard piece of work. But now, letting his mind wander as he hones a new edge on his hunting knife, he thinks of Arthur as a series of hidden ‘softer inclinations.’ Since when did those inclinations become the most definite part of Arthur, to Charles? When did he start looking for the proof of their existence? Watching from the corner of his eye to see if he could catch Arthur smoothing pomade into his hair when he thought no one was looking, stalling on his horse so Arthur can sketch something in the saddle… it seems as if Charles has arrived at a destination with no memory of the road he was on.
Think of the devil, and he shall appear— Charles, head bent, first becomes aware of eyes on him, from across the camp, and then the familiar gait and sound of spurs gently ringing as Arthur approaches, almost hesitantly. Charles curses how he notices that— hesitantly — because it just highlights the strange shyness Arthur sometimes lets come to the surface. How that hesitation draws Charles in, piques his interest. Makes him squint at the strange object that was this wordless feeling. He keeps his head bent and continues to hone, stroke after stroke, waiting for Arthur to make the first move into conversation.
“What you preparing for?” Arthur asks, and damn him, Charles can’t keep a grin off of his face and out of his tone when he answers.
“The greatest of gifts.” He glances up and manages to catch the change in Arthur’s expression from anticipation to satisfaction; had he been expecting Charles to brush him off, not answer him?
“An unguarded stagecoach?” Arthur asks, because of course he does.
“No, you simple-minded fool.” When he had first met the-then Mr. Morgan, he wouldn’t have dared to call him a fool at such close quarters, but Arthur takes the gentle rib in stride with a self-aware little grin. How things changed. When did they change? Charles shakes his head and sheathes his knife. They move around each other as Charles explains about the bison he’d spotted on the plains the day before, when riding back solo from the river. Yes, he had managed on his return to camp to do more than worry about Arthur, dragging his feet at the battle-ground, addicted to picking dead men’s pockets even as the authorities were no doubt creeping closer to the echoes of gunfire. No, not him, not Charles Smith, he’s got a job to do that does not rotate entirely around Mr. Morgan. He did not join this gang with the intention of spending all of his waking hours trying to translate this thing between him and the man Arthur has been slowly revealing himself to be. Charles grabs his gun and turns to go, taking the largest step away from Arthur since the conversation began.
Then, he stalls. He knows that Arthur started the conversation with him for a reason, sought him out in the morning, and now… and he had looked for him, the night before. Had walked (or, more likely, stumbled) away from the rest of the gang, towards the darkness, looking for him . And that wasn’t nothing. How far did this strange softer inclination go? How much harm would it be, to satisfy some of his curiosity, take Arthur along, talk to him more than a few passing conversations here or there? Why couldn’t he make himself keep walking on towards his horse?
Well, here it is. He can see the road, now, and see where it could bring him, if he chose. If he even thinks of it as a choice, which, a cynical part of him wastes no time in hissing in his head, it really isn’t. No, not a choice at all.
He turns and asks, “Wanna come with me?” and damn him, the look on Arthur Morgan’s face says it all.