Work Text:
Did you think there was nothing but two or three pronunciations in
the sound of your name?
He stands on the oil wagon.
The train is just yards away. His weight is heavy through his heels, thighs spread. Heart pounding in his ribcage, staring down the lantern.
Brakes squeak. Fingers itch on his rifle.
Power thrums in his ears, tension, bow-string tight, stomach knotted. Settles deeper, hot and heavy, throbbing into arousal, hard with the threat and the eyes in the trees. His jeans are clinging, unforgiving, uncomfortable.
He shifts his weight and the train hurtles closer, far too close, black tarlike death, choking on coal smoke. If it hits, he’ll die, burn his skin off in sloughing layers like jerky, a terrestrial supernova.
The brakes screech.
He bares his teeth.
Someone calls his name. Law’s closing in, and John is yelling, Sean is yelling, Charles- Charles’ eyes like the train’s furnace, spitting coke and coalfire, crashing into him as the couplings hit the wagon, feeling just like hands on his thighs. Explosive, but in his nerve-endings, a fireball through his gut and through his cock.
The train is gone, just Charles’ hands. There’s only the cool night and the busy forest, back pushed against the trunk of a tree, rough and wanting.
Charles is peeling at his jeans, slipping the buttons of his fly, at his hips and neck and back at once. His hair is barely visible, as black as the night itself, a gorgeous veil of velvet that Arthur tangles his hand in, presses himself to Charles’ face, urging Charles to take him in.
The warmth makes him shudder, murmur out loud. Grabs for more purchase, unable to tell if the black is Charles’ hair or the ghost of the oncoming train. There’s red too, covering them both, copper tang in his mouth like pennies. Spray covers Charles, smeared over his cheeks, a dead poacher’s entrails sprawled across bleached sandstone, fine gunshot mist painted on his face, but Arthur is kissing him, pulling at his hair, biting at his bloody lips, unable to help his moan.
He snaps awake.
“Fuck…”
Arthur groans, drags a hand over his eyes, staring up at the canvas roof of his tent. Listens and breathes, heavy. There’s silence outside, only the wilderness at night, the slumbering plains around his simple campsite.
Charles’ hands had felt real. Stroking up his thighs, dipping into his jeans.
He shifts his weight, frustrated, palms his erection through the cotton of his union suit, outline clearly visible, harder than he can remember being in a long time.
It’s been too many months of chaos to snatch a moment alone with just his hand, to want to even. But his body’s making up for it, tense with arousal, flushed with heat, galloping off beneath him without any cue from his legs.
God, Charles. Charles.
How badly he’d wanted to kiss him on that hunting trip. How it burned in him, the desire and adrenaline and need. No matter that they were covered in blood and had just murdered two men. No matter. He wanted so desperately. Wants still.
He groans again, voice deep with disturbed sleep, and hauls himself up, kneels to check outside his tent, ducking his head out into the night. Magpie is grazing a few yards away, her ears flicking back to him at the sound of rustling canvas, but they are alone still. Just owls and shrieking foxes in the distance, the lonely prairie dark and moonlit for miles around.
Retreating inside, Arthur lies back, resigned to what he’s going to do. He bends his knees up, and undoes his underwear, losing breath with every button. Doesn’t matter that he’s hasty, uncaring for anything but to slip back into that fantasy, rolling his hand over his balls before he bares his skin to the air, trailing down the hair covering his abdomen. Finally he takes his cock in hand, shudders as he pulls gently at the head.
It’s been months. Months that have brought Charles into his life.
Charles’ eyes, his lips. His endless chest, his thick arms. Would his hands be rough?
Arthur squeezes himself, roughly starts to stroke. Probably calloused, tough skin. Never hesitant. Charles is always straightforward, always sincere. Deliberate.
His hand closes firmly. Teeth pull his lips. He tips his head back, slows his breathing, pleasure swelling and falling like waves with every inhale and exhale. Rubs with thumb and forefinger, teases the head, free hand again squeezing his balls up, locking around the base.
It could be Charles’ hands, if he really concentrates. Or Charles could be watching, lounging beside him with his own cock out, heavy and thick against one thigh, maybe stroking himself too. Dark at the head, black hair down his stomach.
Would Charles let him watch? Touch? Would Charles want to watch-
“Fuck,” Arthur hisses again, his stomach hitching. He breathes deep and the surge dies down back to a simmer, fingers pulling at his head, other hand keeping himself steady.
How would Charles like to be touched?
Fingers loosening, he massages his tip with his open palm, wet and hot. It’d be unpractised at first, surely, the heady eagerness of something new - but would Charles be more experienced? Arthur himself has never done anything with another man, not for lack of wanting, but it’s been so deeply locked inside himself that even the fantasy seems taboo, something relegated to the gutter of his mind. Or in fact, put so high on a beautiful marble pedestal, locked in the most ornate and jewelled box, safely away from any potential ruin, far enough that his dirty clumsy hands could touch it, never break it. Could never sully the most intimate and precious desires of his foolish heart.
Longing for a man was something he had always lived with, but similarly bore the burden of knowing it was futile, never to be indulged.
Hope that perhaps he could one day find fulfilment with a man, true honest desire for other men, love for other men...they weren’t concepts made for folks like him. Lofty ideals. Fantasies. Fancies he’d learnt long ago were never to come true. His only hope for those pastoral picket fence daydreams was with a woman. He knows that. And he had tried. He’d tried. But…
Charles was nothing he could have prepared for.
Perhaps he has indulged before. Perhaps Charles sees no reason to hide. Perhaps he would think of Arthur like a blushing virgin, and take the lead for himself. Grab his hips, his ass. Guide Arthur’s hands, praise his fingers, worship his mouth like it’s sacred. Pray at Arthur’s meagre shrine.
God. If there is a God, this is what he wants to go to Hell for.
He wants unlike he’s ever wanted anything.
Breathing faster now, Arthur alternates his rhythm, short jerking tugs and long languid strokes, squeezing the head when he can, massaging the tip in the tight vice of his thumb and index finger. Maybe Charles is one for teasing. Would he push Arthur to the edge and then rein him back in? Would he watch until the moment his back arches, thighs tight, and then command Arthur to stop?
Would he finish him off with his mouth?
“Fuck. Charles.” He gasps air. Hips stutter into his hand. Groans catch in his throat. His heels push weakly at his bedroll, thighs clenched. “Charles…”
He can taste the blood that was splattered across Charles’ skin. Twists his hand. Would Charles moan? Would he breathe on Arthur’s name?
That dark, rich voice. Whispering for him, murmuring praise for him. Asking if Arthur’s okay.
“You good?” he says, every morning, so forthright, always. So genuine.
He wouldn’t hesitate before asking for what he wants. Never fumble for his words. Would he ask Arthur to touch him? Suck him off?
Would he ask to fuck him?
Arthur groans again, chest starting to heave. Charles is over him, undoing him, pulling at his skin, no longer caring about teasing. Wants Arthur tipping into his climax. Wants him arching and quivering. Wants him to come with his name caught up in his throat.
Arthur does.
It’s quiet, wordless. The earth doesn’t shatter. No fireworks. But it’s more than Arthur’s felt in months, in years perhaps, electricity in his nerves, feet scrambling on the canvas beneath them. He spills in his hand, dripping thick onto his stomach hair, squeezing his cock from base to tip until there’s nothing more, flushed skin slick and pink in his hand.
“Charles,” he says, sighs, letting his trembling thighs relax down, stroking himself slower as his muscles jump and spasm. Eventually drops his hand too, barely noticing the low ache in his bicep, the cramping in his fingers. Just satiation, relief that feels like melting.
Murmurs Charles’ name again, to the silence of his tent. As if speaking it will make it true, will reveal Charles’ naked body beside him, eyes hungry and watching, full of fire. What would he look like in that moment?
Arthur opens his eyes. Alone. Sweating and sticky on his own bedroll, breathing heavy. Miles from anywhere.
Just as well, he supposes.
Slowly, he relaxes. Stretches out, eyelids heavy.
Would Charles want to stay afterwards? Would he soothe Arthur’s shivering muscles? Kiss his stomach, his thighs, kiss up to his mouth and stay, nip at the messy stubble, lick flat over every scar, suck brands into his neck. Stroke his hair? Clean him up and murmur praise? Nuzzle Arthur’s nose with his, kiss at his chapped lips, look at him like he’s beautiful and desirable and precious beyond words-
Enough.
That’s enough.
He sighs again, dislodges Charles’ heavy weight from across his body. A washrag to clean up, and he rebuttons his underwear, fingers still shaky, cock soft and sensitive on his thigh, tucking his legs back into the canvas bedroll, lined with a simple blanket.
Gently he shifts to his side, arm pillowed under his head, able to hear Magpie’s soft burrs from outside, dust tickling her nose.
His knuckles are still bruised, from the incident with the poachers, before. The cuts are healed, but purple blooms beneath each index finger, spots tinged with yellow and green.
If he concentrates, he can imagine Charles’ fingers laced with his, on the tent floor. If he shuts his eyes, it’s Charles’ chest tight against his back, Charles’ breath on his neck. Warm and solid and safe.
He sleeps like that. With Charles’ name beside him.