Well since you updated guidelines ...Okay okay okay hear me out.. Could you maybe write something with epilogue Charles x John?
I don't know.. it was so domestic. We see them laughing and horsing around. They literally built Beecher's Hope together, ough!!
There's some dialogue between the both of them discussing Charles leaving to 'Indochina' and John just goes "I wish you could stay :(" and it made me urrgghhh. If you see the vision, do you mind writing something angsty but sweet?
I am hearing you out do not fret Anon. Definitely a new pairing for me and I haven't played through the epilogue so I hope it did it justice.
Honestly I might write more eventually because "Where even is that?" "I don't really know." Charles babygirl... what does that mean? Why did you say it like that?
Words: 1.1k
Tags: bittersweet angst, background John/Abigail, referenced character death, canon compliant, one(1) drunken kiss
The differences and similarities between Arthur and John come to Charles often, ever since he was once more swarmed by the memories. He supposes that they will linger for a long time, until the holes in his heart are patched over with fresh tissue.
He thinks John could stand to reflect on it, too.
There was always something about Arthur's future that was foggy. Whatever happened to Arthur Morgan simply happened, Charles thinks, because the man had no desires and therefore no agency.
Dutch could have crushed his fingers beneath his boot and he would not have been angry until it was over with. Then he would have figured out — in his own words, he figured out a lot of things in retrospect which were more or less lies he told himself to soothe the pain — why it happened. Finally, Arthur would have made peace with it by the morning, because it was much easier than taking action.
Those years ago, Charles felt it too: that clotted-air stagnancy and apathy about his own place in the world. It was starting to reek of death by the time he settled in Saint Denis, and the scent remains in his nostrils to this day. Whenever he grasps his great big purpose in life, it should wane. At least, that's what he tells himself, because each purpose he has tried on for size has yet to banish the stink.
He still misses Arthur, though not as painfully as he once did. The man's heart was good, for all it bled.
Crimson stains John's hands as badly. He must have thought on himself, on his brother, on his lover, on someone long enough to figure out that decisions need to be made or he will waste into the wind just the same.
Except, in the litany of memories that's found him since joining John and Uncle, Charles is uncertain where John's decision-making will stop. Something ugly inside of him is reminded of Dutch, in a way. It had struck him upon reading his letter to Abigail. Like all things to do with her, John never trusted himself to make the final call. He pressed it into Charles' hands with an anxiousness as clear as if it were really meant for him.
Before, he had never stopped to think where kindness becomes selfishness, and like always, John put some of his distastes into distinct words and gave the rest room to take shape.
Who would warm John's bed if Abigail did not bow under the weight of Beecher's Hope?
Who would raise his son if the enormity of this was not as much of a fairy tale to her as it was to John, and to Uncle?
Somewhere deep inside, it has even appeared as one to himself. Charles blames his time cooped up with the two men for poisoning him with fondness for such romantic ideas as my lover, I have built you a house — though the old-world romantic quality of the gesture, which he guesses is what endears Uncle to the sweetness of it, is discolored by a new-age addition of I'll live in it, too, and so will everyone else.
A house, not a home. Not yet.
It's a good life, by definition of whoever decides what elegies will call a good life and what will simply be too bad. He isn't sure if John wants Abigail or if he only wants that foretold good life. Men should be sons, then fathers; if Charles knows nothing of what society expects of men their age, he knows this, and he knows that John's time as a son has well and truly ended.
Still, Charles loves him. He thinks of these flaws the same way he thinks of his habit of spitting out phlegm on the trail: warmly, because John's ugliness is as John as his kindness is.
That sore has been stinging since he read the letter. Never good news in a letter, he has been thinking wryly, on and off. Death or marriage, and never the ones you want.
All of them drunk and Uncle fast asleep, John kisses him just an hour after promising to Abigail what a fine life they will have. Never tactful, but Charles has never been hard to please, either, so he even let John lean into his chest and smell his throat afterwards.
A final to us for a vague entanglement that he always feared would not develop fine lines. Retroactive ones drawn in the dust are better than nothing. The ugliest parts of him flicker with hope for doubt, but then he remembers who they are, where they are, and what year it is.
Charles knows that John will send the letter to his woman, anyways, because she is his woman and that is his son, and he feels dirty for having desired for more than a second that he should come between a man and his family. Good life or not, John is probably experiencing the first chance his whole forsaken bloodline has ever had at something like that.
He also knows that John might keep kissing on him in these privacies because he was raised, to questionable success but undoubtedly in part, by Dutch van der Linde. Charles indulges in feeling over the finally-healed scars on John's cheek for the first time since wondering how thick the skin has grown back, says something sickeningly saccharine about how they cut through his beard much nicer than his own, you always was handsome— and in the soft fall of John's lids, mouth already furled up with drink, he realizes John wants him as much as he wants the good life.
"Are you happy?" He's asking, and his voice cracks over Charles' wrist. "Y'think you can be happy here, I mean?"
And like usual, he's asking more than he should ever ask. It's why they've always been close.
"It'll be a fine place," Charles says, instead. His belly is warm with beer but not enough to indulge the shared fantasies that fall so easily from John's mouth. "For you and your family."
His smile falters. "It's yours, too," he says, brows drawing. "M'family is your family, Charlie. Always will be."
It's a ridiculous thing to say. The name is too sweet on his tongue. It's a question more than anything, a silent won't you play house with us? that he takes offense to for Abigail's sake.
His hand falls from John's face to his shoulder, and he squeezes gently. "I ain't a homebody," he lies. I wouldn't know, he thinks truthfully. Nowhere has ever felt like home. This one isn't his, either, but John's face hardens the way it always does when he gets upset, and so Charles adds: "Maybe in another life, John."
It soothes some part of the ache spreading over his face. "Yeah," he agrees, and his fingers hook around Charles' hand to put it back over his scars. "One where that porch is ours."
