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2demondogs · 5 months ago

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Name of the Game, Boy | Dutch & Arthur

Tags: Young VanDerMatthews and Arthur fluff, Dutch teaches Arthur how to roll a cigar; Hosea's not really present Word Count: 2.3k A/N: Have a Cigar by Pink Floyd, while on the nose, is unexpectedly fitting overall. I'm a cigarette aficionado myself, so I did my best to describe an unfamiliar process.

They've been cornered between city-smog and marsh-heat for days now. Tents were pitched under the shade of a grove, but when its the air that is assaulting them, there's not much the penetrable material of their enclosures can do. It's times like these he wishes they had found somewhere abandoned to shack up, even if it didn't have all four walls.

Hosea's lungs were beginning to struggle with the thickness, and the dampness. Dutch worries. He would have protested his going hunting if it weren't for the emptiness of their metaphorical pantry, and would've joined if it weren't for Arthur. What food's left has wandered off via the saddlebags on his horse, most certainly to the find the nearest watering hole and non-mudstuck grass to graze on. Hosea dislikes them being out of sight, but Dutch's only complaint is his things being carried into the wind.

His upper lip was soaked in sweat when he woke up — hardly unusual, but positively unbearable with the thick hair trapping every bit of it. The same could be said of where his back and behind were drenched in sweat when Hosea roused him to announce his early morning hunt.

While it's still cool out, he said. Even in half-sleep, Dutch laughed.

Always the reasonable one, the older man continues to insist that long sleeves keep the sun off and, therefore, they will sweat far less if they wear them.

Arthur can listen to him all he wants. Maybe, just maybe, he has a point somewhere in that advice.

But Dutch has been feeling choked in anything beyond his singlet. He cropped the sleeves off in their first days wandering this area and, being comfortably outside of society, has worn nothing but his shirt and trousers since they set up proper camp. His arms are beet red and bubbling with burns from the sun, but at least he can feel those rare breaths of relieving wind right on his skin.

Hosea's eyes wander, too. Pleasant, besides the additional heat of them.

The kid is already sitting in his tent with the flaps open when Dutch peels himself from the bedroll once and for all, a modest-sized tin in hand to roll himself a morning smoke. Sleep here is fitful and yet hard to swim out of, like a limbo, even with the sun coming up on its early noon position.

Across the yard or two between the tents, he can tell Arthur is dozing off with his eyes open; he's been growing suspicious that the boy has heat poisoning, his usual alertness having faded into something almost docile — if such a word could ever describe that scrappy mutt of a teenager.

"Mornin', mister," Dutch greets, seating himself between the men's tent and the dead campfire.

He looks up from where he was lazily picking the dirt from beneath his nails with his pocket knife. "Mornin'."

For such a young man, his voice is getting gruff, and fast. Dutch feels a twang of pride thinking on how its dropped since they took him in, as if he has any right to feel that fatherly way.

Even if he tries, the situation doesn't feel... committal enough to warrant himself a label which so many men desire. His mock-son could scurry off any time to try his hand at another orphanage, at finding some wealthy family with a nice homestead who will pity him. They wouldn't, but Hosea and Dutch could just as easily abandon him in his sleep or send him on a goose chase while they flee.

Their relationship isn't tied the same a father and his offspring's is. One mistake from either party, and it could be gone without nearly the same sorrow. Dutch grows older and softer by the day, but he fears wiser is not part of that.

Hosea suits the role of patriarch just fine; the youngin' has begun to say something like Pa and quickly changed his mind with a flush once or twice. In those moments, Dutch always jealously wonders what type of father he'd be.

Is he a Pa, too, perhaps an Old Man? Maybe he could be Daddy, the way his father was to him. Will Arthur ever call him anything but you old coot and yessir?

He's grown fond of the damned critter, and he seems to have met the age where most men feel a certain emptiness in their bachelorism.

Eyes are burning into him as he pops the tin lid and takes out the beginnings of his first cigar: a bundle of tobacco leaves and a bottled shot of whiskey for moistening them. It needs refilled when they cross the next saloon.

The pre-rolls he purchased in Saint Dennis have already molded in the heat, much to his dismay.

Looking up from the bunch of tobacco he's binding to absentmindedly check the horizon for Hosea, he finds Arthur turning his eyes down fast at nothing in particular.

"What's on your mind?" He asks, amused.

Arthur rarely turns away when he's caught watching something; in fact, he seems to stare harder as if to assert his authority. It'd be impossible to say he weren't Dutch's kin, if it weren't for that mop of dirty blonde hair and those blue eyes.

"Nothin'."

"Naw, come on, son."

How he perks up at the name is mostly imperceptible, but it softens Arthur's face as it softens Dutch's sudden, self-imposed jealousy of Hosea.

Raising on gangly legs — still so, even after being fattened with some of Hosea's best game meat — Arthur comes to stand before Dutch, hands stuck in the pockets of his trousers.

"That a cigar?" He nods to the roll in his hand. The question doesn't seem to warrant the interest, but he lets Arthur be timid about his real intent.

"Yessir," Dutch says. He rolls it smooth along his thigh, considers the opportunity he has before him. "You want to learn how to roll one?"

Hilariously, his only response is: "Could I smoke it, too?" His voice is even, total seriousness in it.

Dutch laughs. It is one his first real, hearty ones since they pitched in this miserable swamp.

"'Course you can," he says. He looks up and squints into the light, follows his eyes as the teen plops himself on the ground next to him. He warns with a dull severity: "But if you tell Hosea, he'll hang me. You're too young for smokin'. He worries you'll grow a pair of lungs like his."

"When will I be old enough?" He asks.

He purses his lips, picks up the razor he keeps in his cigar tin for trimming the ends. "I'on know," he admits. "Guess I smoked cigarettes before I was your age." He offers a wry smile. "But I weren't no role model for anything, so don't listen to me."

"They were too expensive f'me," Arthur says. "No one'd let me bum any."

It's one of the few looks into his previous life that he's ever given them. As always, delivered without a missed beat. Arthur doesn't realize how solemn his life was, not really — not beyond the animal discomfort it brought him. It was all he really knew.

Dutch is never sure how to respond beyond the tight knit of his brows. "Well, you're gettin' to try one now," is all he says.

He feels the yearning for a son again while Arthur watches him intently. Explaining his more practiced skills in words has never been Dutch's strong suit, so he's decided he'll either smoke a second or save it for Hosea, depending on when he returns.

Usually, he wouldn't care for one, but Dutch knows he likes the whiskey-River Valley combination real well.

It is strange to have someone so intent on learning from him. Dutch knows he can command a room of people rather easily — it's his job. A genuine attempt to teach makes it feel different, fulfilling; Arthur is hooked, blinking sweat from his eyes as it forms. Seems he's been wanting to ask Dutch to show him this process for a long time. It makes the heat of the risen sun feel bearable.

"Why do you use the drink?" He asks. He spilled a splotch of whiskey on his trouser leg, and Dutch hopes Hosea doesn't smell the liquor on him when he comes back. He'd have to say goodbye to his own hide.

"Makes the leaves flexible." He starts to bunch them to form a core, eyeing Arthur to his side. He learns quick enough, but he's pressing together too hard. "So they won't crumble when you manhandle 'em."

He struggles with wrapping the bunch, but shakes his head when Dutch offers to fix it for him. "I won't learn if you do it."

"A'right," Dutch says. "You want help, you jus' say it. You can try again next time Old Girl's out."

When they're finished, he knows Arthur's cigar isn't going to burn too well. What exactly will go wrong, he isn't sure — but his fingers, though skinny and precise, are unpracticed with this art.

It is an art, one of practicing the tactical differences between excess and moderation, and he makes sure to tell Arthur as much.

He does insist on toasting both cigars. It's hard to explain, the words his own father told him on the matter long forgotten in favor of muscle memories, and Dutch isn't sure that he could even think how to pick apart the delicate process.

He'll probably have to offer Arthur his own cigar if he wants the boy to not hate them forever over one low quality roll — he is fond of him, but it takes practice.

As expected, Arthur's acne-pocked face scrunches upon his first draw. The density of the smoke gives him a mighty cough, and Dutch slaps his back as he hacks.

"Sorry, son," he says, smoke furling from his nostrils as he speaks. He means it. "I probably shoulda known you wouldn't know how to smoke it right."

"There's," — a group of final, shorter coughs, tears forming in his eyes — "A right way?"

"Ayuh," Dutch nods. He barely notices he's adopted Hosea's favorite affirmation, mind focused on finding a flask to offer him a drink of water. "You don't inhale the smoke.

"I still cough like that if I do and I've smoked 'em longer than you been breathin'." Arthur seems mildly surprised by the reminder someone is so much older than him; oh, youth. "When you drag on it, keep that smoke in your mouth and let it sit there. With cigarettes, you smoke 'em. A cigar is for tastin'. Watch."

He takes an exemplary drag. Arthur mirrors him carefully, face still somewhat twisted as he waits to exhale alongside Dutch. The clouds mingle and fade into the air before them, over the unlit campfire.

"All I taste is some nasty ass leaves an' itchy throat," he admits, sounding disappointed.

Dutch laughs. "Sounds 'bout right. It takes time to learn how to appreciate it," he says. "Like all good things in life. Try mine."

They trade. Arthur's is bitter, and he notices the skin of it is cracking at the end. He rolled far too tightly in his efforts to do it right; the taste is tolerable, but only just, and it is difficult to pull on. Arthur immediately hits his cigar once he's gotten it and he bites his cheek to avoid protesting too rashly.

Over the year he's been riding with them, he's noticed the boy struggles with enacting much patience.

"I wouldn't smoke them so fast," he warns. "You'll make it into even more nastiness." Dutch taps the cigar on the boot of his folded leg, Arthur copying him. At least the ash falls off easy. "If you savor it, they can taste real sweet."

Arthur near balks. "Sweet?"

"These are a sweeter kind," he says, and the information takes a moment to be believed at all. He's sure Arthur still thinks he's pulling his leg once it registers that this sour little roll-up tastes sweet to his companion. "Hosea likes these ones 'cause they're some of the easiest to stomach."

It isn't entirely fair to say, but he is absent now and Dutch hasn't influenced Arthur with a good-natured jab at his partner in one too many days.

As they finish them in relative silence, the only sound the thrumming of the heat in the atmosphere and the chirps of birds and insects milling through it, Dutch relents to the sneaking feeling that Arthur looks up to him in some way.

The kid watches him close, nearing the end of his own cigar and yet still learning how to draw it right from how little Dutch's cheeks hollow when he pulls the smoke in. He tries his hardest to wait between drags like he does. He didn't think being mimed could feel so rewarding; he didn't think teaching anything could be much beyond an inconvenience or the mild satisfaction of knowing that he's smarter than someone else.

Probably it speaks to all his own mentors — at least all the ones before Hosea — that such egoism was all he found in it.

The man of the hour rides in shortly after they tap their last ashes, and he is equal parts dismayed and proud to see Arthur studying how Hosea smokes on his cigar once he's passed the responsibility of dismantling the sizeable deer onto Dutch.

He'll give their little smoking lessons away before the month is over, but he has a feeling he can talk his way out of being skinned. When it comes around, he'll tell Hosea he shows Arthur how to survive, and Dutch shows him how to live, and his hubris will endear Hosea too much to say anything besides: don't go rolling him one everyday.

#rdr2 fanfic #oneshot #red dead redemption 2 #good parent hosea matthews. questionable parent dutch van der linde #cigars #rdr2 oneshot #arthur morgan #dutch van der linde #sfw #fluff #hosea matthews #Time for my weird tagging that I won't change because I'm not lazy just dumb #arthurmorgan #dutchvanderlinde #hoseamatthews #vandermatthews #young arthur morgan #young vandermatthews

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