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2demondogs · 4 months ago

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Am I Bad? | Javier/Arthur

Tags: minor injuries, drunken camp shenanigans, Javier has anger issues and Arthur is drunk as FUCK. believe it or not this is all fluff Word Count: 4.4k A/N: I don't speak Spanish so I Googled shit. Let me know if it's contextually wrong. Or just plain wrong...

Boredom has become a luxury. Arthur is glad that — too sore and tired to ride any further, too far from civilization to do much of anything meaningful — they have found themselves at a loss for busywork.

It is a heaven of its own after working his body into unraveling at the seams, it feels, for weeks on end.

Javier had taken the job of setting up camp, delivered well on his promise to make it quick. A single tent lay before the firepit he'd slapped together, piled with timber Arthur fetched meanwhile. They agreed some evenings ago, shitfaced and brazen, that one tent was more economical for many reasons, a few of which spurred Javier's hand on his thigh. Sober, neither have been ballsy enough to discuss it again.

Well, Arthur hasn't got the balls for it.

By the time noon has nestled into the clouds, he's brushed most of the grass and dirt from their New Hanover trail off of his horse. A sweet girl, who reminds him more of a cat than a horse the way she clings to him and eyes Boaz with distrust. A girl that he hasn't yet named since borrowing; certainly, she'll be lured away by another man, in the way karma reclaims all stolen goods, which renders it borrowing.

Naming her is one task he must — he is too soft to say he merely should — do, but neglecting things is a different experience when he isn't in danger of popping any of Dutch's blood vessels.

Javier is circling the firepit when he turns and stretches, lumbering over on sore legs. Watching him plunk his boney ass onto the dirt beside it, Arthur snickers at him hiking his pant legs up at the knees, the way a woman hikes her skirt when she sits.

He doesn't tease him for it anymore. The first and last time, he got asked, in the middle of camp: why, cariño, want me to be your woman? If he really meant the bite that laid behind his words or if it was a cover-up, one for whatever odd flower was growing in the dirt of their friendship — he really doesn't know.

Unable to help himself, he snickers.

"Watch yourself," Javier warns, appraising it as Arthur seats himself without grace. He scoffs. "At least I don't sit down like a withered old man."

The words are light. They've lost some of their usual rasp, as if he is speaking from a different part of his throat where the skin is not so scarred. Arthur likes this tone, has noticed him using it more often when they're alone.

Nevermind that it is the same way he speaks to Boaz, Dutch, and the occassional stray dog in town. Saved for God, wife, and animal companion, like a good man's softness should be.

The thought makes him bite down a laugh, clearing his throat awkwardly.

Afternoon comes sooner than Arthur would like.

The shit has been shot sufficiently, he supposes, if Javier's eyes unfocusing and his broken humming are anything to go by. Another effect of his scarred throat, he doesn't often hum a true hum: dah-dah, duhn, dah-dah-dah, the general beats of a song only he knows, mumbled low and quiet.

Maybe in another life, Javier is a musician. They'd both be artists, then. By chance, Arthur could do the artwork for his record slips, if the lack of guns made more time for pencils to fit in his hand.

Now there's a funny thought. Him, an artist, full-time. All professional-like. There he goes, making shit up.

In the pleasant pseudo-silence, Arthur pulls his pocket knife out to pick the grime from beneath his nails. Swiping the tip of the shortest blade beneath the discolored white of his nail, wiping the dirt off with two fingers, and then repeating. It is so second-nature, he hardly pays mind to whether they are cleaned or not and must do another pass to get them presentable.

He may or may not be wondering, as anyone would, what kind of songs Javier would do.

His fingernails need trimmed, anyways. Everything about Javier looks so purposeful, Arthur is too ashamed to chew his nails in front of him.

The man's nails bend and break, too, sure they do. First, though, they are straight-clipped; he has never felt the teeth-roughened edges of a nail-biter's hands scratching over his skin. In the company of Arthur, he only appears to chew on the hardened ridges of skin around the nailbeds.

Somehow, if his actions chafe with the pristineness Arthur sees in him, the rough things Javier does simply become pristine, too. At least as far as his body extends, the skin-deep qualities like voice and hair and cleanliness and godliness — except, of course, Javier could never fit so nicely in one little box, wiry but wily.

Arthur knows he is just making shit up once more. He hardly understands it himself, at this point, finds it difficult to admit that even when he doesn't respect what Javier does, he still— well, he supposes, likes the man. Digging himself into a tunnel system of respect, admiration, and morality is much easier than taking a crack at digging straight down into affection.

He scrapes wrong against the underneath of his nail and cringes, bringing himself from his head and into the present once more. Javier is singing softly, drumming on his thighs and watching Arthur, who had zoned out thoroughly. He glances at Javier, runs away from his eyes as quick as he ran to them.

They're too kind.

Javier stops singing. It was more of a babble, anyways, slurred and words half-skipped over. "I miss my guitar," he says, nearing solemnity. "No music out here."

Arthur raises his brows. "I got hands and feet, don't I?" He says, offers a small grin. "Just sing somethin' I know."

He chuckles, eyes unmoving as he thinks, like he'll hear music if he looks long enough at Arthur's tired old face. Sometimes, he wishes Javier would just shoot him in the head instead of staring at his damn forehead wrinkles like this.

It isn't as easy as a sing-a-long usually is.

Javier is mostly familiar with Uncle's instructions for playing various English songs: it's like this, then some godawful him-hawing that is somehow turned into notes, then it sound' happier than that, Javier, c'mon'ow. The rest of his catalogue is Spanish.

"If you listen close, I could teach you Corrido de Joaquín Murrieta," he says, and Arthur must look lost. Javier rubs his mouth, studying him. He speaks slower now, gesturing with his hand as if to lay out the letters: "Maybe La Llorona would be better. It's just a few lines."

He nods, but he can feel his eyes widen. "Sure thing. I can try."

"La Llorona," Javier repeats. It is slow, and his voice is absent of the teasing he'd surely turn on anyone else.

"La," — twisting the switchblade in his fingers in thought — "Um, juh—"

"What?" Javier cuts him off, and the taunting tone is risen. "Where did you get a juh from, vaquero?"

Arthur's face grows hot. They decide to leave the Spanish lessons for another day; he feels a little disappointed.

He likes hearing him sing in his mother tongue.

The songs of his own childhood were embedded in him later into it: bleary memories of Hosea, hair still blond and drunk as a fish, drumming to the beat on Dutch's back to irritate him as they all sang through prison song after prison song. It was most of what his father taught him, he had said once, because he spent all but three months of Hosea's youth in jail. The rest of them, Hosea learned firsthand.

By some stroke of luck, Javier knows one.

Well, the sheriff told his deputy; won't you go out and bring me Lazarus? A call to and back. Javier looks far happier than he should for such a song, stomping in time with Arthur.

Well, the sheriff tol—

"Shit!"

Blood drips from the juncture between his thumb and pointer finger, and Arthur tosses his pocket knife into the dirt as if it has teeth. Judging by the modest sized hole in his hand's webbing, it may as well.

"The Hell did you—? Dios, be more fuckin' careful," Javier hisses, raising to come to his side.

An odd type of pain blossoms from the puncture, and he cringes as he moves his thumb to allow Javier a decent look at it.

"I weren't payin' attention, blade was still out," Arthur explains. He peers at it, then shakes his head and turns away with a sneer. "There's a damn hole in me and it ain't hardly bleedin'. That ain't right."

Javier begins to say something, and then shuts his mouth around the first syllable. His fingers are careful where they splay Arthur's fingers open, touch the back of his hand. In another situation, it might even feel nice to have his skin stroked this way.

"I'll admit, it's... weird to look at."

The pad of a finger nears the opening and Arthur grimaces, partly from irritation and partly from an intrusive vision of Javier poking his finger right into the wound. It lights his nerves up, as if his body is as disgruntled by the thought as his brain is.

Oh, Jesus, that's a bad feeling.

"Why's it dark in there? Looks empty," he continues, and Javier laughs easily. "Where's the— I dunno, the muscles and shit?"

Javier retracts his touch, pats him on the head. "Shut up, chiquillo. I'll wrap it for you."

"That better not mean stupid," he gripes.

He huffs a laugh. "Nothing about your intelligence," he reassures. "Means you are a big baby." Arthur scoffs; still, he won't look at his hand. Javier approaches a snorting Boaz to rifle through his saddlebag, takes out a rag and tears a strip off. "I think it has a better ring to it."

On the larger portion of cloth, he tips water from the flask laying beside their tent. Javier works quick, but light; his hand is wrapped around the palm to let him flex it without opening the wound up for dirt and infection. It is a hard area to protect, they agree, but Arthur will survive.

He really doesn't know why it bothers him so much. His stomach ain't weak, not after the gore he's seen and caused — why's a tiny hole in his hand so freaky?

Javier settles by his side, after, and smooths a hand down the patch of forearm his rolled up sleeves exposes. It takes some of his mind off the dilemma of just what is inside his body, rubbing up on all of his bones — a horrible train of thought — to have his rough palm stroking his arm so tenderly.

"I can sing to you, instead," he offers, face relaxed again.

"I ain't on my deathbed," Arthur says.

The warmth in his face must speak for itself. Javier sings for a while, until his throat sparks up phantom pains.

It isn't the first time anyone has seen Strauss and Hosea dancing, but the pair bring Arthur to tears each time, tears of amusement. The alcohol in his system doesn't hurt, though a large dinner is absorbing his first beer, and fast.

They'd hit a gold mine — so to speak, if only — on the way home, a massive buck that Arthur's big girl could barely handle after a nasty field dressing. With its size and the money a best-cut hide could fetch, not to mention the antlers, it was worth the strain on his horse to bring it back home to Pearson and Hosea for skinning. Arthur made sure to find her a sugar cube for her hard work.

It happened to be found in Kieran's tent, but he will be too hungover in the morning to notice and Arthur, too hungover to remember his theft.

Their return didn't come without an nth retelling of Arthur's grand fish haul of yore, as Hosea called it, which made his face burn in something like shame, as it always does. Especially for Javier to hear it after teasing over his fishing skills so often; he had turned and asked if he still pays for his better catches at the market, considering...

Nor did the haul come without a party. None of the gang had seen so much meat in close to a year, let alone been able to eat any of it. Pearson said it ought to have weighed a hundred and ten pounds or more.

Javier clapped Arthur on his sore back with a toothy grin. We did good, and yes, they had, as far as Arthur was concerned. He shouldn't need to go hunting for a month.

Hallelujah.

And now Strauss is twirling Hosea around their campfire, struggling to reach over the taller man's head; Javier mindlessly strums new chords to an old song that Strauss half-remembered from Austria and taught the lot of them years ago, some leigst mir am Herzen, leigst mir im Sinn; Dutch is running his mouth to an unenthused Lenny, who seems to be trying in earnest to mumble the German words that Uncle is singing with his chest.

Arthur and Mary-Beth are vaguely following the other dancing couple, the woman quick to dodge his two boot-clad left feet to save her bare toes from crunching. What a sight those old coots make, stumbling around in a shoddy ländler and hollering every time Hosea is held like a lady would be.

A wasted Sean trades into Mary-Beth's spot followed by a shriek of laughter from the fire, and the lady joins Karen instead. Arthur is just tipsy enough to allow it.

Sean's skinny hand is clammy and dwarfed in his injured one, and both join in vaguely singing so, so, wie ich dich liebe! He can tell the Irishman is sloshed, not only by his breath and how often he accidentay kicks Arthur in the ankles, but because of how he presents his freckled cheek and batters his lashes at the end of the verse.

"You's the ugliest girl at the hoedown," Arthur grins, and can't name each man that finds the whole thing hilarious. He can name each one who finds him kissing his scruffy cheek funny, when Sean rolls his eyes and taps it: all of them laugh, a ruckus loud enough that they will be lucky to not have been ambushed by morning.

The joy hurts his face, though maybe the smile is more of a grimace after having his arms around the redhead, sniffing on that constant hay and liquor smell he carries.

He forgets it by trading for Karen's hand. She is much prettier; he gives her a kiss, too. She makes conversation on what happened to his hand, and offers a playful tut about his carelessness.

When, at last, the song changes twice over, he drops his ass to sit on a log beside a tuckering out Hosea. Rubbing the slight sheen of summer heat off of his face and accepting a beer from the old man, he swipes his gaze around the fire only to notice Javier is glaring daggers at him, fingers picking hard at the strings.

He raises his brows in a silent who, me? Dark eyes return to the neck of the acoustic, and he flubs a note as he begins the next song.

The look throws Arthur off, but he watches Javier playing, anyways. It's no safe bet: his heartrate drums a little faster whenever the man's eyes move from the frets or the body, anticipating a call-out and a what're you starin' at, queer? to save face.

Javier isn't hard to read nor please, as so many of the gang claim. If a man learns how to see his aggression and how to shut his trap appropriately, Javier tends to like him. He's knocking on the guitar body, now, introducing some percussion to the song between quick plucks of the strings.

It must be why the two of them have always gotten along so well. Hosea once told him his habit of wanting to placate others to an abnormal degree was because he was beat as a kid, but he was fifteen and...

He focuses his vision, blinks as it comes into relative sharpness again. "Hey, Hosea?"

Next to him, Hosea turns from speaking lowly to Dutch, who is crouching beside him with a cigar on his lip. He leans over to look at Arthur, too, as if he asked for both of them.

"Yes, son?"

"You remember when," — furrowing his brows, finding such a long sentence hard to string together as the last of his third beer settles into his bones — "I's a kid and you, uh... said I'm a people pleaser all 'cuz my daddy beat me?"

His brows shoot up. "Jesus," he whispers, mouth spreading in a smile that's all nerves and surprise before returning to its usual firm line. "I do. Why?"

"I want'a say 'm sorry for— uh, sayin' your daddy woulda beat you, too," Arthur apologizes, as sincerely as he can. Both of his fathers blanche. "Y'know, if he weren't locked up, he woulda..." He twirls his hand as if to demonstrate a longer explanation laying in the air before them, then scratches the back of his neck with it. "Sorry I said that t'ya. Them years ago."

Dutch grabs Hosea's arm as if to steady himself, mouth split in an amused grin. The blond sucks his lips in, and nods.

"Why, that had't've been a whole score ago," Hosea says. "Don' worry, son."

"I dunno," he says. "'S only time you ever slapped me."

Hosea's ears turn red, and he pats Arthur's bicep affectionately. "Well, I wasn't tryna be another type like your father."

"You's always like my real dad. Sorta."

He pauses, mouth opening and then closing as if he isn't sure how to respond to that drunken confession.

Dutch has sunk to his knees on the grass beside the log, leans over with an elbow on Hosea's thigh. "Say, son," he begins, tossing a thumb to Javier and speaking low. "Why don't you go back to gawkin' at your man in silence?"

It's his turn to blush. "I weren't... the fuck'chu mean," — raising his voice to match Dutch's strained tenor, cracking the words in half to piss him off — "My man, you sack of—?"

"Well," Hosea interjects, then, straightening his pants legs at the knees. He raises with a click of his joints. "Sounds like time for me to get outta here."

Hours pass, maybe two. Arthur's pissed twice counting this toilet run, downed two more beers, threw back two shots of something strong-tasting, and danced twice more. He is coming to like the number two.

Whoever gave Uncle a harmonica, however, Arthur does not like.

Sure, the man has clearly played one before, but every wandering cowboy has handled a harmonica. Someone must be able to make it sound better than this, so shrieking it's driven Arthur doubly as far away as he'd normally go to take a leak. The man who wrote this song, the one that the few remaining around the fire begin to stomp and clap to — Arthur's hand throbs, fingers fumbling at his fly — the feller who wrote my girl, my girl, in the pounds, in the pounds, so on and so forth... he must be rolling in his grave.

Javier could make the shrill cry of the harmonica sound good, he thinks idly. Teetering on wasted, fishing himself from his drawers in the darkness outside of camp's edge, he notices that the guitar stopped.

What kind of music would he play, if he were a musician?

It's a lovely thought, now. Arthur is warm with alcohol and loose enough at the shoulders to entertain the fancy without self-flagellating. He'll have to chew on what Dutch teased him for when he's sober, if he remembers it at all, but for now he thinks of Javier as his man and feels a smile gnawing at him.

Does he want him like that?

Arthur isn't sure, but he thinks it is one of those rare scenarios where neutrality speaks more volumes than both disgust and adoration. A man who was merely lonely, in the sexual sense, wouldn't be so fond of another feller's voice, or the way he struts with his gun belt clanking and yelling out how big and bad he thinks he is, or—

"There you are, Arthur."

Javier's voice makes him jump, hands flinching. How does this guy always find him?

"Just about zipped my damn pecker off," he hisses, turning over his shoulder to glare at him.

Well, he hopes it's a glare. He has a hard time expressing the right things when he's shitfaced.

And Javier is getting close, placing a hand on the back of his neck and stroking the sweat-soaked skin there, clipped nails scratching the shortest hairs at his nape. He swallows a groan.

"Enjoying the party?" He asks, as if Arthur ain't pissing right there and as if he isn't tenderly caressing him all the while.

He shakes himself, stuffs his dick back in his pants and does them up. "I'm enjoyin' the drinks," he says. "Missin' the music."

Javier chuckles. He turns Arthur easily, slots his body to his with his arms around his waist; Arthur smells vodka on his breath, remembers him taking shots alongside the handful of them who had before the bottle ran out.

That's probably why I'm hammered.

"What'chu up to, mister?" He asks lightly. Javier's face, already unclear in the night, has turned to his chest. If Arthur isn't entirely lost, he thinks the man's stomach contracts short and quick where it presses to his own. "Javier. Are you sniffin' me?"

Alright, so he's hammered, too.

He leans back. The whites of his eyes near glow, the collar of his white shirt as stark; his dark hair fades into the background, but his dark eyes don't.

They're hot. At least, their fixation makes Arthur's face feel hotter, and he doesn't care if anyone sees them embracing like this.

"You smell good, vaquero," he says simply. He runs a hand up his right side, over the underside of the arm to splay it outwards before he wraps his fingers around those of his uninjured hand in an awkward, but tight hold. "I wanna dance with you. You didn't let me, earlier."

"Never asked, did you?" Arthur asks, confused.

"No. You had that Irish hog on your hip."

He balks. "For a minute, maybe." Despite himself, he puts his arm around Javier's shoulders, big enough to encircle them. "Is that why you kept lookin' at me like I called your momma a tart?"

Javier blinks, as if he is scanning his memory for what the word means. Then, he frowns. "Sean's an asshole," he repeats, and the softer syllables slur together. "He said my dick's small."

Where a sobered Arthur would laugh at the childish hint of hurt in his voice, he merely raises his brows.

"Were he lookin' at it?" He asks, unsure where the twinge of— whatever emotion that's chafing on him comes from.

Jealousy? Something like anger?

The cackle from the other man tells him the question came out wrong. "Aye, you know how to comfort a man, vaquero," he teases, and Arthur realizes where his words went wrong.

"I didn't mean it like that," he says, and then pauses. "Not that, uh, your prick's small." Javier goes quiet, lets him flounder with a smile pulling at his lips. "I mean, it's... it's real..." — flushing, wanting to stop talking immediately, but knowing Javier will press him until he finishes his sentence — "Nice. I just didn't mean to say it, at first."

"Oh, it's only nice?" Javier rubs a hand at the small of Arthur's back, where sweat pools beneath his button-down. "I'd figure—"

"I don't wanna know what you figure," he sputters, trying to save his own dignity. "God, c'mon, didn't you wanna dance?" Arthur squeezes his hand. "Let's dance, vacay-row."

Javier snorts. "If you stop butchering my language, we'll dance all night."

"How'd you say it, then?" Arthur asks, brows knitting in genuine dismay.

Inhibitions so forgotten, he feels wholeheartedly a need to impress Javier, as if a redneck speaking Spanish with a thick accent but moderate fluency would be able to. He ought to just shut his gob after one or two beers, seal right over it with tape maybe; Arthur never seems to think of that option until he's already knee-deep in an avoidable, embarrassing situation.

To his surprise, Javier replies gently: "Vaquero."

He tries his best, with his eyes peering into his soul like this. "Va... Va-kee-row."

"Close," Javier says. He glances around, then leans up and presses his lips to the lobe of Arthur's ear. His breath reeks of vodka, and he wanders how many shots he took to lose his apprehension about camp. Normally, he wouldn't spare Arthur a handshake two miles from this place. "Vaquero."

He swallows, throat clicking. "Vaquero."

A kiss is tucked behind the corner of his jaw. "There you go," he says. "Beun chico."

"Is that an insult?" Arthur asks, but lets himself relax anyways. "Sounds like what you said yesterday.

"Sí. It is a different insult, though."

He sighs. Javier grins, wide, looks so handsome. The urge to kiss him is difficult to resist. They haven't moved at all, a realization met in tandem.

Javier moves easier than he does, already poor at these close-quarters dances and stomach flipped by how his partner is much nearer than he needs to be. It does not sync to the music from camp, whatever that might be; his ears are ringing a little, Javier's nose pressed firmly into his neck and his breath steady and slow at it. Sleep might have taken him, if he weren't moving his feet alongside Arthur's, and he wanders if he's smelling him again. He can't smell like much besides perspiration and whatever men usually stink of when they've been rotting out in the woods.

His gentleness is nice.

If Arthur shuts his mind off, he only knows of Javier's heat against him and their legs stumbling together and how his fingers clumsily work over his hand and wrist until they finally lace with his. If he comes back into his mind to tune out the sounds of camp— he can focus on the bugs and birds chirping in the evening outside, a hot summer wind rustling the leaves, the sound of their clothes rustling together. Their palms are growing clammy where they meet.

It's nice, until Javier yanks himself away. If he were a dog, his ears would be pricked; instead, he snaps his face back toward camp. He storms off with a seething: "Some rat is playing my fucking guitar."

#rdr2 fanfic #javiarthur #javier escuella #arthur morgan #javier x arthur #red dead redemption 2 #fluff #sfw #arthurmorgan #javierescuella #I wrote this with that stupid Slumber Party song on repeat

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