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unusual-raccoon · 2 years

Text

False Bill of Goods by Unusual_Raccoon

Fandom: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)

Rating: Explicit

Pairing: Arthur Morgan/Edith Downes

Additional Tags: Chapter 4: Saint Denis (Red Dead Redemption 2), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Extremely Dubious Consent, Sex Work, Prostitution, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Come Swallowing, Come Shot, Angst, Arthur Morgan Has Tuberculosis, Low Honor Arthur Morgan, He's trying to change for the better though, The Author Regrets Everything

Word Count: 5.8k+

Ao3 Link

Summary: Arthur runs into a certain widow in Saint Denis and finds it very difficult to ignore his worst impulses.

A/N: This fic and this whole series idea is one that I've had forever, so hopefully you guys enjoy this, because there will be more to come.

As per usual, I don't own any characters and please don't mind any mistakes!

Arthur wasn’t really thinking, or rather he wasn’t putting in a conscious effort to keep from stopping himself. Lately he’d been trying, trying to do better, be better, ignore the twisted vices he was known to give into.

But then, slicked with sweat and fists shaking from not having fed that pompous ass, threatening to beat an orphan over a pocket watch, his own goddamn teeth. His defenses were lowered, his propensity for goodness was a well tapped dry…for the moment at least.

So, when vice was temptingly dangled above his head, like a carrot on a stick, he snapped for a chance at it.

You lookin’ for some company, mister?

He smoothed his rough thumbs over the crucifix he’d found in the street. Without lifting his head to peek beneath the brim of his hat, he answered.

“Sure.” Tucking the crucifix into his satchel, he’d find the good sister Calderon in a little while. He had some sinnin’ to do.

Finally glancing up at the woman who had offered herself up to him, surprise gripped him as he was met with a familiar face. A dainty jaw and pretty aquiline nose and loose russet curls and sad eyes.

Mrs. Downes…

The woman looked haggard and worn down from the big cesspit of a city that was Saint Denis. She blinked at him with wide, horrified eyes, as if recognizing the wolf she had just hollered at.

There was a lawman over his shoulder and Arthur had half a mind to think Mrs. Downes would call the feller. ‘Cept he didn’t budge, weren’t makin’ it easy for her, and she looked too terrified to try to get past him by her lonesome.

“Y-you.” She exhaled in a shaking voice, words having lost all pretense of trying to seduce him out of a few bucks. She was shaking like a leaf, lips pale and pressed firmly together.

“Me.” Arthur grunted back, a hand falling to the brass buckle of his gunbelt.

They stared at each other for a moment, an agonizingly long moment. The lawman on the corner paced down his patrol obliviously, wading down the muck on the street. Neither spoke for a while, just breathed and stared.

“So…” Arthur hummed, hands braced on his gunbelt, a calm, swaggering intimidation that came too easily after as many years as he had spent in the Van der Linde gang. His spine stretched out as he took in a deep breath, chest expanded big and broad.

“I’m still in the market for comp’ny,” he said flatly, there was no disguising his intention.

“You got a room ‘round here?” He asked brusquely, lifting his chin.

Mrs. Downes gave a belated nod, features pulled tight in an attempt to disguise her otherwise tortured expression.

See, he’d been tryin’ at the whole new leaf business. Like filing down his fangs would make him any less of a predator. And he’d been doing a well enough job. Until her - this woman, this widow, well… she had gone and whetted his appetite.

It was foul even by his standards, but he supposed after all his hard work givin’ to the poor and being a decent man, he was due for some debauchery.

She had known it from the moment she’d seen his dark silhouette riding up the beaten footpath to their home.

She knew the Devil had come to collect his due. For all of his virtues, Thomas had been a prideful man too, he should’ve never taken the money from that Mr. Strauss. He should’ve never baited the Devil into their home.

And each and every time she had seen the man since, her belief had only been reaffirmed. Arthur Morgan was the most god forsaken creature she had ever had the displeasure of knowing.

He was rugged and handsome, but she supposed such was the complexity of such a man. All the most poisonous things were darkly beautiful - like Satan, she supposed.

And he was no different. A strapping man of staggering size and frightening brutality.

She had seen the Devil’s face once more, wallowing in the filth he himself had reduced her to: a penniless widow, a common whore.

Yet, she had still taken him to the room she rented in the saloon in town. She had no desire for him, she didn’t want him, she didn’t have the luxuries of wants however.

He had debased her as he did himself; she was an animal now, with primitive needs to meet. Food and shelter for starters, two things she couldn’t acquire without the money selling herself, provided.

Her rented room was plain and small with a bloated water stained ceiling, but it was cheap, the owner only asked for a dollar regardless of how many folks she had visiting each night, and requested that she wash the sheets herself. In a past life, the life he had taken from her, she had been a rancher’s wife, she was no stranger to hard work.

Still, he looked large in the confined space. Like a wolf locked in a chicken coop.

He appeared starved behind those cold blue eyes. A wolf that hadn’t eaten his fill in quite some time.

Edith wrung her hands together, her palms had grown damp and her face warm. Her limbs tingled numbly as he stared back at her.

She had lain with more men then she cared to recall since moving to this wretched city, she knew her way around a man’s body in her rapidly approaching middle age; and she most certainly knew how to undress one. She blinked at the large outlaw, throat swelled shut so each inhale was an effort, scraping down the narrow space into her lungs. How did one go about undressing a wild creature like him?

His upper lip twitched, an echo of a snarl. Her stomach coiled tight. She had seen that expression on his face before.

What are you lookin’ at? I said, whatchu you lookin’ at, woman?

His lip had been curled in a snarl over his teeth then, his eyes had been trained solely on her as he sauntered out of their fenced-in crops, her husband's blood stained on his knuckles. The brute had beaten Thomas within an inch of his life.

And now he intended to bed her.

Or perhaps humiliate her further than he already had.

There was nothing left for him to take, her husband, her money, her sanity - now, her body.

She swept her gaze over him, from the weathered brim of his hat casting a shadow over his terrifyingly blue eyes, to the snug fabric of his black cotton overshirt clinging to the breadth of his chest and shoulders, to the scrap of ebony silk knotted around the soft vulnerable parts of his throat - it was a small touch of civility amidst the overwhelmingly wild exterior, dressed in mostly leather and denim. She paused at the snug riding chaps he wore, the surface was worn, conditioned into being supple from hours upon horseback.

The mere thought sent her back to the ranch, to her home. She thought of their gentle workhorse, Dottie, the prettiest little leopard-spotted Appaloosa. They had raised her from a foal and let Archie name her when he was nigh on 6 years old, on account of her curious speckled coat. Thomas had never been much of a rider, and when his debt needed to be paid, dear sweet Dottie had been one of the first things to be sold. It had been like losing a family member. Archie had learned how to ride on that gentle little horse. A stab of pain surged through her, lodged in her chest like a knife or perhaps an arrow, the kind of pain that could be endured but seldom forgotten; thinking of everything she had lost because of this thing - this man.

Edith felt a tear trickle down her cheek, gaze lowered so the monster before her couldn’t have the satisfaction of seeing her vulnerability.

She glimpsed motion through glassy eyes, peeking up long enough to see Arthur relieving himself of his gunbelt. Her gaze lingered on every shiny bullet lodged into the leather, and the cumbersome set of pistols, laid in glittering metals and wrapped in spidering black filigree that spanned the bodies and barrels of each sidearm like ghoulish cracks in the sterling surface; a sign of his vanity, he was truly a sinner. They made a weighty thunk when Arthur laid them on the side table. She felt a brief twinge of relief and a stinging sort of gratitude that left her mouth sour knowing she’d never known the fear of staring down the barrel of those guns.

“C’mere,” he beckoned in a low rumble, the dimly lit oil lamp in the room casting his exterior in a soft hue of hazy orange. Most fellers were content to hike up her skirts and have their way barely undressed, but not him.

She stepped closer, legs tingling numbly, her hands steadying on his broad chest. The dark leather of his vest was fringed and weathered. She busied herself with the buttons of his vest, undoing each one with trembling fingers. A shiver crept down her spine as he tilted his head down to watch her as she undressed him, she avoided his gaze, but felt the warm gust of his breath pushed through his nostrils with a faint whistle.

When the fabric parted limply, he rolled the article off of his powerful shoulders, letting it drip to the floor thoughtlessly. She brushed away the ingrained impulse to pluck the article from the ground and fold it; she had no kindness to spare for him.

Her fingers paused on the ruffled silk of his ebony tie. She carefully unknotted the fine material and pulled it away from the folded collar of his shirt. She stared at the unguarded flesh of his throat, the thick swell of his Adam’s apple that bobbed hypnotically when he swallowed. It was nearly paradoxical to imagine such a man was made of flesh and blood, that such a man had a pulse and breathed air.

For a blinding, brief moment, she was possessed with the urge to tear her teeth into his skin and draw blood. To maul and mutilate him like the animal he’d made of her, and leave him as cold and lifeless as her Thomas was.

His eyes flicked down curiously to hers, squinted as if knowingly, before she remembered herself. She swallowed the urge. She’d need to see a priest when this was all said and done.

Edith turned her attention to his hat next, gently tipping it off of his head, her fingers curled around the leather brim. His hair was kept short, shorn on the sides and lush and flaxen, swept back with some sweat.

She perched his hat atop his guns.

Her eyes appraised him as he looked down upon her.

She studied him, this Devil dressed like a man. Her gaze lingered on the scar along his chin that created a gap in his otherwise full facial hair.

It was alarmingly human, a spot of weakness that she refused to believe this man possessed.

A massive hand landed on her shoulder and the bite of his plentiful calluses made her flinch.

She was gripped with the image of her late husband’s face, swollen and bloody, as Arthur touched her with the same hands he had beaten Thomas with. His perversion knew no bounds.

Another tear shimmered down her cheek, but Arthur didn’t seem to mind, he just urged her dress to the floor.

He dug a hand between her thighs and Edith was gripped with the urge to strike him with all of her might. There was a glint in his steely eyes, the bright blue seemed infinitely darker with a challenge residing in them. Almost as if he could anticipate what she was thinking, almost as if he wanted her to act upon it.

A coarse finger probed at her heat, crude and rough.

Her jaw flexed tight, chin quivering as she felt this savage man drag his trigger finger over the length of her slit. Palm pausing to settle above the dense thatch of curls between her legs.

“Dryer than a fuckin’ desert,” he commented brusquely and she flinched, somehow managing to feel a twist of shame in her belly at not being able to perform for a man; it was all she was good for as of late. The sudden wave of disgust at the thought of wanting to perform for this man rivaled the swell of shame in her.

He was loathsome, he was vile, he was working a single, disciplined finger into her. The sudden pressure pushed any thoughts from her mind, her hands clutched at the bulk of his forearm as a strangled, tormented sound escaped her.

Her disgust and shame grew ever stronger when after a few meticulous pumps of his finger, he pulled the digit away damp.

“Better,” he remarked and a part of her grew dizzy, ogling the finger he had previously urged into her, marveling at the viscous sheen of moisture glowing beneath the soft light of the oil lamp. She didn’t think long on the fact that she had pleased him with something so cruel as the evidence of her own wrung-out desire.

“Go on,” he directed with a jerk of his chin, “on the bed.”

She did as she was told and laid upon her thin mattress, body left bare. The memory of his single, thick finger urged into her heat still haunted her, and no amount of self loathing had yet to banish the stubborn smear of wetness between her thighs.

Edith watched with horrified fascination as the dim oil lamp painted his body in a mouthwatering contrast, light and darkness clinging to every hard line of his broad body. He had a good, strong frame, solid, like an ox. Had they the money for any ranch hands on their measly bit of property, she would’ve wanted one sturdy like him.

Bile stung briefly at the back of her throat, a sharp visceral reaction that accompanied her own shame, shame borne out of the primitive sort of thrill that ripped through her at the sight of him.

Her mouth had gone dry at the leap of bunched muscles in his chest and arms as he went through the menial task of removing his chaps, trousers, and boots.

Her gaze was inevitably pulled to the ugly puckered flesh of a scar, painted like a crater in the dim light. The flesh shone still so pink and shiny and new. The scar tissue sat thickly on his shoulder, another sign of a humanity she couldn’t dare to stomach.

Someone had tried to kill him…

He was left bare, a bitter sort of irony in the faux intimacy of them, a man and woman stark nude in the narrow confines of her room. It was the kind of intimacy she had only ever shared with Thomas. A closeness she had treasured…and it seemed he meant to rob her of this too.

Her room, while never spacious, suddenly felt cramped, like the jaws of a snare holding her still as a wolf came to feed. And he prowled before the bed and her body shook. The mattress buckled under his weight. His palm so thick with calluses cinched around her ankle, like he meant to drag her down towards him and his hellish desire. His mouth curled into something full of temptation and cruelty. The swell of his tricep bulged obscenely as he reaffirmed his grip around her ankle, tightening it. Her mouth remained as dry as it ever was. Her heart thundered in her throat.

The fingers hot like a brand of ownership around her ankle sailed higher, covering pale flesh before sinking into the soft meat at the back of her knee. A gasp leapt from her chest, wrung out from under the weight of her pounding heart lodged in her throat. His touch terrified her, as he tilted her thighs apart with little ambiguity. Arthur gathered his weight between her legs, he looked every bit the wolf she imagined prowling at the fence line of her property. Powerful and salivating and ready to devour her.

Edith held her breath as his body, broad and powerful and all-encompassing, loomed over hers. She waited with the sound of blood rushing in her ears for the moment he would rear back and cackle out a bark of mockery, shaming the woman she had become, a whore that would stomach the presence of the man responsible for husband’s death inside her bed, inside her body…

But his laughter never came.

His palm pressed to her cheek and she wanted to recoil from the closeness. She tilted her head away, face pressed against the thin pillow on her bed in meager retaliation.

A heavy hand groped between her thighs and she flinched, then he made a sound, near laughter, a distant cousin to it perhaps. But it was frigid and terrifying.

She chewed along the flesh of her cheek to muffle her whimper, the surprised hitch of her hips as his finger traced prominently along her slit.

Heat simmered faintly to a primal throb in her hips. Slow and steady, a hot pulse that culminated between her thighs, pounding in time with each pump of her heart.

His finger slid into her heat with little resistance nor warning, his thumb came up to strum at a small nub tucked away amidst the ridges of flesh. Warmth streaked wildly and suddenly in her abdomen, muscles clenching tight around the finger working inside of her. She gasped, digging her teeth into the inside of her cheek with more intensity to help stem the sounds tearing from her chest.

The bittersweet warm tang of blood filled her mouth as his thumb persisted, broad and callused, aggravating that bit of flesh that had that treasonous warmth spreading to the ends of her every limb.

The feeling inevitably crept higher and hotter, as he began to agitate the finger in her. Her hips lifted and sweat gathered in every unflattering crease of her body, under her arms, beneath her breasts, between her shoulder blades. Every limb felt aflame, like her damnation was finally upon, her sin swallowing her up.

A second crude finger joined the first with a mortifying wet squelch, the brief burn and throb of pressure ached between her legs. Torturous and wonderful.

Edith dug her teeth into the prominent point of her knuckles to smother the godless sound he urged from her with a few clever curls of his fingers.

Every sound she made, he responded to in kind, but not with jeers and the mockery she anticipated. He groaned and growled and feasted upon her, each guttural sound he made urged that tangle of sensation in her body higher.

She clawed at the sheets and mumbled a Hail Mary, the words broken and shorn into a breathless gasp as he maneuvered her on three of his large fingers, like a puppet.

Her knees drew starkly together at the alien crest of feeling pressing behind her lungs. His forearm didn’t remain stuck in the cage of her legs for long when Arthur roughly spread her thighs apart with a grunt, a challenging glint in his eyes.

They were panting and slick with sweat, his hand reached between her thighs, fingers still dripping with her mess. Perching his thumb back against her swollen bud, it only took a few drags of his finger for her legs to tremble once more.

She had chewed her lower lip into a bloody mess in a poor attempt to stifle every sound that swelled in her chest.

Suddenly, his hands were on her hips, pinning her to the bed, before tearing a hand away to tug at the swell of his erection.

She grimaced, feeling all the more soiled watching as he slicked himself with the mess of liquid desire she’d left on his fingers and pooled in his palm.

He drew close and Edith could scarcely breathe with his weight above her, his eyes on her, the blunt head of his erection pushing at the wet seam of her sex.

The grip on her was bruising, legs forced further apart with his bulk spreading her open. He gave a grunt, hips inched forward, grip held tight as her body welcomed him.

Arthur shivered with a hiss between his teeth, muscles coiled tight.

“Ain’t been wore out, yet. S’good.” He slurred, lips spread over his teeth in a cutting sort of smile.

Heat buzzed in her belly despite herself, she tasted blood and rage and loathing, she wanted to scream and yell and damn him. Yet, all she managed was a pinched expression and a squeal as he buried himself down to the root.

He tilted his hips, gathering her up in his hands like she were weightless. Her back curved in the prison of his broad palms, she melted against the mattress with a ragged, scratchy sigh.

He rocked into her with a growl, deep and primal and so very pleased. She keened a broken sound, feeling him surge within her, bulging her belly.

Arthur found a pace to his liking, rough and wet.

Poor Mrs. Downes had all but given up, or given in, he supposed. She was a fine woman, bit sanctimonious, god-fearin’ he reckoned. Had a good cunt on her too, god bless. Not too tight, just sorta warm and velvety, hugged him real nice.

She pressed her teary face into the stained pillow of the bed, hid her rampant ruddy blush that spilled down the dainty column of her lily white throat on the tops of her breasts that swayed on her chest with every thrust.

She was drippin’ down on him, making a damn mess and he loved it.

He gathered her again, pulled her back to look at her face while took her, a hard hand pressed to her cheek. She shied away from it once more, shook with all the disdain she held for him.

A muscle twitched in his cheek in response to her indignation, so ripe and heavy he could bite into it.

He fucked her harder, meaner, sunk so deep he was certain he had hit her belly. She bowed up off the bed like she’d been possessed, willowy muscles pulled taut, her whole body spasmed and clenched around him.

Her head lolled back, her neck fully extended, her mouth fell open with a shuddering gasp.

Heat itched aggressively in his stomach, the feeling ate at him, rolled over his shoulders and clawed at his chest.

Pressing her back into the mattress, letting her sprawl against the soaked sheets, Arthur tilted his hips just a little, her skin sticking to his as he pushed in a long, smooth stroke. She made a pretty sound when he was back inside her, it was hoarse and deep like she’d been punched in the gut. The hot crawl of pleasure tickled along his scalp and behind his eyes. Hooking a hand against the clammy flesh at the back of her knee, he hiked her leg up, pressing her thigh back against her chest so he could take her deeper.

Her breathing was thin, with all his weight and some of her own crushing her. Like her lungs scarcely had room in her chest with the way he was fucking her.

She was fluttering around him, and she squirmed again for naught, fighting that feeling he’d stoked in her. It riled something in him, watching as she tried with everything she had to resist. He didn’t have to make her feel good. Wedging a hand between their bodies, cruel fingers found her bud; but all her fightin’ just made him want to do it more.

Her expression remained as pained as ever, even while she soaked his fingers and cock.

Her eyes were screwed shut, mouth pressed into a fine line, sweat and tears gathered at her temples, streaked and soaked into her wild wavy hair.

There was a sob stuck somewhere in her chest and he wanted it out, he wanted her to scream and shout and damn him to the lowest circle of hell while she came for him.

His fingers were ceaseless in their assault on that aching bundle of nerves. He leaned his weight forward, feeling the hot wheeze of her breath as the air was pushed from her lungs beneath the crush of his body.

His hips hadn’t slowed, just maintained that rough, wet pace. Each thrust filled her belly and still her eyes stayed shut.

“Look a’me,” He growled, lips pulled over his teeth. She muffled a moan against her little white-knuckled fist. Her face pressed further into the pillow.

The slick clap of his bloated balls striking the soft flesh of her rear filled the room, again and again.

Snatching her wrists in his hands, he gave her no reprieve, no place to hide. He pinned her hands above her head, oblivious to the sound of her little frantic gasps with his grip too tight.

“Edith,” He snarled her name and her chin quivered, “you goddamn look at me, when I’m inside ya.”

Her eyes snapped open, those sad brown eyes, brimming with tears and lust. And god, that look in her eyes hit him like a headrush. He held her gaze firm, and she cried and gasped and clawed at his back. She flexed around him, in frantic fluttering pulses that felt heavenly.

He rolled his hips, pleasure shot up the length of his spine and washed over him as she clenched one final time with a drawn out cry. Her eyes threatened to roll back, but Arthur gave her no such opportunity. He seized her by her dainty jaw, held her still, her soft doe eyes had gone wide and hazy where she held his gaze with her release rushing through her.

His head dipped low, hair askew, as he pounded into her with a long groan. He was so damn close, all wrapped up in her.

Her hands pushed at his shoulders with a wide-eyed kind of desperation, “please,” she begged, voice eroded to nothing, sermons stripped away.

“Please, don’t-” Her lower lip was a ragged red mess and it trembled as he pulled her closer, ignoring her pleas.

“Please,” she cried against his ear, little arms pinned between his chest and hers, the sound of her begging was undoin’ him awfully quick.

For a fleeting moment, he considered putting a bastard in her belly, and in a depraved sorta way, the thought delighted him. And she cried all the while, cried right through another orgasm. His whole body was tingling, shaking with all the power she’d given him.

With a grunt, Arthur dumped her back on the bed, barely managing to crawl up and finish himself with a few shaky strokes across her chest. The look of relief, of gratitude welled in her eyes as she stared up at him; and for a moment, she looked so damn fond.

His vision dimmed and his throat was dry and his hand kept moving, kept wringing out a few more spurts of his release to paint her body.

She’d gone limp, even as a glob of his spend landed on her chin, thick and white.

He sat back for a moment, so drunk on the feelings that swirled through him.

He held out a shaking hand, pressed a thumb to the point of her chin, smearing the dollop of his release up toward her panting mouth. Smeared it over the torn-up swell of her lower lip, she winced but still sucked his thumb clean.

Looking down on her, on the wild streaks of his come on her chest, a pretty white pearl of his spend clung to one pebbled cinnamon colored nipple. He blinked and saw how red her eyes were from all her cryin’, the wet trails of which still stained her cheeks. The cut-up swell of her lower lip, stained red with her own blood. The ugly shape of his hands were darkening on her pale skin, around her hips and on her wrists…

Then that feeling came for him, the thing he’d been falling prey to as of late, that little voice in his head he’d been ignoring for nigh on twenty years. Guilt…

Edith could scarcely believe what had happened…that she had - twice, with him of all people. Her body was still buzzing with a tormenting delight, it spilled over her like little ripples in a pond. She wanted to hate the feeling, wanted to hate it so violently.

Her limbs felt heavy, she rasped her tongue over her lower lip, tasting blood and salt and him.

She sat up stiffly as she watched that cocksure outlaw settle at the foot of the bed. His broad, well-muscled back painted like a mural in the dim orange glow of the oil lamp. A pang of shame struck her as she discovered the red streaks of torn flesh down his back, flesh she knew he did not tear by himself.

He hunched in on himself, breathing labored with a troublesome crackle behind each inhale. She ignored the twist of apprehension in her belly.

He slumped forward with a sigh, his elbows pressed to his knees.

And in that moment he managed to do something that unsettled her more thoroughly than the entirety of their evening together: he coughed.

It was a coarse, short sound that he tamped down by thumping a large fist to his chest.

She sat up straight, gathering her legs beneath her, though it hardly helped the way that her body still felt boneless. She knew that sound.

“Y-you,” Her voice was hoarse and she loathed the fact that it was thanks to him, her ruined state, still she swallowed her pride, “you should get that cough looked at.”

He shook his head with another worrying cough before rising up off the bed. He rounded the mattress and she tensed for a brief moment, terrified he might try and have her again; she’d more than enough shame to endure already.

But he looked resigned behind the eyes, tired. He collected his clothes and began to redress. He even flicked up his shirt’s dark collar to affix his tie, the black silk melted seamlessly into the black cotton of his shirt. He bent down and grabbed his vest from the floor and Edith felt a twinge of something in her stomach as he mutely did up the buttons.

He carried his boots to the bed with a sigh, plopping down at the foot of the bed to put them on. He tugged the shafts of his piped leather boots over the hem of his snug denim trousers. His chaps followed after and she felt a bit obscene watching him adjust himself through the opening of his chaps; the irony as she sat, his spend drying on her chest, the taste of it still thick on her tongue.

His guns resided at either hip, gaudy and glittering with their spidering filigree in the hazy orange glow that bathed the small room. He raked a hand through his hair before he put his hat back on, the brim casted a sinister shadow over his face.

Arthur rummaged through his satchel next, lifting his head to look at her.

“How much?” he asked and the question seemed so odd. Reality seemed to return to her then, her lot in life, the sad thing she had been reduced to because of him.

“I don’t want your money, Mr. Morgan.” She said, what her words lacked in malice they compensated for with sincerity. She meant what she said.

He let out a frustrated sigh, “Yeah, but you need it, dontcha.” The words were spat out jaggedly and full of self-righteousness.

“You hardly weigh a thing, feeding that boy a’yours, right?”

She tore her gaze away for a moment if only to spare herself the sting of humiliation of knowing she was so very easy to read. Her throat had cinched tight, each breath a labor by the time she turned back to face him. Her arms were drawn self-consciously over her bare body.

“So shut up and take the money.” He grunted coarsely, throwing a fat wad of bills onto the side table, an iron money clip pinched it all together. He was a brute, so savage and thundering. But there was something else in him too, a part of him so emaciated and weak, an inherent goodness that had been torn up like an errant weed until it refused to grow.

She stared at the money and then at him. It was too much, it was more than she could hope to make in this cesspit of a city…

Edith climbed out of bed and pulled on her dress. She felt terribly small in his shadow, hollow inside as she held the ludicrous amount of money he had left on the table for her.

She watched as he straightened his spine, standing even taller, appearing by all accounts invulnerable, save for the quiet crackle behind his breathing.

“Feed yourself, feed your boy, get the hell out of this city,” He cautioned and she sniffled despite herself, it felt far too close to caring, and what a dreary thought that was, to be cared for by this Devil in Thomas’ wake.

“And, don’t you worry about me, Mrs. Downes, I’ll be gettin’ what I’m owed soon enough.”

His somber words settled like a knife in her belly.

Arthur cleared his throat, “been a pleasure doin’ business,” he said as he tipped the brim of hat to her and swaggered his way out of her room.

To her horror as Arthur opened the door, her boy, her Archie was standing outside. His hand was raised like he’d meant to open the door just as Arthur had.

There was a pause that seemed to draw on eternally, before Archie leapt up full of outrage.

“Momma, what is this-this bastard doin’ here?!”

The room was a mess, her bed wildly unname and in her hand resided a thick fold of bills. She tried valiantly to tamp down the mess of emotions rising in her chest, as she met her son’s gaze; he looked disgusted, he looked betrayed.

“I-” She exhaled shakily.

In truth, what could she say to her son, her only child, how could she justify the thing’s she’d done…

In the commotion, she had noticed, Arthur was nowhere to be seen.

As swiftly as he had arrived, the Devil she knew was now gone. And as per usual, leaving her in a worse state than when he’d found her.

#my writing #my fanfiction #arthur morgan #arthur morgan fanfiction #edith downes

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