Fire and Water: a Red Dead story

25

"How's your woman John?" Arthur had taken John with him out hunting, sensing the younger man's mounting stress as Abigail began to get more pregnant and more snappy. "Everythin' alright between you two?"

John groaned reins slung low as he scanned the horizon. "Arthur you know it ain't. Abigail thinks the baby's mine, and I ain't all that convinced it is." 

Arthur frowned, turning on John. "C'mon now John," he started.

"No, Arthur I ain't want to hear it, not now." John snapped. "Ain't nobody hearin' me anyway, treatin' me like I did shit, when I did nothin'."

Arthur frowned, chewing over his words careful, gun slung low on his arm. "Ain't nobody thinks that." 

"Yeah, okay." He scoffed. "You ain't think that maybe, but all them think Abigail is set up with a piece of shit the way she moans. Ain't no appeasin' and I get flack for it."

"You'll be okay, John. Ain't this what you wanted?" 

"Not anymore." He scowled. "Not when I get a kid that ain't mine."

"Kid's yours Marston." Arthur said, glancing back over at him. "You better treat it right."

John sighed, anger running up and down through him. "Ain't the father type." He muttered. "Don't know how to care for lil' ones."

"Jus' make sure he's fed, is all." Arthur shrugged, pulling from his own brief experience as a father. "Make sure he got some clothes and love it, goddamn it, even you can do that, fool that you are."

"Sure," John agreed moodily, nudging his horse over a dusty trail, dust clouds kicking up behind him. 

Nobody listened, nobody heard his protest that the kid weren't his, that no matter what joy he felt at Abigail sharing his space had been dimmed at the strained relationship that had sprung up between the two of them. Take some goddamn responsibility, those words got thrown in his face, more often than not, and he hated them. Why couldn't he just get some goddamn sympathy?

He loved her, 'spect he always would, and maybe she sort of loved him back, but they both were hardheaded, searching out the for the last word in an argument like it was a competition and lord knows god must have gave them a double dose of competition when he made them. Words were short and hard with each other, her not knowing how to approach the flawed personality of John Marston, and he not knowing how to just talk dammit, least ways to own equally flawed personality. When she first moved in, the spring ages of her pregnancy, he'd been endearingly awkward, not quite knowing to do with a woman in his personal space, asking if she was okay with him coming in, bringing her little baubles and bits he had stolen or maybe bought in town that day. Those sweet summer days were over, now though, driven away with harsh snapping words and a boiling tension. 

Everyone felt the tension, talking died down when one of them, John more often now with Abigail swelling up with child, would come storming out, pulling a bottle from a shelf, taking a deep pull. 

Don't get a woman, boys, he'd say deep and angry, voice rasping, ain't worth shit. 

Abigail wasn't any sweet damsel either, and she more often than not, would snap and bite just as hard as John, setting him alight for more money, more food, more, more always more, and John would get cold and hard, biting back. 

Baby needs some goddamn money, John, she'd say one hand resting on her belly, the other nested in the fabric of her dress. Why ain't you done anythin' yet, you lazy Scottish bastard.

And John pissed off at the implications, would swear back just as foul and just as fast, cursing the ties that bound him to her. 

But as hard as he tried, and as full as piss and vinegar as their relationship was, John watched her stomach swell and grow with a strange fascination, laying his hand top hers one night, listening to her little laugh, watching his face as the little life beneath them kicked up 'gainst their hands. Fascinated maybe, loved even, but he couldn't picture himself as the father, the niggling doubt that the child's father could be any one of the men in the camp talking real fast and quiet in his ear as he lay awake, listening to the soft breaths of Abigail laying next to him.