Wait. {Arthur Morgan x Reader}

Nice To See Ya Again

You'd been all over the country, seen some of the most remarkable towns. You grew up in West Chicago, you'd been to Nevada, New Austin, Oregon, Blackwater, Dutch even wanted to go to Paris at one time, but you were in Rhodes. In the dust and sand Rhodes was an old painting; once great work that was perfected by expert hand. The buildings and dead plants are silhouetted black, two-dimensional almost. The streets yawn in every directions, and it amazed you how generations ago these dry, rough streets were once rivers and pools of water.

You hadn't seen yourself living in Rhodes and married to a man whom you had no love for until now. It didn't seem real, but it was. Sometimes we have no other options but the ones laid out in front of us. William Luck was your only option.

William wasn't a bad man, the opposite in fact. He had cared for you a bit too much. He was an heir to his fathers Elizabethan home and his fortune. You first met William in the streets of Saint Denis all but two years ago. You were newly pregnant and homeless, and not a soul had looked at you the way William Luck did. He had a certain intensity - maybe more of an honesty - that you had never seen another man captive before in your lifetime. He welcomed you into his home - a house that was built in the early 1840's in an oddly futuristic, for its time, Elizabethan Era setting.

The foundation was long and narrow, perhaps twenty feet wide in the front but it stretched back a good forty, possibly even fifty, feet back like a giant shoe box. It was two stories high and had a one story extension at the rear for the kitchen with a door exiting outside towards the barn. There were wooden panels along the corridors, ornate chandeliers, and oil paintings of old bearded men in suits and ties.

It was still new to you, even after spending two years with William you had not yet become accustomed to living life without the fear of how much money you have. Your mind couldn't help but stray to who your heart still belonged to, even after all that William had done for you. He wasn't a bad-looking man or cruel, he just didn't know how to speak to you. There was never a time where something he said had made you feel completely and utterly at ease, if anything you were the one consistently trying to ease his mind. You never felt unsafe, but you were never at peace.

You had a very specific plan for your future before you met William. You believed you were going to marry the one man who ever made you feel whole, run away from both of your flawed pasts and raise your child in the comfort of your own home. Unfortunately, you lost your child shortly after upon meeting William. Perhaps it was the stress of you coming to the realization you were living a lie. He mourned with you as if it were his own child that he lost, he had grown a liking to the idea of having a child running around the house.

It was his soft, strangely melodic, voice that had snapped you into reality.

"(Y/N)?" He asks and you look up from your hands, placed close together in your lap. "Were you listening to me?" He asks, blinking those doe-like hazel eyes at you.

You can't help but examine his features every time you look at them and compare them to what you once had. William wasn't the type of man you'd fantasize about. Not that he was unattractive, but for starters - he was a brunette. You'd always liked the way dirty-blonde hair seemed to beam in the sunlight. You lusted after blue-eyed men with a handle on the world of cruelty. William has short dark brown hair with a pair of black, tapered eyebrows to match. His skin was tanned but pale, like looking at the sun head-on. He obtained prominent cheekbones and a well-defined chin and nose. There was nothing wrong with him physically, but there was nothing special about him. Looking at his face the one speck of distinction was a dark beauty mark just below his left eye. He had no scars on his chin that made creases in his facial hair or multiple spots of imperfectly perfect imperfections.

"No." You respond after a moment. You two were heading into Rhodes on the wagon he had purchased from a snake-oil salesman up in Strawberry, that was all you could recall.

"I'm going to go to the post-office and pick up that letter ma' sent," he says and he pulls at the reins, "You go into the general store and get them groceries i was telling you about."

You couldn't remember what groceries he had told you about but you just nodded, "Sounds good." You say briefly, looking at your side to avoid anymore conversation.

Luckily, William gets the hint and stays quiet the remainder of the ride. After a while he pulls up in front of the general store and hops off of the wagon, "I'll meet you back here?" He asks and looks up at you in the passenger seat. You nod in agreement and step off the wagon slowly, pulling at the hip of your dress to prevent you from stepping on it. He hands you a wad of cash, far too much for simple groceries but you don't protest. You take it and stuff it into your pocketbook, beginning to walk into the store but William grabs ahold of your arm, pulling you towards himself slowly and gently, careful not to pull on your arm too tightly. He kisses your forehead and gives you a whole-hearted smile before walking to the post-office.

He was a good, earnest man. Maybe, possibly, life was supposed to be this way.

You walk into the store and buy the necessities, gratefully accepting the help that the store owner offers. You walk outside and lean against the column holding the second story of the building up and light a cigarette, watching as the store owner hoists the food into the back of the wagon with a puff. Watching his struggle and hearing his same heaves of exhaustion quickly begins to bore you. You look around Rhodes, not much could possibly be happening in this small town but something had to spark your interest.

And surely, something did.

You take a long, deep drag of your cigarette, practically dropping it as you hear the door to the sheriffs office swing open. The cigarette slips from your lips and falls onto the ground beside your feet, as you look up. You step on it, twisting your heel into the ground and you make eye contact with him.

At first glance you could've guessed it was just another random outlaw - but this was your outlaw. Arthur Morgan.