credit to the amazing and always kind @foundynnel for this and all images used in this chapter
RDR2 | Arthur Morgan x Female Reader | Rating: Explicit
Summary: Reader struggles with severe body image issues and low self-worth and loves Arthur but is convinced he’s too good for her. Arthur does his best to comfort her and set her straight.
Tumblr Masterlist | Ao3 | Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6 | Ch 7
🌻Comments always welcome! Reblogs always appreciated!🌻
taglist: @shootybangbang @redwritr @photo1030 @cookiesandcreaminthetardis @clevergirl74 @tecker
🌶🔥Spicy warning: Minors, do not interact🔥🌶
(credit to @cafekitsune for the above divider)
Chapter 8/?
During that long day of travel, you notice at one point that Arthur begins to droop in the seat beside you. His shoulders sag, his back curls over lower, and his chest retreats more deeply inward than his usual slump. You watch surreptitiously as he pushes himself to straighten, fails, and rubs his nose with the back of his forefinger repeatedly in attempts to bring an alertness to his eyes.
At the sight, the muscle in your chest tugs tightly in his direction, and you rest a hand on his arm. When you gently press him to hand over the reins so he can rest a while, his spine straightens in a flash, and he gruffly clears his throat with garbled, throwaway words of protest.
Biting on the insides of your sealed lips, you pin down a wobbly grin at the understanding that it’s his abashed realization that any weariness in his body had momentarily seeped through, enough for you to take note at all.
After the steady persistence of your earnest, quiet, and highly logical petitions, he finally relents. He gives you instructions to keep west on the trail, to remain as out of sight as possible, and to wake him at the first sign of any funny business on the road, if by chance he hadn’t awoken by then already.
You watch with a knowing, spousal smirk as he slumps back in the seat with his hat tipped low over his face and his arms folded. You can almost feel the resulting relief in the taut chords in his back and across the tops of his shoulders. And for a moment before turning forward to guide the horses on, you softly close your eyes with the faintest flicker of a sighing smile.
When the sun begins to disappear beneath the horizon, pulling with it the traces of its own light, you enter the big wood you’d been traveling alongside, just as he would. When the trees break, you quietly gasp.
Before you, beautiful lashes of gold radiate from the drifting eye of the setting sun, just above the horizon of a tranquil, completely secluded forest lake. The gold sheen of the sun’s rays as they stretch and reach through the piney tree limbs for the water’s cool surface reminds you of the metallic way it sometimes catches in Arthur’s own long, bristly lashes.
“Oh yes, please,” you whisper gleefully to yourself, thinking how exorbitantly lovely an actual bath will be, after days of only clandestinely wiping yourself down at little rushing brooks and streams.
