Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He's a terrible man. 

An awful fucking man, he thinks, as he clenches, tests how deep Dutch is inside him, and swallows the low moan the man makes in response. 

Oh, terrible. 

But God, he did miss this.

Dutch under his weight, pawing at his hips, begging him to move. Dutch, taking him in with those blown brown eyes, mouth hung open with wordless pleas. Dutch, flushed head to toe, bucking into him, skin to skin as if being buried in him, hips pressed to his ass, isn’t close enough.

Dutch, Dutch, Dutch.

He's not going to last.

As much as Hosea should be annoyed by it, it gives him a strange and giddy high to know he still has this hold over him.

A strange high that turns to a sick guilt that he pushes down his throat to mull on later.

Sure enough, thighs tight as he shifts, raises, Dutch's hand hooked under the curve of his ass, Dutch begins to grunt. That tell-tale sign, he's close, too close, so close that he can't even get the words out before Hosea takes him fully, meets his stuttering arch. Dutch bares his teeth against his throat—no marks, just as he promised, only a soft whine and a shuddering breath, followed by a wet kiss. Dutch groans his name, or his half-bastardization of it, “‘Sea, ‘Sea, ‘Sea,” against his collarbone, arms moving to keep him there while he comes down.

He stays. Even thumbs over the muscle of his neck, kisses his temple.

Hosea could end it here, let himself live with the peace that even if Dutch came in him, he didn't get off to it. He could be true in that way, let another man use him but not be used himself—faithful, at least as to where his seed ends up. 

He doesn't. 

He lets Dutch suck him off, finish him with his fingers rather than his cock. Eyes closed, he might even be able to pretend it's his darling wife—no, because Bessie's fingers aren't so thick, her groans so deep, her hair so full of fucking pomade. It's Dutch, and it's Dutch's fingers he gets off on, Dutch's mouth he shoots off in, and Dutch's lips he tastes himself on after. 

“Depraved man, you,” Dutch had said the first time, though he'd been joking. He hasn't said it again since Hosea was inclined to agree.

The worst part of it is, he figures, that he really does love his wife. Loves her in the same way even, the same desperate desire, always hungry, always dogging for a kiss, a laugh, even just a smile. Bessie below him, in his hands, in his mouth brings him the same heady joy as Dutch does. She's even called him the same, a teasing smack on the hand as he lifts her skirts in the kitchen, called him a wicked man after they've finished on the table, the bed too far.

No, she knows he loves her. Dutch knows it too.

The worst part is, she knows he loves Dutch.

She knows. Has to, because if one thing can be said about Bessie Matthews, it is that she's a clever girl. No one pulls anything over on her, no one ever has, and God help him, with how obvious they are about it, he certainly never will. A degenerate criminal with a poker face of unbreakable iron, he always thought of himself, until Dutch made him soft and she fell into the aftermath. And she never says anything about it, bless her, simply turns a willful eye away from it all—for her own sanity or for Hosea's, he's not entirely sure. Maybe both.

He thinks to ask, sometimes. Just get it all out there, clear up some unspoken rain cloud of infidelity, and maybe that’d cure him of this deep-set urge to be wild, too. Maybe he could call his whole thing with Dutch done and dusted.

Live a good, honest, true life with her.

And then Dutch settles against his side, tangles his legs with his own, one last sleep-stained kiss before he dozes off, rests his head against Hosea’s jackrabbit heart, and Hosea knows he can't. 

He tried. He did. Maybe, in some cosmic sense, that counts for something. 

Running his fingers through Dutch’s dark curls, thinking of Bessie’s lighter ones, he knows it doesn’t.

Chapter Text

It's a terrible idea. 

One he doesn't push out of mind. One he knows Dutch won't either. 

This is a terrible fucking idea, he thinks, in that little voice in his head that sounds more like Bessie than himself. 

He doesn't care much, not with Dutch's head between his legs. 

Or rather, he cares a whole fucking lot, but has decided to set his own self-loathing aside for however long it takes for Dutch to suck him off and rut against his leg. 

There'll be plenty of time for that in the dark spiral that'll come later. 

It hasn't even been three days, three full days since they'd buried poor Bessie. The funeral—a generous word for the wagon-side ceremony they’d held at the edge of a flowery glen—had been a quick and quiet affair, her wounds dressed and covered as best Susan could, dolled up in her finest dress. Body barely even cold, and here he is, warming their cot with another. 

Not just another. 

With Dutch. 

Of course he'd never say no, and Hosea thinks he might hate Dutch for that even more than he hates himself right now. All these years, he's been Dutch's voice of reason, and the one time he needs someone to tell him to be reasonable, Dutch cannot. Will not, rather, because he's getting what he wants—Hosea in his mouth, under his fingers, and he'll get what he wants, and that's all that's ever mattered to Dutch van der Linde. 

The competition of who Hosea hates most between the two of them is too close to call. At this very second, he himself has pulled ahead by a hair: Dutch sets his jaw and takes him into his throat. Hosea feels a moan bubbling up from his chest, and bites his lip to stop it—too hard, so hard that it bleeds.

Unmistakably her name, not his.

Maybe he didn't stop it at all. Dutch certainly stares up at him like he didn't. 

Good, Hosea thinks, in a voice that sounds more like Dutch. He hopes Dutch hates him for it in turn. He hopes the disgust is shared between them, like blood, like sweat, like poison, like whatever this is. 

Hosea wants him to hurt too. 

He wants Dutch to hurt as bad as he does—a horrible thing, because Dutch has been good to him through all of it, and it wasn't his fault. A horrible thing from a horrible man, because it was Hosea's own plan that'd gone awry and his own worry that'd taken him straight back to camp, his own goddamn foolishness that'd led the law right to her. 

Might as well have just shot her himself. He all but did. His fault, in the end.

If Dutch does feel any way about it, it doesn't stop him. It seems to spur him on even, as though he wants to give Hosea the opportunity to try it again. Get it right this time. 

He doesn't. 

The bile rises in his throat, and chokes it all back. 

Hosea finishes with tears in his eyes, hands clawed in dark hair, Dutch's nose pressed to his skin. Horrible, all of it, all the way down, no satisfaction to be found. He reaches for the bottle on the nightstand before Dutch has even wiped his mouth—doesn't care if he's satisfied either, and again, Dutch says nothing. 

He wishes he would. Hosea wishes he’d say anything at all. Make a comment, scream at him, tell him to fuck off. Fight him. Fuck him. Something, anything. 

He doesn't. 

Just sits on the edge of the cot, and tangles his fingers in Hosea's. 

He really can't remember the last time Dutch was so quiet. Maybe the night it happened, maybe the morning after—maybe he's been quiet the entire time, and Hosea's been too far gone to notice. 

Post-coital clarity, indeed. He tries to drown that with whiskey too.

The only kindness Hosea can find in himself to give: he passes Dutch the bottle after he's slugged about half. 

They sleep side by side. Not tangled, not intimate, just two men on a stiff, threadbare cot—maybe that's another kindness, that Dutch actually sleeps for the first time in days. He really has been good to Hosea. Can’t be easy to take care of him, feed him, clothe him, bathe him like he’s some sort of invalid, and move an ever-growing gang on top of it, but if Dutch has complaints, he’s not voicing them to Hosea. A first. He wishes he’d do that too, because then he’d feel more justified in this ugly contempt. It's harder, so much harder to hate the man when he looks so…

Young. 

Sweet, even.

Eyes rimmed red, stubble thick on his jaw, hair uncurled, a messy mop—he looks twenty again, minus the heavyset bags under his eyes. Hosea runs his knuckles against his cheek, a mimicry of a punch turned gentle, violence turned kind. A sweet thing. Soft mumbles fall from his lips—

It gets easier to hate him when Dutch murmurs, “‘Sea.”

In the end, though, he still hates himself most.

Chapter Text

He's shaking. 

Has been, on and off for the past few days. 

Has been, since he gave Dutch the bottle and told him, “No more.” 

The hair of the dog is the way, as far as Dutch has always heard, but Hosea won't have it. Not a drop, not a single sip, not even a whiff of it, so Dutch hasn't touched the stuff himself—you go, I follow, as they always have been. Dutch feels no different, of course, because whiskey never had this kind of hold over him, but Hosea's been an absolute misery, deep in the throes of misery himself. 

The first day had been fine, a mild headache but he'd been clear-headed, he'd smiled, he was well; the second, Hosea had mentioned something about hearing her voice, in between the bouts of vomiting. 

Today, the third, has been the worst of all. 

Hosea is a caretaker. It's second nature to him, tending to others, his loved ones, even the drifters they pick up here and there. A trait Dutch admires, to be sure; as he's discovered over the past few days, he doesn't have a single damn caring bone in his body, nor is he inclined to know what to do or how to do it. Susan, for all of her hard edges, has been a blessing, although she must be about at her wit’s end with the both of them.

“Do what you can,” she'd said when Dutch had shaken her awake in the darkness of early morning, “You're doing your best.” 

He is, he thinks. 

Tremors, voices, nausea, fever—Susan says the only thing to do is to wait it out, keep him fed and keep him warm and say prayers, if Dutch has got them. 

He doesn't. The closest thing he’s ever found to religion, he found in the sun and the open plains and the blood on his hands, none of which can help them now.

But Hosea always says he runs hot, like the sun rests in his ribcage right between his lungs where his heart should be. 

Keep him warm.

That, he can do. 

They haven't shared a bed since—well. Dutch doesn't much like to think about when they'd last shared a bed, around a year ago. A mistake, a messy mistake that he regrets now and thinks Hosea does too, maybe before it was even done and over with. The line of too-much must be a tricky thing to see, maybe even invisible to Dutch as he never seems to find it until long after it's been crossed, and they'd barreled over it hand in desperate fucking hand that day. A comfort twisted, gone horribly awry, and it was the first time he'd seen real hate in Hosea's eyes—

The first time, at least, directed at him.

He's seen it quite a few times since. 

Seen it earlier today, in fact, when he'd forced water down Hosea’s throat. 

That thought put away, that little contempt when he is honest-to-God trying, he pulls Hosea closer to his chest. 

Long ago when they'd laid like this, it'd been skin to skin, knuckles to spine—Hosea never could let his hands rest, still can't. Arms entangled, legs entwined, his head tucked up under Hosea’s chin; now, Hosea is burrowed under his, nose pressed to the divot at the bottom of his neck as he dozes, breathing wetly into the coarse hair there. By virtue of getting closer, Hosea's hands rest against the swell of his pecs, calloused against him in a way that grinds just right every time either one of them breathes, and his thigh is slipped between Dutch's own—

Oh, he's only a man. 

It's been a while. Maybe since that night, not so long ago but in another lifetime. Maybe a whore here or there, but it feels like nothing to him, same as his own hand, a tired means to a disappointing end. It's been a while since he had Hosea, or rather, since Hosea has had him—the daydreams of it plague him here and now, as Hosea’s thigh moves against him as he stirs, sniffles, shivers. 

Jesus. A man he is, he guesses, for getting hard from a bit of friction. 

A bit of friction, his hardened hands, and the smell of him: sick-sweat, ginseng, and a dark blue musk that is just Hosea.

Christ alive. He can practically hear Hosea's voice in his own head, although he's sure if Hosea said it aloud now, it'd sound much less happily baffled and much more angrily pissed off. 

Dutch wills it away, staring into the dim daylight of the tent. For all the times he nags Hosea about resting lately, he's never been good at it himself, especially when he's trying very hard not to be conscious of himself. A cigar, doesn't that sound perfect? His books, God, he wishes he could read. In his head, he tries to recite some poem he'd memorized for Hosea years back, had to be close to fifteen, and can't find the words: the stillness of autumn moonbeams, something about his face and happiness, and the entire first half of just gone. Plans float through his head—the west has been good to them, but the caravan can only move so fast, and every lost soul they take on adds to their travel. He tries to remember the ledger, tries to add up their takes lately, the money a bit slower since Bessie’s death; John's still learning, after all, and it's been hard lessons without Hosea's help. 

He even counts backwards from one hundred.

Then, he does it forwards.

Every time he thinks he might find success, a little reprieve, Hosea shifts.

He considers waking the man knitted into himself, just enough to move him, but Hosea hasn’t slept in days. Not good sleep, not the kind he needs to sweat out the whiskey fever he’s been snared in for the past year, maybe not even since Bessie passed. He tells himself that, that it’s for Hosea’s sake that he doesn’t move, that he bears the pleasing pressure against the fly of his jeans, but he knows—selfishly, he knows it’s been so long since they’ve been so close—

“You think too loud, Dutch.” 

Well, shit.

Hosea grunts with the effort of sleep, screws his eyes, begins to stretch and pauses as he discovers the reason Dutch’s brain sounds like a warning bell.

Goddamn. 

Dutch moves himself, moves to give him space, and stops when the trembling hands on his chest chase.

You go, I follow.

“Ignore me,” is what Dutch ends up saying, shocked that he sounds so strained. “It'll go away.”

At first, he thinks Hosea must be coughing, gagging, about to empty his stomach of nothing again, so long has it been since he heard that sound. Something must be funny about his words, struck some strange chord and Dutch finds himself stuck between irritation and adoration for the man snickering in his arms. 

Weak, soft, wheezing, Hosea laughs, and Dutch thinks it might be the prettiest thing he's ever heard. 

Been a while for that as well.

“That—” He croaks, low and labored, “Might be the most romantic thing you've ever said to me, Dutch van der Linde.” 

That gets him too. 

The two of them, giggling like fools, pressing his smile to Hosea's hairline, feels good. Feels normal, feels like a return to something that he's had hollowed out from his chest, ripped from his ribcage that he hadn't realized he'd been living without. Feels comforting. Feels…

Hosea tilts his head towards him for a kiss. 

Feels like home. 

It doesn't quell the fire, but it does soothe the ache. 

The past year—longer even, perhaps, but the past year at least—has felt like endless rain, and he supposes he’d never even come to realize that he’d been chilled to the bone. A drizzle at best, a pour more often than not, catastrophic thunder clouds when things were at their worst. 

Now, things feel clear. 

The sun does shine, and shines bright, sweet kisses turning languid and lazy and slow. It's easy enough to pretend Hosea's shaking is from the thrill of it, from a different kind of desire than the drink, and his wandering touch plays into those dark daydreams so sweetly. 

Dutch draws him in close, close, closer. 

God help him, he wants. 

But more than that, he remembers that tricky line.

“You better stop,” Dutch murmurs against Hosea’s lips, pressed to his own, “Else, I ain't gonna.” 

It earns him another laugh, another little light. 

“There he is,” Hosea mumbles in return, “As you wish.”

“As you need, Mr. Matthews,” Dutch chides, readjusts, but lets Hosea's leg stay where it lies, a little self-indulgence. “I came in here to help you sleep, and yet, you insist on tormenting me instead.” 

“A beloved pastime of mine,” Hosea says into his collarbone, and breathes in a rattling breath to continue—but doesn’t. There is an air, a pause, something suddenly tense and tight that Dutch can only wait for, thumb over his bony shoulder, right at the seam. 

“Y’only call me that when you’re pissed.”

”Ain’t pissed.” Dutch says it quick, defensive, petulant. With a soft huff, Hosea’s hand slides over his hip, finds its way to the small of his back—Dutch finds himself drawn in by whatever hold Hosea still has on him after all these years. “I’ll call you ‘‘Sea’ when you like me again.” 

Hosea snorts.

Another sound Dutch had been missing.

Air cleared, Hosea settles back into him, thigh to thigh, stomach to stomach, chest to chest, as close to skin to skin as Dutch will allow them to be. He sighs, and Dutch does too—small reliefs, little comforts, one after the other. 

“I always like you, Dutch.” His voice edges towards sleep once more. “Even when I hate you, I like you.” 

Despite himself, Dutch chuckles.

“Fool that I am, I always love you, Mr. Matthews.” 

“No, you don't,” Hosea says, shaky, and Dutch can feel his smile, his chapped lips, his teeth. “Part of lovin’ someone is hatin’ them sometimes.” 

“If that’s so, you must really love me then.”

It’s quiet, Hosea’s reply, almost lost in the collar of his shirt, would’ve been lost if not for the dead silence of their sequestered tent. For the rest of the afternoon that Dutch lies perfectly still with Hosea in his arms, he winds and replays it again and again and again like a favored record—days, weeks, he thinks even maybe years from now, maybe as he falls head first into whatever bloody death awaits him at the end of their road together, he’ll remember this moment.

The way Hosea’s nose settles against his throat.

The distant sound of birds, birds Hosea will put a name to when he's finally up to hobbling around tomorrow.

The dying, milky sunlight that still, somehow, makes his blond shine like gold.

Hosea’s fingers tracing along the curve of his spine.

Hosea, Hosea, Hosea.

“You know I do,” Hosea murmurs, moments before he nods off. “Always have.”