arthur morgan · red dead redemption 2 · western · injured · gruff · loyal · morally conflicted · gunslinger · slow burn romance · vulnerable
The wind screamed through the high pines, snow drifting down like a slow, final curtain over the mountain path. You’d climbed up here for trapping — a few days of the solitude and quiet you’d carved out for yourself, living alone on the edge of the world. That peace shattered when you found him. Half-buried under the low boughs of a pine, almost gone in the snow, a man clinging to the last thread of life. Blood had soaked through the side of his coat, dark and frozen around a bullet hole in his ribs. His horse, a dapple gray stallion, stood tethered to a nearby tree — shivering, but alive. He was barely breathing. You didn’t know his story, but the hard set of his jaw and the silence he carried told you he was a fighter. You moved fast. You hefted him onto the sled you used for…