Crying While Listening To Ethel Cain Or Townes Van Zandt Is Just A Rite Of Passage For John Marston Fans

I hate him

reblog with a spoiler for your wip with zero context. no context allowed.

morston just hurts sooooo good if they never even fucked each other and the only bit of intimacy they’ve ever shared together is arthur locking eyes with john through the cut linen of dutch’s tent — john’s eyes are hollow, wet with tears and red with a young boy’s rage, his jaw is slack, bleeding strangled hymns, his darkly shining hair is splayed over the cot, forms a twisted halo around his skull — arthur feels sick, wants to gag, almost does, wants to run and he almost does that, too, but he can’t bear to leave john alone like this, wonders how many times he’s been alone like this — with dutch — and when dutch hunches forward to run his hand over john’s chest and grasp at his throat his wide frame shadows john, swallows him all up until arthur can only see dark shimmering eyes peering up at him over dutch’s shoulder, refusing to look away and it all makes him feel deathly ill, stomach twisting, the stench of rot in his nose and when john cries and cries and dutch groans, hitches himself flat to john and holds fast there, lips twitching into a smirk, heaving with pride, arthur trembles with anger — fists clenched at his sides, fingers twitching because he can’t decide whether he wants to beat dutch to a bloody mess of fractured bone and mush or fire into him until his body is so full of holes that’s it’s nearly shredded in half — but he just keeps watching and he hates himself for it, and when dutch finally lifts off the boy and moves across the tent and john stays there, torn and shivering, glistening with sweat and tears and perversion, warmth, not hate, not fear, fucking warmth returns to his eyes that never once strayed from arthur’s.

journal page for johnny too yayy

The giant of Illinois

fair enough!

writing vandermarston and googling “dog psychology and training” kinda day

he is trying his best to be good he is trying his best to be clean but his hair never stops growin’ and the blood never stops flowin’🩸🕊️❤️‍🩹

i love epilogue john with short hair oouuuuhooo i love him there is just something about it auuhhhhh something something trauma and recovery and intense desire to rid himself of this brutal past that haunts him so deeply but he never can and never will and it will never be enough, he will hide his face and introduce himself as an imposter until his real name sounds like a vulgar obscenity on his tongue, he will bite his tongue and bury his nature and keep his revolver holstered until his hands twitch with excitement and he tastes iron and feels at home, he will scrub his skin raw trying to erase phantom hands and he will cut his hair with a dull knife until his head is bleeding his knuckles ache and his back itches and the river will carry the hair, the blood, the grime and shame and longing scrubbed from the tender skin between his legs downstream and he will imagine that he is clean, he will imagine that he has cut the last bit of them out of his life for good, he will imagine a life of peace and forgiveness and acceptance until he feels a cold breeze on his bare neck and a sickening warmth in his gut and a heavy gnawing pain in his chest and he hears those terrible, awful, heartbreaking whispers of “son” and “brother” on the wind and he isn’t crying, he isn’t crying, he isn’t crying

you found god in them dirt roads yet?