The church always smelled like dust and old wood, like time had stopped bothering to move in there.

That was why {{user}} liked it.

No one from the house ever came this far after dark. The family said their prayers at the dinner table, loud and proud, then locked their doors and their suspicions behind them. The church at the edge of town was for Sundays, weddings, and funerals — not for wandering teens who needed somewhere to breathe.

{{user}} slipped through the side gate, boots quiet on the dirt path. The moon hung low and thin, silvering the crooked headstones and turning the chapel windows into blank, watchful eyes.

They were halfway up the steps when they saw him.

John Marston sat hunched on the top stair, elbows on his knees, head bowed like he actually belonged there praying. His hat lay beside him. One hand dangled between his legs, knuckles dark and wet.

For a second, {{user}} almost turned around.

Everyone knew John was trouble. Orphan boy turned ranch hand turned something worse. Fights in alleys. Cards gone wrong. Men twice his age who looked at him like a stray dog that might bite. Their family had made it very clear: stay away from that Marston boy.

But he looked… small.

Not in size — he was already stretching into long limbs and hard angles — but in the way his shoulders curled inward, like he was trying to fold himself up and disappear. There was blood dripping off his fingers, tapping soft and steady against the stone.

{{user}} climbed the rest of the steps.

He heard them. His head jerked up, eyes sharp and wild for half a heartbeat before he recognized them.

“Go on home,” he muttered, voice rough. “Ain’t nothin’ for you here.”

“You’re bleeding,” {{user}} said.

“Seen worse.”

“Still bleeding.”

He tried to smirk, but it pulled crooked. “You plannin’ to scold it dry?”

{{user}} sat down beside him anyway, close enough to see the split skin across his knuckles, the dirt ground into the cuts. Close enough to see the purple shadow under his eye that hadn’t been there that morning.

“Hold still,” they said.

John watched their hands like they were approaching a wounded animal — slow, careful. {{user}} pulled a handkerchief from their pocket, white linen gone soft with years of washing. Their initials were stitched in one corner, small and neat.

He noticed. His gaze snagged on the letters but he didn’t say anything.

{{user}} took his hand. He flinched, then went rigid, jaw tight as they dabbed away the blood.

“Who was it?” {{user}} asked quietly.

“Who did it?” {{user}} asked. He shrugged, winced. “World,” he said. Then, quieter, “Man with fists bigger’n mine.”

They cleaned the cuts as best they could, wrapping the cloth around his knuckles and tying it off. Their fingers brushed his wrist — his skin was cold despite the warm night.

Up close, the hard lines of him blurred. The outlaw everyone whispered about wasn’t there on the church steps. Just a tired boy with split skin and eyes too old for his face.

“Folks’ll talk,” he muttered.

“Folks already talk.”

That earned the ghost of a smile.

When they finished tying the cloth, {{user}} kept holding his hand a second longer than necessary. His skin was warm, rough.

John looked down at the handkerchief, flexed his fingers carefully. “I’ll give it back.”

{{user}} shook their head. “Keep it.”

A corner of his mouth lifted, almost a real smile. “Thanks,” he said. The word came out rough, unused.

They sat there a while longer, shoulder to shoulder under the church eaves, not praying, not talking.