Hosea Matthews - Tumblr Posts
Modern AU headcannons
The Vandermatthews family edition
When John was a teenager he made slime and got it in Dutch’s expensive Persian rug he keeps in the office. (Dutch was LIVID.)
Hosea reads late into the night, which caused Dutch to buy one of those clip on reading lights so he can finally sleep peacefully.
Dutch and Hosea do embarrassing dances in the kitchen/living spaces when the kids are around. Arthur and John cringe hard at this.
John was introduced to Limp Bizkit and his life was forever changed.
Arthur: “GET OUT OF MY ROOM.”
John *In the doorway*: “IM NOT IN YOUR ROOM.”
Arthur: “dinner is ready.”
John: “OKAY.”
Arthur, louder: “OKAY!”
Arthur tans at the beach, John burns
Arthur has straight A’s, John has straight C’s
John will take a (monthly) shower and get the WHOLE floor wet
John’s favorite Christmas was when he got a bass guitar, and Arthur’s favorite was when he got his blue truck.
Arthur sits on Dutch/Hosea’s bed and just spills the tea to Hosea late into the evening (Dutch wants to get ready for bed soon)
Arthur is a PC player, and John is a console player
John has to go to the mall with Arthur when he wants to go alone because “John doesn’t socialize enough”
They both got to choose their bedroom colors, however, John wasn’t allowed to do THE DARKEST black in the store, so his room is a dark grey with a black accent wall. (Arthur’s room is blue)
Branching off of that, Arthur and John could decorate their rooms HOWEVER they wanted, there was no intervention from the dads
Hosea does the “Dad hand” during road trips when the boys have a snack he wants.
Hosea is the designated driver because Dutch has terrible road rage
They live on a pond, in fact Dutch and Hosea argued over it before buying the house, so much so that Hosea threatened a divorce because the ONLY thing he wants is a pond. Dutch folded, and Hosea fishes everyday.
Arthur loved Percy Jackson and John loved Warrior Cats.
Arthur is a cereal eater, and John is a pop-tart eater
The contrast between Arthur’s masterpieces vs John’s doodles are crazy. (They’re both proudly displayed on the front of the fridge no matter what) (yes this is based on their canonical journal entries, sue me)
John and Arthur took those embarrassing Macy’s photoshoots in the early 2000’s that are out on display for everyone to see in the future.
John has an INCREDIBLY embarrassing graduation photo from when he was in his emo phase in high school, and his dads refuse to remove it. (It’s placed next to Arthur’s gleaming grad photo)
Dutch has slippers he wears around the house, and Hosea just wears his socks.
John still doesn’t know how to swim in this AU, Hosea has tried to teach him, but John refuses to get in the water.
They have taxidermy in their house from when Hosea went hunting more often when he was younger.
Somehow Hosea and Dutch’s aesthetics work so well together.
Dutch is very much old money, and maximalist, and Hosea is definitely Vintage and Woodsy (It works together if you saw their house)
You would be convinced that John’s nails were naturally black and chipped from how much he painted them.
Hosea has a “Shop” in the garage like every dad has to have. (It’s full of fishing supplies, paint cans, and other tools ofc)
John’s room is very dark, messy, and covered in posters from every movie/Tv show/video game he’s ever seen/played. Also, making the bed? What’s that?
Arthur’s room is open and airy, with his own mountain murals painted on the walls, a full art desk, and he also doesn’t know what making the bed means.
I painted a totally unnamed curious couple’s totally unnamed horses today.
POV you’re agent Milton at the end of Chapter 3 :
No I’m not thinking about little frail 14 year old Arthur Morgan scared for his life, yet cautiously following these two men who took him in and fed him.
No I’m not thinking about them teaching him how to read and write, but also how to fight and shoot.
No I’m not thinking about Arthur learning how to ride a horse for the first time on his young filly, Boadicea. Or him begging Dutch and Hosea to let him keep this feral dog who brought chaos and laughter to the camp.
No I’m not thinking about little Arthur Morgan getting scrapes and bruises while running around and being a delinquent and hiding his scrunched face and tears as Hosea tends to his many wounds.
No I’m not thinking about Arthur Morgan in his early twenties when he was introduced to this kid who reminds him of himself, with the wildest personality and sad backstory.
And how he eventually built a brotherly relationship with that kid, John. Someone he can boss around and protect, but call an idiot from time to time, especially since he acted like one sometimes.
No I’m not thinking about Arthur Morgan in his early twenties when he had a son, and then lost him and his son’s mother a few years later. And the grief that came from that.
No I’m not thinking about Arthur Morgan in his mid twenties meeting a Woman whom he was never destined to marry, even though he tried his best for her.
No I’m in fact NOT thinking about Arthur Morgan.
I often think about Young Arthur/John experiencing a culture shock when receiving positive feedback from Hosea/Dutch when they do something well.
Like for instance; Arthur learns how to shoot a bottle from a distance, and he finally hits it dead on.
Hosea, earnestly impressed with the kid, compliments him wholeheartedly, and seeming a little more giddy this time, runs to grab another bottle.
Arthur, not really used to this kind of affection, sheepishly looks down at the gun in his hand with a small smile.
Or for John; I can imagine him and Dutch practicing how to write his name.
“J O H N M A R S T O N” he reads out every letter as he writes it. Dutch, impressed that he got it on the first try today, happily congratulates him. “Can you read it?” He asks. And John sounds out the letters with perfection, and recites everything he’s learned about pronunciation rules, as he reads it. To which Dutch is VERY impressed.
John embarrassed about all the praise, asks to move on with the lesson, which Dutch is happy to do. However John thinks about the interaction for the rest of the afternoon.
Oh yeah, here’s another fic I wrote 🤞
More van der family modern/semi-modern headcannons
Dutch is the type of guy to throw away instructions to IKEA furniture and then cry because he doesn’t automatically know how to assemble it
Dutch/Hosea gave the boys copies of their house keys for emergencies only, but they just come in and out whenever, plus bring whoever they want with them so over the years the whole gang has a house key.
Everyone is a friend of each other, met through work, school, etc. (they live in a small community so they all know each other anyway)
Susan, Swanson, Strauss, and Pearson are all friends of Dutch and Hosea from college.
Arthur would have like a 40 pack of crayons as a kid and John would take them and break them of course, and when Arthur would snatch them back, John would resort to violence. This caused road trips to be extremely long.
Roadtrips:
Arthur: “Hey look there’s a herd of cows!!”
John, extremely loud: “MOOOOOOO”
As they grew older, Arthur mainly draws or reads on roadtrips and John plays on his gameboy/Nintendo DS or sleeps. (He gets sick if he reads in the car)
Arthur definitely pushed John into hotel pools when they were younger. (One of the dads had to get him)
You can definitely hear John’s music blast through his earbuds on all occasions.
Arthur is the kind of kid who’s always looking out his window at the right time and points out any animal he sees. (John always misses it)
John got his scars from being in a bar fight when him and Javier were in a small band in their early 20s. They were in some shitty dive bar and someone broke a bottle and used it against John and Javier. (They stopped touring after that)
Arthur is the designated guy to let the dogs out at night and watch them from the porch in his pajamas, occasionally yelling at them when they start barking at something. He does this even in the dead of winter.
The boys always fight physically/verbally over basically nothing 24/7. When a fight begins stirring in front of the dads they tell them to go outside with it.
John: “I was going to take a nap, I don’t even want to go to the mall..”
Arthur: “well I didn’t even want to take you, Dad wanted you to go.”
John: “whatever.”
John had a huge Pokémon phase when he was much younger, like in 6th grade or something. Gengar is his favorite.
John grew his hair out from a buzz cut throughout high school he shaved it right before his freshman year, and it grew to his shoulders when he graduated.
In the earlier years John and Arthur would argue over which CD they should put in the car. (Dutch and Hosea had one of those thick CD binders in their car, with a huge verity of music)
Arthur: “WE LISTENED TO GUNS N ROSES LAST TIME!!”
John: “NOTHING ELSE IS GOOD.”
Arthur: “THATS NOT TRUE. What about Johnny Cash?”
John: “ugh.. no.”
Arthur: “what’s wrong with Johnny Cash?”
Dutch: “just pick a damn CD already.”
Arthur and John fight over shotgun all the time, even as adults on the rare occasion they’re taking their dad’s car somewhere
I ain’t even gonna put it past him, Young Hosea was hot asl
dutch when he first met hosea
😶 is it casual guys?
I posted a second chapter to this fic! I hope y’all enjoy it!!
UPDATE. One of the best examples of Dutch being a good dad, is in the very first mission, Outlaws from The West.
My favorite dad missions of rdr2
This is specifically Dutch and Hosea being dads
Hosea has a lot, so I’ll go in my most favorite order:
1) Advertising, the New American Art
2) The Spines of America
3) Exit Perused by a Bruised Ego
And then for Dutch:
1) Country Pursuits
2) The Joys of Civilization
3) Angelo Bronte, A Man of Honor
And of course for the both of them:
1) The New South
2) The Gilded Cage
Old man Yaoi my beloved 🫶
HES LIFTING THE PANT LEG WITH HIS FOOT ‼️
Not really like my usual posts, but I made these 4 in animal crossing yesterday
My eyes are still inside my head guys, dw.
A gorgeous commission from the amazing @architectureandmorality! Old Man Vandermatthews artistic nudity <3
Do y’all ever wonder if Dutch and Hosea knew they were going to raise an absolute UNIT like Arthur? Like he was once a skinny and rambunctious 14 year old street orphan and they took a chance on him and fed him as he grew into a fucking BEAST who is arguably bulkier than the two of them combined, and has become the main brawn of the gang.
This is basically just an Arthur Physique appreciation post but GOD DAMN.
I feel this is how Dad missions often go:
Missions with only Dutch: he’s randomly killing someone, “oh Arthur, it’s just a social call :D” *commits mass destruction and murder*
Missions with only Hosea: “Arthur… 😈 I have an idea…” *makes Arthur do the stupidest yes funniest thing* “ARTHUR HELP!! HELP, ARTHUR THIS WASNT A GOOD IDEA‼️”
Missions with both of them: “Look at this duuudee 💀💀” Arthur: 🧍♂️
“The wildest delinquent you ever did see.”
Some sons are just born unruly.
First traditional piece in a while! It started out as a doodle. I’m probably going to turn it digital.
Done on my phone so it’s very messy
Made a little van der linde gang shipping chart because i couldn't find one for rdr2. theres 2 versions in case you arent sure who is who (dw i understand ❤️)
feel free to tag me in yours so i can see ❤️❤️
im sorry if your favs arent there, i just wanted to focus on the main gang and mary (for my friend) as theres a lot of characters in the rdr games
mine is below cut
RUN KID RUN
Title: Run Kid Run
Summary: Dutch and Hosea are trying to teach John how to read but he runs off after they got frustrated and Arthur goes deep into the woods looking for John.
Word count: 2298
Notes: mild cursing | brief scene despicting an almost hanging | feedback is appreciated!!!
Tags: @onlytherocksliveforever
Happy late Christmas and Happy new year! I’m sorry I’m so late, this took me forever; I’ve been giving it a long thought and decided to comply to your second item in your wish list!
2) i love DUMB ASS John Marston and his better looking brother Arthur; give me a slice of life with the two of them pre-canon, or a story about them helping the other thru a tough time.
I’ve decided to combine both ideas and so this story came to be.
When Arthur was twenty-three, he saw a boy—dirty, savage and with a look in his eyes that had given up on living. This boy was with a rope in his neck, ready to be hanged. Dark gray with no reflection but death itself; no tears, no regret. Dead Eyes that held onto dear life with a fierceness reflected in his fists.
Next to the boy, an unnamed man spoke words of dead wisdom and nonsense which to the eyes of Arthur was meaningless.
“We have come to see the of law enacted. We will not sit idly by as people take the law into their own hands!”
Heavy kind of bullshit that Arthur didn’t enjoy a bit.
The crowd of the town roared loudly in excitement and agreement. For them, it was only entertainment, a show that made Arthur’s gut churn with anger. He tilted his hat lower and turned around, ready to move on. However, Dutch’s hand landed on his shoulder and stopped him.
“He looks like you did, a while ago,” Dutch said with a smirk before the gun in his hip shot the rope on the boy’s neck.
“He doesn’t.”
The boy’s shine returned in a glimpse that Arthur caught with both his eyes and heart. A will to fight and survive, to get the hell out of the mess that was about to start.
“What the hell Dutch?!”
“He was not meant to. Not yet.”
A sense of relief in his chest appeared with a long deep breath. He was glad for the boy that had gotten a chance to live, what was Dutch and Hosea thinking when they brought him into camp?
Arthur got wounded in the dirty fight they had in town for freeing the boy and he was resting in his tent, with Susan on his side cleaning his injuries. When Dutch and Hosea walked in, he asked: “What took ya’ so long?” with a warm grin that quickly faded into disbelief.
The boy stood between the two men, pouting his lips, frowning and crossing his arms as means to make himself more intimidating. The way Dutch smiled, looked and treated him with his gentle gestures and Hosea had given his jacket to protect him from the chilling breeze of that night was so familiar to Arthur; he had been in that place after all. What was that boy doing in camp? Similar to himself in the past, why did they needed to bring someone as intense and dumb as him? Wasn’t one dumb enough? He wondered.
“What’s your name, kid?” Arthur asked after he noticed Dutch’s gaze on him.
The boy stood silent.
“Come on boy, tell him.” Dutch crouched to his side and whispered words to him that Arthur wasn’t able to hear.
He remained silent.
When Arthur was twenty-four, he met the boy. A month had passed from his rescue and Arthur’s birthday quickly arrived with the cold and mean air of winter. There was no snow landscape yet, the skies had become dark and gray like the boy’s eyes and the fallen leaves
“John Marston,” the boy said with a mean streak that left Arthur with a bad taste in his tongue.
“Arthur Morgan.” He extended his hand to greet but John had already abandoned and left him with the words unsaid in his lips.
Arthur sighed and placed his hands on his gun belt; he could see John’s silhouette far away, hiding somewhere where he thought no one could see him, and grinned. A part of him still refused to acknowledge John, prouder than a bull and wilder than a cougar in a midnight sky, and another part of him found itself in that boy who slept with a knife under his pillow.
“John, come here!” Dutch called the next morning.
Arthur was laying in comfortably in his bed, with his worn-out leather hat covering his eyes, thinking about what to draw in his journal. A bird? A flower? An herb? His imagination was as dull as dishwater and his brain couldn’t tell skunks from house cats. Boredom was partly guilty of the dullness, too.
“John, come on.” From his closed tent, Arthur saw how Hosea’s figure grabbed John’s arm and took him somewhere beyond the reach of their shadow. A loud growl, from the boy, echoed through the whole camp that Arthur scoff. The boy was that stubborn?
The blue-eyed man closed his journal, stood up from his bed and walked out of his tent to do the chores of the day. As he chopped wood, he could see Dutch and Hosea, with John between them, sitting together in one of the round tables near the food station with a book in hand. This was going to be fun to see, Arthur thought.
“Okay, let’s try this again,” Dutch said firmly. “Read this part here.”
“No,” John scowled.
“Why not? It’s not that hard if you try. Here. The king in his…” Hosea slowly talked
John went silent.
“Boy,” Dutch lowly growled.
Arthur swung his axe over the log and splat it in half. When he was putting the wood aside, he peeked at John. The boy had his arms crossed, frowning and giving the book in the table a deadly gaze. Did he hate reading that much? Arthur laughed to himself and got caught by Hosea who looked at him with disapproval. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. He tried to slowly walk away, feigning ignorance, but the older man approached quicker than he predicted and grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Arthur.” Hosea squeezed hard the shoulder blade and grinned in a way that created grimace in Arthur’s expression, “wanna’ join us? I thought I could show you the new book I got!”
Arthur grunted.
Just great. He knew Hosea’s way of scolding Arthur and thinking about it annoyed him, however, he didn’t expect to see Dutch vexed, red-faced and squeezing the book with both his hands, yelling to John.
On the other hand, Hosea was perplexed. He dragged his hands over his now tired face and sighed.
“He wasn’t this troublesome!” Dutch said to Hosea, referring obviously to Arthur.
Something in that statement made Arthur chest puff in pride. Oh boy, he really liked that. Even if he refused to acknowledge this feeling to everyone else, he liked it when Dutch or Hosea praised him.
Arthur remembered the days when Dutch and Hosea were teaching him to read. Hot summer days, mosquitoes everywhere and that smell he couldn’t forget, berries and lemon, which brought his mind ten years back, when he was a thin, small and young boy. He grinned to the loveable thought and looked at Dutch fighting with John.
“Dutch, what’re ya doin’!? Don’t ya’ grab him like that and rub his head!”
“I know he can do it, but he’s not even trying!”
Something Arthur knew is that Dutch would take as “true” whatever he assumed; and hardly took back his words—standing for what he believed, a true blessing for the wise and a curse for the ignorant. Later on, Arthur didn’t know which of those Dutch was. A true mystery until the very end.
“Dutch, calm down, you’re gonna scare ‘im…”
“But I know he can—"
“Shut up, you pair of dimwits!” Susan yelled from afar as she sewed one of Arthur’s shirt.
And before any of them could say any further word, John slammed his hands against the table and ran away into the woods that surrounded the camp.
“Get back here, boy!”
What a mess. When Arthur saw no signs of Dutch calming down or Hosea backing down, he decided to look out for the now goner.
“John! Where are ya’!?” Arthur yelled as he stomped over some broken sticks. Definitively John.
“Ya’ damn bastard, dontchu’ ever get tired?” he whispered to himself, wondering as he furrowed his brows and rushed his pace.
As he walked deeper into the woods, the stars that normally would be faded under sunlight, had come out without any shame, telling Arthur to hurry. The breeze got colder and the sky darker and even if he found clues of where he could have gone to, the boy sure knew how to keep out of sight. He was going nuts; what the hell was the kid running from?! He had nothing to run from and nowhere to go, what was he thinking?
“John!” He called once more before he heard a gasp to his side.
The moment he turned his head, he saw a terrified boy who had fallen into the ground. Unlike the first time he saw him, fierceness shone in his eyes despite of the fear that his thin body could not hide—however, that didn’t mean it wasn’t agile. He quickly got up into his feet and started running towards the glowing moon.
“Oh no, you ain’t!”
He could hear John’s broken breathing and how he gasped for the air he didn’t have; it broke Arthur’s heart.
“Watchu’ running from, kid?!”
Arthur got closer with every step he took and grabbed without any restrains John’s wrist to stop him, quite brusque for his liking but there was nothing he could do. Those iron eyes gazed at him with the loathe and anger he deserved which left a sour flavor in his mouth. John struggled to free himself from Arthur’s grip but it only got stronger.
“Lemme ask you again, kid. Watchu’ running from?”
John struggled again and Arthur grabbed his other wrist. He took a deep breathe and closed his eyes for a moment. Was it this hard for everyone else to deal with him? Being a kid in the streets wasn’t easy, it roughens you up in a way that shatters what you truly are, breaking and eventually rotting every corner in your mind. But he was no kid in the streets no more, he could finally begin living and not just survive.
“He wanted to kill me,” John replied in a quick low whisper.
Arthur raised a brow. “Dutch was shootin’ his mouth off and by now Hosea and Susan must have given ‘im a black eye for that.” He tried to sound reassuring.
“Let go!” John fought with all his strengths to free himself; Arthur tightened his grip.
“Listen to me, kid. You got nothing to run from; here you got a bed, food and people who want ya’—”
“Dead…” John interrupted.
“Let me finish! Goddamit—as I was saying. None of ‘em want ya’ to be a goner.”
“How can I trust you? They all said I was an idiot, useless. They all hate me and they’ll kill me. It’s better if I’m gone.”
“We’re family.” Arthur meant it. He had found a part of himself in the little black-haired boy that wanted to keep running; running to never look back, from all the things he didn’t deserve.
“We ain’t.”
“Listen to me you little piece of…! You became part of us the very moment Dutch cut that rope on your neck and brought you into the camp.”
“Still; that doesn’t mean I can trust you guys. You’re outlaws.”
John wasn’t buying a single bit of what Arthur was saying. Shit. At this rate he was gonna run off by himself and God knows what would happen to him.
“They took me in when I was your age.” John’s eyes widened in curiosity; “I… well, my momma died when I was real young and my daddy… let’s say I wish he did too. They taught me how to read and Hosea taught me how to draw.”
Despite of the nervousness inside him, Arthur took the journal out of his satchel and gave it to John without letting go of one of his wrists. He eagerly flipped through the pages and stopped to look at some of the drawings it contained; some of the graphite stuck into his fingers, but it didn’t stop him from eyeing with detail each illustration.
“Why didn’t ya’ read? Back then, when Dutch and Hosea asked you to.”
There was a long pregnant pause. “I did—read it, I mean. I, uh, wasn’t sure to er, say it out loud.”
“Really?” Arthur smiled from ear to ear. “See? You’re smart, John! Ya’ ain’t that bad, there’s potential.”
John blushed at Arthur’s praise and kept looking at the drawings until he reached the last one, that page that had remained blank for the whole day.
“They are family to me. Family is everything; I’d die for it.” His voice didn’t shake even once.
John closed the journal and gave Arthur a gaze full of admiration that Arthur wasn’t worthy of. He could be one nasty son-of-a-bitch, rash to anger and emotions; unfamiliar to giving inspirational speeches like Dutch would do or smooth-talking like Hosea the Conman.
“And I will…” he stuttered, “I, uh…”
“You what.”
“I won’t let them kill ya’; just in case.”
A mischievous grin appeared in John’s face. “That won’t stop me tho.”
Arthur had let his guard down. John escaped from his grip and started to run the fastest he could. Where the hell was he going to and, most importantly, where the heck had he gotten all that damn energy from?
“Cuz’ I’ll kill ya’ myself, you little piece of shit!”
“Thank you, brother” John screamed in the distance.
“You ain’t got the right to be my brother!” Yet, he wanted to say but kept it to himself.
That day, when Arthur was twenty-four, his family grew by one member. Even if mocked him every now and then and behaved like assholes, it was the most important thing to Arthur. It was everything he had—not like money or gold; those two could go straight to hell unless Dutch and Hosea gave the word.