Chapter Text
The first time Boyd paid any mind to Raylan Givens, he was smashing Dickie Bennet's knee out.
After that, Boyd never really stopped paying attention.
Paying, he thought, was a good word for it, because it was like paying tribute. Giving Raylan the space in Boyd's mind he rightly deserved. Every night, most mornings, he closed his eyes, and paid his tribute to Raylan's body, and jaw, and harsh laugh.
They'd known each other a little for all of both their lives, same as Boyd had known mostly everyone in the holler.
Raylan was: a Givens, a baseball player every girl Boyd knew was obsessed with, his daddy's son, the most beautiful person Boyd thought he'd ever seen.
They passed by each other in school. Everyone said Raylan had a chance of going to college, getting a scholarship to play ball. Boyd would see him in the hall, always looking pissy. Or at parties, sprawled on a chair with a girl on his lap, a drink hanging from his fingers, his head tipped all the way back and his eyes closed, looking practically like he was asleep.
It made it easy for Boyd to take good long looks at him: the angled hollow under his chin, the tendons that would flex in his neck from time to time, the way his face stayed quiet and pretty even when his fists tightened enough that his knuckles turned to white and his paper cup of moonshine dented in under his fingers.
When they were outside at summer parties, Boyd let himself feel poetic about it. Raylan's face tipped up toward the stars, the stars tipped down toward him. He imagined himself up on the moon, like the astronaut who'd visited their school, who'd told them he got to choose any one thing to do up there, so he'd swung a golf club. Boyd thought to himself, if he was ever up there, he'd pour out a jar of moonshine, watch it float in the air like coal dust, and he'd look down and be looking at Raylan; be paying Raylan mind all the way from space. It was a crazy thing to think, but he only ever did it outside under summer stars, a girl in Raylan's lap, so he figured there was no harm.
They talked, just a little, sometimes. Boyd nodding at him and saying Raylan Givens and Raylan saying Boyd Crowder back, the long drawn out drawl of it in his voice following Boyd home, and to bed, and into his dreams.
Then they graduated, and started digging coal together.
ᨑ
"Boyd," Raylan complains, eyes glancing sideways across the width of the cab. His hand is already on Boyd's cock, pulled out the fly of his jeans.
Boyd has his hands up behind his head, grabbing onto the headrest.
"I'll get you next," he tells Raylan, his voice sliding out drunker than he is.
Usually when they do this, they keep it simple. Or something Raylan could tell himself is simple, Boyd thinks. They work from before sun up, get out in the early afternoon hyped up and exhausted at the same time, no parties for hours, no girls for miles.
Boyd doesn't feel anything simple, but it is easy: drive the truck down the back road one turn down from the mine, pull in and crank down the windows to the fresh air, jerk each other off at the same time, staring out the windshield. Or, Raylan staring out the windshield.
This time, Boyd wants to focus on just the feeling of Raylan touching him, to pay it mind: Raylan's hand rough and intent, the same way Boyd imagines he touches himself when he's alone; his breathing quick but controlled across the truck, the smell of him, sweat and coal and aftershave patted on to try and cover it up.
It's the first time he's worn that. Usually, they get off work, rinse off in the freezing showers of the locker room, and hop in the truck still smelling mostly like a mine. They don't always end up here–sometimes they'll drive to the bar in Cumberland, or just around and around the hills in Harlan, Boyd coming up with things to say and Raylan just mostly quiet. They've gone to Boyd's daddy's old cabin a couple times, practiced shooting out back and fooled around inside.
Raylan never says much about anything, but he'll hang close to Boyd in the mine, and then just keep doing the same after, until they're climbing into Boyd's old truck together.
The first time Boyd turned down the road by the creek, he'd just been thinking he'd tell Raylan it was a good spot to bring girls. Maybe ask if Raylan'd ever had a girlfriend, because Boyd didn't know of one. And then he'd parked, and Raylan had turned to him and said, "If you brought me here thinking I'd put out, I'm sorry to tell you you're sorely mistaken," a little smirk on him, a joke he wouldn’t have guessed was close to true. Boyd had raised an eyebrow and asked him, "Am I, now?" And then, stupid and reckless feeling, thinking nothing about Dickie Bennet’s knee, everything about brown eyes and thick hair and a long, lean body, he'd reached across the cab of the truck and run one finger along the rough stitching on the underside of one of Raylan's belt loops, a swoop in his stomach like he was a mine collapsing in on itself, a black hole being formed.
The cologne tonight could be because Raylan is planning to see a girl later, Boyd tells himself. Ain’t for Boyd, because even if Raylan wanted to wear it for him, there's no way he'd do it if he thought Boyd would notice.
Boyd breathes in deep, the spicy scent of it, of the creek out the window, of coal.
He thrusts up into Raylan's hand and opens his eyes, tipping his head sideways to find Raylan's eyes right on where his hand's moving against Boyd's cock, and it's a shock of ache that makes him leak out, too much pleasure to hold inside him.
Raylan never looks over at him, but here he is, eyes wide like he can't help it, pretty mouth parted.
Boyd thrusts up again, and Raylan makes another sound, annoyed even though it doesn't match his face.
"I will get you next, Raylan," Boyd tells him, "I know you know I'm good for it." Raylan's hand tightens a little, and he looks away, rocking his jaw back and forth. He smells like firewood burnt to black, and his hand tightens, and he's a dream come true, sitting here doing this with Boyd like it's simple.
"I'll blow you," Boyd tells him, half just to see his reaction, half a promise.
Raylan's eyes snap back across the cab, but this time they land on Boyd's, squinted suspicious like what he said's so good it might be a joke. Same as when Boyd tells him, "We going to the diner for pancakes" or "I got some good Bennet weed" after a long shift, but deeper, warmer, and Boyd knocks his hand out of the way at the last second, desperate, and strokes himself quick and breathless through his orgasm.
When he looks back over, Raylan's staring out the windshield again, the hand he had on Boyd on his own thigh, fingers digging into the muscle of it through his jeans.
It's a minute of work, figuring out a way to make his muscles, stiff and sore from the mine, let him get where he wants to be, and then to pry Raylan's fingers off himself and put them in Boyd's hair instead.
In his mouth, Raylan is hot, sweat-salty and bitter, a good margin bigger than he's ever felt in Boyd's hand.
Boyd feels heady with it, wordless almost.
Raylan curses above him, and Boyd wishes they were in a better position so he could look up, see if Raylan's looking out the windshield or down at him.
When Raylan comes, he says Boyd's name on a groan. His hand slides to the back of Boyd's neck, his palm hot and rough, his thumb stroking once over Boyd's nape.
ᨑ
Boyd drives them by the VFW, looks past where Raylan’s spread loose and tired and worked over in more ways than one, his head tipped back on the seat, his hand dangling out the open window. Raylan blinks over to check the parking lot, and then blinks back forward. Arlo’s truck isn’t there, which means he’s more’n likely at the house.
“Cabin?” Boyd offers. It’ll make their drive in to the mine in the morning long, but they’ll have a roof over their heads and a bed to share.
Raylan rocks his head slowly against the seat. “Nah. Truck’s fine.”
There’s a little field just a few miles from the mine, the road to it chained off with no trespassing signs so no one ever bothers to go down it.
Raylan hops out when they get to the mouth of it, hefts the chain up so Boyd can drive under it.
All things equal, Boyd would rather be in the cabin, four walls around them, a door between them and everyone else. It makes it feel more safe; makes him believe for a night that they have time to take.
He’s been thinking about their last night up there for a week and a half. Raylan under him, his head twisted to the side so Boyd had a perfect view at the way his jaw slid back and forth like a lock, the way the tendons in his neck flexed tight over and over again while Boyd slid his dick along Raylan’s, took them both in hand. It's the only time they've done anything like that; that close.
Boyd drives into the middle of the field, the truck bumping through long, deep-summer grass.
As soon as he stops, Raylan opens the door and hops out, his body long and still loose.
Boyd's still smiling, feeling cocky, when they meet at the tailgate and hop into the truck bed. Raylan watches Boyd as he unrolls the big sleeping bag he’s taken to keeping back here from the tarp it’s wrapped in, pulls out a thin pillow and a jar of moonshine.
Raylan takes the jar, tips back a long drink while Boyd makes their bed.
The moon is out, dull in the still half-light sky. Boyd slides into the sleeping back to stare up at it.
Raylan crawls up the truck bed, slides himself in alongside Boyd, yanks at the pillow until he’s content he’s got enough.
This is the less simple part of it, Boyd thinks. The two of them and no one else for miles, cicadas and crickets starting up, the whole big sky looking down to pay mind to Raylan Givens.
“Don’t think I’m ever going to do that to you,” Raylan drawls, like it’s a lazy observation and not something he’s clearly been thinking about for the two hours it’s been now since he finished against Boyd’s cheek.
“Alright with me,” Boyd tells him easily. “Plenty attached to your hand already.”
When Boyd wakes up, it’s not to the sun and the robins, it’s to the sound of the sleeping bag zipper, and then the rustle Raylan moving down between his legs, and taking him into the heat of his mouth.
He tries and fails not to think about it all the next day in the mine. Doesn’t want to get coal dust on the memory; to let the idea of the softness of Raylan’s hair and the quiet way he’d kept on gagging this close to all the other men.
Raylan stays close, like always, a warm, steady presence alongside Boyd in the cold and pitch black.
ᨑ
It’s raining when they get out. Boyd watches it turn the coal on Raylan’s face into black rivulets that he has to spit out, his face twisting up pissy at the taste of them on his lips, same way he'd looked before he spit Boyd's come over the side of the truck that morning.
Raylan catches him looking, and Boyd just–he thinks, God, I want him. He prays it.
He thinks about how much money he’ll have after the summer's over; how much Raylan will. How many more miles his truck has in it.
It's worse than it ever was before, when he'd barely ever talked to Raylan, when there was no chance of any of it, when it was just him and his thoughts and miles and miles of hills and hollers to soak them up, to let the feelings melt into the ground like spring snow.
Since the back of the truck won’t work in the rain, they go to the cabin. Drive past the VFW first, of course, even though Boyd tells himself he’s not the only one hoping they don’t find Arlo’s truck there.
Raylan touches him in the car, once they’re out of town. Just a second, fingertip brushing just under the sleeve of Boyd’s t-shirt, callused and cool.
When Boyd glances over, he’s turned away already, looking out the window.
They roll a joint out of his daddy’s weed stash and smoke it on the couch, Raylan shirtless in the heat, his legs sprawled so far apart his knee is pressed into Boyd’s thigh.
Boyd can’t stop looking at him. The flat plane of his chest, the cuts of muscles across his stomach, his hips. He’s still never touched Raylan as much as he wants to. He’s never kissed him anywhere but his dick, just that once.
High and messy, he asks for it: “Raylan Givens, can I kiss you?”
Raylan rolls his eyes over to Boyd’s. “Shut up, asshole,” he says, huffing a laugh, like that’s a stupid question.
Boyd reckons he’s right.