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Raylan sighs in the courthouse elevator, rubbing at his temples. He got up too damn early, then put up with too damn much nonsense, and now he’s exhausted before noon on a Thursday, which does not bode well for the rest of his day.
“How was transport?” Tim asks when Raylan walks in.
“Uneventful,” Raylan says, sitting heavy in his chair and taking his hat off, scrubbing the heels of his hands over his eyes. The prisoner, a thief named Reggie Porter, had headbutted Raylan getting into the car, so Raylan had to put him in the trunk for part of the journey. He took Reggie out at a gas station and split a cherry slushie with him, so he was docile the rest of the way to Tramble, but Raylan’s head still hurts a little.
“What counts as an event for you?” Rachel asks, walking in from the conference room, where she’s assembling something on the whiteboard. “You got a bruise on your head you didn’t have this morning.”
“An event is something I can’t handle by myself,” Raylan says. “What are you up to in there?”
“What, you can’t find your own work, so you need to poach mine?” Rachel asks.
“I was merely offering my services,” Raylan says. “Don’t let me step on your toes.”
“You a good dancer?” Tim asks, out of nowhere.
“Not especially,” Raylan says. Boyd was always the better dancer between them.
“Bryce Howard,” Rachel says, tossing the file on his desk. “Real piece of work. Take a look if you want, but I think I’ve got it from here.”
Raylan cracks it open, looking through the extensive list of crimes before his eyes settle on the picture they have on file, lifting it gingerly off the page like a hissing snake. Raylan stares at the picture in his hand for ten unblinking seconds before he drops it, snaps the file closed, and walks to Art’s office.
“Raylan,” Art says, not looking up yet. “What’s up?”
“I need to take a few vacation days,” Raylan says.
Art looks up at that, takes his glasses off to peer up at Raylan. Raylan tries to make eye contact and keep it, isn’t quite sure if he succeeds.
“When do you need them?” Art asks, his eyebrows furrowed.
“Today and tomorrow,” Raylan says. “Maybe Monday too.”
“You’re not sure?” Art asks, audibly concerned now. Raylan stays quiet. Art waits a few more seconds before realizing Raylan has nothing else to say. “Any active cases right now?”
“Just wrapped up my last one this morning,” Raylan says, referring to the prisoner transport he had been assigned early in the morning after one too many coffeeless Wednesdays.
“Paperwork done?” Art asks.
“Can be done in thirty minutes,” Raylan offers.
Art stares at him for a few more beats. “You know you can talk to me if--” he starts.
“I know,” Raylan says, too fast. He looks at the toes of his boots, and then up at the papers on Art’s desk.
“Just answer one question, Raylan,” Art asks, “and I’ll give you as many days as you want.” Raylan raises his eyebrows and waits. “Are you planning on shooting anyone?”
“No, sir,” he responds, as honest as he’s ever been.
“Alright,” Art says, though there’s still concern in his voice. “I’ll talk to you Tuesday then, unless I hear from you before.”
“Alright,” Raylan echoes, before turning and leaving. Art’s eyes are heavy on him through the glass walls of his office for the next twenty minutes as Raylan finishes his report and uploads it to the right directory. He makes sure to submit his time off request, each keystroke deliberate and final. Then, he gets up and leaves, his gun on his hip, his badge on his desk.
*
He cancels on his dinner plans with Winona somewhere between the office and his car, receives her confirmation text at the gas station. The actual words she uses get shoved out of his head as soon as he reads them, but when he puts his phone in his pocket, he knows there’s nobody on earth who expects to see him for the next few days.
He gets in his car and drives. He doesn’t have a destination in mind, just the smooth flat road, the way it keeps on going. The sound of the radio clashes violently with the noise in his head, so he turns it off. He keeps driving. The road is quiet, only a few other cars with him. At any moment, he’ll turn around and head back to Lexington so he can get a good night’s sleep in a motel room he regrets leaving, but he’s got a full tank. He can turn around whenever he wants. He’ll turn around when he can. He’ll turn around soon.
Harlan County creeps around him, slowly smothering him in her coal-dense embrace. He doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t think about anything. He keeps driving.
*
When he finally parks in front of Boyd’s bar, it’s not a surprise. He should have known this was where he was going to end up. For a second he thinks about pulling out of the lot, turning around and driving straight back to Lexington, but if he could do that, he would have already.
He gets out of the car and walks inside.
There are a few people inside when Raylan walks in, a couple in the booth, one by the bar. Boyd is wiping something down, dressed in one of those snappy vests of his, his watch chain gleaming in the dim light of the bar signs. Raylan stares for a long moment, struck dumb by the sight of him.
“US Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens,” Boyd calls, looking not a bit surprised to see Raylan walk in. He must have heard the car pull up. “What brings you to my fine establishment today?”
“Not here as a Marshal,” Raylan mutters, summoning the will to walk forwards and sit at the bar. He keeps his head tilted down, the brim of his hat blocking out the world.
“No?” Boyd asks, meeting him where he sits on the orange leather barstool. Raylan doesn’t look at him, doesn’t think he could stomach it again. “Then what are you here as?”
Raylan shrugs. “Man looking for a drink.”
“Surely there are watering holes in Lexington,” Boyd asks, but now there’s a new quality in his voice, something probing.
“Sure are,” Raylan says, feeling stupid. “Guess I should go then, huh?”
“Well now, let’s not be hasty,” Boyd says, grabbing a glass. “Though I’m certain there’s many a fine liquor to be found in Lexington, I’m equally certain none of it compares to the spirits I have at my disposal.”
“I’ll take a double of something strong,” Raylan says to the counter. He can almost hear the gears in Boyd's head spinning. He doesn’t look up to confirm his suspicion, doesn’t see the need.
“You know, Raylan, I admit, it’s a tad surprising that you would show up at my place of employ during working hours without a badge on your hip,” Boyd says as he grabs a bottle of something dark. “Not exactly the behavior I expect from you.”
“I took the day off,” Raylan responds. Boyd freezes for half a second, blink and you’ll miss it, before he continues pouring Raylan more than a few fingers worth of booze, his movements strange and graceful like a cat or some kind of bird of prey.
“And what precipitated such a joyous and unlikely event?” Boyd asks, his obvious concern now filtering into his speech as well.
Raylan doesn’t answer. He could lie, but Boyd would know he was lying. He could tell the truth, but there are too many people around, too many eyes. He should never have come here.
Boyd places the bourbon in front of him on the wooden bar. Raylan reaches for it, but Boyd grabs his wrist before he makes contact. Raylan tenses, freezes in place, and they hold like that for a long time, Raylan’s pulse the fire of a Gatling gun against Boyd’s thumb.
Slowly, Raylan looks up to meet Boyd’s gaze. Whatever Boyd sees on his face darkens his expression, his eyes narrowing, something deep and furious lighting up behind his green eyes.
“Raylan,” Boyd says, his voice low and urgent. Raylan pulls his arm out of Boyd’s grip and grabs the glass, throwing the liquor back. It’s smooth and strong, and kicks like a mule, but the burn feels like something at least.
“Thanks for the drink,” he says, getting up to leave.
“Raylan, did you want to speak in the backroom for a quick second?” Boyd asks, something almost like panic entering his tone as Raylan stands. “I had a question I wanted to ask you about the general decor.”
“Not really,” Raylan says. It was a mistake to come here. He shouldn’t be here. He should be in a motel room, jerking off to something softcore on the television, drunk out of his mind. In a few hours, that’s exactly where he’ll be. He’s no company for Winona tonight. “Don’t think I have much to offer on the matter.”
Boyd walks around the bar and moves to Raylan, too close, too fast. Raylan stills when he gets within reaching distance, holds his breath so he won’t have to deal with the smell of him, cedar and soap and something unique to Boyd that hits Raylan like the five-thirty coal train every time he encounters it.
He smelled a cologne that reminded him of Boyd once, in some mall in Utah. He had stopped in his tracks, following his nose like a hound to a kiosk manned by some hapless teenager getting paid minimum wage. Winona used to make fun of him for never using it, for leaving it boxed up in a small corner of the bathroom counter, next to his toothpaste and his aftershave. The night he moved to Miami, leaving Winona behind to sleep with the realtor, he had taken the cologne with him, packed carefully in a small suitcase containing most of his earthly possessions.
“You know, I was just about to go on an errand up to Hazard,” Boyd says in a quick low voice as he nears him, his fingers rubbing at his lips and chin in a thoroughly distracting manner. “I have to pick up some supplies for the bar from one of my distributors. Hazard’s about an hour and some change away, the deal oughta take thirty minutes or so, makes it a round trip of a little less than three hours. Now it occurs to me that as you are here as a private citizen, you might consider accompanying me on my trek. Keep my attention on the road and whatnot.”
“Don’t you have people for that?” Raylan asks, casting a look at the very visibly armed man in the bar, glaring at Raylan.
“None who keep my attention the way you do,” Boyd says, too earnest to endure.
Raylan should say no. He has no idea if the purpose of this road trip is legal or not, and he doesn’t need to be in a car for three more hours considering the drive he took down here. Boyd is sure to ask him all kinds of questions, and he has no interest in answering any of them.
“When do we leave?” he asks.
“I’ll get my coat and my keys,” Boyd says, his eyes lit up with triumph. “You go wait by my car.”
*
The first thirty minutes in the car are spent in relative silence. Boyd stops by a gas station for a full tank and buys Raylan a Dr. Pepper that he nurses quietly as Boyd drives. Bon Jovi comes on the radio, and Boyd doesn’t change the channel, speaking volumes about his worry over Raylan. Boyd hates Bon Jovi.
“Do I want to know what you’re picking up when we get there?” Raylan asks at one point.
“I don’t know, Raylan, do you?” Boyd asks, refusing to take the bait.
“Guess not,” Raylan says, before raising the Dr. Pepper to his lips.
There’s another long silence. Bon Jovi says he’s wanted dead or alive and Boyd rolls his eyes when he thinks Raylan isn’t looking.
“Why’d you ask me to come with you?” Raylan asks eventually.
“Would you believe I missed your sparkling company?” Boyd asks, the edge of his smile catching the light, dazzling Raylan for a second. “Your scintillating conversation? Your rare insight?”
“No,” Raylan responds flatly, though his lips do curve up at the thought.
“Well, then I imagine there’s no answer I can give you that you would believe. Nothing true at least.”
Silence again. Words well up behind Raylan’s tongue like blood in a fresh cut, but he swallows them down. He had expected Boyd to pry, but Boyd always surprises him right when Raylan thinks he has him pinned.
“You know, Art says Rachel is his best Marshal,” Raylan says, apropos of nothing, ten minutes later. Boyd makes an inquiring noise, but otherwise stays silent. “I’ll never admit it to his face, but I agree with him. She’s smart, savvy, tenacious. Disciplined as all hell too. I typically get the cases that fit my specific style, less surveillance, more going into dangerous places with angry people and provoking them. Rachel gets all kinds though. White collar criminals, gun thugs, arms dealers, rapists and molesters, Rachel always knows exactly how to get her man, or woman in certain cases.”
“Well, Raylan, given my own personal experience with the Marshal, I can’t say I have any grounds on which to dispute your claim,” Boyd says mildly.
“Today, Rachel was given the task of finding a felon by the name of Bryce Howard. He was a legbreaker for the Dixie Mafia way back in the day, before he struck out on his own and got into the arms dealing business. From there he diversified his assets, starting up a sex trafficking ring that spanned three different states.”
“Sounds like the kind of man your office would be well-served to bring in,” Boyd says, cautious.
“That he is,” Raylan says, nodding. There’s a long pause as Raylan stares out of the windshield, swallowing to bring moisture back into his mouth. “I used to fuck him for money.”
To Boyd’s credit, he doesn’t move a muscle. He stays perfectly still, his eyes staying directly on the road in front of him. Even so, the silence in the car takes on a new quality. Raylan shifts in his seat, looks out the passenger window.
“When I got out of Harlan, I didn’t have the funds to put myself through all four years at UK. Marshals paid for some, Aunt Helen paid for a little more, but I had to work like a dog to make up the difference. I cleaned bathrooms in dive bars, dealt a little weed, though that was risky considering I was aiming to join the federals, even worked graveyard shifts at cemeteries.”
“You always were a touch too familiar with tombstones,” Boyd comments lightly, and Raylan feels his throat clog up with something strong and miserable.
“A girlfriend told me I had the looks of a rent boy as a joke, but the idea stuck with me. Sex was easy, and I had no qualms about getting paid for it. I knew a little about how to make it as a whore, thanks to some conversations with the girls at Audry’s. It wasn’t that difficult. Some nights I scrubbed puke off bathroom floors, other nights I’d put on a tight button-down to sit in hotel bars and make eyes at anyone who looked at me twice. Ended up on my knees either way.”
“I mostly landed what you’d expect, recently divorced cougars and closeted married fellas in town for business, but I had a few regulars who lived in the area. It was always better to have regulars, to be able to rely on the money.”
“I suppose this Bryce fellow was one such regular,” Boyd says, indicating a turn.
“You suppose correctly,” Raylan says lightly. “Though he didn’t go by that name with me. Called himself Clint like the actor. He wasn’t that much older, in his early thirties, and he looked good, compared to my typical clientele. He called me Cowboy, got off on slapping me around in bed. I made him pay extra for the privilege, of course, but at the time I liked it. Looked forward to it even. It felt good. Felt like I earned it with him more than I did with any of the rest.”
Boyd’s jaw is clenched, but his hands are light around the steering wheel as he drives them down a back road.
Raylan keeps talking, unable to stop now that he’s started. “The more I fucked him, the harder he’d swing. I remember one time he hit me so hard I blacked out with him inside me. Woke up to an empty bed and a black eye, my usual rate on the bedside table in cash, plus a little more for the inconvenience. I never had any proof, but I knew he hadn’t stopped until he got his. At the time I was grateful. He didn’t have to pay me, could have just left while I was unconscious, but he kept his word. That meant something to me.”
“A man’s word is his bond,” Boyd says, sounding like he was very far away.
Raylan looks out through the passenger side window. “I wish I could say I never fucked him again, but I did, over and over until I finished my classes and went off to Glynco for training. It was good money. I couldn’t afford to turn it down. Or maybe I just thought it was what I deserved.”
Boyd is silent next to him, wound tight like a spring.
“When I saw his picture in the file today, next to that list of all his crimes, I couldn’t for the life of me muster up any surprise. I always knew the kind of man he was. I don’t rightly know why I got so worked up about it. I guess it made me wonder what kind of man I am. A deputy marshal, or a gun thug’s whore.”
“Raylan,” Boyd says, sounding pained.
“Save it,” Raylan says, more exhausted than he thinks he’s ever been in his life. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“I suppose not,” Boyd sighs, pulling up in front of a warehouse and parking.
A burly looking guy built like a brick shithouse comes out of the warehouse, crossing his arms and glaring at Boyd’s car.
“You wanna stay in the car?” Boyd asks. Raylan nods. “Okay.”
Boyd gets out and exchanges words with the man, who shakes his head a few times. Boyd goes still and tense the way he does when he’s anticipating violence, his hands shoved deep into his pockets as he winds up, an explosive rage building in his back. By the time the other man starts to reach for his hip, Raylan is out of the car, slamming the door behind him.
“Everything alright here?” he asks, already on the razor’s edge, taking a few steps forward.
Boyd spins around, looking a little wild-eyed. “We’re doing just fine, thank you,” he says. “I thought you were going to stay in the car.”
“Yeah, cowboy,” Shithouse corroborates, the word sending a pulse of heat into Raylan’s gun hand. His fingers twitch, itchy. “Why don’t you get back in the car and wait for the men to finish talking?”
“Well, from my perspective, it seemed to me that you fellas might have been having something of a disagreement,” Raylan says, in the most mild tone he can muster. Boyd’s eyes narrow, no doubt hearing the rage underneath. “I thought you might benefit from my services as a mediator.”
“I was just telling your boyfriend here that the price has changed,” Shithouse says. “And if he doesn’t like it, he can take it up with my boys.”
The warehouse door opens up again to reveal two young men, both similarly gargantuan.
“You could take it up with them too,” he says, leering at Raylan. “They’d love to have a private word with you. Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll be polite. They’ll even take turns.”
Raylan glares at Boyd for never being in a normal goddamn situation before he pulls his jacket back to show his holstered gun.
“The thing is, it sounds to me like you already struck a deal with Boyd here, and if I know anything, I know a man’s word is his bond,” Raylan says, a small tremor finding its way into his voice. “Now I think it would be mighty unfair of you to renege on that deal after Boyd drove out an hour to see you, so I propose you give Boyd what he paid for and you can hash out a new price for the next delivery when we are long gone from Hazard.”
“And what are you gonna do if I turn down your proposal, pretty boy?” Shithouse asks, stepping forward to menace him, but Raylan’s gun is up and pointed at his head before he finishes the sentence, something dark and familiar rising hot in his chest.
Everyone freezes, even Boyd.
“Well, to answer your question, in the time it’ll take for the two young men behind you to get their guns out, I could put two in your forehead easy. Now I don’t particularly want to do that, no more than I want to put bullets in their chests, but I’ve had a long goddamn day and I can always say you pulled first.”
Boyd backs up while Raylan talks, getting some distance from Raylan’s new targets.
“From this point, there’s just about two ways this can go. One, l start shooting and I don’t stop till I’m done, or two, I lower my gun and you uphold your bargain. Now, can we all get on with our night, or am I going to have to start killing folks?” Raylan asks. He wants to believe he’s bluffing, but he wants a lot of things he can’t have. It would be easy to shoot them, and easy to get away with it. Only Boyd would know and he would never tell.
There’s a long pause as everyone evaluates their options before Shithouse takes a step back and puts his hands up, gesturing for his boys to go back inside.
“You’re lucky you brought your boyfriend,” he says to Boyd as the meatheads bring out two cardboard boxes and begin to load them in Boyd’s truck. Raylan lowers his gun but keeps it in his hand, keeping track of everyone else’s hands as well. “Next time we won’t go so easy.”
“Gentlemen, after what has transpired tonight I would be surprised if there was indeed a next time at all,” Boyd says, staring at Raylan with something peculiar in his eyes.
After they finish loading the trunk, the behemoths walk back into the warehouse, leaving Raylan and Boyd behind. The air is still and quiet around them.
“Now that that’s done with, do you want to tell me what I just aided and abetted?” Raylan asks, weary.
“See for yourself,” Boyd says, opening the trunk again to show Raylan the contents of the boxes, four gallons of clear moonshine and nothing else. “Their stock can’t compare to Mags’ apple pie, but it’s smooth as sin and goes down twice as easy. You can sample it if you’d like.”
“I’ll pass,” Raylan says, turning away.
“You really thought it was contraband, didn’t you? Narcotics or something like it,” Boyd says, stopping Raylan in his tracks.
“I did,” Raylan says.
“Then why did you intercede on my behalf?” Boyd asks, that peculiar light still in his eyes.
Raylan stares at Boyd for a long second, wondering if Boyd genuinely believes that Raylan could sit and watch him get killed from inside the car while he had a gun on his hip and a clear shot at the threat, if Boyd is actually that profoundly stupid.
“I already told you,” Raylan says eventually, shaking his head, moving back to the passenger seat. “I’ve had a long goddamn day.”
*
They stop at the Hardee’s in Hyden on the way back and grab some burgers for dinner as the sky darkens around them. They don’t eat in the car, driving down 421 until Boyd pulls over to the side of the highway, turning off the engine so there’s no light other than what the moon provides.
They get out and sit on the hood of the car to eat, like they’re teenagers again and they just got off of a long shift, passing napkins and fries back and forth in silence. The salt and grease settles something in Raylan’s stomach, and he feels some hunger tension exit his shoulders, leaving behind a strange electricity in his skin, green skies before a tornado.
It’s a beautiful night, not too warm or cold, lit by constellations that Boyd named for him decades ago. He left his hat in the car, for one reason or another, and the breeze flirts with his hair, tugging at it gently. Raylan wonders if anyone driving by would be able to tell them apart, if their shadowed silhouettes have merged into one beast, melding in the places where their shoulders and thighs meet.
They finish their food quickly, licking their fingers clean. Boyd collects their trash into a ball, shoving it into one of their takeaway bags and tossing it into the backseat, before walking back and staring Raylan down.
“Ready to head out?” Raylan asks, antsy for some reason, his fingers fiddling with his horseshoe ring, his legs restless and jittery.
Boyd shakes his head, his hands fisted in his pockets as he watches Raylan.
“No, Raylan, I am not,” he says, taking a step forward so his thighs are touching Raylan’s knees, closing in on him like Raylan’s been in a snare this whole time and Boyd has finally come to skin him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Raylan asks, as Boyd crowds Raylan up against the hood of the car, nudging himself between Raylan’s spread knees.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” Boyd asks, his voice soft and fond and so goddamn dangerous. Raylan shudders. He doesn’t know why he thought Boyd was just going to leave him alone. He never did before, when Raylan got this way.
“Boyd,” Raylan warns.
“Raylan,” Boyd says, hypnotic like a snake charmer. “When’s the last time you touched someone, wasn’t trying to hurt you or fuck you?”
Boyd’s hand on his wrist in the bar. Before that, the prisoner transport this morning. Raylan had grabbed him by the forearms to get his cuffs on. Before that, a hand on Winona’s back three nights ago when they went to dinner, but Raylan’s not sure that counts as they fucked later that night.
“Boyd,” Raylan says again, protesting weakly. “We can’t—“
“Ain’t no one around,” Boyd murmurs, somehow closer, slipping one hand around Raylan’s back, sliding it up under his shirt to touch his skin. “No service in this area, no lights. Nobody here but you, me, and the stars. You could scream for help, Raylan, and I’m the only one who’d hear you.”
“Is that a threat?” Raylan asks, his hands gripping tight on the metal under him, this pulse thrumming through his body. He feels desperate and scared like a cornered animal, like at any moment he could leap for Boyd’s throat and rip him open.
“It’s a promise,” Boyd says, his voice patient and familiar and steady, his hand on Raylan’s back moving in slow circles, sending shocks of static up Raylan’s spine. “You can give in, Raylan. We’re alone. We’re as alone as two people on earth could possibly be. There’s nobody watching, not God, not his angels, nobody but me.”
Raylan doesn’t know why that’s what does it, no more than he knows why he drove down to Harlan in the first place, but as Boyd speaks, a great howling fills his ears, like he’s caught up in a windstorm and the ground has fallen away from him, and something in his chest collapses, a sinkhole in a long-forgotten mine shaft.
Raylan lets out a broken noise as he crumples, shoving his face hard into Boyd’s chest, mashing his nose up against Boyd’s sternum to feel his pulse thrumming through his own skull. Boyd catches him as he does, pulling him close and wrapping his other hand tight around the nape of Raylan’s neck.
“There we go, darling,” Boyd mumbles into his hair, pressing his lips hard against Raylan’s scalp. Raylan hopes he bruises, hopes he can feel the imprint of Boyd’s mouth on his skull until the day he dies. “Just let go, baby, that’s it.”
Raylan fumbles clumsily with the buttons on Boyd’s coat until it’s open, scrabbles his hands underneath to steal his warmth. His fingers claw into Boyd’s back, digging into his skin like he’s hanging over a chasm, and Boyd is the only solid ground in reach. He moves his head up from Boyd’s chest to his throat, his nose smashed up against Boyd’s jugular. He’s shaking, he realizes, breathing hard and fast and wet, something electric and poisonous running through his bloodstream.
“Oh god,” Raylan hears, a desperate wretched voice that almost makes him cringe away when he realizes that it’s his, that those are his strangled words. “Oh god, Boyd, oh god.”
Boyd’s neck is wet with spit and sweat, dampening his shirt collar, and Raylan’s knees are giving away under him, Boyd and his car the only things on earth keeping him upright. Images pass through his mind, fists raining down on him, one hundred gunshots being fired in a cacophony of heat and light, a whispered voice calling him Cowboy, dark finger-shaped bruises in a ring around his throat, an open faced slap from his father or any other angry man who wanted to make him bleed, who wanted to see him cry, who wanted to put him on his back or his stomach or his knees.
“You’re okay, honey, I’ve got you, my darling, my Raylan,” Boyd croons, drowning out the memories with cedar and soap, with the lean warm presence of him. Raylan tries to worm his way closer, tries to force his way through Boyd’s skin, under his ribcage where it’s safest. His fingers come up to tear at the buttons on Boyd’s shirt too, exposing the soft skin of his neck. Raylan lets out a wet sob and bites down hard on Boyd’s collarbone to shut his traitorous mouth. Boyd doesn’t pull away, doesn’t even flinch, just keeps holding Raylan in the cage of his body, murmuring soothing nonsense about how Raylan is safe now, how Raylan never has to be scared again. Raylan can’t believe him, can barely listen to him, just clings to him hard enough to bruise and shakes and shakes and shakes.
*
Raylan doesn’t know how long they sit like that. At some point the tremors in his body stop, and he rests limp in Boyd’s arms, all the fight wrung out of him like water from a dishcloth. It’s only when Raylan pulls away ten minutes later that Boyd lets him go, and even then he stays close, wiping Raylan’s face off with his sleeves in an act so tender that Raylan can’t meet his eyes for the shame of it.
Raylan keeps his eyes fixed on the ground, incapable of looking up or speaking, but Boyd doesn’t ask for any of that. He just cups Raylan’s face in his hands and presses a single kiss to his forehead, before walking back to the driver’s seat. Raylan sits for a few more minutes alone, trying to scrape together what’s left of his ruined pride, before trudging back to the passenger’s seat.
When he gets in the car, Boyd is holding his hat out to him, not a trace of judgment or pity in his green green eyes. Raylan takes the hat wordlessly, ungrateful in his humiliation, and puts it on, letting the brim cover his eyes.
They drive back in silence, the radio tuned to static, to the birth of the universe.
*
When they get back to Harlan, Boyd parks in front of his bar but doesn’t get out immediately. His shirt is still unbuttoned, at the collar, giving Raylan a glimpse of the bite mark swelling up on his collarbone. A flash of heat hits Raylan’s stomach and sits there.
“You know you could stay the night,” Boyd says, looking straight out the windshield.
“What?” Raylan asks, shocked out of his silence.
“There’s a guest room with nobody in it,” Boyd says. “It could be yours until you wanted to go back.”
“So I’d, what, sleep upstairs in the guest room with you and Ava across the hall?” Raylan asks.
“I would stay with you, if you let me,” Boyd says, turning now to meet Raylan’s eyes.
“And she would be okay with that?” Raylan asks, overly skeptical to mask his fear.
“She would,” Boyd says, confident in that particular way of his. “She knows what you are to me. She’s known since Bulletville.”
Raylan stares at Boyd and cannot speak. Every word he can think of dissolves like sugar on his tongue.
“I told her run straight through the woods and don’t stop til you get to the river. She could follow it down to the main road where there was some service and call for help on my phone. She asked me why I wasn’t coming with her and I told her I wouldn’t leave you behind to die. Later, when I beseeched her to allow me into her home, she told me it was only in that moment that she had realized I had the capacity for love.”
Raylan opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He closes it again, swallows heavily.
“It’s okay if you want to stay, Raylan,” Boyd says, his voice getting softer and lower the more he speaks, like Raylan’s a spooked deer and Boyd is trying to convince him to eat out of his palm. “I wouldn’t let anything hurt you. You could sit upstairs and read and ignore the world during the day, and I could go up there and hold you through the nights. I wouldn’t mind a bit and neither would Ava.”
Raylan tells himself he doesn’t actually want what Boyd’s offering. He’s not considering it at all, he just can’t speak and tell Boyd that because he doesn’t want to hurt him. Or not that, because he doesn’t care about hurting Boyd, he just doesn’t want Boyd to think worse of him. Not that either, because he doesn’t care what Boyd thinks, and he doesn’t want Boyd to hold him or do anything else to him. He just needs to catch his breath, and once he does he’ll be able to turn Boyd down. That’s all.
Boyd’s hand comes up to Raylan’s cheek, cradling it, and Raylan lets himself lean into the touch, his eyes fluttering shut. They stay like that for a long time, before Raylan pulls away, the way Raylan always does.
“I should go,” Raylan says, in a hoarse whisper.
“If that’s what you want,” Boyd says, pulling his hand back and putting it into his pocket.
“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Raylan says, shaking his head.
“Whoever convinced you that was true deserves a bullet,” Boyd says, almost to himself. “It’s okay, Raylan. You make your choices. I’ll respect them.”
Raylan doesn’t get out of the car right away, wondering, as always, if this is the last time Boyd will extend his hand to him, if Boyd has tired of getting slapped away, if next time they meet Boyd will be cold and resentful of all that he gives, of all that Raylan takes.
“The invitation does not have an expiration date,” Boyd says, interrupting his thoughts. “Come on by whenever, Raylan. There’s always a place for you with me.”
Raylan doesn’t trust his voice, so he nods once and leaves before he can do any other regrettable things tonight, like point a gun at someone else when he’s off-duty, or stick his tongue down Boyd’s throat in an attempt to taste his esophagus.
The drive back to Lexington is unremarkable. Raylan doesn’t remember a thing about it.
*
“How was your vacation?” Rachel asks when he comes in on Tuesday, hungover and only marginally less homicidal.
“Uneventful,” Raylan says. He spent most of it face-down on a motel bed drunk off his ass. “How’d it go with that felon you were tracking, Howard something?”
“We caught him late Saturday, got him processed into Big Sandy on Sunday,” Rachel says. “Clean bust too. We got one of his girls to flip on him, didn’t need to fire off a single shot.”
“Well executed,” Raylan says. “There’s a reason Art likes you best.”
“There are many reasons Art likes me best,” Rachel says, but she’s got a pleased little smile on her face, and Raylan enjoys having put it there.
Work moves slowly, a lot of emails. Tim asks him for help on a case involving someone Raylan remembers batting for Bennett back in the day, and they spend the morning brainstorming leads.
Rachel gets a call around two, right after lunch when everyone’s languid and tired. Her responses are terse and to the point, and when she hangs up the phone she leans back in her chair and looks up at the ceiling, something like consternation on her face.
“What’s up?” Tim asks before Raylan can.
“Just got a call from Big Sandy,” she responds. “Bryce Howard was killed.”
Every organ in Raylan’s body feels like it’s suspended, weightless, in mid-air.
“Since when?” Tim asks.
“This morning. There was a riot apparently, nobody knows who started it but when the dust cleared, Bryce was lying dead in the middle of the cafeteria.”
“Shivved?” Raylan asks, voice carefully even.
Rachel shakes her head. “Bludgeoned,” she says. “His skull was caved in when they found him.”
“Jesus,” Tim says. “Any leads on who killed him?”
“Nobody had a specific grudge against him, but he wasn’t well liked. If someone knows who did it, they’re not talking.”
“Damn,” Raylan says, his mind and his body feeling very far away from each other. “Sorry, Rachel.”
She shrugs. “He wasn’t good for any testimony, and his lawyer was already looking to get him off. I’m not particularly fussed about it. Just a strange way for the story to end.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Raylan says, turning around to stare sightlessly at his computer screen.
Exactly ten minutes later, Raylan leaves the office, pulling out his phone and dialing a number he memorized the second he saw it.
“Hello, Raylan,” Boyd says, picking the phone up before it rings twice.
“Boyd,” Raylan says, before stopping. He’s not entirely sure Boyd did anything, doesn’t really know why he called. He just got a feeling, is all. It’s the feeling he gets when he knows someone’s about to pull. When someone’s about to die.
“Any news?” Boyd asks, a smile in his voice, and that seals the deal.
“Jesus,” Raylan breathes. “You didn’t have to—“
“Yes I did,” Boyd says, cutting him off, the smile gone, his tone like steel. “You know I did.”
There’s a long silence, as Raylan rests his temple against the wall of the courthouse. He feels shaky and light and strange and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands.
“I don’t know what to say,” he says.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Boyd responds.
Another silence, this one longer. Raylan lets himself quiet, lets himself listen to the sound of Boyd breathing, the crackle over the line. Clint’s dead, he thinks. It can never happen again.
“Raylan,” Boyd says, after a few minutes pass, his voice a little tentative now, “if there’s anything else you wanted to say--”
“There’s not,” Raylan says, his heart beating slow and even for the first time in days. “I should go too.”
“Don’t forget about my offer, Raylan,” Boyd says.
“I couldn’t if I tried,” he says like a fool in return, hanging up before he can say anything worse, like ‘thank you’. He turns in the hallway, spinning so his head rests back against the wall, and closes his eyes. For a moment, there is only peace, his mind floating away from him, dancing on air.
“Raylan,” Winona says, from near the elevators, pulling him back into himself. “There you are.”
“Here I am,” he responds, opening his eyes. She’s wearing a nice blouse and a pencil skirt and for a moment she looks like a complete stranger to him.
“Are you alright?” she asks, concern written all over her face. “You looked like something was on your mind.”
“I’m doing just fine,” Raylan says, surprised that he’s not lying about it. “Never better.”
“Okay then,” she says, still concerned about something or other. “Wanna get dinner tonight? I haven’t seen you in a minute.”
“Can I get a rain check?” Raylan asks, a strange impulse taking him over. “I have something to do in Harlan tonight.
*