Archive of Our Own ^beta

Do you ever get the feeling
That we started in the middle?
Or have you ever had the sense
That we’ve been lyin’ just a little?
I mean come on
It's not like we've known ourselves that long

And I can't say I really blame you
For being bored with the beginning
Always staring at the score
To figure out who's barely winning
But don't you know
There is a reason strong move slow

And I'm okay
If you're okay
With wasting time
But when you trace
You always see the bottom line

Tracing ♫

Rhett cannot write anything sincere about Link that doesn't allow for a solid proofread. More than a quick once-over with a red pen, at least.

He's expecting hours. Plural.

Link has learned his lesson on that end in their youth. He can no longer recall the incident that incited it, but he got an "accidental" kick to the shin that he swears he still has a scar from, so he always lets Rhett tell him when he's ready to share. He knows Rhett's limits. He tests them daily.

If, during these hours of reflection, Rhett (or Link, for that matter) ends up with a compartmentalized thought or two, well, it's a nice coincidence.

Link knows why he does it, he himself reaps the same benefits from the practice. It's why he's always game to kick back and let Rhett handle worrying about how things are gonna affect his mental well-being and whatnot, but it's simply not his sole mode of operation like it is Rhett's.

It seems to consume Rhett, sometimes, thinking about how he'll come across and how he looks.

It's not that Link doesn't also worry about these things to an almost paralyzing degree. He's just always been judged for them anyway so he's never found sense in worrying about it during, it was more of a before and after kind of anxiety for him. Once someone yells action, he's in whole hog.

Scripted or otherwise, Link will pour it all out to a video camera. It's a feat that Rhett has always deferred to Link on, from a young age. They are both comfortable in public, in front of a camera, live or not, but not Rhett more than Link. Especially not when Link learns how drawn the camera is to the vulnerability of it, when he really lets his guard down.

Soon, Link starts to chase what Rhett runs from.

Rhett eventually gets about as close as he'll ever be to Link’s comfort level by the time they're shooting more than once a week. He damn well has to be by that point because the show didn’t have patience for him to figure it out any longer, but it's still always been a race to catch up not to maintain Link's ease and they both know it. Link looks like he forgets he's being recorded half the time, whereas Rhett.

Rhett's two other best friends are the monitor and the editing bay.

Some days, that awareness shines brighter than others. Even after years of therapy and conversations made up entirely of "I" statements and self-reflexive digs at their own expense. Link can't believe it, in those moments, when they have setbacks or even speed bumps since it seems like they've grown so far beyond it. Then they'll hit a wall and he’ll be forced to remember that the changing of behavior is not a one-time event but an everyday practice.

Oftentimes, it's him, too, trying to break bad emotional habits, especially into their middle age. Link is the one who picks a fight with a parking meter and almost gets booked trying to kick it clear off the pole it sits atop in broad daylight on a sidewalk off La Cienega. Link gets thrown out of a stuffy IPA bar for booing the dog that was winning the Westminster Dog Show because the long haired Dachshund that is usually not even regularly featured in those pageants keeps getting passed over for a hideous wire fox terrier. Link is the one being pulled into a thirty minute argument with his gym "buddy" about why Patagonia's return policy isn't "stupid" but actually helping change the freakin' — Link gets it — he finds himself in plenty of situations where he could have communicated better. Plenty.

Usually, it's Link that's more likely to cause a scene by ignoring his better judgment, but the times it seems to matters most — it's Rhett.

It's hard to get any documented moments of sincerity for the first half of Link's time knowing Rhett. At least that he can recall off-hand.

While their back and forth has always been undeniably good-natured most off the time, it does account for some amount of roughhousing and screaming matches. To that end, it might be considered odd that the two could be so simpatico in every other way but still wrestle. They need to relieve the tension of their fights and arguments somehow and that's simply how it always presented itself.

Link could punch Rhett’s arm and tell him “you’re an idiot for being friends with me” and Link is sure Rhett would only grin, do the same, and say some variation of “likewise” back at him. That is their working version of sincerity for a long time. Too long.

Link's overall takeaway is that he's not sure you can really care for someone if you don't question if it's worth it sometimes. He has and it's never been in any kind of doubt, but he's wanted it to be. Oh, boy, has he ever.

Link remembers the Dark Ages of their friendship when it was nothing sincere if it's being filmed at all.

Link discovers this in college in perhaps the worst possible way someone can discover anything: while making an audition tape for The Real World.

Link writes his sides and Rhett writes his. It doesn't go how Link expects, though to be fair, most things don't.

They pitch each other and their dynamic to the invisible casting team, billing themselves as life-long friends, even though all of Rhett's comments are awful and total put-downs. It's nothing like how Rhett talks about him at all, even amongst their more boorish friends, and Link is momentarily floored.

It's like a waking nightmare of Rhett's basketball days when he was always cooling off from the adrenaline rush of dominating courts across central North Carolina. At one point, Link remembers making a conscious effort to cut back on some of their worst rival games to avoid this demeanor.

He's better off throwing in the towel and going to law school if he ever wants to perform that well around a court again, Link presumes, snidely, if the daily sore back complaints were anything to go by.

Funny how things work out, he thinks.

It's a crueler train of thought than he'd like to take and one he immediately resents having. He resents feeling lulled into the kind of simmering argument that his parents kept up all through his young adulthood. It makes his skin crawl.

He considers, then, changing his comments about Rhett to make them equally barbed, but thinks twice of it. Maybe in another bit, later on, or during a second take. Right now, he feels beholden to the words on the page if only because he knows that there's humor if he plays it right.

Rhett's so much better at being the heel, though. Link doesn't have the stomach for it. Sometimes his chin even trembles.

Link reads off his smattering of compliments that make him come off something between Howdy Doody and Urkel, but it's decidedly good flair for their video.

Afterwards, Rhett turns off the camera and pants out a long sigh.

Only after there's a lingering silence does he continue.

"Kind of feel like an asshole, after hearing what you said in your intro."

Link shrugs. Maybe a part of him takes joy in the shame it causes Rhett and that's why he made sure to read his nice lines anyway, essentially calling him out on it in real time.

Maybe Link should have known this was supposed to be funny for TV, not two minutes of close friends talking about how they met drawing unicorns.

Link has never considered humor and kindness to be mutually exclusive.

Rhett is usually there with him, in these sentiments, and it strikes Link that involving MTV and their submissions department might have a lot more to do with this than he realizes. They should work through their lines as a team. He knows he’s gotta try and tone down some of Rhett's worst instincts, just as Rhett eases BIC lighters from Link's hands at parties—do something to prevent this from spiraling—before their next draft or at least before the next project.

"I think that's what they're looking for, Daria and Lane, right? Like we said."

Link's lines are nicer, but he still reads the lines exactly as they'd planned which in turn amps up the humor of Link talking about coloring mythical creatures and writing swear words on his desk as a child in a totally deadpan voice.

The shows they've taped and rewatched to study the most popular comedy on TV were all extremely acerbic and bored. It's what's expected to get on the air right now, dry and to be a little disinterested altogether, which they were doing a great job of capturing if partially by accident.

And really, at the end of the day, that’s their main goal: two tickets to The Real World.

Link doesn't know what they're going to do after college, but it probably involves either something corporate or else they’ll end up working for the church and he'd definitely prefer Hollywood to either, so he'll settle for wherever that season of The Real World is filming as an excuse to have one last chance at something big together.

He looks over and sees that desperation mirrored in Rhett's face so strongly that Link has to look down, to avoid Rhett's gaze. Link watches Rhett's movements in his periphery.

Rhett turns back, keeping his elbow over his knee to steady his reach as he fools with the camera, scrubbing through the footage, his face pinching up. This has gotta work.

"Let's do this all over again, we're gonna look like a pair of jerks not best friends."

Link shakes his head because no way. Rhett has been more focused and natural on camera than he's been all week in their unscripted test runs. Link didn't say that part, while he was being berated, but the confidence Rhett has been lacking was finally there.

Link huffs because of course now Rhett wants to throw away the only good footage they've got.

Link thinks it over, considers the best way to compromise.

"Let's just swap cards."

Rhett furrows his brow, unsure, holding his cards as if protecting them from Link's prying gaze.

Eventually, he relents, shrugs, and they start from scratch and retake the whole thing. When they near the end of the third card Rhett has prepared but Link is now reading, there's a delightful but unplanned accident.

Link reads a random fact on his card that alludes to his being six foot seven, which prompts him to comedically look down, then up at Rhett, then back at the card, feigning stupidity to the camera and scrambling to swap their cards.

Rhett slaps his forehead when Link begins reading his actual cards about meeting Rhett on that day in first grade drawing unicorns and the kind words now read as their own scathing joke written about himself by himself.

Link feels certain, in that moment, this was about as funny as they can make this kind of humor and he does a suave look to the camera that he hopes the staff intern that screens these tapes interprets to mean he's not really too hurt by any of this.

Later, editing the two versions together, Rhett cuts in a clip of production stock footage he recorded off an SNL behind the scenes skit from a couple months back, it looks about as good as anything they've ever put together. For that alone, Link feels pretty proud of his contribution.

But, he has to say, "If we get on the show, you're not acting like that the whole time."

"So, some of the time?"

Rhett smirks, almost daring Link to give him a reason to escalate to something worse like most.

Rhett would be the type to keep up a bit like that for the next year (or decade, he's so stubborn) and Link looks around the room almost as though he would find the rhetorical equivalent of a fire extinguisher for a way to end the discussion.

Instead he huffs again and translates his frustration to humor, so Rhett can understand his polite request to knock it off. "Infrequently and not on holidays."

Link fiddles with the camera, avoiding Rhett's now teasing stare. Rhett nods.

"Semi-annually and on holiday eves," Rhett says, mostly to himself, already aware that Link has checked out of the conversation until the subject changes.

Link realizes then that their mini-DV tape storage is still only half full and moves it from his lap back onto the makeshift stand they created using math textbooks. He already memorized his angles, but has a feeling he’s alone in that and hits record faster than Rhett seems to anticipate.

The other boy scrambles to sit up straight in front of the blinking red light of their hand-held.

Link swivels the viewfinder back around and allows Rhett to use the added visual to frame himself better and puff back up to his full height.

Link simply stares at the camera as he did before, a small smile on his face.

He's enjoying his brief foray into being the mean one and plays his disinterest up to their non-existent viewer over how much Rhett fawns over himself, getting ready, and the frustration when he can't even rush through these moves until he knows he doesn't look like a total mess.

Link doesn't mind. In that moment, he feels the power shift back and although Rhett is still looming to his right, he feels Rhett sense it, too.

Rhett finally glances to the lens and sees Link staring at it with a serene smile, realizing he's been had, he immediately deflates and blushes fiercely.

What he says surprises Link and probably would the camera, based on the footage already captured within, if Link thought that possible.

"Why do you put up with me?" Rhett asks with some humor but far softer than Link expects. He sounds tired of it, too.

Link puts his chin in his hand, eyes still greedily keeping the lens to himself. Floundering in the awkward silence, Rhett appears to get jealous of it, suddenly, eyeing both Link and the lens, like he could see that Link is already comfortable in front of it and he's now making a sloppy attempt to win it's attentions back.

As soon as Rhett said that, Link knew the footage would never go to New York with the rest of what they shot and although the camera was recording, this was all temporary.

"Would it kill you to be that sincere while we were filming for real? For even one minute?" Link asks, brushing his bangs away from his eyebrows.

Since Link was looking straight into the camera for the duration, Rhett finally meets his eyes again only by doing the same.

The fear in his friend’s gaze makes Link think of his grand dad's well. That time they threw rocks down to see how deep it was and they had to do it at least ten times because they could never hear the splash.

Bottomless.

Until then, most of what Link recalls of that day is his grand dad's worried tone when he scolded them, fearing they may have already damaged it. Just because you can't see or hear the sound, doesn't mean it's bottomless. It's reckless to throw rocks at something you know is there. Only bound to 'cause more harm than intended.

There's a long pause while it's clear Rhett is searching for the most honest answer he can provide.

"Yeah, might," Rhett says, so vulnerable that Link almost puts a hand on his shoulder.

Link thought earning a thick skin through years of bullying was bad. Yes, on its face, it is a terrible thing. But, literally the only upside? This is child's play, to him, so he shakes his head, lets out a calculated chuckle, and slaps Rhett's leg.

This will ease the tension and they can go back to business. Confirming his suspicions, he immediately sees the anxiety leave Rhett's shoulders.

He swears to himself he's gonna force the next thing they film to be so sickeningly sweet that it'll have to counterbalance whatever the Hell that experience was, though, that's for damn sure.

He rocks out of the chair using both feet and turns off the camera.

The Real World: Honolulu rejects them that summer.

Ain't no change in the weather
Ain't no change in me
There ain't no change in the weather
Ain't no change in me

I'm not hidin' from nobody
Nobody's hidin' fom me
I got that green light babe
I got to keep movin' on
I got that green light babe
I gotta keep movin' on

Well I might go up to Califonia
I might go down to Georgia
I don't know

Call Me The Breeze ♫

Rhett walks into the service station in Branson with enough cash for a pair of two-liters of Mello Yello and a king size bag of pull-n-peel Twizzlers.

After having set the pump to fill the gas tank and watching Rhett disappear inside, Link has retreated back into the car. His newly purchased cowboy boots go up on the dashboard, crisscrossed but comfy, he reclines back fully and sets the accompanying black felt cowboy hat over his face to block out the daylight on the hot summer afternoon. He tries to will himself to take a cat nap for even the ten minutes they’ll be stopped.

Normally, Link can sleep anywhere, but the angle of this rental car and the older than dirt engine has led them on a very unforgiving and bumpy drive through most of Okie territory. He’s eager for the chance to relax unimpeded.

He’s passed out in a blink, but comes to at the sound of Rhett taking a photo with his film camera.

Link waves a hand out, holding his hat up to block Rhett's general direction, his eyebrows a tight peak. Rhett takes another.

“You love doin' that, huh?” Link groans, groggy.

“Hmm — 's that?” Rhett hums, imploringly, for more context. Like it's not obvious. Rhett returns to the trunk and packs his camera away.

Rhett takes the nozzle nearly out out from the gas tank, shakes it twice, then returns it to the empty cradle. He circles the car around the back and squishes himself into the driver’s seat as Link finally shakes the sleep off enough to answer.

“Take photos of me sleepin’ while we’re travelin’ or workin' or hell any time I wake up, I'm liable to find you with a camera,” Link says, picking the thought back up and now takin' to rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He’s been out all of five minutes yet it feels like it's been hours.

“‘Cause ‘ya look so handsome,” Rhett says playfully, swatting Link’s thigh. “Like James Dean.”

Link laughs and shoves at Rhett. He knows Rhett's lying because he doesn't look like James Dean on a two hour drive to a group ski trip and he's woken up to photos of him then, too. Did James Dean even play a cowboy or skier?

Link buckles his seatbelt as Rhett starts the engine and their drive to St. Louis begins anew.

“Don't call it beauty rest for nothing, partner,” Link says back, equally in jest.

“Oh, yeah. Beauty. Beatific, man, 'ya looked so good — couldn't help m’self. Any time 'yer mouth's shut for one whole minute, I gotta document it. Music to my ears, picturesque to my eyes — had to,” Rhett rambles, playing up an accent more podunk than even the farthest outskirts of Harnett by Link's estimation.

They’re waiting on the car opposite theirs to finish exiting the parking lot. Link can't remember talking that much on the last leg of the ride, but he's antsy to get through Tornado Alley fast and he can get distracted easy. Rhett’s eyes are dancing in the sunlight overwhelming their yellow Gremlin’s windshield as they watch the sedan's taillights creep backward towards them.

“Listen, I get it. It’s probably asking a lot to be ridin' around alongside a real live cowboy in the flesh, twenty-four seven. Gets 'ya flustered,” Link says, ignoring Rhett’s earlier words, tipping his hat and putting on the charm. Whenever he has off his glasses, he feels like he’s playing a character, anymore. It’s a strange thing, considering he used to always look like this.

“Cowpoke, more like,” Rhett mumbles the insult to himself, twisting the top of the Mello Yello two-liter with his hand as it’s gripped between his thighs under the steering wheel. He takes an enormous swig of the soda.

“Yeah, no kiddin’ — a lifetime spent grabbin' a bull by it’s horns’ll earn a guy a reputation. Gonna blame the man or the beast?”

Rhett makes a face, but then laughs loudly and blows out a whinny like a horse, perhaps the closest impression he knows he could do to approximate a disgruntled bull. Spittle flies around the console of the car, Link screeches on instinct, and they devolve into laughter.

Link starts sneezing at the dust that it has pushed into the shared space and has to roll the window down further on his side for fresh air. “Ahh, gross, I breathed in so much of your spit.”

“Gotta get a better handle on 'yer cattle, fella. Wanna avoid stirrin' up dust clouds on ‘yer ranch,” Rhett scolds, feigning disappointment as he turns their car back left onto the frontage road that leads to the highway.

“Yeah, yeah. Hi-yo, already, Silver. Away,” Link calls out, jokingly, to the open road.

Link sets his feet back down on the floor of the car with a sigh. They’ve still got so far to go.

I got half a smile and zero shame,
I got a reflection with a different name
Got a brand new blues that I can't explain
Who did you think I was?

In the morning when the day begins
I'm makin' my mind but change it back again
I am a shifter of the shape I'm in

Who did you think I was?
You've got my number but I always knew the score
Who did you think I was?

Who Did You Think I Was? ♫

Rhett’s dad hates Link. Rhett claims otherwise, since Link is a good student, generally very wholesome, and is overall a better influence than any of his brother’s friends that he can count off on one hand. But, Link is sure he’s got it right.

The older man thinks Link is stupid and oversensitive and undisciplined. He's only ever said the last one to his face, but Link assumes the rest based similar experience.

Link can’t help he gets anxious enough when he’s addressed directly by Rhett’s parents that he starts laughing nervously sometimes. It’s a bad habit and usually one other adults let be. Rhett’s dad seems to think it’s something that he should work on and he lets Link know, Gotta learn to tell a joke, first, if 'ya wanna figure out when to laugh, son.

Once, a few weeks back, Mr. McLaughlin even shakes his head in frustration and leaves the room after hearing them talkin' about something too goofy for his liking.

Link is completely mortified and has refused to return to their house since then, but tonight he and Rhett have to do their history project, there’s no way around it, and the McLaughlins are the ones with a fancy, new MX-80 printer.

All during dinner, when Link would normally be trying to cut in and speak up and prove his worth, he’s still so shaken that he says next to nothing. Letting the McLaughlin boys loudly recap the most recent home game against the Bulls, talking smack on Jordan leaving North Carolina like they always did, it’s more than enough to dominate the conversation for the evening.

It doesn’t help that Link has next to no idea what they’re talking about. Link knows how to play soccer and that was about it.

”What about you, Lincoln? You like 'em any? Hornets?” Rhett’s dad asks, trying to draw him into their conversation.

”Nah, never been stung. 'Fraid I’m allergic,” Link says, absent-mindedly. His thoughts screech to a halt, instantly realizing as he finishes speaking that Mr. McLaughlin obviously meant Hornets as in North Carolina’s NBA team, not the insect, and he must look like a total idiot.

But Mr. McLaughlin laughs warmly. So much he pulls a napkin up to contain it. Link’s gaze shifts up from his plate, his grin enormous. So is Rhett's.

The topic quickly changes, but his friend connects his elbow gently with Link's ribs from where he sits next to him. Clearly, he's also happy for Link that he got his dad to laugh, not something Rhett himself can always manage. They both happily tuck into another serving each of Mrs. McLaughlin’s delicious tortilla casserole.

The more Link listens, now, having earned his singular stripe, the more he feels like he unlocked something with it. Yes, they’re talking about sports, long-winded and boring statistics, but they’re punctuating it with little jokes. Silly puns and plays on words, all is welcome, even accidents like his.

The context unfurls a new roadmap for McLaughlin family dinners in Link’s head and he tries to stay checked-in on the conversation while his mind races.

The next time he’s invited over, Link spends his entire last period brainstorming one-liners to bring to dinner.

He’s gonna leave knowing for sure that the McLaughlins all find him hilarious. It wasn’t the exact reaction he’s been shooting for, necessarily, but it's a Hell of a lot more than he was anticipating in the first place.

Oh, half of my heart's got a grip on the situation
Half of my heart takes time
Half of my heart's got a right mind to tell you
That I can't keep loving you (can't keep loving you)
Oh, with half of my heart

I was made to believe I'd never love somebody else
Made a plan, stay the man who can only love himself
Lonely was the song I sang, until the day you came
Showing me another way and all that my love can bring

Half of My Heart ♫

Link weeps while reading an early draft of their first book. He weeps during several more drafts onward and practically every early version of the novel, to that end, but definitely the hardest when reading the first draft of that first book.

Rhett's never spoken at this length about so much of their childhood and their families and their friendship in this way.

Christy holds him after she finds him sobbing with an unbound copy.

Rhett prints it for Link at work that afternoon.

When he coughs out a choked wheeze, desperate for air, he can picture Rhett casually tossing his half of the book draft, still an unassuming looking pile of paper held together haphazardly with four red rubber bands worth of tension crisscrossed in either direction around. Link has been carrying the thing around for the whole afternoon in a backpack with a half-eaten Clif bar, not knowing it was a ticking time-bomb.

When he pulls the first couple chapters out to read while listening to some of his favorite records, he barely gets two pages in before he has to take his glasses off to see better through the tears, and it's too much.

Link considers it, all of it, how publishing something this personal to the audience of The Daily Record used to seem terrifying.

Nothing is even that revelatory, but reading Rhett describe him in such a way, so publicly, it's all too much. He’s so moved he wants to write some notes to the editor to change one of his early paragraphs to state the surprise.

He feels useless when Christy comes to check on him for dinner, paralyzed by his inability to complete a thought, still lost in his memories trying desperately to recall what Rhett and he had laughed about on their first sleepover together.

By the time she's taken a moment to read what’s set him off, he's not even hiccupping or coughing anymore. Thick, hot tears roll down his cheeks, his eyes like two steely blue cumulus clouds precipitating a downpour on his face late some overcast summer’s day.

Once Christy starts also crying and hugging his side as he stares off, still lost in thought, he feels less alone.

Link closes his eyes. The record he's had on has finished and he should get up to put on something new.

Instead, he focuses on the silence, broken occasionally only by Christy's quiet sniffles, it makes his ears buzz. He focuses, desperately, trying to lie to himself for once and pretend to remember hearing the sound of rocks hitting water over the heavy ambient noise.

Today skies are painted colors of a cowboy's cliché
And strange how clouds that look like mountains in the sky
Are next to mountains anyway
Didn't have a camera by my side this time

Hoping I would see the world with both my eyes
Maybe I will tell you all about it when
I'm in the mood to lose my way
But let me say

You should have seen that sunrise with your own eyes
It brought me back to life
You'll be with me next time I go outside
No more 3x5's

Guess you had to be there
Guess you had to be with me

3x5 ♫

Link recalls it off-hand since it's more of a fact than an anecdote, in his opinion, that he's kept every camera that he and Rhett have shot on. Of course he's kept every camera. Least up until they had a company with a department that had to check gates and restock a hard drive or fifty.

It's not that he's less sentimental, it's that they're more stable.

If they ever move on from their current to future projects, you can pry the camera they shoot the final moments of anything on from his cold dead hands. Well, maybe not, maybe he'll screw up his grip or maybe he still might get cremated.

Either way, he's gonna start putting it in his corporate contracts so it'll be a nightmare in probate, so nobody better even try it.

Link loves curating things, like a museum, one that he can visit whenever he wants to let his mind and soul feel flush with the memories that go along with any particular object. Cameras are especially helpful because they've always been there, by their side, like faithful pets, and he can remember the eras instantly when you put any one back in his hand.

He can see it easy. What Rhett looks like in front of or behind the lens. How old their kids are at the time it was shot on or if one of them ever held it. Where they are on their journey between dating and marriage and child rearing, based on if it went into the delivery room, or was at their rehearsal dinner or a grade school graduation. It can all be pulled up on demand, in his mind, at a moment's notice.

Rhett has always suffered from, Link knows, the exact same crippling nostalgia that he lives with every day. He is less like Link in curating a museum-type display for people to admire and recollect alongside, but Link is aware that Rhett keeps track of memories and stories, more than things. He invites people inside the memories themselves and in some ways Link finds that too intimate to share. Link likes a little more distance between his private moments of introspection and other people.

In turn, while the cameras were somewhat an extension of them both, more cherished than that has always been Rhett's cards.

Perhaps the oldest collection of Rhett's belongings, if he considers them each and their span. At least older than most anything Rhett has of his own keepsakes besides childhood hand-me-down toys for their boys, he's sure of it. It's like Link runs a tiny self-storage facility that has one singular, independent non-profit location, operating out of the back-left corner of Link's hope chest, and Rhett’s their #1 customer.

In Link's defense, for the ratio of it all, he has known Rhett the longest, and these are the type of mementos that Rhett is one of the most prolific at producing.

Other people have given him things that are treasured but not meant to be stored. Sure, for all Link knows, Rhett expects Link to have burned these cards after reading, but Link knows his friend well enough to know that's not the intended use. The thing it came with is just stuff, sometimes actually nice and sometimes what Rhett chooses selectively to claim as placeholder presents or jokes, based on how sincere he's feeling that day. These are Rhett's gifts. It's unspoken, but so is most everything.

Heck, half of them aren't even all that great.

Link is glad he kept the old ones because the growth they show is really part of it and it’s enormous. It's hard to understand what a young Link saw in some of the haphazard birthday wishes from when they were in grade school or teenagers, but it was probably the Rhett in the same messy block signature he still signs autographs using scribbled below prewritten messages of friendship or love.

Link can't say for sure, but he's nearly certain that the first time Rhett "said" he loved him was in a card. There was a Valentine's Day card in there that predates just about every memory he could place with a similar subject. It actually predates any time Link can remember telling Rhett he loves him, back when it would make Rhett blush and push him away while fighting a smile.

Link keeps a lot of cards in there, usually for major birthday milestones or if the sender actually inscribed a meaningful message within. On the opposite side of things, Link knows his mama never writes in the cards she picks to send him on account of her preferring to let the card maker's words say what she means. She underlines words once or twice for emphasis. Maybe her cards would look plain to some next to Rhett's, but it doesn't make 'em any less special.

You love different things about different people, simple as that.

Rhett doesn't always write big, lengthy messages like he used to.

But when he does.

It's still almost always on an unassuming, store-bought card with a paradoxical message that corresponds seemingly not at all to the event it's commemorating — a Happy First Birthday greeting that's annotated to address the holiday by adding ^Jesus!  to the front to mark their first Christmas in Los Angeles, You're My Favorite Grandma for Link's thirtieth, or I'm Thinking About You and Know You'll Get Through This from some holiday right after cutting his hair — he's seen it all.

It's his thing. Inevitably, this means that it becomes their thing.

Rhett pours words over the cards. Sometimes succinct and bone-crushingly sharp, other times full of stories and well wishes and hopes written around every edge of the card, messy, with lines that point where things continue and whole lines scribbled out. Christy's read half of ‘em at one point or another, usually out loud, to decipher a phrase or two. Rhett's handwriting is chicken scratch, which figures, he'll admit anything in writing yet still will make you hunt to find meaning.

It's the only way Rhett is comfortable talking to Link about his most guarded feelings and emotions: not talking about them at all.

In Rhett’s cards, he recounts their tales of misadventure, reckless heartache, and endless pining for something more. The content, the holidays, the promises are always changing, but they're always coming from Rhett and signed with some form of love. There’s no subject uncovered. It's in reading these and moving them to their shoebox — when Link took ownership of that fictional storage facility he pretends it to be — that he eventually pushes them to write a book in the first place. They’re so strikingly soft and honest in a way that Rhett is only now, after years of work, revealing how he’s always been underneath it all.

The person Link knows he's been based on these letters and who he is day-to-day are finally starting to match pace with one another.

Link knows that this, in particular, has been the undercurrent in any of the conversations about why they’ve stayed together through it all.

Love pools around them like ink in a well.

Eventually, Link begins to see Rhett’s eyes reflect the same sincerities and dedications before he’s even reached for a pen.

Just cast away and I am lost at sea
Another lonely day and no one here but me
More loneliness than any man could bare
Rescue me before I fall into despair

Message In A Bottle ♫

“Can you come over?” asks Link abruptly, into the car's speaker phone, by way of greeting.

“Hello, to you, too, Neal,” Rhett answers back.

“The girls are out and the damn boycat hates me and Jade,” Link exclaims, sounding cornered.

“Where you at? Your place? With the cat?”

“We’re in the car. I have stuff I have to do in the house, but they keep fighting. So I took a break.”

Rhett laughs.

“And what am I supposed to do about it?”

“Come play referee?”

“Listen, which one of us made their brand hating cats, Link?”

“It’s about to be me, okay, and it’s not a good look on me. I’m aware! C’mon, animals love you way more than me, we both know that!” Link shouts into the car's internal speakers. Across town, he can easily guess that Rhett is holding his phone away from his ear for relief.

“All right, all right, quit bellyachin’ and I’ll come over in ten, okay?” Rhett says, kindness in his voice despite his words. Link knows Rhett’s always wanted to be an marine biologist or cattle rancher with a stable full of horses, himself, so he’s probably fighting below the belt by even bringing that up.

“Thank you.”

Ten minutes pass and Rhett arrives in sweats, a V-neck, and a ponytail.

He ambles up to where Link is sitting, finishing an NPR podcast, reclined in his Audi’s driver’s seat. Jade has the whole passenger side and a spare blanket he brought out from the living room all to herself.

Rhett raps his fingers gently on the glass of the car window and smiles at Link, already in some kind of character, Link can tell from the posture. Rhett would never look so casual.

Link hits the automatic window button.

“Hey there, fella. Got a call about takin’ a look at the neighborhood, tryin’ to monitor a health hazard, referred to only by a local tipster as, that darn cat,” Rhett says in a purposefully bad approximation of a Boston accent.

Link makes a funny sound somewhere between a laugh and a scold. “Oh, I don't think I was that kind, but yeah. Hey.”

Rhett grins. “Hey, back. He inside?”

Link nods, but his brows furrow. He’s called Rhett in mostly so someone could hold Jade while he works, he didn’t really think Rhett was coming to try and deal with the cat’s overall temperament. That seems like a bigger undertaking than this Sunday afternoon has to offer. That's gonna take time and interaction more than anything, really.

Rhett seems pleased to float on in the house himself. Link sees he’s in slides, too, barely out of whatever loungewear he’s been in all day, no doubt. Link figures he’s probably thankful for the distraction from whatever this week's Netflix dating show is that he’s mid-marathon on.

Ten minutes pass and relegating himself to his car starts to seem silly. He gets up and follows Rhett's prior movements with Jade in hand.

Before he goes back in, he wants to see where they’ve wound up. Opening the security app on his phone, he scrolls through the inside cameras to look and see where they ended up in case they’re right by the front door, where Link left the cat as it chased them. He doesn’t want to spook it into running in the road or anything sinister.

After a quick pass through, he doesn’t see them at all and almost panics, but a quick once-over shows Rhett is actually lying down in the living room behind the coffee table and blocked somewhat from view besides the crystal wash of the joggers that cover his long legs and knees sticking up nearly out of frame.

Link figures that if he goes right to the back and puts Jade in his bedroom, he’ll be able to at least get the rest of the editing he has to do on the script sides they’re going over on Monday.

He does that, giving Jade a quick kiss and tucking the door shut quietly. He walks back down the hall to the living room and finds Rhett still horizontal on the ground, talking to the cat and gently stroking it’s orange coat.

“—really?” Rhett asks the cat, hand still gently outstretched and petting it’s upturned head. “Oh, hey, Link,” Rhett adds when he sees Link at the door frame.

Link grins. “Didn’t mean to interrupt,” he says, extending his hand to indicate where Rhett’s still on the floor.

“Not at all. We were just having a heart-to-heart, you’re welcome to join,” Rhett explains.

“Oh, a heart-to-heart? I thought you hated cats,” Link continues.

“This is a member of the Neal family, now, I could never hate him. Just had to get to know ‘im,” Rhett says, rubbing a long and gentle pet along the cat’s head. Rhett's hair now out of it's band, his dirty blond curls appear to have started as a makeshift pillow under his head.

“Oh, okay. Well, did you talk about not running after Jade, then? What’s he got to say about that?” Link says, hand going to his hip because he can’t help it. Even humoring Rhett, it's hard to act like this is a normal conversation.

“Feels real bad ‘bout it,” Rhett says, nodding. “What I explained is that Jade isn’t trying to hurt anyone, least all you, so to back off. They’re on the same team, y’know?”

Link nods, because, well, yeah. Even as silly as this is, he’s right. Jade is never gonna hurt a fly. Besides the, uh, the literal ones, but that’s different.

“He says, that if you pet him once in the morning and once at night, he’ll know you’re good. So, I said I’d come over and get a report on how that’s going, but if you do that, I think he’ll know you’re safe and don’t need any intervention,” Rhett explains.

Link shakes his head because this is the type of stuff Rhett does with their kids all the time. Hell, he did it to Link when he was a kid, too, when they were both kids and he didn’t know better. Sure, Rhett, thanks for talking to my cat, his smirk says without speaking.

Rhett sits up and pulls the cat to his chest, giving it a last-minute nuzzle. The orange tabby purrs delightedly and Link almost jumps back, still unfamiliar with the sound, before Rhett sets him back down on the couch.

“I thought you hate cats?” Link says, in question.

“Hate other people’s cats. You’ve never had one. Can’t hate your cat,” Rhett says, matter o’ fact, patting him on the chest.

“’s weird to see you cuddling a cat, I guess, after hearing those long-form poems about how they’re going to kill us in our sleep and retake Egypt or somethin’ — way you always were,” Link rambles, still shook from Rhett’s lack of anxiety around the cat.

“People change,” Rhett says, shrugging.

“Cats do not,” Link says, giving their cat the stink-eye.

“Don’t count him out,” Rhett warns Link. He reaches back over for a quick pet and they walk back to the entryway. Now that the pets were wrangled, Link can get back to what he was doing that day. “Nine lives and all that.”

“Right, right.”

“I’m serious,” Rhett exclaims, waiting for Link to shut the door behind him as he walks beneath the high-ceilings in the entryway of the Neal home.

“Just treat him like he’s a better behaved cat, watch, he’ll be your best friend by this time next week. He only wants you to believe in him.”

“Oh, does he?” Link asks, suddenly feeling like they were having two simultaneous conversations that he’s still not fully catching on to.

“Yeah, you wait,” Rhett says. “I think he’s mad because you give Jade all your attention and he feels like he needs to fight to be seen.”

Link blanches, because that was one hell of an escalation in reasoning.

“Huh?”

Rhett holds up his hands, then tells him, “I’m the messenger.”

Link shrugs and rolls his eyes because if this is still some kind of metaphor, he’s lost the plot. Rhett is so hard to follow, sometimes.

”Give him more attention? That’s your grand plan?”

”I don’t make the problems, just the solutions,” Rhett says, trying to sound serene like a yogi or someone Link won’t slam his front door on.

Link can’t help an honest guffaw that gets out, though. He reaches out and shakes a hand through Rhett’s messy hair, where it’s parted to the left.

Rhett recoils, playfully batting Link’s hands away. “What the hell, man?”

“I thought you wanted more attention.”

“The cat, man, the cat does,” Rhett whines, fixing his hair and squeezing his eyes shut tight as if Link would reach back out to poke him.

“Sure, Rhett.”

Rhett’s still smoothing down all his hair and looking perturbed when it strikes Link. The most basic of similarities may they be.

“It’s not like it’s my first time dealing with an oversensitive pussycat with an attitude problem,” Link says, joking.

“Yeah, right. When else 've you—” Rhett begins before he sees the smirk on Link’s face and his goes deadpan. “Oh. Yeah, sure. You got me. Well, MROWR, for now, jerk.”

They both chuckle as Rhett walks back to his car and waves goodbye with a clawed hand swipe through the air.

Link will be damned if that freakin’ cat never gives him a problem again, after that Sunday.

Your big imagination's playing its tricks on you
If you think my up and leaving's something I'm going to do
Feel my chest when I look at you

Only Heart ♫

Yearbook season has always been bad, but there is a major escalation by the time the boys are teenagers.

Students began claiming pages wholesale of their friends' yearbooks to write long-hand messages recounting memories, hyping friendships, and promising the world. It's been unspoken in the past to leave space for everyone to have enough room, but now people were writing little notes where they reserve pages to write.

Some people wrote Have a gr9 summer, Stink! or some useless iteration, but. This problem wasn’t caused by those idiots. This was amounting to a popularity contest of who was claiming the most pages.

Everyone does it. Rhett starts claiming pages in Link’s yearbooks in middle school. Someone says, early on, that's a thing girls do or girlfriends and boyfriends more like and laughs at them both. Link remembers Rhett denying it strongly, confidently, stating, "Nah, my brother has signed his friends’ yearbooks since forever."

It's firm enough that no one ever questions it again. Except, maybe, Link himself sometimes.

Rhett is the hard kind of soft where you could dare him to read a poem at basketball practice and he'll do it while making lay-ups and finishing with a dunk and leave the team thinking he's a genius for it. It makes Link sick. He's impossible to embarrass in those situations.

If Rhett is confident about something, there's no challenging him.

Rhett is confident about the yearbook pages.

He takes, at first, one or two at a time throughout middle school years. But then as they grow older, Rhett has more to talk about. The pages mount up until Stacey McAllister is pulling Link aside to ask before taping a note into his yearbook in algebra while they're waiting for the class to let out. She's worried he'll be mad about her potentially wrecking the paper (he would be, so he's glad she checked).

"Is there no other place for you to sign?" Link asks, aware this is about as cool as he's ever gonna seem. Having to act blasé to a pretty girl about finding room in his yearbook to sign her name to avoid causing a scene.

"Well, Rhett claimed half the damn book, so most everythin' else is taken, Lincoln!"

He slides his eyes back to her sharper this time, since he knows she knows ‒ they went to school together as far back as elementary, too ‒ he doesn't go by his full middle name. Or his full first name, for starters.

He's exhausted with whatever she's still bothering him with this about and he doesn’t want her tapin’ the book. She must read it in his face because she huffs a sigh and signs H.A.G.S. - Stacey in a corner near a photo of Vanessa Pommel painting a still life in the art room on page sixty-two.

Link almost sighs back in response to tell her what he really thinks. If she thought that short message was worth even asking him about it, Stacey was out of her wits.

After she hands back the book that has been passed to her by some other random classmate, no doubt, as all their books made the rounds, he scans to see Rhett's pages.

There's almost ten, by Link's count. Two of them are the really big pages that are almost all blank. He knows Rhett likes those because he can write without having to use cursive and with that much space he probably do a cartoon ‒ he’s been talking about doing a Buies Creek version of The Canterbury Tales and either page is prime location for it.

Link eventually considers how this looks to someone like Stacey. Then he glances around the room and wonders who else the book has been passed to saw this.

His cheeks burn a little bright looking back at Stacey's message.

Link finds Rhett after class in the cafeteria and holds out the yearbook. His posture prompts a lonesome Rhett to look up, but not stop eating. Rhett is usually one of the first people to lunch and they are the only two at the lunch tables, in the whole cafeteria, except for staff and a scant few all the way across the room in line to buy.

Link is uncomfortable about how to even broach this topic. One they avoided so suavely for so long.

Rhett, still eating, stops and wipes his hands on his jeans and Link cringes at the sight, even as Rhett takes the proffered book, finally.

"Oh, you want me to start tonight?"

"Tonight?" Link asks. It's lunch time and it's their only period together this semester of senior year, so this is where he has to bring this up. "It's lunch time!"

"Yeah, I'm not writing everything in the middle of Deitch’s chemistry class, Link. It'll take all period. I'll flunk out," Rhett explains. His hand has set the book aside and is back into a huge helping of mashed potatoes on his plate.

"You will not flunk out," Link says, deepening his voice to sound more like Rhett's. It's so deep already and every day it sounds more and more like an adult's.

"Yeah, yeah. All right," Rhett concedes.

Link moves to sit down, turning a lunch chair backwards and facing Rhett. He sits on it far enough away to be cool and casual enough that the slow filter of students entering might not read the seriousness of his tone.

"Were you really planning on writing me ten pages for my yearbook message?" Link asks.

Rhett shrugs, arms going slightly askew, fork still in-hand, as if to ask, you must’a counted them yourself to know that, so why're you asking me?

"Ten pages, Rhett?"

Link internally cheers and jeers himself, seeing Rhett finally deflate a bit. Turning in on himself, his posture softens, and he looks like how he is at parties or around girls. Even though everyone loves him or is intimidated enough from his height, Rhett is not great at confrontation or embarrassment and it was unfair for Link to jump in with both. At school. At lunch.

But Link also knows he's already got his way. Rhett will let up the pages.

There's a bittersweet pang of realization, when he believes he's managed to talk himself out of getting all but maybe one page, now, and for what? He wants to assuage Rhett and make him promise not to let them go.

He just wants Rhett to admit it's a little extreme, maybe. Or to make it less Link's responsibility.

Link knows how Rhett would retaliate. He'd claim eleven pages. But Link, much he adores his friend, is not nearly as prolific a writer as Rhett and worries that he'll be able to fill all that space without it feeling like a waste or that it would cheapen what he has to say in the process.

Link sighs. "Stacey McAllister was telling me she wanted to tape a note in because there was no more space."

Link looks up and sees that despite being delicately seated, Rhett has already resumed picking at his lunch plate. He hums a loud laugh around a mouthful of potatoes. "So, that's what this is about?"

"Huh?" Link asks.

"She's a jerk. Jus' jealous," Rhett explains, mumbling with food in his mouth.

Link shrugs, realizing that it was the truth, odd may it be that a girl would be jealous of Rhett and him in some kind of way.

Link worries the hole in the left knee of his jeans. He shouldn't. Their principal hates when boys wear jeans too low on the waist or full o' holes. A guy got sent home last semester for wearing Doc Martens with studs on the heels.

"Everyone in math was passin' it ‘round, I guess she got handed it last," Link continues, softly. He says it and although he doesn't know why this thought in particular has lingered, it has, and his mind all but forces him to recollect it in front of Rhett.

Rhett looks at him, long, like he doesn't have anything more to say.

"Do you want me to keep passin' it, then give it to you later, so people don't hafta read it? All..." Link trails off and sighs. He rolls his eyes pointedly when he’s unable to stop a smile from pulling at his cheeks. "Ten pages."

Rhett lets out another food-muffled laugh and shakes his head. "Nah, man. I took it now, didn't I? I'll write my piece tonight and then you can have it. Send it to The Daily Record for all I care."

Link squints, confused. Sometimes, he’s sure he'll never really understand Rhett.

He’s made his peace with it. He knows it's easier to wait for Rhett to write the thing and ask questions later.

He leans forward and swivels the chair to propel himself to standing and asks, "How's the menu, today? Food any good?"

"Lousy," Rhett says, shoveling another forkful of it into his mouth.

Link walks over to grab himself a plate.

I worry, I weigh three times my body
I worry, I throw my fear around
But this morning
There's a calm I can't explain
The rock candy's melted
Only diamonds now remain

By the time I recognize this moment
This moment will be gone
But I will bend the light pretending
That it somehow lingered on

Clarity ♫

They're back home to shoot the second documentary and it's clear after day one that they need to do some substantial snack-buying for both themselves and the crew. A few teeny-tiny single-serving bags of trail mix from the hotel lobby's 'convenience pod' are not cutting it.

They have been averaging only fifteen to twenty minute drives across Buies Creek. Nothing is too far off, necessarily, but between trying to cram all pick-ups into this single trip to North Carolina and getting the establishing shots they need overall, the demand for sustenance quickly grows to a fever pitch.

It's Rhett who says, "If there's not a vast improvement in the snack offerings upon this time tomorrow, I'm calling our bosses to lodge a complaint!"

"Doesn't that mean you'd be filing a complaint to yourself against yourself?" Link asks, logically.

"I was told I was primarily talent, for this trip," Rhett says, voice wavering with a put-on hysteria and airy distaste. Playing up his frustration for the audience of passengers, he catches Link's gaze, and immediately concedes to him.

Unspoken, Rhett's eyes dance for a moment, his head askew, and Link reads the meaning, that he's bringing up the topic to offer to go shopping for everyone later and he needs suggestions. Link holds his eyes and shakes his head, not sure if it's because they're back in North Carolina that they can speak non-verbally so fluently again or if they were this good day-to-day, a week ago. It feels like being here, with Rhett, walking through their old haunts was giving him a sense of self that he didn't realize he was missing. Being an adult, comfortable in his own skin, and treading these grounds, it feels like he's gonna be a different person afterwards. Closer to himself.

Rhett's eyes are still alight and on his, always thrilled when Link humors these asks. Link remembers when they were kids and Rhett tried so hard to convince others they were telepathic that they once got sent to the principal's office because Brian Crumple claimed it had to be witchcraft. Rhett still brags about it to this day, if you get him in front of a sympathetic crowd.

He looks around the van and realizes he has to voice the conversation.

It's nothin' that fancy, it's that they've talked over so many scenarios and been through so many together, when Link imagines a situation he can guess what he thinks Rhett will be thinking and usually it's right. It's not the same thing as reading someone's mind or anything as intimate.

As if to prove his point, Stevie, from the driver's seat calls out, "I'll file your complaint, Rhett." She turns to Link. "He's too beautiful to be treated this way. Buy him chocolate and licorice before he trashes his hotel room."

Other people can nearly speak their language, sense what they're getting at sometimes, and that delights them both endlessly.

Rhett widens his eyes at Link where he's sat, still the co-pilot. Rhett is now sat in the middle row of seats as it's Stevie's turn to drive. Rhett says without words that Link missed his chance at the punchline and Stevie has to be thus rewarded.

Always the showman, Rhett flicks his head back, shaking his messy curls, styled originally to sit atop his head, they continue to shift loose in the Carolina summer into the soft tidal waves of his youth that nearly reach his ears. He makes a bigger scene of putting on sunglasses he's pulled from a travel bag and leans back with his hands under his arms.

The picture of a needy Hollywood star throwing a fit, Link laughs warmly at the image, and Stevie eyes him in the rearview, also laughing.

Link begins making a list in the notes app on his phone: chocolate plain, chocolate pb, australian blk, twizzlers.

The rest of the crew join in and give their requests.

Later on, they're shuffling through the supermarket and Rhett's weighing an over-stuffed medium-sized bag of malted milk balls in the self-serve candy section, when Link is struck with the urge to stop and look around.

It's been so long since he's been back east, he wants to look at the brands on the shelves. He gets a rush of nostalgia at just about everything they've encountered on the trip so far. Seeing boxes with local packing plants and off-brand substitutes that have never expanded out to the West Coast makes him smile. They're nothing he's gonna buy, not even his taste if he did, but seeing the boxes alone is enough to set his mind off to memories of shopping with his Mama in the years he spent here, even if this particular Piggly Wiggly wasn't even built yet, to have visited then.

"Hey," Rhett says, quietly, interrupting Link's thoughts.

Stirring from his memories, Link blinks away the distracting names and images, turning to his friend. "Yep?"

Rhett smiles and asks, "You gettin' all sentimental?"

Link feels himself start to blush, but he shrugs it away. Of course he is, he's back home for the first time in a while and seeing it through the new eyes of the crew, it's overwhelming, it's therapeutic, it's - of course he's sentimental. "Extremely," he breathes out, the confidence in that fact squashing some of the embarrassment. Rhett looks thrilled at the admission.

"Me too, man," Rhett affirms. "Just seein' all the same stores on the street. Seein' a Piggly Wiggly," he says, throwing his arms up around him for emphasis. "It's so weird, it's like we walked onto an old set and it's all been kept exactly the same."

"I don't think this Piggly Wiggly was even built when we were kids, but," Link says, bringing up his own earlier doubts. He agrees with Rhett, but he can't help but point out the fact that it's the same, yes, but different. He shakes his head.

"Yeah," Rhett exhales. "There was one in Sanford already, now here," he starts and then stops to shake his head. "It's trippy."

"Very trippy," Link says back in agreement. He's glad he's got Rhett to relate with in moments like this.

They finish by making a pass through the cereal aisle so Link can grab some Raisin Bran since the hotel lobby has only Total and the raisins were completely below his standards.

At the only open checkout, this late, a slight blonde girl with lots of freckles and a flat gold stud in her nose rings up an elderly woman leisurely. Her movements are at a gentle pace, allowing the woman to direct her to pack things in a certain way — it's slower than any cashier he's seen in years, even in the sleepy beach towns of West Coast that he's been to — Link once again distracts himself with their surroundings as Rhett loads their food onto the belt after the divider.

A red banner raised above their heads splits the checkout section from the aisles.

100 Years — It's Kind of a Pig Deal

It boasts of the store's anniversary, the zeros are two halves of a whole watermelon, it looks a few years old. Link grins at it and then looks over the front of the checkout, there's a last-minute items display of bakery foodstuffs, a section they didn't go through for long on their shop.

He looks over the selection and almost calls out to Rhett to tell him they have divinities, an old favorite of both of theirs, instead he reaches out to grab a couple, knowing Rhett will want them. Divinities are a rare treat from their youth that were not easily accessible where they live now or something their combined families have been able to easily replicate at home to the quality they want. He's seen nothing that looks this authentic, none that Link can remember, in years. He realizes next that their groceries have begun to be checked out and scrambles to add two small plastic bakery containers to their order, one for tomorrow morning and hopefully one that would keep long enough to bring to the girls.

"Together?" asks their cashier, politely, before shifting her eyes to Rhett as Link approaches.

"Yep," Link says, preoccupied. It comes out so fast it's more of a sound, to his ears, so he goes on to say more affirming that. "Couldn't help myself," he explains the excess candy purchase and lays it down next to a bag of chips. It's not the first time he's had to do so, admit he ran from buying things to grab one more thing to buy, Link is always finding himself the victim of a checkout impulse buy, and he's not above being honest when they get him.

He slides over to where Rhett is packing things into the canvas bags that Stevie loaned them from her luggage to make carrying it up to the hotel suites less cumbersome.

"I found divinities," Link says to Rhett. He beams at the look of absolute delight on his partner's face.

"Mmm hmm, those pecans," Rhett responds warmly, then feigns a drooling sound for long enough that Link slaps him playfully on the arm to get him to stop.

Link takes all the produce, the baby carrots, the celery, and a few Pink Lady apples, and starts haphazardly shoving all things into the remaining canvas tote that's not been used yet. Rhett's eyes light up further, his gaze drifting back to the belt and seeing the second container of divinities being scanned.

"You bringin' them home with us, too? They makin' the flight?"

Link nods, rapidly, because that's the idea.

"Y'all tourists or somethin'?" asks their cashier, casually, finishing up the last of their items, and turning to help pack the rest. Her name is LeAnn. Link reads her nametag, finally.

Rhett bellows a deep laugh, clearly on instinct, at the suggestion.

Link smiles around a chuckle, too, not doing a great job at keeping his own initial reaction at bay. Tourists in Harnett County, North Carolina. Maybe.

"Well, kind of," Link says, meeting her halfway with some grace and purposefully trying to soften Rhett's reaction. "We grew up here together, got married here, raised kids here, whole shebang but moved away for work. Yet here we are, back, literally, touring the place. For work, mind you." Link laughs, warm and melodic, to ensure LeAnn doesn't take it like he's annoyed. "I hate to say yes, granted, but I also don't know which of us is more right."

LeAnn laughs gently. "Yeah, I could kinda tell."

Link watches as LeAnn pulls the divinities aside. She tucks them into a plastic store bag and knots it so full of air that they won't possibly get crushed before placing them gently atop the contents of the full canvas bag Rhett already moved to the side. Link relaxes with her instantly.

"What gave us 'way?" Link asks, smile still huge.

"Your accents, didn't really hear much of any," she says, too shy to look him in the eye.

Link makes a show of clutching his heart, humorously. "Oh, LeAnn. I've barely gotten over being called a tourist, now I sound like a Yank?"

She laughs and shakes her head, pushing the filled bags closer to Link, so he can easily put them in the cart. "No, no, only not so strong. Thought you were visiting in from the Triangle or somewhere North of Durham."

"Ahh, no," Link says, tapping the plastic divider as Rhett slides his company card through the machine. "Did work up there after college, but then we had to move."

"Where to?"

"California," Rhett says, warmly, interrupting as he signs the credit card slip.

"Oh, wow. Cool," LeAnn replies. "Well, you're really sweet with one another. Nice to see. Best of luck on your work here!"

Link nods at her first response and Rhett interrupts again before he can process the second part, shouting, "Thanks, LeAnn!"

Rhett pulls Link by the sleeve, closer to him, so they can walk side by side with the cart and let LeAnn help the young couple who have walked up behind them to start checking out.

"My pleasure! Take care," she answers back, smiling.

"What just happened there?" Link asks Rhett as they make it past the automatic doors into the muggy night air.

"LeAnn started that conversation asking if we were together and you basically never corrected her," Rhett explains, grinning at Link's cluelessness.

"Oh-hhhh," Link says in a breath. "That makes sense."

He opens the back doors of the rented cargo van — normally, he puts his groceries in the large trunk of a sedan or SUV but this'll have to do — and fills the space behind the back seats with the bags of groceries. He grabs the divinities for the drive back to the hotel. "Hey, neither did you!"

"I think it was sweet," Rhett says, shrugging. "She had a nose ring, so I didn't want to dash her hopes, you know?"

"She had a nose ring? So what?"

"Might be into girls," Rhett says, shutting the door once all the bags are moved inside.

"Rhett, that is so—and if she 'might be into girls' why would us being gay dash her hopes? Wouldn't that have the opposite effect?" Link asks, baffled at this. He's never heard the nose ring thing and has a whole list of questions to ask Stevie in the morning in an instant. In Rhett's defense, he's not even brought up the one tote that says Lilith Fair 20th Anniversary Show — 2010 in big silver italics, so it's perhaps that which got her attention in the first place. Still, Link stares at Rhett waiting for a more detailed answer.

Rhett pushes their empty cart into the dolly that's to the right of where they parked linking it into another cart that already sits there, and then returns to open the driver's door and gets in without answering. He's made great strides, but having this conversation in public in a Piggly Wiggly parking lot, where people still amble to and fro, is clearly not gonna be one of them.

Sure enough, as soon as Link lets himself in the passenger's side, Rhett looks over and appears ready to continue.

"Seeing us together, here in the town one over from where we grew up, thinkin' we're married and happy and, well, middle-aged?"

At first, Link waits, as though Rhett has more to say, but then he realizes, no. That's it and of course that's all it has to be. "Right."

"Yeah," Rhett says, quiet.

Link is charmed that Rhett let all this go unspoken for a total stranger's sake and can't really figure out a way to say so lightly. He wants to hug him but the distance of the van's console mixed with having waited to get into the van to share that, plus the context of the omitted lie, it all felt a little too charged.

Instead, he tells Rhett an old standard, knowing his friend will always welcome a bad joke to ease the tension. He unties the bag containing the candy, opens the plastic box within, then offers Rhett a divinity for good measure.

"Not sure how believable it is that you could land someone like me, but I'm touched you think she bought it."

"You're a real pain in the ass, y'know that?" Rhett says back, teasing. He crunches on the pecan buried inside the treat and savors it with a groan. "Though I guess, in that case, turnabout is fore—"

"Ah-ah-ah, shut it," Link cries, cutting him off. "Or you'll be sleeping at your mama's house tonight."

Love is a verb
It ain't a thing

It's not something you own
It's not something you scream

When you show me love
I don't need your words

Love is A Verb ♫

Link's not really the new kid anymore. After two years pass, at least three other new students have joined the ranks of Buies Creek Elementary. Another came and went again, their father some kind of traveling executive that was being relocated to yet another new Walmart, it was all the talk that year. Link’s been here the whole time.

So, when someone describes Link Neal, now they have to search for other adjectives.

Unfortunately, the one most his classmates have settled on is: weird.

The new kid, Link Neal, is no longer new.

As Link had overheard one of his classmates phrasing it, so delicately, to another, "That weird kid, Link Neal, is weird."

At least he isn't known for puking up Orange Julius after soccer like Carter Mayhew.

Whatever version of Link Neal is the real one, new ‒ weird ‒ neither, he's dreading Valentine's Day.

He's made it through most of the year without having to deal with much extended social interaction with the majority of his classmates. He made a friend, his best friend, Rhett. He doesn't need much else and most people steer clear of him for that reason alone.

Rhett is so much more relaxed than Link. In just about every way Link can think.

Rhett leans back in his chair.

Rhett laughs at the jokes on TV that Link doesn't get at all. He thinks it's because Rhett has an older brother who explains why things are funny so he understands.

Link could probably ask Rhett to explain it to him, since Link didn't have a brother for himself to ask. He kinda prefers the mystery.

Link really likes being around laughter and he's not sure it's something he really knew before he met Rhett.

It's also offered him a social shield like nothing else.

Mr. Busbee, their fourth grade teacher, has not been very forthcoming about their class' activities for the Valentine's Day week ahead.

Link is extremely jealous of the kids across the hall in Miss Parachetti's room. They have streamers, balloons, and allegedly were getting cupcakes on the holiday itself.

Link’s sure that means their classroom will get to do at least one special thing on that day and is excited for something to break up the utter boredom he felt for the rest of the week’s lessons, culminating in preparation for their upcoming spelling test.

Like he's ever gonna need to know how to spell daughter in his day-to-day life anyway. He's an only son.

If it’s been announced before, he’s totally missed it — Rhett being in his class yet again has been plenty distracting this year, like always — the news of their classroom's holiday plans bring Link's daydreaming to a screeching halt.

Everyone has to have Valentine's mailboxes made out of tissue boxes Mrs. Jeffries and Mr. Michaelson (their music and gym teachers, respectively) donated and they’ll decorate them all tomorrow and then let them dry in time for everyone to give one another cards on the holiday itself. It leaves a sinking feeling in Link's stomach.

He is not gonna get a single card and it's gonna be so embarrassing. Rhett has friends from before Link even came to Buies Creek, so he's at least gonna have Link and theirs. Link feels like he's about to be shown to be the least popular person in class in real time.

Instead, he finds out that at least the majority of the notes are to be put in the mailboxes at lunchtime and before class, so no one feels pressure to deliver their cards.

It's still not enough. Link spends an afternoon over Rhett's house barely paying attention to whatever the other boy has been talking about that week because he's too lost in thought ‒ imagining one of their meaner classmates shaking everyone’s boxes and realizing that Link's has no cards and laughing at him in front of everyone ‒ to hear any of it.

It's not until Rhett physically shakes him that Link realizes he's not paying attention to what he's saying at all and feels like he's being a bad friend. He wonders back to his other initial worry ‒ if he's even got a card from Rhett to count on ‒ considering how uptight his friend can be about any emotion in front of others, despite being genuinely affectionate when they're by themselves.

When Rhett rolls his eyes at Link's inability to focus even after being shaken, Link breaks into a full-on panic, cold sweat and everything.

"Link?" Rhett pleads, trying to get Link to snap out of it.

Finally, Link pulls his attention back to them both. "Sorry."

"What's goin' on, man? You're acting like a freaking space cadet today, I swear!"

Link grimaces, embarrassed again at his disregard for whatever Rhett's been saying.

"I'm really nervous about this Valentine's Day thing, I guess," Link explains.

Rhett seems completely confused. "Why?"

"I have to hope I get more than one Valentine's Day card and not look like a total loser, okay?"

Rhett eyes him from Link's side, still confused.

Link sighs, seeing his friend's unsureness means he still has to explain until they're on the same page. It's how they work. "Not all of us are so okay with seeming unpopular."

Rhett seems to take some offense at this. "Hey, I'm popular!"

"Yeah, Rhett. No kidding! But I'm not!" Link's tight voice breaks, finally, faltering with emotion.

"What're you talking about? You're plenty popular. At least as popular as me," Rhett says.

Link rolls his eyes and grumbles. "No way, Rhett. But even if you didn't believe me, I know I'm gonna be lucky if I can get one Valentine's Day card from somebody 'sides from Mr. freakin' Busbee."

Rhett snorts at that.

"It'll be fine, Link. Even if you get only one, now, you'll make more friends and get more next year."

Link doesn't really believe him (plus he hopes against all odds this really won’t be something they do again next year or ever again) but, as is often the case, Rhett's confidence is hard to deny. He seems so sure.

"What if I don't get any?" Link breathes the question out — the Real Fear.

It feels like a dream or more realistically a nightmare to say something so personal out loud. But they were already talking about it and Link doesn't think he's ever felt safer around anyone to admit something like this. So, he can’t help but ask.

Rhett stops, genuinely thinking about it. Then he shrugs.

"Well, you'll always get one from me, so. You're at least gonna get one for a while. Maybe that'll be good enough?"

Link's worries are gone because, yeah, that's definitely good enough.

"Really?" Link asks, to be sure he heard right.

"Yeah, I mean. All I have to do is sign a card, that's easy. You’re giving me a card, too, right?"

Rhett puts a hand to the back of his neck, suddenly the picture of insecurity, finally considering the reverse, if he gets no cards. Link can’t believe how it looks on him, small and scared and stoic. Like a tidal wave, a rush of protectiveness crashes over him, and Link silently hopes to never see him look that way again if has any say in it.

"You know, so I won't have no cards, or whatever," Rhett continues, explaining himself.

Link grins and nods. They both know Rhett will probably get at least a few more cards, but Link does see genuine fear in his eyes at the prospect of having no cards for just long enough to know he can commiserate.

Afterwards, Rhett ends up with twenty cards.

Link ends up with twenty-five, which is confusing, since there's only twenty-four people in their class and it turns out Mr. Busbee wasn't giving out cards, but brought individually wrapped Twizzlers for the class.

His mama thinks one of the girls has a crush on him and wrote him a bunch from different people. She even points out that at least six of them cross their T's with a squiggle across the top.

That theory falls apart when they notice plenty of other people, like specifically, Rhett, also cross their T’s that way. Maybe Link got so popular, a couple people wanted to send him two? There are a handful of unsigned cards that could be from anyone, really, including those who had already left a signed card.

Whatever it all means, it's the best Valentine's of Link's life.

The volume's down
Blue lights are dancing around

And still, I can't seem to find
The quiet inside my mind

Daylight is climbing the walls
Cars start and feet walk the halls

The world awakes and now I'm saved
At least by the light of day
At least by the light of day

Quiet ♫

Until Link is forty-three, that is.

Link is thrilled to have discovered through a series of r/LifeHacks and r/DeepCleaning research spirals what he considers to be the perfect solution to two of his frequent self-care hobbies that usually take a back burner due to the amount of upkeep he ends up having to put out afterwards.

Link likes his leg hair either gone or light and airy and he likes his nails manicured. Pretty simple things that most people manage fine every day, but they’re hard to do efficiently without compromising the attention to detail for either too much for his liking. Link manages it fine for a long time, too, if sporadically. He remembers the clean-up taking time enough to procrastinate going back to it every time he feels the urge. His world is rocked when he starts doing both in the bathtub.

He can clean up right afterwards. He's relaxed in the moment and even though he's making sure to keep some boundaries — he wears shorts, he has a little pillow to sit on in the tub, he uses his electric razor — it's the most freeing thing he's learned to do in years.

One Saturday evening, he's surprised to come from a day of errands to a sleepover with not one but two of his daughter's classmates staying the night to work on a school project.

They are seniors in high school so it's likely prom-related, all things at this point in the year have been, but Link doesn't pay much attention to the details. He's thrilled these are the girls his daughter is hanging around with and not more "friends" like the one that kept asking her to get Link to listen and produce her boyfriend's EDM music a couple years back.

Melanie and Leah both politely thank him for allowing them to be there, but appropriately they all excuse themselves to finish whatever project they’re here for and otherwise mind their own business for the remainder of the night.

Without much more thought, Link resumes the rest of his evening plans.

In the blink of an eye, it's an hour later, he's in bright blue swim trunks, he's got a glass of ice water on the bath tray that crosses atop the normally filled tub, and the razor has done its job. Now he's relaxing and methodically cleaning his nails one at a time before he’ll move on to use the nail clippers. For now, they rest, also on the teak tray, farthest to the right.

It just so happens that his headphones were around his neck at the moment, letting his ears have a breather between moving from legs to nails. He might’ve missed it otherwise, hearing his bedroom door open.

He hears his daughter and friends enter his bedroom and go looking for something at the behest of Christy, per their loud conversation. He can hear them say something about childhood photos and knows from the sound of the creaky joints they've opened the hope chest incorrectly.

Link freezes as he hears them discover the shoebox.

He knows there's instantly no non-confrontational way to make known his desire for them to beg off his personal belongings. He does not at all want to be That Dad. On principle, he's refusing to be. Coincidentally, he does what Link Neal does in most conflicts not of his own making: he avoids them completely. He hopes to god they don't notice there’s a dim light coming from the bathroom where candles flicker around him, currently sat clutching his bare legs with both arms and trying not to breath audibly.

Their ceilings are high and with the gap under the door, their voices echo like they're right there in the room. Link sets down the nail file quietly and bites back the mortification he's feeling as he hears them sifting through the letters.

At least, when they realize most of them are Rhett's, they're not bad about it.

"This is so sweet, your dad is so romantic."

"Was Rhett, like, his childhood sweetheart?"

He has to listen to his daughter explain that Rhett is not an ex but his business partner and childhood best friend. It sounds absurd to him, too, sitting there, now cold and tired. His back is sore from trying to keep still for so long without noise.

Eventually, he hears them read more of the letters and one of the girls sounds like she almost starts crying over the one she reads to herself, there's some cooing noises, so he feels some of his earlier shame ebb. Then after some discussion about how Rhett is now, it's clear the girls feel terrible for violating his privacy. Especially when they find the really old one that's in there.

"It's like a Valentine's Day card you would get in grade school, do you remember those?"

He hears, he thinks it's Melanie, based on their earlier introduction, say, "Yes, I used to love those. They came with candies, right? You could get a pack of like twenty with a Tangled theme or something, it was the best! I wish we could do that again."

"I can't believe they've known each other for that long, it's so sweet," the other girl says.

His daughter is quiet for a minute but eventually speaks, "You know Rhett told me something when I was younger about Valentine's — it’s like he was talking about — well, he told me if I was ever nervous about getting them at school if they still did that, which they did, to not worry about it. Check with your best friend and you know you’ll always have at least one Valentine coming in from someone who loves you. I asked my old friend Mia, before she moved away, so we always knew we would send each other something every time but I never really thought about it. What it would mean if you didn’t go into class knowing that."

The girls, all smart adults in their own right, process silently what he knows they’re all looking at means — a vintage Valentine’s card from what had to be the early 90’s at least (it was 1987, to be exact) — that maybe Rhett’s warning came from experience that either Link or he had. Since Link was the one holding on to the card for this long, he’s essentially already shown them his hand. The silence looms loudly in both rooms as he can hear them all working it out. It feels like he’s working it out for the first time, along with them, crying silently in a bathtub for Christ’s sake.

There's some warm laughter and sighs, his daughter declares her thankfulness for having friends like them like he had Rhett, then eventually they quiet and realize still that what they're after is not in this box. After putting things back as they found them, the girls make quick work of finding the other shoebox full of pictures of his kids in their youth, likely to be used for some end-of-year project or assignment still probably wrapped up in prom in one way or another.

Link remains frozen on the floor of the bathtub. He thinks over what his daughter said, remembering that Valentine's with new eyes.

When he and his mother were going over things the morning after, he had only a working knowledge of Rhett at the time, and to be totally honest, Link has been operating with much the same set of rules and expectations until about 2014.

Link pictures a well so full he could dip a bucket in by hand to find purchase.

Y'all should know better, your age.

A chill runs up his spine.

After the girls have definitively left and Link does a cursory job cutting his nails tight and clean, he walks into his room and looks at the hope chest like it's the first time.

Locking the door, to avoid further interruption, he pulls out the box and reads over the letters and smiles.

He texts Rhett.

LINK

still awake

?

He defaults to his usual, late-night, knock-knock updated over the years from physical raps on window or bunk bed frames to this.

Always first to check that Rhett's still up at all. Before he bothers worrying about it further, he's found it's always better to check if he's got reinforcements around to help.

RHETT

When have I ever fallen asleep before you?

The response arrives before he’s even navigated out of iMessage to distract himself.

LINK

Fair nuf. Got a min

can I swing by?

RHETT

It's almost V Day you tryin surprise me at midnight??

LINK

Ha ha

Link thinks over his last text. He decides to add some levity to ease the intense conversation forthcoming.

LINK

But ask Jessie for a pass, keep my options open

RHETT

Jessie says 👍👍

Christ, Link cries out silently, throwing his head back. Immediately, this took a turn. Immediately. They're joking, of course, but he's about to walk in with the subject change of a lifetime. He's going to have to try extra hard not to chicken out on the drive over there.

RHETT

way

way up

Rhett replies both times way too fast for Link's comfort.

LINK

Be there in 35

RHETT

Brush your teeth pleeth. 🦷

All the while
I was trying to keep her there
Not man enough to need
But man enough to always care
Hummingbird
Hummingbird

That's all I heard
That's my hummingbird

Just because I said I didn't want her
Doesn't mean I want her to go
In fact, I quite depended on her
But that I didn't want her to know

Hummingbird ♫

After Link washes his hands and changes his pants, he does brush his teeth, but not for the reasons implied. Like Link Neal needs to be told to brush his goddamn teeth. He's a considerate person and talking to someone at length calls for fresh breath, too, in his opinion.

When he crosses the living room where the girls are, wearing his favorite denim jacket, it makes him feel confident enough to pretend what happened earlier is completely unknown to him.

He pulls Christy into the front walkway, away from earshot, however, to avoid any additional embarrassment. He lingers near the door to appear nonchalant, but he's fooling no one.

"Please don't tell them I overheard, but the girls found my shoebox of cards and were reading them earlier," Link says it all at once, to pull the Band-Aid off.

Christy blanches, second-hand humiliation sweeping through her for a second at the idea. She has read (and written) some of what's in there, so she does have the presence of mind to be equally squeamish about what they found.

"Which ones? The love letters from you?"

He remembers one letter where he tried to reteach himself French and wrote a lot of sordid stuff to her, earlier in their marriage. Then a few he wrote while she was pregnant and they weren't always able to be as physical as they'd like, and he thanks his lucky stars that those are in Christy's own safekeeping somewhere as the recipient.

"No, they're — it was all my stuff, the stuff in the hope chest, my cards and all that."

"So, just your love letters."

Link blushes. "They're not love letters, Chris."

"Then why do you care that the girls found them, Link?" Christy turns it back on him and he panics, not expecting it.

"This isn't — that's n-not — this ain’t why I brought it up," he pushes forward, flustered.

She looks around at where he's brought them, his hand still on the door to their entryway.

If this isn't that big a deal, why aren’t we having this discussion out there? Her body language screams at him.

She puts her hand over his and pulls the entryway door shut firmly, encasing them in privacy, as if to prove her point, and turns back again to look up at him.

"Link, it's okay that you're sentimental about a man you've known and cared for for thirty years plus, babe," Christy says, plainly.

Link sighs, he knows that part. That's the easy part. That's the summit they've both been breathing thin air at for the last decade.

Or at least Link has. Sometimes, it feels like Rhett's brought a reserve of oxygen and he's completely unaffected.

He feels like acknowledging what he thinks he's now realized about the Valentine's Day cards is the final straw.

"I heard one of her friends ask if Rhett and I were childhood sweethearts," Link says, dismissively.

It unnerves him that it suddenly feels like downplaying it is dishonest.

Christy laughs.

"Well, I mean—" She trails off, pulling him into a hug. "Is that so far off? Kinda what attracted me to you in the first place. That plus," she says, smirking, then chirp-whistles a sing-song whee-whoo and points two fingers to where his eyes stare wide back at her behind his glasses.

He blinks at her. He then pulls her into another hug, hiding his shocked expression in her hair, and laughs softly in surprise. He cannot believe that this is a real conversation they’re having.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, seriously. Knowin' you could treat someone like that, so tender, it was instant for me. Everyone else was so tough all the time, you remember, how we grew up. But y’all never felt like you could — you were safe — I know how that might sound. I think you know how it mattered so much — matters so much," she explains it some and then rambles to a stop, smiling again.

“It’s just how you are, gentle with one another because others weren't. I’m so glad y'all had that when you were younger because it made you open and loving in a way no one I’d ever met at that age was. Without that, I don’t know if I’d have found you when I needed you. I don’t care what you wanna call it, childhood sweethearts is kinda cute — that's a new one.”

He grasps her shoulder and leans back to look at her fully, his mind racing to process her words again for another meaning. They've had conversations about similar subjects to this before but never so directly about his relationship with Rhett, never implying what he thinks Christy is.

They're childhood sweethearts and she's okay with it.

She bites her lip and continues, daring based on his guarded expression, to get at what she thinks this outburst is really about because she loves him and knows there's a chance he might never, ever, do this on his own.

"I think that when y'all realized you cared for — loved — as fierce as you two did one another, as boys, that young, it scared you a little. I'd be scared to have met you that young, it would've seemed so massive a thing. So, you had to portion out the love best you could so it didn't consume you. You, obviously, never been very good at that, but you're damn sure Rhett's better off having you to write cards to. Imagine if he didn’t have that. Get it? You got each other through it. Call it whatever you want. I’m glad with every part of me you had each other because it made you who you are."

"Exactly,” Link says finally, allowing himself to let out a tight breath of air he finds himself to have been holding. He goes on. “It's all — it got me in my head, thinkin' about these cards I got in fourth grade for Valentine's. I got technically only one from him — I wanted to ask him for myself if he stuffed a bunch of others in there."

"He put an extra sheet of Valentine's and you're tryin' to work out if he had a crush on you?" Christy cuts right to the chase, like it didn't take him thirty very uneven years to realize the same thing.

"Somethin' like that," Link answers, ducking his head at being so easily read. He rolls his eyes at himself, still keeping secrets. "It had to be closer to twenty-five of 'em and all disguised. So, maybe, more like four sheets? I don't know how many would'a come to a pack."

Christy looks at him long, then, and he can't figure out why that in particular seems to make her smile hardest. She kisses him on the forehead.

Her pocket buzzes and she pulls out her phone to read a text.

"Wanna explain why Jessie is asking if I want her to sneak 'a video' or 'a still life' of you kissin' Rhett?"

Link sighs, closing his eyes.

"It was a joke that's already spiraled."

"A joke?" Christy asks, kissing him on the lips for emphasis but then lingering. "Did you brush your teeth?" She asks so softly, her voice almost cracks at the change in tone.

Link blushes further.

She shakes her head and smiles. "Honestly, y'all need to have a long talk about your feelings in general, but if you think kissin' through it would make it easier—" Christy trails off.

Link's eyes are wide and he hangs on her words waiting for her to continue.

"Clearly Jessie don't mind either, right?" She posits, as though ready to launch into further explanation that goes beyond two thumbs up emojis, like she’s discussed this with Jessie before and already knows what Jessie's thoughts are.

Before he can ask, she shifts her attention to responding with an emoji camera and a green heart.

"Christy—"

"Just talk to him, Link. I love you. I know you love me. I want you both to be honest with each other, if that's what this is about," she says, pulling his forehead to rest against hers.

Link pulls back and kisses her once on the lips and again on the cheek. "I love you so much, it's unreal."

She smiles and tilts her head, her hair falls in a way that the blonde streaks catch the glow from the light fixtures at their front door.

"If you think there's anything you can say to me from a place of honesty and vulnerability that isn't gonna make me send that love right back to you, all the same, you're out of your wits, baby. What have we even been talkin' about for the last few minutes?" She shakes his arms as she holds him, urging him on.

"I don't want anything to change," he squeaks out, finally admitting his only remaining reservation into the quiet stillness of the room.

"Nothing really has to, Link," Christy assures him. "If you're just being honest with one another, you might treat each other different, of course, but nothing else has to change. We're all still gonna love you just the same no matter how you decide to process whatever's got you feelin’ somethin' serious like this."

Link hugs her tighter, again, putting a chin near the top of her earlobe and taking in her smell.

He's decides, then, to tell her. To say it now so he can't chicken out. To name it and let her be the first to hear it.

"I think I'm in love with him—with Rhett—since maybe when we were kids."

The words pour out in one exhale, a chaotic rush of sound, the likes of which at least ten rocks slamming into water below ground would make.

Christy reaches up, pulls his jaw to her and kisses him full on the mouth.

He belts out an elated sigh at the warm embrace of her body everywhere — it feels like every surface their skin that can touch does — down to her absently stroking the hair at the nape of his neck, it is — it was — the only thing holding him back.

He melts into her arms and lets out a sob into her mouth.

She holds him to her, after their mouths part, and his crying stops. Smiling against his tall, tired shoulders, she rubs her knuckles under his shoulder blades.

"Time to go tell him that."

Oh twice as much ain't twice as good
And can't sustain like one half could
It's wanting more that's gonna send me to my knees

Whoa, gravity, stay the hell away from me
Whoa, gravity has taken better men than me
Now how can that be?

Just keep me where the light is
Just keep me where the light is
Just keep me where the light is
Come on keep me where the light is
Come on keep me where, keep me where the light is

Gravity ♫

When Link arrives at the McLaughlin's, he's immediately worried he's fallen back into old habits yet again, misreading that text to hyperbolize the last few years of playfulness that Rhett has championed between them and nothing more.

The suggestive lines would be easy to write-off as jokes, but it's a bit too real, for those that know Rhett, to pass off completely. So, when Link first arrives and Jessie is not-so-subtly following them around with her phone out as if to accidentally capture something, he thinks he's just made a fool of himself with his wife — essentially coming out to her and himself — over a joke.

Always a good sport, Link allows Rhett to greet him with soft pat to the shoulder, Rhett’s long limb outstretched above Jessie’s entire head. After, his hand rests at the top of the door jamb casually and Link feels tiny and stupid and instantly feels like this was a mistake.

Jessie must read this in his face because she immediately drops the joke and doesn't seem to realize that Link wasn't in on it. In both their defense, he didn't exactly object in the texts.

She elbows Rhett and he holds up his hands first in protest but then to acquiesce. Whatever suggestive comments he’s been making that Link has been blocking out stop.

Link sighs, knowing them both for this long has it's perks. Jessie's searching for his eyes and he can't help but be honest. "I have a lot of intense personal questions to ask your husband and I don't really know how to bring it up without being awkward."

Jessie laughs, easily. As Christy had given thanks to Link having Rhett in his youth earlier, he is equally grateful in that moment for their wives. They would be trying to stand six feet apart in an elevator, avoiding these subjects, without their wives knocking sense into them at every turn.

"I think you just did, hun," she explains, ushering him further into their home.

"I got just the place for that," Rhett says, walking slow enough that when Link follows they both meander quietly to their backyard.

Jessie starts to excuse herself wordlessly before stopping to jump up on her tiptoes and plant a kiss on Link’s chin. She gives him a quick, cheerful thumbs up and turns to go upstairs. His hands are in his denim pockets and his gaze lingers on Jessie’s retreating form, strolling down the hallway casually, as though completely unbothered by this turn of events. He envies the calm.

"Thumbs up," he mumbles to himself. He chuckles. They think us idiots, he muses, silently.

Link's eyes find Rhett's from where he's already sitting, outside, tucking his loose curls behind his ears where they fall across his head. He beckons wordlessly and motionlessly for Link to continue outside to join him. His eyes catch light from the far wall or possibly the moon, when it's clear in silent conversation that Link registers this request, and Link feels a stirring deep in his soul.

Maybe they have a point.

Link takes in the furniture on which Rhett is making himself comfortable, an outdoor lounge set he's spent the last couple weeks talking about — at home and on the show — having struggled to put together. It's large enough that he can comfortably put both his legs up and recline as well, so it’s okay by Link for him to brag, it could not have been an easy task.

Link ambles over to where Rhett sits and considers joining him. Instead, he holds his ground and takes advantage of the height disparity to start the conversation on his terms, from above, and hopefully keep things as civil as possible, which is always a challenge with Rhett.

"The girls were going through some keepsakes and came across this," Link says, softly. He opens his wallet and pulls out a Valentine's Day card with a cartoon lion from fourth grade.

Rhett smiles. He knows the one.

On the back, in scrawled, elementary-school student cursive it lists a single addressee. It's faded but still visible.

To: Link Neal

Then, Link flips it 'round to show Rhett the front.

I'm not lion

I like you

Valentine

There's a small hand-drawn and partly filled-in heart, a comma, and then just:

Rhett

Complete with the little squiggle across both T’s.

"Holds up," Rhett says, nonplussed.

"Was this the only card you put in my Valentine’s mailbox, Rhett?" Link asks.

It's a question he has never asked before. One that he thinks he knows the answer to, only now, and it feels like an entire lifetime of explanations go with it. He has to be sure.

Rhett's eyes are glassy-looking suddenly as his mind conjures the memory and the tone of the conversation shifts until it's matching.

"Rhett?" Link breathes.

"No," Rhett says, quietly, admitting something that would have been outright denied in the past.

Not anymore, not after this much time, and not considering how Link's faltering composure at his entryway earlier appears to slam into context.

Rhett looks up and rights himself so his feet are on the ground.

"Rhett," Link says, more of a demand, this time. For more than only confirmation.

"You were so nervous that no one would like you," Rhett says, looking so shy and small from above, Link wants to reach out and hold his head, cradle it, but he doesn’t want to scare him off continuing. "And I was already kind of planning to stuff a bunch in my own box so people wouldn't think I was so awkward..."

Link's resolve breaks and he reaches out to grab Rhett by the shoulders. Rhett lets him and leans his head flush against Link's chest.

"Rhett, you were popular, you weren't awkward," Link coos against his curls, correcting Rhett’s bad memory.

"Link, I was 5'3" and had ears like a chimp, I was plenty awkward. Trust me."

"Your mailbox had plenty, right?" Link asks, desperate to finally get the whole truth out of Rhett.

"Yeah, I guess y'right," Rhett says, quietly, relinquishing the other anxiety that has always plagued them both. As though they were going to wake up tomorrow and find empty mailboxes, their age. Rhett hasn't moved from where Link holds him so every word vibrates against Link's sternum and tickles his sides a bit.

It's dark out and all that's left to light the backyard are the warm yellow-orange sconces attached to the side of the McLaughlin house. Where they sit, it's far enough away that normally Rhett would turn on the fire pit for light or warmth.

But Link feels sweat collect under his collar, waiting for Rhett to say more, like they both know he could.

"I can't believe you kept that," Rhett tries to attempt levity, to Link's ears — fails.

Link shakes his head at Rhett deflecting, even now, as he's being held in his arms.

Link's sick of it.

"I should'a kept all of ‘em, Rhett," Link scolds, his voice a playful whisper. "You gave me all of ‘em, didn't you?"

Rhett voice tightens with a squeak, as he initially tries to say something, but he's unable to speak. From the look Link can see on his profile, he's in shock, still laid against Link's arms and chest. He is totally unprepared, somehow, that this line of questioning leads to the logical conclusion of him being found out. Now that he’s finally broached the topic, Link feels tickled with a little amusement at Rhett's reaction.

"'Course I did. Had to," Rhett says, eventually, after clearing his throat. His voice is still sounding whiny and youthful in this admittance, his head burrowing in kind against Link, as though he could worry a hole through Link's chest with the motion. "You deserved to feel popular," he says. Rhett's mouth is wet with emotion so much that his lips pop the 'p' in popular in a way that betrays the meaning. He's sounding like he was telling Link this the very next day after it happened, to Link’s closed eyes.

"Thought of you going to see if you had any cards and finding none — I -" Rhett trails off, like he couldn't continue if he tried.

His accent sounds so strong, to Link's ears, that he can't help but focus in on it. The whole time, Rhett's voice is soft as pie, as he admits this. Has it always had such a lilt still? Has Link never paid close enough attention?

Link sighs, his body gripping Rhett tighter where he's held. A physical manifestation of what am I going to do with you?

A car honks in the distance and Link feels so removed from the obstacles that have kept his inner thoughts from Rhett. He's always been here, physically and spiritually, but it's been difficult to brave the honesty. Now, it feels silly not to.

"Why do you put up with me?" Link asks them both, knowing now Rhett also has an answer he's always kept hidden, even though he's asked the same of Link so freely. It's been rhetorical, their whole lives, until this.

Link doesn’t think he fully knew he had an answer to give back when Rhett first asked him.

"I love you," Rhett says, so softly, it sounds like he's either started or is trying not to start crying. Link almost leans back to check his face, to swipe away any tears, but he doesn't want to break the tension yet.

"Yeah," Link says, finally. Although it's not the first time Rhett's said it, it feels like it is in many ways. "Always have."

"Yeah, starting to realize that," Rhett whispers, equally still.

Link sits down with the weight of it, laid out at both of their feet like this, he reaches over and threads their fingers where he’s kept his arm by Rhett’s side. When Link turns his eyes back up to meet their eyes, his friend has an expression somewhere beyond pure adoration on his face, grasping Link's hand tightly in his own, it draws them closer. They lean against one another.

"Link, I wanna — I-I know we asked Jessie, but," Rhett starts stammering, while Link can only focus on his mouth, upturned and desperate. He needs to connect their mouths and prove how in love with Rhett he still is so Rhett doesn't feel like he's drowning in this, like he looks, right now.

"Christy's who told me to come over here," Link breathes out.

Now that they're both sitting, Rhett is back to being taller than him by a few inches, even as he has collapsed a bit into Link's side, his head against Link's face, beard itching at Link's chin, their bodies pressed together like they’re huddled under the ribs of an unseen umbrella, hands held together clutching the same non-existent handle.

"I'm in love with you," Link whispers, holding the card in his open hand where they can both see. "Have been probably since you gave me this."

The silence is deafening and Link stares at Rhett until finally, finally he breaks the tension.

"Can I kiss—" Rhett begins, gently, allowing Link time to react. Link nods twice, quick to approve, before he's even finished asking.

Instantly, Rhett leans down and presses their mouths firmly together.

At first, it's not what Link imagined, so chaste and straightforward, he almost thinks this is an elaborate rebuff. A request to relegate these things to grade school. He braces himself for Rhett to backtrack this to be something else.

Rhett's hands come up behind Link's head where he can't see them, as if he's going to push him away, Link's eyebrows knit together but instead — instead — Rhett tugs Link's bottom lip roughly between his teeth, lets out a panted breath into Link's open mouth, palms the back of his head like it's nothing, grabs Link's good shoulder, pulls it inward towards him, and deepens the kiss with his whole tongue.

Link almost screams out, maybe would have, if his mouth weren't so muffled by Rhett's in the moment. Instead a keening whine ekes out low but the yearning held in it sounds — feels — bottomless.

They both jump at the intensity only long enough for Link to instinctively try to placate Rhett's shifting upper body with a roaming forearm, their mouths still connected. He doesn't know if Rhett pulls his thigh or just holds it steady as he crawls into Rhett's lap to further deepen the kiss, but it feels right. It feels amazing.

They're making out before Link has registered it fully. It's sloppy and earnest, like a couple of co-eds out back at a kegger. They're also both letting out a series of feverish grunts and moans as Link's rolls his hips and their jeans rub against one another, the growing friction is dizzying, mixed with the heightened emotions already raging inside.

Rhett pants, wrapping his huge hands around Link's back, Link leans into them and feels small again, this time relishing it. This time, he feels giddy with excitement and relief.

"Pretty sure I've always been in love with you, too," Rhett says quietly, amidst their movement, and Link stills to let the words settle in the air. It's an effort to give them even more weight than they already have, which feels impossible, but he has to try.

"I wanna regret not realizing it sooner, but without the girls, I wonder if I'd have ever even realized it at all. Let alone act on it like this, it's — the trust you must'a got to even come here. I can't believe it," Rhett says, voice small.

"We all trust you. I know I do. Rhett, I've loved you for so long," Link says, fast, frantic to get out each word before reconnecting their mouths.

Rhett chokes what sounds like a sob deep down into his chest and Link wraps his knees around Rhett, too. Clutching his sides, he grips Rhett tighter and refuses to let up.

The word why tumbles from Rhett's mouth into Link’s kiss — a plaintive death rattle — the Real Fear. Link finds himself immediately furious at the swallowed question and returns Rhett’s kisses with such passion that he hopes Rhett finds all the answers he's searching for in them.

The Valentine's Day card falls between them as they shift against one another and Link grabs it, tucking it into Rhett’s shirt pocket gingerly, adding a soft caress. Link wills it's presence to show — after all this time and distance — technically, Rhett should know better. He started it.