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Raylan drank in the victory of cuffing Boyd’s second wrist across the tree. He met Boyd’s eyes to flaunt it, but was met instead with wanting eyes, and a heavy breath let out from an open mouth. With an effort he made no reaction to Boyd’s seeming interest, quipping at the humor of the situation and then walking away.
“I’ve come to a conclusion. I don’t like you Raylan.” The lie made Boyd’s voice light.
“Never much liked you neither Boyd.” Raylan smiled and kept walking. The words stuck with him though, the rudeness allowed by how well they knew each other and how much they had loved each other and maybe still did. Now they were facing each other in a game that might get Boyd killed if he lost and him winning would probably require killing Raylan.
Raylan stopped walking.
“Now, Raylan don’t tell me you’ve gotten lost already!”
Raylan turned around and looked at Boyd who was still standing there, confused and concerned now. “How much longer do you think we can go on before we start really meaning it?” Raylan asked as he approached.
“I’m afraid I’m not quite following you. What exactly do you feel I’m being dishonest about?” The comment gets the laugh Boyd was hoping for.
“I handcuff you to a tree and you look at me like it’s foreplay. You tell me you don’t like me and my heart starts acting like I’m a 19 year old with a crush. How much longer do you reckon we can keep doing this before we actually hate each other?”
Boyd hesitated an extra second before he started talking. “Now this sounds like you're trying to have a serious talk about our relationship.” He twisted the last word into something that almost captured the immense confusion and feeling around whatever it might be. “That seems like something to have while we are both completely free, maybe even with a few drinks to go along with it.”
“Uh, huh, and I suppose that if I were to uncuff you, you would want to get right to that conversation rather than running after the elusive Drew Thompson?”
“Why of course, there’s nothing more important to me than clearing up your confusion.” Boyd lied with an extra wide smile. Raylan smiled back and sat down, leaning against a tree a few feet from Boyd’s “I don’t think there will ever be a time as good as this.”
“Very well Raylan, since this is so important to you what do you want to say about our relationship?”
“I’d like you to answer the question, Boyd.”
“Ok, now could you remind me of the exact question. I was slightly distracted by your implications on my character and enjoyment of my current predicament.”
Raylan opted not to engage with the quip. He picked at a leaf on the ground as he found the courage to ask and the phrasing to ask well. “Do you think we’re gonna start actually hating each other if we keep going like we’ve been going?”
Their eyes met as the question hung there, neither of them wearing their typical humor and playfulness with each other. “Raylan, I hated you for a long time. I’m not going to start again.” Boyd looked down after the words and then scooched down the tree to sit in the awkward position the cuffs allowed. “After you left, or rather after I didn’t go with you, I started blaming you for every miserable thing that happened here. You were the only joy I had in this place and after you were gone all I had was hate that I twisted towards any viable target, you, jews, foreigners. I joined the army looking for chances to hurt those people, found them too.” Boyd’s voice faded with shame.
“I’m sorry I left you.”
Boyd laughed. “There could be songs written about how you begged me to come with you. If there had been any words or actions that could have gotten me to leave, you used them that night. I should be apologizing for not going with you.”
“Do you think we would have made it?” It was a question that had stuck with Raylan even as he did everything he could to keep from thinking about it.
“Yes, Raylan, I think we would have.” It was an answer that Boyd had always believed despite always trying to ignore it.
Raylan smiled at the wave of lost possibility in the answer and watched Boyd do the same. The nostalgia faded though and they were left sitting there again, uncertain in the loving space between them. “Why did you stop hating me then?” Raylan asked.
“You shot me.” They shared a smile at that. “But even just seeing you. Well dressed and composed with that hat of yours. I knew that all my hate was for myself. That I had inked that hate into my very skin.” Boyd wiggled his fingers to direct Raylan’s attention to the letters on his knuckles. “You spared me, missed my heart and saved my soul, if only briefly.”
“You think I missed on purpose?”
“Well if you didn’t I might have to believe it was truly an act of God that spared me. Did you not?”
“I honestly don’t know. It might have been a split second mercy or maybe my aim was just off from being around you again after so long.”
“But you only shot once. From what I’ve heard you shot three times to drop that Miami gun thug that put you back in my life. If you wanted me dead I would have been dead, something I knew as soon as I woke. My hatred disappeared leaving only the feelings from our youth now finely aged. From then on I was just waiting to see if you still had those feelings.”
“Boyd, if you want to know if someone has feelings for you, you ask them, or flirt with them, or buy a drink for them. You don’t start a fanatical church that forbids jackin’ off, let alone any of the things I might have wanted to do to you.”
“Now, Raylan, you must have known that I would have happily made an exception for you, our church's one and only saint.”
Any other time Raylan would have just laughed and left it there. “Do you really mean that?”
“Yes Raylan I really mean that. I was hoping that you might take the first step back to me for a year.”
Raylan took his hat off and ran his hand through his hair. “I’m sorry I didn’t.” He poured out how much he wanted that possibility into the words.
Boyd didn’t have anything to say to that, the realization and loss deadening his tongue. They both sat there watching the sky and trees above them, waiting for this new stable understanding of where they once stood with each other to settle on them.
“So after all this it seems that nothing has changed,” Raylan said. “You’re with Ava, and you’re hunting Thompson for people who will try and kill you if you fail. And I’m a marshal with a kid on the way who should run from this place as soon as possible.”
“Perhaps not, but it now seems fitting for a good luck kiss before we begin this contest of ours.” Boyd stood up, and tilted his head in the way he used to when there were people around and he wanted Raylan alone.
Raylan smiled at the familiar sight. He left his hat on the ground, dug his keys out of his pocket, waved them at Boyd and then dropped them into the hat. “You sure Boyd?”
Boyd laughed. “Why Raylan, a handsome gentleman like you must know that there are reasons to kiss you other than to rob you?”
Raylan shrugged and strode forward. He took Boyd’s hands and leaned down to bring their lips together. The kiss was soft and slow. The kind they couldn’t have dreamed of in their secret moments 20 years ago. Raylan pulled himself back just before the emotion of the moment kept him from ever stopping.
They shared a smile in their shared breath before Raylan turned and reclaimed his hat. “See you around Boyd,” he said over his shoulder.
Boyd smiled and watched him go.