Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was probably like breaking a horse, or some other stupid Western thing that Hollis thankfully hadn't picked up saying in his time in Nevada. Gentle, cautious, can't push too far or you might damage it beyond repair, or at the very least put yourself back weeks or months of work.

When he spelled it out like that, though, it also sounded a lot like an undercover op: long, painful weeks of establishing your cred, documenting your (fake, but not this time) identity so that it held up when your mark prodded it.

Fuckin' cliches, or metaphors, or whatever. If anything in his life had ever been a goddamn house of cards, this was it. Hell, it's not like the sturdy things turned out to be any less bullshit.

Ricky was damn near passed out on the couch, the football game on the TV in front of him having long ago ceased to be. interesting, but he was either enough of a completist or enough of a hopeless optimist that he'd watched every Colts game that season til the bitter end.

If Hollis didn't say anything, Ricky would stay. He'd fall asleep on the couch, and by the time he woke up, it'd be dinner, and Hollis could order in pizza and beer, and if they drank just enough beer, Ricky would stay and talk instead of insisting he needed to get home, and then Hollis wouldn't have to be alone on Sunday.

That was the one thing he missed about the bounty hunter work: there was never any shortage of skip traces to be hunted, and he never had to be stuck home alone on a day off if he didn't want to.

It made him think, not for the first time, that he'd like to go back to it, and it'd be better if he could bring Ricky with him. Safer with a partner, for sure, and Ricky could handle himself in a fight for damn sure, if it came to that.

Then they'd have a reason to hang out, things that needed talking about. Worrying about whether your partner was getting enough sleep, if he was safe, that's just good business sense.

Hollis's hands clenched reflexively, and then he started his thumbs across cracking his knuckles, his left hand not quite ready to give up the habit even though it ran out of fingers too quickly to be any kind of soothing or useful.