Work Text:
In the week after they sentence Ava, Boyd throws everyone out of the bar, bolts the door behind them, and proceeds to drink himself under the table. He does this for five nights. The first night is a Monday.
On a Monday
Boyd wakes to the sound of the door opening. He knows he was fall-down drunk when he passed out because he’s lying on the goddamn floor behind the bar, but he hasn't got a hangover to speak of, and he’s got all his wits about him as he scrambles to reach the shotgun under the taps.
Raylan Givens walks through the door, from an outside that looks full of late afternoon sunshine and heat. It had been dark and raining when Boyd last looked through the grimy windows of his establishment and Jimmy would have come in already had he slept the night through.
He tightens his hands around the weapon.
Raylan’s inexplicable smile disappears from his face in a flash when he catches sight of Boyd, braced behind the bar, shotgun in hand.
“Well, now truly, as you know, I would not so casually draw on a lawman, but in light of recent events and your cold absence from a particular courtroom in these past few weeks, I think I’m gonna have to make an exception. I am not in the mood for visitors tonight, Deputy.”
Raylan’s expression is profoundly disturbed and his hands aren’t at his hip, so much as they are raised only at hip level, as though he were placing them flat on an invisible table.
“Boyd?” he asks, voice thick with absolute confusion.
“Who did you expect to find?” Boyd returns, tilting his head and tightening his hold on the weapon. “Wynn won’t come back here for another few weeks. I know you’ve tracked his route through Harlan already.”
“Duffy?” Raylan’s bewilderment, if anything, has only increased.
“I ain’t in no mood for this bullshit, Raylan. Would you just let me drown for a while? We can do your subsequent dance on another occasion. Tonight, you’re gonna get the fuck out of here.”
He racks in a load.
The door opens then and another man walks through, a smile on his face and more light in his eyes than Boyd’s ever seen in a mirror. “Jesus, baby, the one time we decide to go to Johnny’s for a change and there’s no one parked in the--”
He breaks off, staring at Boyd with the shotgun braced tight in his hands. “Shit,” he breathes and takes an instinctive step towards Raylan, who takes a step of his own backward, as though the two are drawn to each other.
His eyes travel across Boyd’s face, up and down him, seeming to search for some difference, stopping briefly on his hands. When Boyd flicks his own gaze down to this man’s knuckles, he sees no letters carved there. He wonders if he’s missing a bullet wound, healed over.
“This ain’t Johnny’s bar no more, mister,” Boyd says.
“Who are you?” the man asks in a soft tone that Boyd recognizes as one hiding fear.
Boyd smiles and Raylan’s eyes widen as the other man steps abreast of him. “I’m Boyd Crowder and this is my bar and my goddamn county. I don’t think you two are from ‘round here, now are you?”
“We must not be,” says the man who shares his face. “Would you like to put that weapon down?”
Boyd doesn’t move. “Why’d you call him ‘baby’?
Something flashes in both men’s eyes. “Because he’s dear to me,” the man replies in a low, defensive tone. He looks at Boyd’s weapon pointedly. “I assume someone who looks like my dear friend here isn’t so welcome in your fine establishment.”
Boyd’s expression tightens, he can feel it, and he sees himself take note. “He has been. Not of late, unfortunately. Never so welcome as it seems he is to you.”
“Well, that’s all very interesting,” this Raylan says to them both, lowering his hands. One of them hovers over his side arm, which is present and accounted for. Boyd doesn’t know about this other, this copy of himself, but he can tell this Raylan still works for the law. Raylan continues, patience obviously at its limit, “But what the fuck is going on here?”
Boyd doesn’t answer. He’s sure there won’t be a logical explanation, not one easily found at any rate. He sees that knowledge in the man sharing his face. They must share a lot more.
“Raylan,” the voice sounds strange to his ears, like a recording, and he says Raylan’s name like Boyd always used to, with fondness and patience. “What makes you think he knows?”
“It’s his place, ain’t it?” Raylan responds, hand obviously itching to pull. “He’s got to be as much of a goddamn know-it-all as you.” There’s no bite in the statement, for all the bark of his tone and Boyd feels his expression souring, unbidden. “Also, he’s upset.”
“I’m also experiencing some feelings of disquiet.” His voice is soft, more considering than fearful now, though his hands are still in the air.
Raylan shakes his head, certain. “He said some shit to me. About courtrooms and Wynn Duffy and something to settle between me and him, some other me, I'm guessing.”
“Well, that’s interesting.”
They’re making him think of times gone by, but here in the present, in the lines of their face, in the tones of their voices, and the ease, the quick staccato of their exchanges. Any conversation Boyd has had with his Raylan, which in no other context could he think of a reason to refer to him in such a way, was sharpened by their opposition.
The other man looks at Boyd and a strange sadness comes into his eyes as he says, “Looks like Daddy got what he wanted from you, then.”
Boyd feels it like a blow, but he smiles and says, “My daddy was shot in Brogie Holler by a Cuban firing an AK because I blew up his chemical shipment with a rocket launcher. Allegedly.”
Raylan smirks. “That sounds familiar.”
He tosses a fond smile over to Raylan but sobers when he looks back at Boyd. He says, “Yet here you are. Behind his bar, toting his gun, lookin’ out with his eyes.”
Now it’s a knife in his gut. “You think whatever it is you have is better? Whatever it is you do, if it ain’t what I’m doing, you should still know, this place, this county, this family’s got a legacy. It’s something to keep.”
“Only when you got nothin’ else to hold on to.”
Boyd feels it twist and he can’t stop himself from letting the barrel of the gun dip as he blinks to recover and pulls the strength back into his arms. He thinks of Ava’s face when they read the sentence. Ten years. They proved the self-defense, but the jury didn’t like her. She’d already killed a man once before.
“How much have you lost with your daddy’s legacy keeping you chained to this life?”
Boyd sneers. “How much shit have you taken, stranger?” He looks between his own face and Raylan’s, who's frowning with a mixture of bewilderment and concern, oddly enough, directed at both of them. “How much hate do you swallow for him? You must live here, you’re coming into this bar. Everyone’s got their chains in Harlan. What are yours made of?”
He blinks and replies smoothly, “Love.”
Boyd thinks, not for the first time, that if he really loved Ava, had only wanted Ava, he never would have left the mine. He remembers what Raylan said in the car, on their way to the airport not so long ago.
He looks at this other lawman, whose eyes don’t look so hard. “How much shit have you given him, being the way you are, doing what you do?”
Raylan’s lip quirks slowly. “Maybe a little more than he’s given me.”
“Not by much,” the other adds, almost warmly.
Boyd hates them, but he lowers the gun, sliding it across the bar.
He suddenly thinks of the Raylan of so long ago, who always used to smile at him like he never smiled at a single other thing. He thinks of this feeling he used to get sometimes, like he wanted something he never dared name, even in his own mind.
He turns away, drawing a hand across his eyes and grabbing for the Wild Turkey he left on the shelf on the back wall. “Fuck you,” he mumbles. He turns back and says, “Well, you came here to drink, didn’t you?”
He lines three shot glasses up on the bar. They approach slowly.
Raylan watches with a careful eye as Boyd pours. He notices the ink on Boyd’s knuckles finally. “You got the thing,” he says. “On your shoulder.”
Boyd looks at him coolly. “I do.”
His brows knit together. “But you’re out of that shit now?”
Boyd clenches his jaw. “Yes.”
“When did I--the other Raylan, I guess--come back to Harlan?”
Boyd’s not exactly sure why Raylan cares, but he sees no reason to lie. “Just about two years ago.” He thinks then but doesn’t say it was about the time he’d got out of that shit. He glances at the other’s hands again. “I’d say somewhere between ‘97 and ‘99 for you.”
“‘99,” he replies in his low, slightly disturbed voice.
“Before September then,” Boyd says.
“Arlo died in May,” Raylan murmurs.
Boyd doesn’t mean to smile like that.
“What?” Raylan asks.
Boyd raises his shot and they follow him. “You’re lucky,” he tells him and takes it.
It doesn’t burn so much on the way down and Boyd knows he’s been drinking too much.
In the week after they sentence Ava, Boyd throws everyone out of the bar, bolts the door behind them, and proceeds to drink himself under the table. He does this for five nights. The second night is a Tuesday.
On a Tuesday
Boyd wakes to the sound of his own voice. It’s distorted, coming out of another’s mouth like a tape recorder.
“Johnny didn’t say nothin’ about being closed.”
He’s on the floor behind the bar. He hears the door slam behind them.
Raylan answers right away. “I didn’t drive all the way down here for nothin’. He don’t care we take shit. Let’s just grab a drink anyway.” His Harlan is so much thicker than Boyd’s heard recently, as though he’s not trying at all to sound professional.
The other sounds unsure. “Ain’t it weird he left the lights on though?”
“You want to check the back?” There’s the sound of a weapon leaving its holster.
He listens to their soft footfalls, their voices muffled by the walls when they go through and find no one. Boyd’s voice says something about being alone. He hears Raylan laugh and the scraping of furniture across the floor.
Boyd curses to himself. He pushes up off the floor, damp and sticky with spills. He doesn’t know what the fuck is happening, but he thinks he can slip through the back exit. He can’t face this again.
“I said I wanted a drink, asshole,” Raylan says, coming through fast from the back. There’s a playful suggestion in his voice. “We’re alone in here too.”
Boyd turns, eyes peering past the bar. Raylan’s not wearing his hat--the hat that Boyd knows as his. He’s got a dirty baseball cap on like he used to wear in high school and it’s pushed up high on his forehead, as though someone was just messing with it.
He’s walking backwards, a slow, self-satisfied smile on his face. He’s wearing a cheap flannel, unbuttoned to reveal a white beater. He’s wearing work boots and he’s still got a gun in his hand.
He watches the other walk through too. This one is more like himself than the one before. There’s a sharpness to him, something Boyd sees in the mirror, that was dulled before. Now, it seems sharper still, almost mean. But there’s something else deep in his eyes too, that’s burning hot as he stares at Raylan.
“You wanna go on the pool table?”
Raylan smirks, still walking backwards, inviting. “Like that time Messer asked me where I get my hair cut?”
The other’s grin grows devious. “Yeah, except I ain’t gonna push you into the back ‘fore you come all over me.”
Boyd will be damned before he watches himself fuck Raylan Givens on his own goddamn pool table, so he drags himself to his feet, keeping his hands raised, and says, “Well, don’t be too hasty now, gentleman. You didn’t check behind the bar.”
It’s actually pretty amusing watching the twin expressions of shock cross their faces. The other’s hands tighten involuntarily on Raylan’s shoulder and waist while Raylan’s own hand tightens on the grip of his glock. He raises it fast, but Boyd doesn’t have any space to step back. The bar is right behind him. He’s pretty sure he’s grinning like a jackal.
“Lord Almighty,” the other says.
“I can’t believe you were going to screw with a gun in your hand, Raylan,” Boyd says, feeling a little giddy.
They certainly are a sight. Boyd can tell they stand together, close, and move together often. He saw the way the other’s arm fell to allow Raylan the room to raise the pistol. It was like a dance. He can’t imagine being so close to another human being.
“Holy shit,” Raylan breathes and lowers the weapon.
Boyd is surprised but lowers his hands regardless. “Welcome to my humble establishment, boys, tucked away in our own little corner of the Twilight Zone.”
“Did you just get up off the floor?” the other asks dubiously.
Boyd throws him as charming a smile as he can muster with whiskey and the morning lingering in his mouth. “This entire experience is either truly supernatural or hallucinations related to a very long and very dark bender in which I am indulging.”
They blink at him, simultaneously, then frown and glance at each other.
“Tell me,” Boyd says, leaning forward curiously, “Raylan, in your life, when did you return to Harlan?”
The color drains from Raylan face and something fearful flashes across the other’s.
Boyd makes sort of an a-ha sound and answers his own question. “You never did leave, did you?”
Raylan doesn’t answer, still frozen and shocked, but the other clenches his jaw and draws up tight and fearful. He takes a step forward, fast, angry, but Raylan moves in just the same way as the other did before, gracefully and sure, to hold him back.
“You shut your mouth,” Boyd’s own lips spit at him.
“You stopped him,” Boyd says anyway. He’s finding it hard to care if they shoot him. He wonders if he’d truly die. Maybe he’s already dead--alcohol poisoning or some such thing--and this is his own personal hell.
“He didn’t want to,” the other growls and Boyd doesn’t believe him. Raylan always wanted to leave. That was why Boyd never let himself get closer, why he ignored that--that thing he’d sometimes feel.
Ralyan slips off his hat and rubs at his brow. His hair is long, like Boyd’s Raylan lately, and the hat has pushed it back from his forehead, like he’s some kind of Italian gangster. The other presses close to him and they sort of sink into each other, like they need it, like it’s how they sustain themselves.
Boyd makes himself watch them, or maybe he can’t look away. It’s hard to tell.
The other is touching Raylan’s face and Raylan’s eyes are cast down between them as he sighs, “Shit, now I really need a drink.” He looks up at Boyd, flinching slightly like it hurts to look at a face so like his lover’s, yet not. “You pouring, or what?”
Boyd’s not done yet, though.
“You run it?” he asks, looking at the other.
“The racket,” he replies, almost defensively. “We let Johnny run the drugs. We keep Frankfort out. And the goddamn Cubans.”
All they need is themselves, Boyd thinks as he watches them walk together towards him, too close for any reasonable human being’s comfort. He can’t tell if it’s fucked up or beautiful.
They are isolationists, it seems. He thinks it’s interesting they made such a fuss about being alone in the bar. They must always be so.
The other takes in Boyd’s vest, an addition to the close buttoned flannel he’s wearing, his pocket watch and the tattoos on his knuckles. “What do you run?”
“The County. Heroin for Detroit, through Frankfort.”
They sneer at him.
Boyd smiles. “It’s a different world, my friends.”
Raylan climbs onto one of the bar stools. Upon closer inspection, he looks somehow younger, more carefree than the Raylan Boyd knows. His smile is less cynical and Boyd finds himself smiling back. “When did Raylan come back to you?” he asks quietly.
Boyd makes himself keep that smile on his face. “He didn’t, in the way you’re thinking.” He pulls out the shot glasses, lining them up. The Wild Turkey is still on the bar. “Came back to Harlan, maybe two years ago. He shot a man named Tommy Bucks in a fancy restaurant over crab cakes.”
The other frowns in confusion. “Why would they send him to correctional here?”
“No, son,” the diminutive feels right on his tongue. “He didn’t go to prison. He’s a U.S. Marshal.”
Raylan takes his shot and then he takes the other’s. He leaves Boyd’s, but Boyd doesn’t want to take it yet.
“Bullshit,” the other says.
“Carries a gun,” Boyd says, and points at Raylan’s holstered weapon, “a lot like that one. Badge and everything. Cowboy hat, cowboy boots. He’s a fucking sight.” He looks at them slyly, feeling a little bit mean as he adds, “Shot me too.”
“Oh hell,” the other growls and pushes away from the bar, scraping the stool harshly across the floor. “Let’s go.” He turns away.
Boyd looks Raylan in the eyes. He looks scared and guilty. He wants to know.
“I told him, not so long ago, he should’ve stayed in Harlan. We would’ve been good together.” He touches this Raylan’s hand. He’d never presume now with his own, not unless there was going to be a fight. “Maybe, if he stayed like you, I’d have found some courage. Lost some sense.”
Raylan blinks and jerks his hand away.
“You’re lucky,” Boyd tells him and takes the shot.
In the week after they sentence Ava, Boyd throws everyone out of the bar, bolts the door behind them, and proceeds to drink himself under the table. He does this for five nights. The third night is a Wednesday.
On a Wednesday
Boyd isn’t lying on the floor again when he wakes.
He’s still behind the bar, but he’s propped up against the back shelves, unopened bottles behind him, like someone put him there. It gives him a good vantage point of the door as it opens and yet another version of himself walks through.
Boyd seems to be mostly hidden, and he doesn’t trust his legs to stand regardless of whether he wants to be seen, which he hasn’t quite decided yet.
The other’s eyes are sharp, looking fast around the room before an expression of open confusion cross his features. “Well, then,” he murmurs to the empty room. He smiles then and there’s something about it that makes Boyd think he would never smile in such a way--subtly self-deprecating but also sort of sweetly true. “Some homecoming, Crowder.”
Something sinks very fast to the bottom of Boyd’s empty stomach. He has to stifle a groan. This one left. He left. Did Raylan? Boyd sees no tattoos on this one's fingers and no guard in his walk or in his glance, no edge that’s been sharpened. Though he does have a certain grace and ease that Boyd is certain he’s never seen in himself.
The other’s phone rings and he smiles as he answers it. “Honey, I told you you didn’t have to check up on me.” He listens patiently for a moment and nods like he’s heard it all before. “Well, you’ll be disappointed then, there ain’t nobody here.” A slight pause and he adds, “Nope, bar’s empty. No Johnny. I saw Ava earlier, yeah, my sister-in-law. She seems fine, though I had to tell her to quit apologizing for shooting my brother. Yeah, I know it’s fucked up and I know that’s why you’re calling--” He rolls his eyes. “What did Raylan tell you, Lydia?”
He laughs out loud at something this Lydia person says and Boyd winces at it. He draws a hand across his eyes. He’s not feeling any hangover. He just doesn’t remember the last time he’s laughed like that.
“He told you to stay out of it, yes, but he also told you it would be fine. I’m fine, we’re fine, Harlan is fine. No one here knows why I left. Daddy and Bowman are dead and no one gives a shit. It’s fucking fine.”
It’s starting to look like he’s not really fine and Boyd thinks back to those wounds in himself. It shouldn’t have mattered to him so much, even Daddy, when he’d been so keen to do the killing himself. But it had. He can see those wounds are fresh in this version of himself.
“No, Raylan’s not here. Maybe you can get off the line so I can call him?” There’s a bite in his tone that Boyd can see he regrets immediately. “Look, honey, get your husband to make you feel better about your worrying about me. I can’t do it right now.” He crooks a smile and replies, “I was always mean. Maybe not so much to you. But you can’t blame Raylan--well, don’t blame him and I’ll do some real nice things for you when I get back.”
There’s no doubt in Boyd’s mind that the bargain is a sexual one. He sits back and gives this other a second, more careful look.
It’s the slight shift that catches the other’s eye and he freezes, wary. “I’m gonna have to let you go, Lydia,” he says into the phone. “Someone’s just come in.” He hangs up without waiting for a goodbye and his fingers tighten around the little black flip phone as if he wishes it were a weapon.
He’s afraid, Boyd can see. He isn’t from Harlan anymore.
His eyes dart around the room for a moment and he takes a breath before he strides across the empty floor and over to the bar, undoubtedly thinking he can reach for the aluminum bat under the bar top or the axe next to the fire extinguisher before whoever made that sound becomes an actual threat.
When he meets the bar, reaching over to grasp at the bat that is now a shotgun, he comes face to face with Boyd.
“Fuck me,” he gasps. His grip on the bar becomes tight like he’s just lost the strength in his legs.
“Hello,” Boyd replies softly. He moves very slowly to stand.
The other regains his footing at about the same time but doesn’t back up any.
Boyd is finding it necessary to continually reassess his read on this one. He’s changeable in a way that is not quite like the others and not quite like the way Boyd knows himself to be. Just by demeanor he seems to have lost some kind of edge, but it reappears in his eyes from time to time. He’s easy to read, but hard to understand. Boyd wonders what his Raylan thinks of that.
They look each other up and down and they say nothing for a long time.
Boyd can see that this one can tell that they are different, that he’s lost that sharpness Boyd was looking for, but knows it when he’s staring it in the face. He hasn’t forgotten.
“I dropped acid in New York when I was twenty-two,” he says, just as soft as Boyd’s greeting. “I spent forty-five minutes locked in my lover’s bathroom staring at a man who looked a lot like you.”
Boyd decides not to suppress his smile. “Where else have you been?”
The other matches him. “I lived in New York and Atlanta. Spent some time with some people in Rio and the French Riviera, a few weekends in Lake Tahoe and Miami, places like that. Now, I live in Berea.” He spares a second glance at the ink on Boyd’s knuckles. It always gives him away. “You ain’t been anywhere but here and inside, have you?”
“I been to Kuwait too, asshole,” Boyd replies, but not in an unfriendly way and the other grins.
“You run this place?” the other asks curiously. “It doesn’t look so different.”
“I run this county,” Boyd tells him. He hasn’t gotten tired of saying it yet. There’s a satisfaction in it, even after all that’s happened, that hasn’t grown too sour to swallow.
“Where’s Johnny?”
“Don’t trust Johnny,” Boyd says. “Yours ain’t here right now and mine is in the wind. Don’t fucking trust him.”
The other’s brows rise. “I wasn’t planning on it.” He tilts his head and says, “Your Johnny, huh? What about your Raylan?”
Boyd can appreciate that these doppelgangers of his are rolling with the punch of coming face to face with another version of themselves, but none has rolled quickly enough to be the one who’s asking the questions. He’s surprised and intrigued.
“Can Raylan be trusted, you mean?”
He shakes his head. “No, just, what’s he like?”
Boyd shrugs, just because he can tell this other cares a lot. “He’s a Marshal and an asshole. Wears a hat. Shoots people and so on. Does that sound like yours?”
The other nods. “Does he like to bottom?” He says this with such a winning, mischievous smile Boyd isn’t even angry, or upset, and he sure as hell isn’t surprised.
He huffs half a laugh that he wonders if the other will perceive as regretful and replies, shaking his head, “I don’t think so.”
“You never tried it with him?” He’s frowning, like he can’t conceive Boyd would never have laid a hand on Raylan for anything like that. He realizes in the next moment, when Boyd doesn’t answer. Boyd can see it break across his face. “You never did anything with him, did you?”
Boyd doesn’t answer that either. He wants to ask the questions now. “How did you know?”
“How did I know what?”
What to do, what they wanted, what Raylan wanted, anything and everything. Boyd is looking at him and he sees a stranger, so much more than the others, and he needs to know how. He doesn’t even know if what he’s looking at is anything that he wanted then or desires now. He just knows he’s seen a world and a version of Raylan Givens Boyd has never dreamed of.
“How did you let go?” The Wild Turkey is still sitting on the bar. He fumbles, taking out a glass, and pours a generous shot.
The other blinks at him. “Didn’t you hear her? All those years ago. She said, we’d know how to love. I never forgot that.”
Boyd is mystified. “Who?”
“Mama.”
Something must shut down in Boyd’s expression, closed off fast and terrifying, because the other recoils, frowning, but steels himself and presses forward, reaching across the bar.
It’s disorienting, watching yourself approach, lay hands on you--Boyd can’t pull away for the vertigo. He must be feeling it too because he’s blinking fast, but it might be more than that because his eyes are wet too. He’s saying he’s sorry.
“Fuck you,” Boyd growls.
There’s something about his hands, though. They are insistent and strong and they feel like his own. He doesn’t struggle.
“Fuck,” he breathes.
“That was mean,” the other says, so earnestly. “I’m sorry.”
Boyd doesn’t pull away either. “I never heard her say that.”
“I was small,” he says. His hands are fisted in the fabric of Boyd’s shirt sleeves, rolled up and dirty from the floor. “She said, ‘Boyd has the soul of a poet. He’ll always know how to love.’”
The bar is between them and Boyd doesn’t really want it there anymore. He wishes he’d known such a thing was in her mind. He wishes he’d had the courage to believe it without her.
“Can I--” the other begins to ask.
“Yes.” He’s breathing hard, upset. He sees no reason to hide it now.
He comes around the side of the bar and stands strangely close to Boyd.
“You’re so sad,” he murmurs.
Boyd closes his eyes. They’re not touching anymore. It feels so strange that he wants to. There’s a magnetism to him, a confidence that breeds attraction. Boyd’s never felt such a thing.
“Don’t,” Boyd tells him. He picks up the shot glass, full to the brim. “You came here to drink, didn’t you?”
He looks at him and he’s all wide eyes full of concern as he takes it. “You didn’t pour one for yourself.”
“If I take it, I’ll black out, wake up looking at some other face of mine.”
He tilts his head and Boyd wonders if he thinks for a moment that Boyd is joking. But he twists his mouth into half a smile, sort of ironic, but full of wonder at the same time. “This is so fucking weird,” he says and takes the shot.
They look at each other for another long moment. This other’s lips are wet now and slightly parted.
“Do you think I could--”
“Go ahead, you lucky bastard,” Boyd tells him.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t want to be the one to do that, but the other doesn’t seem to mind. He leans in fast and presses their lips together, opens up just as quick--they must both like it that way--and Boyd tastes the whiskey on his tongue.
In the week after they sentence Ava, Boyd throws everyone out of the bar, bolts the door behind them, and proceeds to drink himself under the table. He does this for five nights. The fourth night is a Thursday.
On a Thursday
“I told you not to follow me in here,” Boyd hears Raylan growl. Harlan is back in his voice and he sounds angry, afraid even.
“Raylan, there isn’t anybody in here right now. What does it matter?” His own voice again. Less Harlan, more north, and tired.
Boyd is on the floor. He still feels that other’s kiss on his lips. Lord Almighty, how many more could there be? He decides not to look at them, he just keeps listening.
“Should be,” Raylan grumbles. “Where the fuck is Johnny?” Boyd can hear the thud of work boots across the floor, near the bar. He takes the Wild Turkey and reaches down, without looking, for two shot glasses. “You’ll settle my tab?” Raylan asks, voice hard with bitterness.
“Whatever you want, Raylan, just let me talk with you.”
Boyd remembers thinking something so similar when they were still young and in the mine. Raylan was always so quiet down there and when they were out, he’d take a long time to start talking again. Boyd would always think to himself, just talk with me, and it would be at least a round before he would get his wish.
Raylan huffs something not quite like a laugh. “Must be nice,” he says. “Big fat government check in your mail every week.”
There’s a pause and Boyd wonders if that stung. He waits for the answer and he wonders at something else, his chest constricting in a slow, almost painful way.
“It’s every other week, son,” he hears himself say. “And the DEA don’t actually pay that well.”
Boyd has to stop himself from taking an audible breath.
“Don’t put the accent on just for me, Boyd.” Raylan’s retort is quick as lightning and his voice drips with derision. “Don’t think just ‘cause you’re in here and we’re drinking, you’re gonna make me think this is old times and I can just listen to you and everything will be--”
He stops short there.
“Raylan--”
“No,” Raylan growls. “You think I don’t know how to handle myself?” There’s an edge to Raylan’s voice that Boyd knows the other can detect, like Raylan himself is uncertain and is only saying the words to bolster his conviction. “You’re the one who’s been away. You’re the one who hasn’t had to fucking manage these godamn shitkickers for the past twenty years--”
“Raylan, I’m not sure you understand,” the other says slowly, his voice louder. He’s raised it, but he’s also closer. “It’s not shitkickers you’re dealing with now. It’s not Harlan, which means it’s not anything like dodging Daddy and paying protection next week. It’s organized crime. It’s a goddamn gang war, asshole. It’s a hit on me and it might be a hit on Ava. I know you know that, so talk to me like you do.
“I’ve been a field agent for fifteen years. I’m a goddamn expert in explosives and artillery. And I’m the head of a Task Force specifically designed to take down these people who wanted you to shoot me. I can fucking help you.”
Boyd can tell he’s stunned Raylan. He hears the clinks across the table, the bottle hitting the rim of the glass. They both drink and they don’t speak for a while.
“They put you in charge of a Task Force assigned to take down the people who put a hit on you?” Raylan asks. “Isn’t that a conflict of interest?”
Boyd can hear the smile in the other’s voice, the pride. “I’m a very persuasive man, Raylan. And I get shit done.”
“You want me to inform?” There’s a sad uncertainty that Boyd can hear, it makes his heart ache. This Raylan never went anywhere. This Raylan doesn’t know what he can do.
“I want you to do what you can,” the other says. “And I want you to be safe.”
There’s another long pause and then Raylan says, “Why the fuck do you care so much?”
Boyd can’t stand it. It’s so different, but it's just the same.
He stands up.
He looks them over with a tired gaze. They’re sitting, facing each other, two sides of a mirror, opposite his own.
His other is wearing business clothes--not like Boyd’s though-- straight-lined khakis and a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves. If Boyd didn’t know better, like Raylan must not have, he’d’ve thought he was a pencil-pusher. A nobody. But there’s danger in his eyes, and certainty, and competence. Boyd thinks they look more like his own eyes than any of the others.
He suddenly hates himself and hates this other for making him feel that way. He’s a snake in the grass, but he doesn’t bite the hand that feeds, he bites the one that strangles.
This Raylan is nineteen--or looks that way at first. With his coal-dusted work boots and his flannel shirt--like those other boys--and his baseball cap. But Boyd sees in his eyes an exhaustion and a desperation that he’s never seen in any other Raylan’s that paraded through here, or in his own--even when Helen was killed.
“We always want to help you, Raylan,” Boyd says. “Sometimes you won’t take it. And sometimes we just don't know how. He does, so I think you should listen to him.”
“Lord--” his other bites out, pulling a lawman-style sidearm. Boyd raises his hands.
Raylan barely reacts at first, as he stares at Boyd, then slowly smiles, like he thinks something is funny.
"You didn't answer the question, asshole," Raylan says.
Boyd smiles back at him, more warmly than he’d anticipated. "It's because we love you, son.”
The other puts away his weapon, eyes wide.
“Maybe we loved you a long time ago. Maybe we never understood what it was. But that don’t mean it wasn’t there, or it isn’t real then or now.” He lets out a breath, it’s not a laugh or a sigh, it’s just Raylan. “Just fucking let us love you, Raylan.”
They both stare at him for several long moments, until Boyd looks at the bottle sitting between them. “Pour me one, will you?”
It’s Raylan that obliges.
The other is assessing him now, his expression darkening. He’s taken in the tats, the watch, the knife in his boot. Boyd smirks at him. “Would you like to compare scars?” he asks.
The other’s eyes flash angrily. “Fuck you,” he says and Boyd laughs. “You’re a goddamn waste.”
Boyd’s smile falters, but doesn’t fall away at that. “Maybe,” he says, stepping around the bar, still with his hands raised, and approaching the table. He wants that drink. “But I’m thinkin’, without me in my place, my own Harlan County would be in just as dire straits as yours. And then where would my Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens be?”
This Raylan’s eyes widen, and then he looks sick, leaning forward heavy on his hands, which he’s rubbing across his face. “Oh fuck,” he says. “Oh, Jesus--fuck.”
“He might have been shot,” Boyd continues, carelessly. “He certainly wouldn’t have no baby on the way with that pretty court reporter. But then again,” he looks back at himself, as Raylan makes a choking noise. He looks at this man he knows he could have been had he cared to, and says, “Maybe I wouldn’t have fallen for Ava and got her thrown in prison for murder. We are all--every one of you I have seen--all capable of deeds both good and evil, but I’ve realized--and maybe that’s why I’m here--that my greatest misdeed was not understanding and subsequently not showing Raylan Givens the depth of my love for him.”
He looks down at the shot glass and asks, “May I?” His hands are still in the air.
The other juts his jaw and jerks his head in assent.
Boyd picks up the shot. “You’ll be luckier if you’re honest with him. About everything.”
The whiskey burns on the way down, hotter than ever, and it’s chased by the darkness behind his eyes.
There are cool hands on his face, long fingers--not Ava’s. He groans.
“Shit,” someone mutters and a burst of pain blooms across his cheek.
Boyd’s eyes spring open and he struggles wildly, trying to back up, banging his head on one of the bar stools. “Fuck.”
He looks at Raylan--hat on head, badge, gun, angrily concerned expression. “Which one are you?” he growls. He looks around the bar. “Where’s the other one?” The place is empty.
“What the hell are you talking about, asshole?” Raylan’s voice is dry, too pissed to be amused. He still looks somewhat concerned. “I just came in here, found you passed out on the goddamn floor, Jesus Christ.”
Boyd stares at him, long, and then he says, “Raylan?” He can’t quite believe.
“Who do you think?” He looks really concerned now and even more mad about it. “Come on. Let’s get you up.”
Boyd’s whole body feels tired and sore, wrung out, as if he’d been awake for days and drunk for twice as long. Raylan helps him to his feet and steers him to a chair.
“When did you last eat?” Boyd can tell Raylan hates asking.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know.” He puts his hands to his eyes, the light’s hurting them. “What day is it?” Raylan’s fingers tighten on his shoulder and he hasn’t let go. He thinks of them boys, the ones who didn’t leave. He can’t even ask Raylan--why would he want to?
“It’s Tuesday,” Raylan says quietly.
One night, then. Boyd wants to laugh.
“The spirits can do it all in one day,” he mumbles into his hands. “Christ Almighty.”
“Boyd, look at me.” Boyd looks up. Raylan eyes are grave and he doesn’t look pissed anymore. “Boyd, this ain’t like you.”
“You don’t know what I’m like, Raylan,” Boyd says after a long time just staring at him. He raises a hand to touch Raylan’s face and quirks a bitter smile when he jerks away from his touch.
“What the fuck,” he says and he almost steps away, but Boyd’s hands snake out and grab at him, hard around both wrists.
“Did you ever feel it, Raylan? It’s real, you know? I thought--I thought it was nothing. But it isn’t. It’s fucking real.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Do you think I could have been for you? Would you have stayed for me? Did I--did I ever have the soul of a fucking poet?” He’s feeling hysterical now, thinking of all of them and Raylan. “Did you ever feel it?” He gets his hands on either side of Raylan’s shocked face. He thinks about kissing him.
Raylan knees him in the gut and he doubles over. His stomach heaves. “Oh, God.”
“You are unbelievable,” Raylan spits from where he is standing over him. Boyd wonders if he’s going to get kicked.
A chair scrapes across the floor and he looks up to see Raylan sitting, leaning over his knees, hat on the table next to that fucking bottle of Wild Turkey. His hair is too long and he’s drawn his hand through it, mussing it up so strings are falling over his eyes.
He looks at Boyd in a manner that reminds him of the mine, but the openness of his expression shuts down in the next moment and he sighs in frustration.
“I hate you so much,” he says. “I tried to tell Ava. I really did. What you’re like. You chew people up. Spit them out. You take and take and you’re so smart, but you don’t fucking understand anything. I thought--I really thought we could be done. And now, you’re gonna say such things to me?” He raises his chin. “Fuck you, Boyd. I fucking hate you.”
Boyd isn’t sure what to say now. He feels lost.
“You’re in a whole other category of denial, Boyd. I just push it down and down and maybe that’s why I’m so pissed all the time, but you--you’re so lucky you usually see so clear, because when you want to pretend something ain’t happening, Boyd, it’s just not there.”
“Raylan--”
“No, shut up. I get you, Boyd. I always have. But what I don’t understand is why you want to dig this shit up now. Will you tell me that?”
“Would you believe me if I said it came to me in a dream?” Boyd asks.
Raylan rolls his eyes in a way that Boyd does not take as amused. “I was nineteen the last time I unequivocally believed anything you said.”
“What was it?” Boyd asks curiously. “The thing I said that you believed.”
Raylan licks his lips carefully and he takes a moment before he answers. “You said, you’re gonna get out alive, Raylan.”
Boyd closes his eyes, he lays back down on the floor, facing the ceiling. When he opens them, he keeps his gaze on the popcorn tiles. “Raylan, why did you come here?” he asks.
“Ava asked me to.”
Fuck.
“She called me. Said you hadn’t taken her call from inside. Don’t fucking do that, anymore, Jesus. What is she supposed to think?”
“I’m sorry,” Boyd murmurs to the air.
Raylan sighs. “I took pity on her. Because I know--I know what it’s like.”
He didn’t say what it is that he knows. But logically, Boyd understands it isn’t being inside. Raylan had never done that. It must be the thing neither of them can say. It’s not like it would matter now.
“I always want to help you, Raylan,” Boyd says, as though that’s going to make everything clear and better.
“Sure,” Raylan drawls, walls coming back up. “Doesn’t stop you from using me either, though, does it?”
“It’s just my nature, I suppose.” But he thinks about those other men. They knew so much more than Boyd did. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Why didn’t you know?”
Boyd can’t answer--even after all this--so he decides it wouldn’t be right to demand anything else from him.
He hears Raylan pour himself a shot, the slow gulp, and the sound of the glass hitting the table.
“I’m gonna try not to see you for a while,” he says.
Boyd thinks that sounds good.