Work Text:
Raylan, 23, found a stopped pocket watch holding down an envelope on his nightstand one cold morning. Inside the pocket watch was a pressed four leaf clover that had been painted into the door with a clear plastic along with two locks of hair braided and positioned for their adhesion into the watch to look akin to wild wheat. One in black and the other in a sunny brown. Despite being carefully arranged, the hand that installed these items inside the watch were inexpert.
Raylan swiped both off the night stand into the drawer. He didn’t read the letter.
On his twenty-fourth birthday a song comes on the radio while he’s waiting for his dinner to heat up. It doesn’t take more than half a bar for him to recognize the voice warbling to him in his own kitchen the way it used to do every day. He recognizes the song as well. The pronouns sung are wrong. She didn’t do shit.
He doesn’t realize he’s done it until he’s standing, heaving for air, over the wreckage of what had been before then the most precious gift he’d ever received. He sweeps the radio up into the trash and doesn’t replace it.
He never needed one before anyway.
Which is why his doublewide is silent when Ava, crying, tells him she was pregnant in the same sentence she tells him she miscarried. The tears wash away the make-up on her face leaving her blue eyes lost in deep sockets of coal smudge gray and bruise green from the way her mascara runs.
Raylan may not have been smart enough to turn tail and run when the getting was good but he is stupid enough to put two and two together and come out of it with felony assault charge for the hospitalization of Bowman Crowder.
Ava’s there to greet him when he gets out after five on good behavior.
She says, "Prison did you favors," and squeezes his bicep while eyeing him up and down.
Raylan doesn’t tell her there’s no such thing as a favor in prison. He’s thinking she knows.
"Hope you don’t mind I redecorated a bit," she says standing on the threshold of the only home Raylan’s ever known. "Figured you might want it to look different after…"
The place looks good. He can’t fault her for changing everything while he was away. His chest and eyes burn when the sheets don’t smell the same.
Two boys barely graduated and already tied at the hip approach Raylan after a shift. They’d been whispering and staring his way for the past week.
He knows why. He only wishes he didn’t.
"Mister Givens?" the blond asks. His eyes are jewel-like where they stare at him out of his coal covered face.
"What is it?" he sighs, wishing for the millionth time he was anywhere else but there.
"Is it true? You knew him? You knew Boyd Crowder?"
Raylan swings. The firing is worth no one asking about that traitor again.
Bowman dies in a police raid at Audrey’s with his dick halfway down a teenager’s throat. His gun jams when he goes for it.
Mosley comes to Raylan and Ava’s door with his hat in hand while they’re fixing supper. He looks Ava in the eye when he tells her he killed her husband.
"Ex-husband," Ava and Raylan correct at the same time. Raylan pours Ava and Mosley a glass of bourbon.
"Good riddance to bad company," Ava toasts.
Raylan drinks from the bottle and skips dinner. He wakes in the night to vomit so hard he bursts vessels in his eyes.
"You owe me one," Johnny informs him after his first shift like they both don’t know the reason he hired Raylan was because he’s sweet on Ava.
"You were the one with the Help Wanted sign."
He nearly misses the flyer when he’s taking out the trash eight months later. The Two-Body Problem Celestial Tour. Raylan tears it into shreds, piles it all up in the sink, douses it in Cinnamon Schnapps, and lights it on fire.
He informs Johnny he will not be working those nights. Fire him if he likes, Raylan won’t do it. Johnny thinks that’s fair enough.
Raylan steals the bottle of Cinnamon Schnapps. Johnny won’t miss it.
Ava goes. He wishes she wouldn’t have. It’s harder to be alone after—
He never wanted to stay here to begin with. He’d made so many plans before—
He drinks until he throws up in the shower. Staggers to his room after waking up on the shower floor.
Boyd is sitting on their bed.
"Figured you’d’ve thrown it away."
Clenching his towel, chest burning, Raylan makes himself meet his eyes. Boyd looks better than his posters make him out. Better than his pretentious music videos.
"I’m not in the habit of tossing aside what don’t serve me."
"You’re always the kind to hang on past reason," Boyd says as if he has the right. "Like a bulldog."
Raylan turns to his closet, needing more cover than the threadbare towel Ava brought when she moved in after Raylan’s conviction.
"You never opened the letter."
He shoves his legs into undersized jeans. He’s not been able to afford new clothes since his release.
"Would it’ve said something slipping out in the middle of the night didn’t?"
He doesn’t answer Raylan’s question. He turns Raylan around. This time Raylan can’t make himself look.
Boyd traces Raylan’s clover tattoos over his chest. Raylan tries not to shiver at the feel of Boyd’s hands on his tattoo.
There’s glitter in the embroidering of Boyd’s shirt. His jeans are… very fitted.
"You’re still holding on, aren’t you?" Boyd asks, his voice that private timber he used to use in their bedroom. It lilts up at the end like he really needs to ask.
There’s glitter on Boyd’s lips too.
"You look like a rodeo themed Ken Doll."
Boyd laughs. The room spins. From the Schnapps.
"I’m glad you like my outfit."
Raylan wants to cut it off with the knife Boyd got stuck in the wall over their bed a month after they moved in and burn it.
"In the letter I promised I’d return for you."
"Goddamnit, Boyd! Together. We said we’d get out together."
Boyd’s hand covers Raylan’s clover tattoo. He’s got the same guitar callouses.
"If you had read the letter—"
"Fuck you and your letter."
Boyd wraps his arms around Raylan’s neck. The buttons on Boyd’s shirt press into his skin. Raylan’s hands grab Boyd’s hips without his say so.
"How 'bout just me, cowboy?"
Big time country rock stars kiss the same as poor coal miners.