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Raylan catches up with him two weeks after he makes his escape.
If Boyd’s being honest with himself – and, these days, he does try his god-blessed best to at least not lie to himself – he should be long gone. The plan had been to go to Mexico, and he’d sent sweet Charlene on ahead there, with the promise that he’d be joining her shortly, just as soon as he got his hands on some funds he had stashed before getting locked up.
And he’s honest with himself, now, but that doesn’t make him an honest man. Not by a long shot. The money is real, at least. Boyd’s got it in his possession, stuffed in a duffel bag in the trunk of a beater he stole. But the bus to Cancun came and went, and Boyd never set foot on it.
He’s in Virginia, now, in an empty cabin that, as far as he can tell, belonged to some tourist rental company that went belly-up in the years he was in prison. Everything inside has a fine layer of dust on it, and the electricity doesn’t work, but it’s well water in the leaky pipes, and it’s remote enough that no one stumbles onto it while they’re looking for something else. And that suits Boyd just fine.
One way or another, he’s not going to be in the cabin for long. He knows Raylan will come for him, the same way he knows the sun will rise in the morning, the same way he knows that Mexico wasn’t ever really in the cards for him. He can feel it in his bones, in a place deep inside him that he might have called his soul, back when he had godly aspirations. Their story, he knows, will not end with the years and the miles growing ever more lengthy between them. They were always meant for more vicious things than that.
(He tells himself that it’s fate, that it’s unavoidable – that Raylan would follow him out of the country if Boyd were to go. He tells himself that he doesn’t want to be looking over his shoulder while he’s enjoying his twilight years, but when night falls and he’s alone between musty sheets with nothing more than his own thoughts… that’s when he reminds himself of the truth of the matter.)
Boyd hears the car pull up outside late one afternoon. It could be anyone, but no one’s bothered him in all the time he’s been in the cabin – he doubts that foot traffic is going to start now, as the days are getting shorter and the temperature continues to fall. No – while there is the possibility that it’s someone from the village at the base of the mountain, or a police officer doing patrols, Boyd knows that it’s not, sure as the beat of his own heart.
He doesn’t move from his seat at the kitchen table. Maybe it would be polite to greet Raylan at the door, ask him for the warrant Boyd knows he doesn’t have, but the two of them, they’ve never stood on ceremony like that.
Besides – he wants a chance to talk to Raylan, and that sounds like a good way to get himself shot prematurely.
He settles into his chair and closes his eyes, tracking Raylan’s movements through the sounds he makes: the car door slamming, the crunch of boots on gravel, the squeak of the old boards on the porch. Raylan’s moving slowly, and Boyd can picture him in his mind’s eye, with his gun drawn and held low, dark eyes peering out from under the brim of his hat as he scans the scenery for any sign of a threat.
As the front door opens, Boyd opens his eyes and puts his hands flat on the table, palms down. Not a threat, he wants to say, though he and Raylan would both know it’s a lie. But he can look the part, at least. Con himself into a few more minutes of Raylan’s tenuous patience.
His breath catches in his throat when Raylan comes around the corner and Boyd finally lays eyes on him. The decade they’ve been apart has been kind to him – his hair is gray and still too long to adhere to any sort of regulation; his eyes are still sharp, narrowed in suspicion as they take Boyd in; and the rest of him, well… Boyd’s fairly certain that Raylan will be gangly until the day he dies.
His eyes flick briefly to the gun Raylan has leveled at him before returning to his face. “You look good, Raylan.”
The corners of Raylan’s mouth twitch, like he’s biting back a smile. The lines on his face have gotten deeper, more marked, but the twinkle in his eye is the same from when they were kids. Boyd doesn’t remember his own mama’s face, but the myriad of ways that Raylan looks at him? He’ll take all that to the grave.
“Ten years,” Raylan drawls, his voice easy and his aim steady, “and that’s all you have to say?”
Boyd shrugs, even as something thrills inside him at hearing Raylan speak again. He aches to hear the man say his name, a need that’s as real as the one he has for oxygen, for water. And he can’t help that ache from coming out in his voice when he says, “Might be that I spent a lot of those years thinking about you.”
Raylan takes a few steps inside the kitchen, his eyes darting left and right before settling back on Boyd. If he’s got any opinions on Boyd being alone, good or bad, he keeps them to himself. “Boyd,” he says – and there, Christ, Boyd can’t do anything but swallow the saliva that floods his mouth when Raylan finally does say his name. Raylan goes on, oblivious. “If you think you’re going to sweet-talk your way out of this, I’m sorry to inform you that you’re sorely mistaken.” He gestures with the gun, a quick flick that makes the metal gleam in the cold sunlight streaming in through the window. “Get up. Slowly, now. No sudden moves.”
Boyd resists the urge to roll his eyes – barely – and obliges, levering himself up out of the chair with a small sound of discomfort that he can’t quite contain. He wonders, almost distantly, if Raylan’s body hurts a little with every movement he makes. Boyd might not have been kind to his body in his youth, but Raylan wasn’t kind to his in adulthood. They made him retire, Boyd heard. Otherwise, he thinks, Raylan would still be out there with a star on his hip, wrestling fugitives to the ground like there was nothing else in the world he’d rather be doing. Boyd smiles at the thought, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. “You here to arrest me, marshal?”
When he glances up, Raylan is looking at him with an odd sort of expression on his face, something that’s almost disappointment but softer. “I’m not a marshal anymore,” he says, and Boyd can hear the ache in his voice, the longing.
Boyd pauses. “Now, that could mean one of two things,” he says slowly, weighing Raylan’s reaction to his words just as carefully as Raylan is watching him. “Either you realized that you are no longer beholden to any and all federal organizations that are looking to re-acquire me–”
“Not likely,” Raylan says, but Boyd presses on.
“–or you’re here to put me down for good.”
Raylan’s smile doesn’t fade, from his mouth or his eyes, but something goes tight in his shoulders, and he shifts his weight, almost like he’s bracing himself. “Could be,” he says. “While I was driving up here, it occurred to me that you might have let me catch up to you just so you could make a concerted effort to put me in the ground.”
“Seems like, if that was my intention, it would have been more prudent to take any sort of action before you had your gun pointed at me.”
The laugh that escapes Raylan’s mouth is short and sharp, and it doesn’t make the humor return to his eyes. “And since when do you choose what to do based on how prudent it might be?” He gestures, with the hand not holding the gun, at the cabin around them, though his gaze never strays from Boyd. “Wouldn’t put it past you to rig this piece of shit to blow.”
“Seems just a bit ill-conceived,” Boyd says dryly, “to escape from prison, only to blow myself up.”
Raylan takes another step closer, carefully, one foot placed neatly in front of the other. “Seems like something you’d do,” he says, and Boyd’s not sure whether to be flattered or insulted. “The other option is that you let me catch up to you just because, and it’s not like that makes a whole lot of sense either.”
“Maybe I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for you, Raylan.”
Raylan’s grip on the gun tightens, almost imperceptibly, little more than a flexing of the muscle in his forearm and a slight whitening of his knuckles. “See, when you say things like that, it doesn’t make me think you’ve got anything good planned.”
Boyd sighs, making Raylan’s eyebrows draw together under the brim of his hat. “I suppose I don’t have much say in how you justify killing me to yourself.”
Raylan looks like he’s considering it – imagining it, even – but while his gun doesn’t shift away from where it’s pointing at Boyd’s chest, he shakes his head in denial. “Never wanted you dead, Boyd,” he says, and there’s something in his voice, something old and weathered and familiar. Boyd knows the feeling well – he gets it every time he thinks about Raylan, be it the way he was when he left Harlan or the way he was when he came back.
Boyd’s gaze flicks pointedly to the gun. “Forgive me if I don’t take you at your word. You’ve put holes in me before.”
Raylan’s mouth twists into a little half-grin, like he tried and failed to suppress it. But it only lasts for a moment, until he takes a step forward, and then another, until the barrel of the gun is pressed right against Boyd’s chest. Exactly, Boyd realizes with a bittersweet lurch, over the scar Raylan gave him.
“You had to know I’d track you down,” Raylan says, and the almost apologetic tone in his voice makes Boyd’s heart stutter in his chest. But the truth is, he did know that. Regardless of Raylan’s circumstances, Boyd always knew that Raylan wouldn’t let this go. And, maybe, just a little, he’d been looking forward to this reunion. Maybe, once or twice, he’d allowed himself to imagine the best possible outcome, instead of the worst.
“I knew,” he says quietly, and the apology in Raylan’s expression turns into something desperate, something raw. “Hell, Raylan, I could’ve been in Mexico by now, sitting poolside and sipping on a margarita.”
Raylan’s jaw works as he grinds his teeth together. His eyes go a little flinty, and Boyd’s stomach swoops – though not from fear. “Then why aren’t you?” Raylan demands. “What was the point of this?”
The point was, Boyd thinks, that once upon a time, you ran away and left me hanging, and try as I might, I couldn’t find it in me to do the same. He almost says it out loud – except he’s not sure Raylan would appreciate the sentiment. “Maybe I just wanted to see you one more time,” he says instead. Raylan’s mouth flattens into a thin line, and the muzzle of the gun presses a little harder against Boyd’s chest.
“Not quite sure I believe you chose to see me and lose your shot at freedom and white sand beaches, Boyd.”
“I’ll always choose you,” Boyd says – and it’s not what he meant to say, not by a long shot. He swallows, looking away from Raylan for the first time since the man walked in the front door. “Ain’t my fault if you won’t let me most of the time.”
“Boyd,” Raylan says, and there’s something helpless in his voice, a question and an answer all wrapped up in a name.
Boyd answers, even though the words twist painfully in his chest as he says them. “I loved you, Raylan. Can’t much help it if I still do.”
”So did I,” Raylan says, without missing a beat. “Loved you the only way I knew how.”
Boyd waits, but that’s all Raylan says. So did I. Three words, encompassing a set of choices made, of roads left untraveled. Loved, he said, and maybe that’s always been the difference between them. Raylan’s love is an unwanted memory; Boyd’s is a fundamental aspect of his personality.
And if that isn’t clear enough, well – Raylan’s still pointing a gun at him, after all.
Boyd smiles, even though it feels forced as it slants across his mouth. “So what’s your plan, Raylan?” he asks, changing the subject for both their sakes. “I don’t see any handcuffs on your belt. You’re not even bothering to pretend that you came up here to take me into custody.”
Raylan’s hold on the gun shifts again, his fingers flexing around the grip. “‘Cause prison worked out so well the last time, right?”
“You don’t want me dead,” Boyd says softly. “And you don’t want me in prison. Tell me, Raylan – where is it you think I belong?”
The muscles in Raylan’s jaw flex as he grinds his teeth again – if nothing else, Boyd supposes, he can be comforted by the thought that he still knows how to get under Raylan’s skin. When Raylan doesn’t answer, though, Boyd just smiles. He reaches down, slowly, so as not to give Raylan the wrong impression, and closes his fingers over the barrel of the gun, but he doesn’t push it away. Instead, he drags it up, notching the muzzle under his own chin.
The metal is cold, and Boyd’s heart is in his throat, but when the gun trembles, ever so slightly, it’s not because Boyd’s hands are shaking.
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t miss this time,” he says, holding Raylan’s gaze – and then, deliberately, he closes his eyes.
For a moment, all he can hear is the interminable dripping of the faucet and Raylan’s breathing, harsh and uneven. He braces himself. A shot like this should mean an instant end – no pain, no time for regret. He won’t even have time to register that Raylan pulled the trigger before he’s dead.
The gun wavers, and Boyd tenses for a beat, but the shot doesn’t come. Instead, Raylan sucks in a ragged breath, and his other hand comes up to fist in the front of Boyd’s shirt. “Boyd,” he says, and somehow he conveys the ache Boyd has felt inside him for the past forty years with that single, plaintive word.
The gun falls away – not to clatter to the floor, but to slide back into Raylan’s holster with a definitive sound – and then Raylan’s hand is pulling him forward and his mouth is on Boyd’s own.
The kiss is hard and desperate, and it takes Boyd a moment to realize that it’s Raylan making it that way. It’s Raylan’s hand gripping the front of his shirt, like he’s afraid Boyd will pull away. It’s Raylan crushing their mouths together, nipping at Boyd’s bottom lip, like he thinks he needs to take Boyd’s mouth in order to have it. It’s Raylan who’s trembling when Boyd reaches up to cup his jaw, shaking so minutely that Boyd wouldn’t have been able to tell if they weren’t touching.
It’s Boyd, though, who gentles the kiss into something softer, something sweeter. Something a little less desperate.
Raylan makes a sound, something low and needy, and it sparks low in Boyd’s belly. “Raylan,” he murmurs, just to taste the man’s name on his tongue, and Raylan shudders against him. He finally abandons the grip on Boyd’s shirt, only to slide one arm around his waist, his other hand finding its home against the back of Boyd’s neck.
By the time they part for air, they’re both breathing hard, and Raylan’s eyes, when Boyd looks up, are a little dark, a little wild. Like he can’t quite help himself, he leans in to capture Boyd’s mouth in another kiss, this one slow and deep and luxurious, making Boyd’s toes curl in his boots.
“With me,” Raylan says against his mouth, biting the words into Boyd’s lips, like offering them up with the sting of his teeth will lend them more weight. “You belong with me.”