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It’s a bunker they’re in. They woke up there, Boyd just barely, muttering something in the dark corner and cradling his head in his hands.
They’ve only got one light. An old mining lamp, burning low on oil, yielding scant light and no heat.
“Boyd,” Raylan calls. He knows it’s him, saw the vest, the hair, in the dim light. He’d know it was Boyd even if he couldn’t see the murky details, he’d know him.
Boyd groans and doesn’t stir much. Raylan wonders, rises, shakily, and goes to him.
“You okay?”
Boyd startles, jerking away when Raylan brushes his arm with cautious fingers. He twists, turning away from the floor and looking up to peer at Raylan. “Raylan,” he murmurs, softly, as though lost. “I thought it was you.”
“How did you get here, Boyd?”
Boyd shakes his head, blinking slowly and leaving his eyes shut.
“Did someone hit you hard?” Raylan asks, kneeling down and trying to find a head wound in the dark. He doesn’t want to touch Boyd again, but he thinks he might have to. “Your head ache?”
Boyd tries to turn away again, but Raylan lays a hand on his shoulder, stilling him, so he pulls his hands up again to cradle his head. Raylan sees that his shirt sleeve has been torn open and there’s a trickle of blood running down from his wrist. Raylan squints at it, turns, reaching for the lamp, and raises it high enough to get a better look.
He grabs at Boyd’s hand, holding it still and twisting it gently so that he can see. Boyd’s skin is hot and his muscles are tense, fingers curling around the pressure of Raylan’s grasp. “You got a bite, Boyd,” he says, confused. “How’d you get a snake bite like that?”
“The sister,” Boyd mumbles. “Cassie. She milks ‘em.” He pulls his arm away roughly and tries, unsuccessfully to sit up. “I’ll be fine.”
Raylan instinctively reaches out to steady him and Boyd can’t help but take the assistance. He peers at Raylan again, eyes little slits, even in the dim light from the lamp. “What are you doing here?”
“Boyd, do you even know where here is?” Raylan asks. “Because I sure as hell don’t.”
Boyd looks around, eyes widening as he takes in the dark, cold, filthy bunker they’re in. “Oh,” he murmurs. “Well, shit.”
Raylan wants to pull away, but he’s sure Boyd won’t be able to keep himself steady and upright on his own, so he just frowns and grumbles, “You got that right.” He waits a beat, then says, “Here, Boyd, let’s get you over to the wall. Least you can sit up then. I wanna look around.”
Boyd nods and they make their way over to the nearest wall, which is directly behind them. The wall itself is made of some kind of fairly thin, but sturdy aluminum. Raylan assumes they’ve been thrown in somebody’s back shed, which is just fantastic. Boyd pulls his knees up to his chest, resting his elbows on them and cradling his head once again while Raylan runs his hands across the frigid metal walls, running into cobwebs and grime, but no exits besides the locked sliding door, no chinks in the armor, so to speak.
“No way out, huh?” Boyd asks in a voice that seems too strained.
Raylan scowls. “Not that I can see. This door’s locked tight. The shed itself is shit, but not shitty enough to knock down, and this door--they must have got it special, welded the thing on. It’s not goin’ anywhere.”
“Cold as hell, too,” Boyd mutters, rubbing his arms now, curling up like a cat in the rain and Raylan stares at him for a beat before returning to his side.
“Goddammit, come here,” he says, settling down on the floor next to Boyd, feeling the shock of the ice cold metal against his back. “Don’t lean up against that,” Raylan orders, hearing impatience born of discomfort and maybe a little fear in his voice. “Lean on me, Boyd.”
Boyd doesn’t say anything as he moves away from the wall and closer to Raylan. Raylan adjusts himself, letting his body relax as Boyd lays his head on Raylan’s shoulder. Boyd’s shoulder presses into his side, bony as ever, but not uncomfortable. Raylan pulls his arm around him and finds he’s shivering. “Shit,” Raylan says over Boyd’s head. “What are you talking about, you’ll be fine, Boyd? You got bit by a damn snake.”
“She milks ‘em,” Boyd says again and Raylan doesn’t know what that means.
“You gotta explain this to me. What are you talking about?”
Boyd tries to pull away, but Raylan’s arm holds him still. “Church tented up in Harlan. They’re snake handlers. The boy is. The girl, she milks ‘em, milks the venom out, so he don’t die. Jimmy had bites all up an’ down ‘im. He’s okay. I should--” he breaks off, shivering hard now. “Should be jus’ fine.”
“Jimmy got that anti-venom though, huh? I imagine you got some poor schmuck in there to doctor him up.”
“Mmm,” Boyd says, leaning harder against Raylan, head lolling lower onto his arm.
Raylan shakes him. “Boyd,” he says urgently. “I dunno what to do here. I can’t tell how you are. Only way I know is if you talk to me. Don’t go to sleep, okay?”
“What are we gonna do, Raylan?” he asks, mumbling into Raylan’s shirt sleeve.
“We have to wait,” Raylan answers. “For someone to find out where we are and come get us, or for some assholes to come in here and try to kill us. Or whatever they think they’re gonna do.”
“Who picked you up?” Boyd asks.
Raylan takes his free hand and tries to prop him up a bit better, back up onto his shoulder. “Probably one of Theo Tonin’s boys, from Detroit. There’s somethin’ weird goin’ on with a bag some kids pulled out of Arlo’s wall.”
Boyd frowns and pulls away. He looks hard, or as hard as he can, at Raylan and says, “Arlo killed a man.”
Raylan’s brows rose. “You mean another one?”
Boyd blinks. “In prison, Raylan.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
Boyd actually looks a bit pissy. He rubs at his head and Raylan almost wants to reel him back in. He’s swaying a bit, like he won’t stay upright much longer. “Well, I didn’t. Not ‘til Wynn Duffy was lordin’ the knowledge over me in my own bar.”
Raylan resists the urge to shake the man. “You been talkin’ to Duffy?”
“That’s my own concern, Deputy,” Boyd answers, as if he needs to remind himself of who Raylan is.
Raylan smirks. “You ain’t been to see the old man either then, have you?”
Boyd tries to turn away, but Raylan’s hand snakes out and stops him, catching him by the shoulder. Boyd’s palm goes to his head in response, like he’s just got dizzy. “I been...busy,” he mumbles.
“Get back over here, asshole.” Boyd goes easily, not bothering to lean only on Raylan’s shoulder this time. He just lays himself down in Raylan’s lap, pressing his face into the denim seam along Raylan’s thigh.
“I don’t care if you see him,” Raylan says softly, “or if you don’t. Forget about him for all I care. I wish I fucking could.” He’s not sure what to do with his hands now. He runs one across Boyd’s brow and it’s burning up. There’s no food in the shed, no water. There’s nothing to do but wait.
Boyd’s got his arm cradled against his chest, the bit one. It’s looking red and purple, angry around the bite. “You think this preacher and his sister got you?”
“Dunno,” Boyd answers. “I was comin’ out the bar. Late. I dunno, Raylan.”
Raylan sighs. It’s about the same story for him. “That’s all right, Boyd.” He sets his hand in Boyd’s hair, mussed and dirty from laying on the floor.
“This boy, though,” Boyd whispers, like he can’t help talking about it. “I--he’s a believer.”
“And that bothers you.” Raylan just wants him to keep talking. He, for God knows what reason, doesn’t want Boyd to die. Not like this, from a milked snake bite in shit holler and shittier shed. Boyd is worth more than that.
“He believes, Raylan. I can play that boy like a fiddle,” Boyd says, almost like he’s smiling, but his tone has an edge. Raylan remembers Boyd’s face the night he lost his faith, remembers finally realizing he’d mean what he’d said, what he’d done. “I know just what he’ll do.”
“But not the sister.”
Boyd laughs. “Guess not, if she’s in bed with your mafia.”
“Duffy’s in bed with them too. Might not even be her.”
“An’ I got me a fuckin’ snake bite?” Boyd twists in Raylan’s lap and looks up at him, smiling like they’re going through a comedy routine.
“I don’t know, Boyd. Won’t make sense ‘til we get out, I imagine.”
Boyd’s face falls and he seems to wince a bit. “My head hurts,” he says, like Raylan doesn’t know.
Raylan puts his hands back through Boyd’s hair. He rubs his fingers across Boyd’s scalp and feels his muscles ease, just a bit. “I know,” he says softly.
They don’t say anything for a minute and Raylan feels Boyd’s breath even out. He shifts, making Boyd move too, and groan. “You don’t like that he believes because you don’t anymore,” Raylan says, figuring he should say the thing that might piss Boyd off the most, just to keep him talking.
“I should like it,” Boyd answers. “It makes him easier to predict, her easier to control through him. I should have got ‘em out by now.”
“But you don’t. You haven’t.”
Boyd’s not facing Raylan, so he can’t see his expression. “It’s hard to watch,” he says in a voice that sounds too small.
Raylan frowns. “Why?”
“He’s gonna fall,” Boyd says. “He’s not talkin’ to anybody, Raylan. It don’t signify.” The words, as he speaks them, sound far sadder than anything else Boyd’s said to Raylan in a very long time.
The shed has grown colder, making Raylan wonder if the sun has gone down. He takes off his jacket and lays it over Boyd, who sighs, not contentedly, but with some relief.
“You could leave me on the floor,” Boyd says, something like amazement in his voice, as though he’d just realized the strange position they are in. “This can’t be where you wanna be right now.”
Raylan huffs a sad little laugh. “Well, I can’t say that it is, Boyd, but you think I’d leave you to shiver by yourself, all that poison coursin’ through your veins? And anyway, you’re keeping me warm too.”
“It’s too kind,” Boyd whines, twisting again like he wants to pull away. “You can’t be kind. Not after--”
Raylan stills. This isn’t what he wanted. He doesn’t need it, really. He never expected it at all. “Not after what?” He isn’t even sure why he asks.
“Your daddy is in prison, Raylan,” Boyd says like he needs reminding. But he doesn’t add anything else. He can’t say, but they both know.
“You think I care about Arlo?”
“I know you care about your name.” Boyd is looking up at him again, some unreadable mixture of pain and regret is in his expression. His eyes are almost completely closed, but it looks as though he’s keeping them open as much as he can just to see Raylan’s face.
“You mean my reputation? That’s nothin’, Boyd. Art will speak for me. Everyone in that office knows how it was between me an’ Arlo.”
Boyd looks confused for a second. “No,” he says like Raylan should know. “I mean, your name, Raylan. I didn’t mean to take it. He just...gave it to me and then, I didn’t know how to give it back. He didn’t seem to notice.”
Raylan feels a curling hand of fear in his belly because he’s certain Boyd has stopped making sense. He thinks, he shouldn’t care so much. He feels it anyway.
“Boyd,” Raylan says slowly, “I have to say, here, I’m not understanding you. You gotta explain this to me now, or I’m gonna be real worried about you.”
Boyd smiles. He raises his hand, too warm to the touch, to Raylan’s face, a gentle caress and that curling fear plunges down into his gut. Boyd hasn’t touched him like this since Raylan asked him not to anymore, since he was so scared they’d get caught he couldn’t stand it.
“Gonna be?” Boyd asks softly.
Raylan can’t pull away, wants to so badly.
“All the things I said, Raylan, all the things I did an’ asked for forgiveness--I never did that for you.” Boyd’s frowning at him like he’s just said something important.
“Boyd, we never actually did anything you’d have to ask God forgiveness for,” Raylan’s hand is back in Boyd’s hair, drawing down to his fevered forehead.
Boyd blinks and smiles again. “Perhaps it was the sin of thought then, an’ not deed.” He hesitates, but adds, shaking his head like he can’t clear it, “I thought--”
“I thought it don’t signify,” Raylan says, trying to steer the conversation away. “There is no evil, no sin for you now, is there?”
“Maybe not. Maybe heaven ‘n’ hell are bullshit like the christ of the gospels, like the church. Maybe there really is nothing but death,” Boyd murmurs. “A cold grave and the worms and darkness--”
“Jesus Christ,” Raylan spits and pulls Boyd up and into his lap instead of just on it. Boyd’s face is close to his now and he looks bewildered, confused and exhausted. “You stop that, right now, asshole.”
Boyd lays his forehead right on Raylan’s collarbone, presses close and hot. “My head hurts, dickhead,” he returns, like they are nineteen again. Like a snakebite is some kind of excuse for being maudlin as hell.
“What about this name thing you said before, Boyd?” Raylan needs something else for them to talk about besides faded memories and close quarters.
Boyd shakes his head, says to Raylan’s chest, “I didn’t mean to take it. He jus’ gave it to me.”
“Arlo gave you my name? Son, that don’t make no sense.” Raylan pulls Boyd up, by the back of his cold sweat-soaked neck. “Tell me what you mean. But think about it first, so I get it, all right?”
Boyd nods and his brows furrow in real concentration. He opens his mouth and takes a quick breath, pausing and finally saying, “H-he called me by your name. I thought you wouldn’t like it an’ I meant to--”
Raylan says the first thing that comes to mind, just to get Boyd to stop rambling before he says something even worse, more sad, or more revealing. “Did you like it?”
Boyd shakes his head quickly, stark denial in his eyes. “It was the saddest thing I ever heard. ‘Cause I didn’t want it, ‘cause it wasn’t my name, and I know you wouldn’t have wanted it, ‘cause it was him sayin’ it like you meant somethin’ to him, even though it was me, but he thought--for jus’ that moment--it was you.” Boyd’s chin has fallen to his chest and he’s still shaking his head, slower now, but no less emphatic. “It’s all fucked up.”
Raylan frowns deeply and pulls Boyd close again, speaking softly in his ear. “Can’t talk to you about anything without it bein’ all fucked up.”
Boyd laughs softly, lips pressing to Raylan’s shoulder. “Ain’t it always been that way?”
“I guess it has.” Raylan’s hand is still on the back of Boyd’s neck and he pulls it up to slide through the short hairs at the base of his head. Boyd makes a noise like he just touched his dick. Raylan closes his eyes. He hushes him softly.
“Raylan,” Boyd says and the door opens with a loud bang, light from a lamp held at eye level pouring in and making them both squint painfully.
Boyd hides his face in Raylan’s shoulder, groaning, Raylan pulls his arms tighter around him.
“Hey, anybody in here?” A voice demands from the doorway.
Raylan’s eyes haven’t adjusted yet, but he thinks he recognizes the voice. “Constable Bob?” he asks, failing to get his voice to carry far.
“Raylan?” Bob’s voice echoes genuine surprise. “Shit, I didn’t think I’d find you, I just thought I heard some voices in here.”
“There a BOLO out for me?” Raylan blinks hard, trying to get his brain to catch up to the real world, away from the close darkness, away from Boyd.
“Yeah, but I only caught it like twenty minutes ago. I was just checking up on this property seein’ as it’s pretty much vacant like your daddy’s house.”
Raylan frowns, “Where are we?”
“Hiram What’s-his-name’s place,” Bob says. “He went missin’ a couple weeks back. I been keeping an eye on the place, try and find some clues or somethin’.”
Boyd groans again. “Raylan,” he says urgently. “Raylan, that man is de--”
Raylan tugs roughly on his hair and Boyd winces and looks him right in the eye, head tilted off the the side where Raylan’s hand had guided it. “Don’t you say another word on that. You ain’t in your right mind.”
Boyd puts a hand to his head and sort of looks around them, how he is sitting in Raylan’s lap, the light spilling in from the open door. His brows furrow as he looks back into Raylan’s eyes and he says, “Thank you.”
Raylan tightens his jaw. He knows he shouldn’t have done that.
“Raylan, who is that sitting in your lap?” Bob says, still lingering in the doorway, a funny tone in his voice.
Boyd carefully, very slowly, extricates himself from Raylan, using his hands and knees, perhaps not trusting his legs and feet on his own. Raylan doesn’t answer Bob. His hands reach out to steady Boyd as he rises and pulls him up by the arms.
“This man is injured," he calls to Bob. "Go and call it in."
Boyd pulls at Raylan's arms in response. "No, no, Raylan," he says. Turning, he yells out to Bob, "Do not make that call." Raylan has to hold on tight to make sure he doesn't stumble.
"You gonna die over keeping yourself free?" he asks through his teeth.
Boyd smiles at him. "I'm not dying, Raylan. You're just feelin' ornery 'cause it was you stopped yourself from gettin' me in cuffs jus’ now."
"I can still arrest you, Boyd." Raylan hates that smile.
"Is that Boyd Crowder?" Bob calls again from the door. He sounds uncertain, like he can't believe Raylan and Boyd might breathe the same air or exist on the same plane. He should know, though, that they can, they have and do. They all went to school together.
"Well, if it isn't the dependable Bob Sweeney," Boyd twists again and Raylan scrambles to keep a hold of his arms. "I heard you was Constable in my county, Bobby. I'm truly sorry that our paths have not yet crossed since your appointment."
Raylan still can't see Bob's face, but his voice has got that low, stubborn tone that he knows the man thinks sounds tough. "I heard you been sellin' smack in my county, Crowder. I been on the lookout for you."
"Shit, Bob, get over here and help me with him. He can't fuckin" walk. He's gonna fall right over." Raylan says impatiently. Boyd's grin is a mile and a half wide. "Don't you say anything else," Raylan warns him. “I can still arrest you.”
Boyd smiles again. “And hold me for what?”
Raylan feels his lip curl. Bob comes over, shining his flashlight against the ground. They both get one of Boyd’s arms around their shoulders. Boyd sinks his fingers hard into Raylan’s skin through his shirt and Raylan can’t imagine him doing the same to Bob.
They come out of the shed slowly, but without stumbling too much, and lean Boyd up against the hood of Bob’s shitty Gremlin. Boyd’s hand slides down Raylan’s arm and tries to tangle in his fingers, letting go of Bob immediately. Raylan sees Bob notice the contact and politely try to ignore it. “Bob, I left my jacket on the floor in there,” Raylan says, pushing a lightness into his tone that he doesn’t feel. “Can you go back in there and get it? I’m gonna call this in.”
“Don’t,” Boyd says, clamping a vice grip around Raylan’s fingers as they reach for the radio in Bob’s car.
“I have to, asshole,” Raylan hisses. “You think this is just about you? There’s a BOLO out for me. They know I was missing. I have to explain this to people. I have to figure out what the fuck happened. I have goddamn oversight, Boyd.”
“Let me get out first,” Boyd says, eyes half closed, but tone urgent, almost pleading. “Let me--”
He tries to push off the car, but Raylan’s hand shoots out and presses him back down. “Why the fuck should I do that?”
Boyd, in a surprising burst of force and agility, smacks Raylan’s hand away and launches himself up and into Raylan, clawing at his arms and pulling himself close, too close. Raylan has to hold him up because his legs don’t have the strength to do it and Boyd gets a hand up and around Raylan’s neck before he has time to react, time to pull away.
“I should’ve said no to you, Raylan, when you asked me not to. I should’ve said fuck no--should never have stopped,” he says and Raylan almost doesn’t know what he means, until he somehow leverages himself closer, breath fever-hot, fingers tight in his hair.
“Shit,” Raylan breathes. He can’t push him away. He feels the tension, the exertion, the desperation, thrumming through Boyd. He doesn’t mean to lean forward as he says, through gritted teeth, “Stop it. Right now. You’re gonna fuck this up for me, Boyd.”
Boyd laughs softly. “It’s all fucked up anyway,” he whispers in Raylan’s ear and, God help him, Raylan leans closer. It’s all Boyd needs to slide cracked lips across Raylan’s cheek, open his mouth and press forward to his slackened mouth.
Boyd is far too warm, body working overtime to get rid of the poison in his veins. He seems hell bent on making this good for Raylan, scrambling closer, pressing hard, but only fumbling enough that Raylan has to take on most of his weight.
However many times Raylan thought Boyd wanted this, thought he wanted it too, he never thought they’d ever do it. He wishes, as Boyd slides his tongue in, fast and expert, that they had done it twenty years before, because it really is going to fuck everything up for him.
And yet, he still doesn’t pull away.
Boyd tastes slightly bitter, like something aged a little too long, and his breath is coming too fast for Raylan’s liking. He tries to calm himself, he can’t let himself be carried away--too far away.
He’s about to pull back, when there’s a thud on the ground to their right. Bob’s dropped the flashlight in the doorway of the shed. “Holy shit,” he says.
Raylan feels something snap back to reality inside him. He pushes Boyd to the ground.
He steps away, far to the side, and walks calmly from the car. He doesn’t quite meet Bob’s eyes as he walks forward. He takes his jacket from Bob’s wilting outstretched hand, puts it on smoothly, and then looks at him not too hard.
He wipes his wrist across his mouth, unconsciously at first, but then he owns it with a small, just shy of wry smile. “You ‘member all them things we did the other week that I asked you never to mention to anyone?”
Bob’s looking at him like a deer in headlights and Raylan makes sure his smile stays perfectly still. “Yeah,” Bob says. “I do.”
“Add this to the list, all right?”
Bob blinks and sort of grimaces. “It’s not gonna get much longer than this, Raylan.”
“I know that.”
“All right then.”
Raylan forces his smile wider. “Thank you, Bob.”
Bob makes this sort of adorable face, one not used to thanks or compliments, and says, “Oh, sure, Raylan.”
Boyd starts laughing behind them, too loud, like the devil himself.
Raylan turns and walks back to the car, going around to the other side, and reaching in for the radio. He closes his eyes and he can still hear Boyd laughing. He calls it in.