Chapter Text
"Huh," Raylan says, looking up and grinning at him in a way that Boyd can't help but admit is cute. It makes him look young, like he might have looked at some age he'd been when Boyd hadn't seen him. Twenty-nine, maybe, something like that.
Boyd looks up from the cabinet he's emptying out. “What?”
"My exit paperwork, from the Marshal service," he said, waggling some papers in his hand. "A week from today will be the fourth anniversary of that day you came to drag my ass back here."
They're cleaning out the spare room for the second time. The first time was to make room for Raylan that he'd ended up not having much use for. Ever since Raylan had abandoned the room in favor of Boyd's bed, they had steadily allowed it to fill up with things to trade, unfinished projects and things they didn't know what to do with but didn't feel they should throw away.
"Anniversary? Is that the date we're using, then? Should we choose to mark the occasion."
Raylan shrugs. "Not sure what other one we'd use. I don't really care to use the day I came down here to arrest you. Anyhow...yeah. That's the date. September 18."
"Four years, huh? That sounds like a long time. Don't really feel like it though."
Raylan cocks his head at him and squints in his direction. "Nope, not so much. We been busy."
Boyd glances around the cluttered room. "I really don't feel like doing this right now, Raylan."
Raylan sighs. "Me neither. But tomorrow's the meet. We been talking about clearing this shit out of here for months." He quirks an eyebrow at Boyd then, and says, "But if you had something particularly interesting in mind..."
Boyd rolls his eyes. "The news is on in a few minutes. I want to hear what's going on in Texas." Raylan very nearly pouts, and Boyd looks at him with ersatz sympathy. "We can cuddle on the sofa and watch the world fall apart, and then I'll blow you. Does that work for you?"
Raylan shrugs. "Sounds okay," he says. "But then we load up the truck with the shit we're bringing to the meet tomorrow. Before it gets dark."
"Sure, honey, whatever."
Raylan gave him the look he always did when Boyd called him that. The first time, he'd said it made him feel like a girl, but Boyd had told him he wasn't about to stop, that Raylan was dear to him and he would call him whatever he pleased. Raylan had blinked and said, "Okay, Boyd," and then jumped on top of him.
"After the news, Raylan," Boyd reminds him, walking away from him to the living room.
The only news that's available these days are a daily report from the new government-owned channel, and coverage from CNN that runs about six hours a day. Normally they don't bother with CNN, on account of their habit of talking nearly non-stop bullshit, but the situation in Texas is changing constantly, and could have long-ranging consequences.
In some ways, it's like the last four years never happened for some of these assholes, like an international catastrophe was just a speed bump before they could get back to their regularly scheduled partisan bickering. But he knows they're lying; they're scared shitless, and if they’re not they certainly should be.
As soon as the country started to get power back, about a year and a half earlier, groups had begun to spring up all over the place in support of the idea that people should stay off the grid, that they should remain self-sufficient and not place their trust in technology. Boyd himself was very sympathetic to this movement, and had changed very little in his life after the turn on. He continued to keep his still and his chickens, and Harlan as a whole continued to operate largely on the barter system, despite the fact that cash had been making a comeback.
No one seemed particularly anxious to go back to how it had been before, though of course refrigeration and hot water heaters were welcomed back wholeheartedly by most people, including Boyd.
One of these power-independence groups had begun to make noise in Harlan some months back. Their members seemed to come from the surrounding towns, some from neighboring counties. Boyd had gone to a few of their meetings, and at first he'd been excited about it.
Raylan had heard a few things here and there that concerned him a bit - that a lot of them seemed to have their roots in a hard-right religious tradition, that they wanted the country to return to the old ways in more than just technology, and even that there had been serious rumblings about secession.
Boyd had dismissed that stuff, saying that might be true of some of the groups, but that the people in Harlan weren't like that. They knew and respected him and Raylan, and their relationship, so he couldn't see them being too into the Christian Right thing. And secession, that was just ridiculous. The US military was weakened, certainly, but could still crush a bunch of redneck assholes with romantic aspirations. No one in their right mind would try.
It was maybe their fourth or fifth meeting when everything had changed. They always met in the basement of the public library, on Wednesday nights, and there were normally between ten and twenty people in attendance. That night, the place was packed. There had to be close to forty people, and Boyd hadn't recognized any of them.
Boyd had been running the meetings, being a talented public speaker, and a man had come up to him before it got started and introduced himself. His name was Jacob Petty, and he lived up in Manchester. He ran the branch of a group with similar aims, he said, up there in Clay County, but they were much bigger. They called themselves the Bluegrass Free Citizens and they were growing in numbers all the time. They'd been hoping that the Harlan group, which was currently independent, would become an affiliated chapter of the state-wide organization.
Boyd had taken the literature Petty gave him and brought it home to show Raylan. They'd both found it quite disturbing, full of barely coded language about heritage and traditional values. Raylan had given Art a call the next day, and found out that they had strong ties to some militant white supremacist groups, in addition to somewhat more mainstream but still out there right wing and religious groups.
Petty had shown up again the following week with a few of his fellow members, and Boyd had told him the Harlan group wouldn't be joining up. Petty had asked to be allowed to speak to the group, so they could be informed and make up their own minds, rather than have their decisions made unilaterally by someone with a non-traditional mindset.
Boyd had sneered but told him, "Go right on ahead," and went upstairs to quietly call Raylan. He'd gotten a bad feeling, suddenly, and he hadn't been at all sure Petty would be satisfied with just talk. Raylan had pulled up just as Petty was finishing. Boyd had stayed in the stairwell and listened to the speech; the man was a good speaker. He was not in the same tradition as Boyd, not a preacher. He spoke to the crowd as if they already knew all the things he was telling them.
He was saying things as if they were self-evident, and Boyd could feel how effective it was. He could feel the pull to agree, to go along, himself, even though he knew it was false logic. Nothing but preying on people's fears and tribalist urges. Most upsetting of all, though not really surprising, were the occasional murmurs of concurrence he heard in the crowd.
Raylan found him where he stood. "How bad?" he asked.
"Bad," Boyd shrugged. "I'm gonna go in there now and try to keep this from happening." He looked worried, and Raylan smiled warmly at him.
"Boyd, you convinced me I liked sleeping with men and that it would be for the best for me to move back to a town I'd avoided for twenty years. I think you got this."
Boyd gave a short laugh and kissed his cheek before jogging down the stairs. Raylan followed him down and stood on alert at the back of the room. Boyd approached Jacob Petty and offered a hand to shake, which Petty did, though a bit warily. He sat on the edge of a table at the front of the group and said, "I listened to what Mr. Petty here had to say, and I want to tell you that I understand if you felt a certain attraction to it. Even I myself did, and I have good reason not to. You all probably know - and if you didn't, you will now - that I spent some years involved with some people who feel the white man has some sort of claim to this country, indeed to the power in any place he chooses to seize it."
Some people made noises at that. None of them sounded like this was news to them. He looked back at Raylan then and met his eyes for a second. Raylan nodded back at him, and he went on.
"We're all white people here, in this group. We're the majority here, in Harlan. There's a couple ways you can go with that situation, as I'm sure you know. You can use that power to exclude, or to make life safer and better for everyone. Now, I know all the words to use to inflame, to incite. I also know, as this man does, how to make it sound like there ain't a more sensible thing in the world. I'd almost convinced myself at one point. Problem is, it don't stand up to reflection, nor to any application of logic."
The crowd was quiet, mostly looking at their own hands, and a few at Boyd, but not around at each other. Petty stood up and said, "Now just hold on here. No one said a thing about white power, that's not what I'm talking about here."
Boyd looked at him calmly and said, "Oh? Then perhaps you can explain to us what you mean when you say ‘our nation should be once again in the hands of those with a rightful claim to it.' Or that we need no longer suffer the 'drain of inferiors on our system'? Because honestly, that language is all very familiar to me. And these people are not stupid. If you want to appeal to the racially motivated among us, I would suggest a more direct approach."
"You assume that refers only to race," Petty said.
Boyd smiled his sharpest, most brilliant smile, and without thinking too much about it, Raylan moved his hand closer to the firearm on his hip.
"Well then," Boyd said, "why don't you speak openly? This is America, we got freedom of speech here."
Petty looked around at the group, which was a fairly typical selection of Harlan residents. There weren't too many college graduates here, but a lot of churchgoers. Boyd knew what the man thought he was looking at, what he probably figured was his best shot. He was banking on ignorance, and Boyd hoped that was a miscalculation. In truth, however, he wasn't entirely certain.
"Before the lights went out," Petty began, "our country was already heading down a dark path. Decent, normal, hard-working people suffered indignity after indignity, were forced to accept - with good cheer - the so-called 'rights' of the perverted and base elements of society. Now, I know that for the past several years we've all been focused on survival, and there hasn't been much time to think about dangerous nonsense such as that, but we ought to be damn certain we're working to bring this country back into the light. We have an opportunity here to set things right."
Petty sat back, and the crowd muttered, quietly at first, and then a woman sitting off to the side, who hadn't spoken all night, stood up and said, "We don't want you here. You can go now."
Boyd smiled, more softly now, and said, "Well, even Darlene has been moved to speak. Thank you, darlin'. Anyone else care to chime in?"
A young man named Kurt- barely more than a boy really, he'd been a high school senior the year of the Event - was sitting in the front row. He'd been heavily involved in the group, would come early to help set up, and would talk about it to anyone who'd listen. He stood and said, "It seems like you're talking about the gays and all that? Is that right?"
"That's right, son," Petty said. "The so-called gays, the feminists, all the destroyers of our proud culture. We need strong men in days such as these, not the emasculated weaklings our society has been forced to embrace."
"Well, that's just stupid," Kurt said. "Boyd here has a boyfriend, who's the Sheriff of this county, and I can't think of anyone who'd call either one of them weak. Plus there's Matthew, who's on my hunting crew, and he's the best shot besides me. You can't fool people with that bullshit no more. Most people know at least one gay by now, so they can see with their own eyes you're just making shit up."
Petty nodded almost sympathetically. "I understand, son, you're young and you've been taught all that stuff is normal, but I bet your daddy would feel differently about it. Folks, this is exactly what I'm talking about, it's the vulnerable younger generation, they are at a crossroads-”
"I think that's enough," Raylan put in laconically from the back of the room. He pushed casually off the wall and walked forward. "Like Boyd said, this is America and these people can do what they like, but they've heard you out and now it's time for this meeting to wrap up. You're welcome to leave your pamphlets and whatnot."
There had been a little back and forth after that, but Petty had gone peaceably, leaving behind a stack of flyers for the next BFC meeting. Boyd didn't see anyone take one, though he knew that statistically there must have been at least a couple people interested. If they were refraining only out of respect for him, he thought that was a victory in itself, so he didn't mind.
That was more than a month ago, and since then a lot had happened. Similar, loosely affiliated groups in Kentucky and elsewhere had begun to make a lot of noise. There had been large-scale rallies in several cities, mostly in the south but also one in California and one in western Pennsylvania.
The northern states mostly seemed to want a return to the previous ways, which made a lot of sense considering the weather. Kentucky got cold enough, and it was easy to imagine how miserable someplace like Chicago would be in the winter with no electricity and scarce oil and gas. There had been huge riots there in the first two years after the Event, and large sections of that city had been burned to the ground. Detroit basically no longer existed, or so Boyd had heard. Aside from the public demonstrations, there had been small but problematic displays of destructive protest.
One common method these groups employ is to sabotage power lines. They have people stationed at points all across a service area, and at a set time, they take a chainsaw to the poles so they fall over. The power company then has to run around like crazy for weeks, trying to attend to all the downed lines. It's incredibly easy to do, difficult to catch anyone doing it, and extremely disruptive to an already overworked system.
They also stage illegal pickets in front of power companies and block the exits, they set off smoke bombs in the lobbies of these companies, they slash the tires of power company trucks. They've been doing all these things and other ones on a similar scale for months, and everyone had been waiting for it to escalate, for something big to happen.
And then it had. In Texas, the energy independence movement had been huge since almost the beginning, but had been mostly peaceful. Then, a day earlier, a large explosion was reported at a power station outside of Lubbock, darkening a good-sized area.
Boyd sprawls on one end of the couch, and Raylan leans against the other arm, resting his socked feet in Boyd's lap.
"I ain't giving you a foot rub," Boyd says.
"Ain't asking for one," Raylan replies, rubbing his foot in Boyd's crotch.
Boyd huffs and shoves it away. “Quit it, asshole. Come on, Raylan, don’t you want to see what those crazy motherfuckers in Texas are doing now? This could be important.”
“I kinda don’t want to know,” he admits, but before Boyd could yell at him he added, “I know we need to pay attention. I just…” He looks away. “I know how fast shit can get out of hand. I know how bad it can be. I don’t like watching it happen.”
“Oh.” He nods and pulls Raylan’s foot back onto his thigh. “Yeah.” Raylan’s never gone into detail about what happened during the time he spent in Lexington after everything changed between them. Boyd knows about the prison break, and he knows Raylan did things that disturbed him. Raylan has always had a code, and whatever he experienced there put him at odds with it.
“I’m fine, Boyd.” Raylan smiles at him mildly. “I don’t like it, but I ain’t gonna have flashbacks or nothing.”
Since he knows Raylan would hate to be fussed over as much as he himself would, he just turns the television on. It’s still feels strange, almost surprising, that it works. The screen is showing a series of images of several men and women, interspersed with a shot of a large, yellowish building that the voiceover explains is the Jones Generating Station, located southeast of Lubbock Texas. The people on screen are hostages, employees being held inside by the Texas chapter of an organization called the True Patriots.
Raylan is staring at the screen, a hard line between his eyes and his mouth in a grim line. "Jesus Christ," he mutters. "What the hell do they think they're doing?"
"They're fools," Boyd replies. "They think most people would really think the way they do, if only they had the courage to say so. They think they're gonna liberate people."
Raylan shakes his head slowly. "They're gonna get us attacked from the outside while we're distracted, that's what they're gonna do. All because some bunch of entitled shitstains are throwing a tantrum about not being in charge of the world anymore."
"They're us, Raylan," Boyd says grimly. "Middle-aged southern white men. Although, I suppose we get to claim minority status now."
"I'll take it," Raylan snorts. "Anything to distance myself from these idiots."
They watch the same pictures scrolling over the screen while the CNN anchors repeat the same shit over and over until it's clear there's nothing new to be gleaned. Raylan shuts off the set, and they look at each other.
"I ain't really in the mood no more," Raylan sighs.
"No. Let's just finish clearing the spare room."
They work in there until the truck is full, they're exhausted, and the sun is going down. Their plan is to sit out back, build a fire and drink beer all evening. They have some fried chicken in the fridge, courtesy of a woman Raylan had helped out when some neighborhood boys were breaking into the fenced-in garden where she grew weed.
Neither of them talk much at all while they work, and when they're finished, they talk about anything but the news. They swap gossip, and when that runs out, they talk about old times a little. Boyd plays the guitar and Raylan sings, and then they pull each other into bed. They’re both still in a bit of a mood, but it’s different now. Whatever pain and loss they’re each remembering doesn’t come between them, but only reminds them that it’s also what brought them together. Boyd would never say - never even think - that it was worth it, but he’s glad for it all the same. When Raylan comes, shuddering, groaning love words into Boyd’s ear, he can’t think anything else.