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Boyd’s been in the mine longer than Raylan has, long enough for the coal dust to have settled into the grooves of his skin like a constant shadow under his eyes. Raylan’s wrong-footed by his presence, the reality of being down here slamming home in his gut when Boyd looks up from his work.
“Hello, Raylan,” he says softly, unsmiling. They’ve never been friends, too much blood and crime and manipulation between their families. But then, they’ve never been enemies either.
“Boyd,” he replies, face clean for the last time in a long time. “Where do you want me?”
Boyd smiles a peculiar half-smile. “Ain’t that the question?” He murmurs. “Follow the others, this rock’s gonna blow.”
Raylan does what he’s told, falling in with the stream of miners.
“You new?” asks one. Raylan nods, keeps walking. The man falls into step next to him. “Gets easier,” He says, slapping him on the back. “We watch out for each other.” They reach the cover, men turning on lights and checking equipment for the shift change when he hears Boyd’s voice come screaming out of the tunnel.
“Fire in the hole!”
An explosion shudders through the alcove, vibration reaching an uncomfortable buzz as the noise fades, and Raylan realizes his heart is thudding painfully in his chest. The older man next to him smiles sympathetically. “Not my idea of a good time either, kid,” he says, heading back down the shaft. He takes a deep breath. Another.
Boyd’s face is black and his teeth are white against his lips when he meets them coming the other way. He stops next to Raylan briefly, offering a hand. Raylan takes it, feels the tight grip through his glove.
“See you tomorrow,” he says. Raylan can only nod, can only watch him go, before he sets to digging.
--
A week later, Boyd is there at the beginning of Raylan’s shift like he’s never been anywhere else.
“Boyd,” he says, unsure. Boyd smiles sideways at him.
“Raylan,” he drawls in return. “How’re you keeping?”
They take the same shifts from then on, settling into a dangerous rhythm of explosives and deep shafts. They’re young.
--
A man collapses on the job and dies before they can get him out of the hole, gasping his last a mile underground. They take him to the surface, sunlight blinding and unwelcome. His body is whisked away and they stand in an empty circle for a moment, until one of the oldest men there heaves a deep sigh and turns back to the mine’s maw.
Raylan feels a hand grasping his tightly all of a sudden, almost jerks his arm away until Boyd presses their shoulders together, the heat of him unexpectedly welcome. He presses back, letting go.
“Once more into the breach,” Boyd murmurs, leading the way down.
--
He feels the confession come rushing up, can’t stop it from leaving his lips. “I hate it, Boyd.”
Boyd pours him another jar of ‘shine, stretches out next to him in the bed of the truck. “Anybody says they don’t is a liar,” he murmurs in response. Boyd runs hot, all tight muscle and quick, sharp thoughts. He’s like a furnace next to him, sides pressed together again, legs brushing.
“I’m gonna leave,” Raylan says, bracing. Boyd doesn’t say anything, drinks slowly from his glass.
“And do what?” Boyd asks him, leaning back to look at the sky. The darkness is becoming natural to them, pinpricks of stars or hanging safety lamps the only illumination they feel comfortable in, coal dust darkening their nails and the creases developing near their eyes.
“Anything but mining,” he spits, shaking off his growing claustrophobia, only for it to settle back on his shoulders like a lead blanket. Raylan feels Boyd laugh more than he hears him, a gentle vibration where their bodies touch, cramped as they are. “What?”
“Nothing, Raylan.” Boyd shakes his head. “Nothing at all.” He reaches for his hand and Raylan turns his palm up to meet his. Boyd grips him hard, shakes their joined fingers gently.
Raylan doesn’t care that he doesn’t believe him.
“What are we doing?” he asks at last, cold night air biting at him, a sharp contrast to the heat between them.
“Call it comfort, I guess,” he replies, the first hint of uncertainty Raylan’s ever heard from him creeping into his voice. He tries to pull his hand away but Raylan grips him tighter, strokes a thumb over Boyd’s, feels the shuddering breath he takes along his ribs.
“Are you asking me to stay?” He’s not sure what he wants to hear, only that he needs to hear it.
“I won’t ask something of you that you can’t give.” Boyd says calmly, staring resolutely up.
“I won’t let Arlo win,” he blurts out all at once, alcohol and starlight loosening his tongue. Suddenly, Boyd shifts, rolling in and over and coming to rest over Raylan’s hips. His hands press down hard on his shoulders, long fingers digging in. The jar of moonshine rolls out the back of the truck, liquor spilling from their glasses, soaking into his clothes.
“You listen to me, Raylan Givens,” Boyd growls, eyes intent beneath his brows. “You ain’t Arlo, and I ain’t Bo. Whatever happens, we will never be our daddies. Everyone shall be put to death for his own sins.” The last comes out a hiss, the verse clawing its way out of Boyd and Raylan realizes that this is the most he’s ever really seen of him, the only nerve he’s ever really struck. Their lips clash more than meet, teeth scraping, bitter with alcohol and a lifetime of simmering discontent.
Raylan surges up, wrestles with the buttons on Boyd’s shirt, throws off his own, allowing himself a frenzy of touches, letting Boyd do the same. Raylan reaches down, feels his fingers brush against the band of Boyd’s jeans. Boyd’s mouth breaks away from his again, his whole body taut against Raylan’s, a bowstring of contained force. Raylan grins up at him, sliding his fingers lower, unzipping him deliberately, taking him in his hand. Boyd moans obscenely into his shoulder, wordless.
Raylan’s hard against his hips, his own jeans painfully tight around him as he strokes Boyd harder, Boyd pushing into his hand and biting into his shoulder, teeth closing down over a scream, hard enough to be painful. He collapses, arms giving out beneath him as he comes.
Raylan feels more powerful than he ever has in this moment, watching Boyd unravel in his grip, his own need building. He shoves off his jeans at last, taking himself in hand until Boyd replaces it with his own, stroking too slow, infuriating. Raylan arches into the touch, searching for more. Boyd’s lips travel down his chest, settling, moving, teasing, until finally he takes Raylan into his mouth.
It’s like fire, better than anything he’s ever felt. It takes no time at all for the heat to build, spilling over with a long, shuddering breath, the bite on his shoulder throbbing in time with his release.
He hears Boyd spitting, looks up to see him wiping his mouth. He grabs him, pulling him back down to taste himself on Boyd’s lips. Boyd smiles against his mouth, nips at him again, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck.
They lie tangled together until the cold creeps back in, silence charged and heavy. Boyd rolls over at last, searching for something. Raylan shivers at the loss of his warmth until a blanket settles over them both, dusty and welcome. Raylan could laugh as he feels the heaviness of sleep creeping up on him, out in the woods in the back of a pickup with Boyd Crowder. What a perfect mess.
“I think I’ll skip church in the morning,” he says, and Boyd laughs harder than he’s ever heard, gasping with it. Raylan can’t help but join in, tension rushing out of them both with the shattered silence.
“Amen, Raylan,” he manages, fitting himself in, legs finding their way back between his own.
They wake up sticky and cold and young, going their separate ways with no promises between them.
--
The world crashes down around him on a Thursday afternoon, starting with a rumble, building with a screech until it reaches a crescendo with the screams of running men and falling rock.
Raylan freezes to the spot, time slowing to a crawl as he watches the billowing dust preceding his death.
A hand yanks him back, hard and frantic, and then he’s running, Boyd pulling him on, lungs burning. They reach the end of the tunnel tethered to each other, Boyd’s fingernails drawing blood from Raylan’s wrist. Raylan watches it drip to the floor, mingling with the grime and gravel and suddenly claustrophobia slams down on him, dropping him to his knees, forcing the air from his lungs.
Boyd crouches down; Raylan can see his lips moving but all he hears is the rush of blood in his veins, the rasp of coal dust in his throat as he fights to breathe. Boyd grips his forearms, shakes him violently, and Raylan’s retching, choking on nothing, collapsing against him.
He doesn’t realize he’s crying until he feels Boyd wipe at his face with a hand rough with grit. Boyd’s got blood in his hairline and under his nails, blood streaked on his face from where he’s rubbed at it.
“Breathe, Raylan. C’mon, there’s plenty of air. Breathe,” he hears him repeating. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, another, a third. Boyd’s relief is almost palpable as he pulls him upright, hands trembling. They stay pressed up against the wall until the rescue team comes down the shaft to fix the exits, a scattering of other men around them.
“You okay, boys?” asks one, offering water. Boyd nods for them both, taking a sip, forcing Raylan to take another.
“Biggest one in a while,” the man continues, shaken. “We just got lucky.” He takes his helmet off and swipes a hand over his head, heaving a sigh.
Boyd hands the canteen back to him. Raylan searches his face, sees the deep grooves, the tight lines around his mouth, the pupils wide in the darkness and sees a future that he refuses to allow.
Luck has nothing to do with it, and Raylan is never, ever coming back here.
--
“Where the hell were you?” Arlo snaps as he crosses the threshold, cold and tired.
“Cave in,” he says, like it’s nothing, like he’s fine.
“Ain’t part of the hill yet, then,” Arlo says, turning back to the tv.
Boyd had offered to drive him home, but come out into the evening to find Johnny and Bowman waiting for him. He’d grimaced before covering it with a grin and a swagger, hand gently brushing Raylan’s as he’d gone to meet them. Raylan had driven himself back, smelling coal and blood and the stink of fear on his body all the way.
He’s too tired to fight with Arlo tonight.
He looks around the house, at all the slowly-fading relics of his mother, at all the debris of two men living in quarters too close for their hatred to escape. There’s a layer of dust lying heavy on everything but the chairs.
He turns around and leaves without saying goodbye.
--
He knows how he must look to Helen, coal-black and bloodstained, wild eyes red and angry.
“You look like hell,” she says, stubbing out her cigarette on the doorframe, reaching out for him and drawing him close, utterly heedless of the mess he’s leaving on her clothes.
He breathes in her scent, tobacco and hairspray and linen. She takes him inside without a word, handing him a towel and shoving him up the stairs before he can say a word.
“You left some pants in the closet!” he hears her yell as he starts the shower.
He doesn’t know how long he’s in there, only that he watches the water run off black and rusty red for a long while before it runs clear. He sits down and waits, but he can still smell terror when the water goes cold.
He finds Helen smoking at the kitchen table with a bottle of good bourbon and an envelope.
“I heard what happened at the mine.” She holds up a hand when he opens his mouth. “I’m not gonna watch you die too.” There’s finality in her voice and her hand is steady when she slides the package to him.
“Helen, I…” he tries, but she stops him again, coming to sit next to him. She’s still got coal on her shirt, he notices vaguely. She snakes her arms around him again and squeezes tight enough to trap him, if she wanted to.
“Get out of here, Raylan.” Her eyes are damp and she blinks viciously. “Send me a postcard.”
It’s after midnight on a Thursday when he leaves Harlan. There’s been a suitcase under the seat of his truck for months.
--
Raylan drifts for a while, cut loose from Harlan and Arlo and even Helen, her kindness a weight on his conscience. He works a construction site near Memphis for a month, drives on.
He thinks his options through for a while as he drifts, Helen’s money always in the back of his mind. He sleeps in motels or in his truck, until he makes a decision. He drives south to Oxford, plans forming. He owes two people a good life.
Six months later, he writes two postcards. One has a picture of Ole Miss on the front, nothing but ‘Thank you’ and a Harlan address on the back. He slips it into the university mailroom on his way to class and feels lighter for it. The other is just a nature scene, nothing special. He writes as much as he can think of, then rips it to shreds. He starts over. ‘There was nothing in Harlan for me but you’ he scrawls at last, putting it in an envelope before he can destroy it. He sends it to Kentucky like the other one, but creased from his pockets, carried for days.
--
If he doesn’t exactly take to studying like a duck to water, he at least throws himself into it; more motivated than most and often feeling on the back foot, even with financial aid. He’s older and more jaded than the majority of the kids around him, finds himself something of a novelty. It’s not a disadvantage.
A year to the day after he sent his last postcard, he sends another. This one has nothing but a return address on it, just in case. He puts it in the mailbox before he can think better of it, forces it out of his mind.
Two weeks later it’s back, travel-worn and battered, ‘I had fair warning’ written in cramped handwriting, a deliberate black thumbprint instead of a signature. Raylan smiles wider than he has in a long time. Boyd always did have a flair for the dramatic.
It becomes a contest, of a kind.
--
‘The prettiest girls all go for the football players,’ he sends, a folded pennant in the envelope.
‘The prettiest girls are married,’ he receives, an intricate drawing of Harlan’s abandoned church in the corner.
He sends Boyd the university newspaper’s cryptic crossword. It comes back with all the right answers, folded inside a brochure for the Army. His heart stutters in his chest as he looks at the paper in his hand, finds the address hidden in the margins. There’s nothing left in Harlan, now.
--
It’s the autumn of his fourth year in Mississippi. He’s working construction again, for the camaraderie more than anything else. There’s a burning feeling in his arms and back that will always be familiar, will always bring the scent of coal and emulex rushing back. He’s not quite top of his class, but he’s easily eligible for the Marshals.
Boyd sends him a card written all in military acronyms, and it takes him a week to realize the first letters rearrange to ‘KUWAIT.’
He writes a page in a frenzy but tears it up, scattering the pieces with a snarl, too many words clouding his meaning. He finds the card with the black thumbprint at the bottom of the box where he keeps them and looks at it, turns it over in his hands, thinking.
It strikes him that there are years in this box marked out by puzzles, drawings, opposing hands.
He still has faint scars from Boyd’s fingernails around his wrist, remembers darkness and terror and miles of crushing rock above them. Raylan pricks his thumb before he changes his mind, places it over Boyd’s. He writes ‘The people might change their minds when they see war, and return to Egypt’ in his slanting script; it fits over ‘I had fair warning’ like it was meant to be there. He sends it with the address for Glynco, just in case.
--
He drives out to the beach on his first night, wired from hours of orientation and new faces. He turns off the truck to listen, remembers Helen saying something about being able to hear the sea in a shell. He laughs a little at himself, stepping out onto the sand and walking down towards the water.
He’s got sand in his boots and saltwater creeping up the bottom of his jeans. It smells like nothing he’s ever encountered before, humid air and stinging salt. He thinks of Boyd in the desert, imagines him in a uniform which always seems to become a black-streaked jumpsuit. He takes a last look at the endless expanse of water before turning his back.
The postcard shows up when he’s been there almost the full four months, appearing in a red envelope; it’s the wrong shape, something distorting the paper. Raylan opens it with fingers he refuses to admit are shaking, spilling the pin from a grenade into his palm. The postcard is a photograph of the fall of the Berlin wall. There’s nothing on it but coordinates, a time and a date, months from now.
--
Raylan takes a week, pleads personal reasons, and drives over the border to South Carolina all at once. The radio fades in and out, local stations changing from country to evangelism and back again until he pulls up at a motel a few miles from Fort Jackson, bone tired. He books a room, smiling thinly at the girl behind the desk.
“You feelin’ alright?” she asks him. He jerks his head in something like a nod. She raises a skeptical eyebrow but hands over the key anyway.
He drops his bag and splashes water on his face, looking at himself in the mirror. He’s pale, dark circles standing out under his eyes, but there’s nothing for it. He gets back in the car with the map he bought weeks ago. The coordinates are for a bar just on the edge of town, marked in pen and double checked.
He takes a deep breath, peeling his hands from the steering wheel. Music and light spills out into the street as he opens the door, moves past people crowded around booths and tables. It’s riotous and bright and overwhelming after the near-silence of the road.
Raylan scans the room like he’s been taught, but he still doesn’t see Boyd until a warm hand settles around his wrist. Raylan opens his mouth to speak but finds that he can’t just yet. It’s not that he’s so different, really, but after all this time Raylan still pictures him coal-stained and whip thin. Boyd’s broader, his hair shorter, but his smile is the same wry sharp twist, the heat he throws exactly as Raylan’s skin remembers it. All the words he wrote and ripped to shreds in Mississippi come rushing up all at once to stick in his throat.
“Hello,” says Boyd, his voice still soft around his accent.
Just like that Raylan feels himself cracking, wraps his arms around Boyd in full view of God and South Carolina. He takes a deep breath, feels Boyd grip him in return, new muscle unfamiliar.
“I owe you a drink,” he says into his neck, pulling back to arm’s length, looking his fill.
“I believe I have other debts I’d like to collect first.” Boyd’s eyes flick over his face and down his body. Raylan’s smile spreads across his mouth, relief and something unnamed building. They leave the bar together.
--
Boyd’s hands are on him as soon as they’re through the door, firm and frantic. He slides his fingers up Boyd’s back, peeling his black t-shirt off and throwing it aside, mouth seeking his. The kiss is deep and urgent; Raylan feels like the ground is slipping out from under him as Boyd bites gently at his lips. Raylan yanks Boyd down onto the bed, breaking away long enough to fight off his jeans. Boyd does the same, a laugh escaping as he wrestles with one of his boots, finally kicking it to the floor.
Raylan reaches for him, pulls him across the scratchy blanket. He slides a leg between Boyd’s and hears him gasp into his ears. He rubs gently, teasing his teeth down his neck to nip at the join of his shoulder. Boyd arches against him obscenely, pushing his chest flush with Raylan’s. The heat is overwhelming as Boyd rolls on top of him, pinning his wrists loosely above his head.
They stare at each other for a moment before Boyd’s swollen lips curve back in his familiar manic grin. Raylan doesn’t try and pull his arms down, relaxing in Boyd’s grip. He’s here, warm and solid and clean.
Boyd searches his face, looking for all the world like he’s about to devour him whole, lets him go only to reach between them. Raylan bucks up, their hips clashing, just this side of painful. He feels Boyd’s breath by his ear.
“Did you come prepared?” he asks, stroking Raylan from base to tip. He nods, keening, gesturing at the nightstand even as Boyd slides a finger downward. It’s replaced a moment later with a cool wetness at odds to the fever between them. Boyd’s far too gentle.
“I’d rather not wait ‘till judgment day, if it’s all the same to you,” he growls, digging his nails into Boyd’s back. He draws a low, desperate sound from him, not quite a moan. Boyd does what he’s told, going faster until Raylan’s ready, entering him all at once and holding still, trembling. Raylan has not been a monk in their years apart; he rolls his hips and hitches a leg higher to draw Boyd flush with him, setting their rhythm. Boyd moves with him, following, finding the perfect angle easily, like they fit together. Raylan feels strong fingers wrapping around him once again to bring him to the brink, rough and perfect. They finish together, Raylan arching back with a strangled shout and Boyd collapsing on top of him.
It’s not like last time, teenage clumsiness made up for by anger and willingness. They’re older and harder and marked by divergence. Boyd breaths deeply against him, releases a sigh. Raylan still can’t quite believe he’s here.
“I missed you,” he tells him, feeling suddenly more naked, even as he’s bare beneath Boyd’s hips. The words leave him hollowed.
Boyd says nothing for a long while before he rearranges himself, lying up against his side.
“Every day I spent in that mine, I’d catch myself looking over my shoulder for you,” Boyd says finally, eyes intent in his desert-tanned face. “I never asked you to stay, but I guess you asked me to leave and I just couldn’t hear it.”
Raylan doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just waits, looking for all the differences six years have wrought. Boyd’s got new lines on his face and new ink on his skin, ‘If I have faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing,’ over his heart.
“What are you gonna do now?” he asks, preparing for the worst, for Boyd to do the leaving this time.
“I’ve got a place at the University of Texas,” Boyd says instead.
“I get posted soon,” he replies. “I can put in a request.”
--
Boyd’s got his glasses on when Raylan comes home, slipped down to the end of his nose. He’s asleep with a book on his chest, one leg hanging off the side of the couch. Raylan wishes they had a camera. He walks past him to the kitchen, resisting the urge to sink his fingers into Boyd’s hair. He’d rather not wake him just yet.
Raylan’s never developed the interest in cooking that Boyd has, but he’s got enough skill not to poison himself or others. He makes two plates, takes them through to the living room. Boyd hasn’t shifted, still breathing deeply with his long fingers spread over the spine of the frankly enormous textbook. Raylan sets the plates down on the coffee table before lifting Boyd’s leg off the couch only to slide under it, replacing it on his lap. Boyd wakes with a jerk, scowling at him over his lenses.
“I made dinner,” Raylan says, pointing.
“Thanks,” mutters Boyd in return, stifling a yawn. He closes the book and sets it aside, carefully marking his page. Raylan’s not sure how they got to this point, eating together in comfortable silence. He lets it stretch between them, enjoying the quiet after a long day.
“How’re the finals going?” Raylan doesn’t really need to ask. It surprises him every time that he never realized Boyd’s passion was for knowledge when they were younger, but years of communication in riddles have given him greater insight.
“I know you’re bored stiff by the finer letters of the law,” Boyd says, smiling.
He lets his hand rest on Boyd’s leg, sets his plate aside. “Maybe you could edify me.”
“Raylan, you know I was kidding when I said reading the dictionary turned me on.” Boyd grins wide and slow, takes off his glasses.
They share a smile and Boyd reclaims his limbs, getting up. He’s thinner again, jeans low on his hips as he leaves the room.
Boyd had taken so many classes his first year that Raylan once had to go pick him up from the library after midnight, finding him passed out next to a pile of books and scattered academic journals. Boyd can sleep anywhere, a legacy of the army along with his new habit of running in the morning. Raylan loves discovering these pieces of him, even if he knows he’ll never solve this particular jigsaw.
“I always knew you talked in your sleep,” Boyd had confessed to him once, washed in pale light from the street coming through the crack in the drapes.
“Oh?” he’d replied, half dozing still, not yet on solid ground with the things between them.
“Spent a cold night in the back of a truck, if I remember correctly, listening to you mumble.” He’d run his hand through Raylan’s hair, far more awake than Raylan’d thought he had a right to be at 5 am. Boyd always seemed to be ahead of him in his little revelations.
“It bother you?” he’d mumbled in response. “I can get you a discount on earplugs.”
“Not a bit.” Boyd had rolled out of bed, stretched out his full height, left the room, the smell of bacon drifting in a while later enough to pull Raylan from his cocoon of blankets.
The first few months, the sight of Boyd in the morning had almost made him late for work more often than he cares to think about.
He maps the patterns they’ve fallen into since then, thinks how different they would be if they’d never left, or if only one of them had. Boyd comes back from the kitchen, two beers in his hand. He passes one over, dropping back down onto the couch.
“Thinkin’ about Harlan?” he asks, taking a sip.
“That easy, huh?” Raylan acknowledges.
Boyd hums deep in his throat, something bitter playing around his mouth. “You’ve got that look about you.”
“You’re gonna be terrifying in a courtroom, I hope you know that,” he tells him, reaching an arm around his shoulders.
“I was heading for the other side before you started sending those damn cards.” They’ve never really talked about it, what Boyd did in the time before he joined the army. Raylan’s always left him his secrets, just as Boyd has never asked for his.
“I wrote letters,” Raylan admits, too embarrassed to tell him that he turned them into confetti after.
“So did I.” They look at each other, and burst out laughing.
“We ain’t so different,” Boyd says at last, mirth fading. “From each other, at least.”
“I guess not,” he replies. “Still, can you imagine what our daddies would say?” They’ve been living together for years, fitting into each others’ lives with the determination of second chances. Raylan tries to think of something he would change and comes up empty.
“I don’t care to know,” Boyd says, with finality. There’s a well of anger in him that Raylan glimpses occasionally, flashing dangerously in his eyes. He always steps into the line of fire, takes the brunt of it. It always passes, leaving calm in its wake. “We almost were those bitter men.”
“That was a different life,” Raylan replies, and an old weight slides off his shoulders.
--