Archive of Our Own

Now

Raylan doesn’t tell Boyd about the true extent of what he had experienced when he had been tied up to a tree in Nicaragua. He tells Boyd about the farmer, about Tommy Bucks with a knife in his hand, about the rope and the dirt and the time. These are not the things that haunt him in his upcoming recovery.

No, it’s the delirium, the hunger pangs and dehydration, the shock flipping face up to reveal trauma.

Raylan thinks Bucks may have left him with a party favor shoved down the back of his throat, fingers sliding over Raylan's tongue, back and down. Raylan’s memories are hazy.

Rope cuts through his skin when he struggles, not even in attempt to escape, but because he loses such grip on his sanity that his body moves with the ferocity of his screams.

He had never expected this. He had never believed he could experience something that could eclipse Harlan. This moment passes in front of Harlan’s sun, casting shadow over up in front of his own grave, of watching his uncle die for Arlo’s crimes, of watching the life in his mother’s eyes slowly be extinguished over a stretch of years.

His thoughts tangle, tangle together with an innocent being killed because Raylan hadn’t held more intel, even when it’s job his to have it. Arlo dangles love in front of his eyes, only to yank it back and laugh wildly, like he’s thrown a ball for a dog to fetch, but holds it furtively behind his back. 

Blood swirls around him, like it’s going down the drain, but the drain is Raylan. It coats him, paints his insides, marks him indelibly with red and red and red.

Watching the poor farmer’s head blow to bits—it blows the rest up, unearths every single demon within him, and the wreckage of all those pieces lands upon Raylan like the blood of the famer had rained on his face, and then it is everything all at once, every trauma, every bad dream, every sin.

Blood dances in front of his vision, splotches and drops, of victims and criminals, of men he’s killed, of every time he’d been too slow, of every misplaced bullet, of every mistake, of every single time he had not been enough and failed and failed and failed.

Raylan lives in his father feeding him buttercups and screaming at Raylan for puking them up, all because Raylan had the nerve to have a favorite flower, punished for the crime of loving, punished for the sin of gifting something to his Mama.

The rocks come down, and Boyd’s hand is in Raylan’s, and Raylan almost loses the only good thing he’s ever held for longer than an instant. The only thing that hasn’t slipped from his fingers and into a grave.

Gunshots fire over his head, breaking the windows, his Mama’s vase full of wild flowers she’d picked that morning.

The past wheezes, coughs up black phlegm, chokes up red spittle, and then the future replaces the past as it dies in agony.  

Fear of Boyd leaving him, always that. Fear that Boyd will realize he’s too good for Raylan—belated, but not impossible. Fear of Boyd thinking he can’t handle Raylan nearly dying or worse, wishing Raylan does, wishing Raylan doesn’t come back from this trip at all.

Fear of Boyd forgetting him. Raylan will die out here, abandoned and wasting away, or maybe he’ll be eaten by a beast, one who smells the corpse and tracks the scent down and decides it wants something fresh too.

And Boyd will forget him, will move on, will continue teaching, will get that promotion he’d been up for before Raylan had gone off running after a fugitive, tracking him to the first hell Raylan’s ever known that isn’t Harlan. Boyd will get that promotion, and he’ll make the school such a great place, and maybe a single parent will be so grateful on their child’s behalf or so seduced by Boyd’s pastry skills that they’ll throw themselves onto Boyd, and they’ll run off together and the only time Boyd think of Raylan is when he’s preparing to walk down an aisle for a proper Church ceremony that he probably hates but is willing to go through with because he loves this person so, so much, and he’ll have to think, oh, yeah, my husband, huh, last I heard he’s disappeared, if we’re lucky they’ll have declared him dead.

He cries out more water than he should for someone at risk of dehydration, vomits out all the rest.

But then Boyd is at his hospital bedside, and Boyd is in their apartment banging pots and pans in the other room, and Boyd doesn’t leave him until Raylan himself walks out the door to go to his first shift back on his own.

Harlan, Then

The funeral is held on a Wednesday.

Boyd gets the day off for bereavement. Raylan just takes the day off.

The casket is open.

Raylan cannot fathom why. Bowman is a mass of meat and gore, even with the morticians doing the best they could with his body.

There had been a terrible, awful wreck. Bowman had died, along with a few other football players.

Bowman had been drunk. So had his friends. Two of them had survived—one was okay and attending the funeral, even though he was badly beat to shit and shaking like a leaf. The other still hasn’t woken up.

Raylan wishes he isn’t as happy about it all as he is.

He just.

He just thinks that maybe now Boyd will say yes. That Boyd will come up with him to Lexington.

He’s broached the topic. To Boyd. About leaving. He’s never asked, but he’s hinted and talked around it.

And it’s always. It’s always making sure Bowman has food on the table. Bowman has that ten dollar bill for a field trip. Bowman has a clean uniform. Bowman isn’t left alone with their father. Bowman has someone who isn’t Bo telling him how to be.

And that’s. Shit, that’s not something Raylan can argue against.

He just wants to take Boyd with him. And yeah, the extra income would be nice, but Boyd himself would be nicer. Raylan would let him be his kept man if he thought it’d be at all possible. But Raylan can’t feed himself, let alone Boyd and Boyd’s brother both.

Boyd is steel faced. Raylan thinks he doesn’t give off the airs of “fine,” but he doesn’t look devastated. Raylan knows he is. Raylan also knows that he’ll get a bloody nose or a black eye for showing it in front of his Daddy.

Bo is trashed, and he nurses a glass of moonshine in one of those meaty paws of his. He’s already decked Johnny and one of his men, swinging his fist at everything today. Raylan thinks he saw him punch his fist through the wood of the kitchen cabinet, but he had been in the other room at the time. The bathroom mirror is in a thousand pieces on the floor, so Raylan’s already had to piss behind the shed.

Raylan knows he’s going to give Boyd a blow job tonight, and maybe Boyd won’t be as into it as he could be, but Raylan doesn’t know what much else he can do.

Raylan stands there, awkward and contained.

It’s surreal, to be honest. He can figure how his own self could have died. At any moment the mine could have collapsed or maybe his Daddy would hit him too hard. Maybe he’d piss off the wrong person, or maybe Bo would catch him fooling around with Boyd.

And here Bowman is, the one lying in the ground.

Raylan can’t fathom this either.

He doesn’t like Bowman. That’s not it. It’s that Bowman had been seventeen and just being an idiot and an asshole, and he shouldn’t have to die for that. If being an idiot was a death sentence, then half the school would be dead, and if being an asshole could do you in, then Raylan would already be in the ground.

Raylan is a piece of shit. Today’s about Boyd. Boyd. He’s gotta get out of his own damn head.

Raylan just wants to put a hand on his shoulder. Something. He’s not going to. He can’t. He just.

Little Ava Randolph cries. She’s pretty about it. Raylan knows it’s probably weird to think so.

Raylan thinks he wants to go over and comfort her. That if he can’t set a hand on his boy’s shoulder, may he could do so for her and it wouldn’t be looked at so weird.

And then he just thinks that people would make it weird anyway, that it would be seen as trying to pick her up or something. He doesn’t know.

He nudges Boyd. Boyd looks at him. His eyes aren’t focused, but he’s there and he’s Raylan’s. Raylan tilts his head in Ava’s direction.

Boyd squints his eyes back. “What?” he asks without saying anything.

Raylan tilts his head again, a little more dramatic, widening his eyes in emphasis.

Boyd shakes his head at him and turns away.

Raylan glares. Goddamn him, if the two shared comfort right now, maybe no one would think anything of it.

Raylan kicks Boyd’s foot with his own, as subtle as he can make it.

Boyd whips his head to Raylan, like he’s going to start a fist fight right then and there.

Raylan wouldn’t mind. He would get to touch Boyd, if Boyd throws the first punch. Not the way he wants, but he would still get to do it, and Boyd would get to let off some steam.

Raylan waits there patiently, wants to tell Boyd he’ll accept it, anything, just make the choice.

Boyd turns away again. Raylan takes two fingers and shoves them deeply into Boyd’s side.

Raylan does think Boyd really is going to throw him down for this.

Instead, Boyd walks over to Miss Ava, wraps an arm around her, and rubs circles into her back.

She sinks into his hold, and her crying grows desperate. She screams, and Boyd catches her as her knees give. Raylan moves to stand off to the side, taking himself from the center.

He keeps his eyes on them.

He drives her home, after the service, Boyd in the passenger, and tells her to call on him if she needs anything. Anything at all, whatever, whenever. He means it, and he hopes she understands how far he would go for her.

He takes Boyd with him, drives them out, out past anything, and he just lets Boyd ruminate in his seat. He parks deep in the forest, out near some of his old uncle’s land, nestled under some low hills.

Raylan leans forward over the wheel, looks up at the stars. He looks for the belt, the bears, the puddle of stars all spilled from the same pitcher.

“Don’t ask me, Raylan,” Boyd says, looking out the passenger window. Raylan catches the hint of his reflection in the glass. Nothing clear enough to read his face.

“Ask what?” Raylan asks, frowning.

“To leave with you,” Boyd says, hollowed out.

Raylan’s first response is anger. His first reflex is always anger.

He doesn’t want to do that though, not right now. He doesn’t want to yell, doesn’t want to fight. Not now. Not ever, really, but especially…

He opens up the door, walks out, slams it. He shouldn’t have.

He sits up against the back tire of the truck, buries his face in his hands, because he does want to ask. He wants Boyd to say yes.

Boyd sits in the car, and Raylan finds hot, fat tears rolling down his cheeks, and that only makes him angrier. He hates that, and he hates this.

He hates himself. He hates Boyd. He hates his Daddy. He hates his Mama for leaving him, and he hates Aunt Helen for pushing him out the door. He has only ever wanted to leave and to have Boyd, and it always looked like he couldn’t have both, and he had thought he had accepted that.

And apparently, he hadn’t. Apparently, he never had. Apparently, he had just buried it deeper in the ground than Bowman lies now.

Raylan rubs his eyes with the back of his jean jacket sleeves.

The truck rocks behind Ralyan as Boyd exits the door.

Raylan feels Boyd sink into the dirt next to him.

“I’m sorry, Raylan,” Boyd says.

“Don’t be,” Raylan mumbles, burying his face further into his arms. “I should be the one comforting you. This is so stupid.”

“I don’t know if I would even accept that right now,” Boyd admits.

“Should’ve offered at least,” Raylan growls. “I wasn’t gonna ask tonight, or anything. I wouldn’t put that on you right now. I wouldn’t have done that.”

“But you want to,” Boyd states simply. “You want to ask. And you will, Raylan, I know it. I know you.”

It burns Raylan, and he’s not going to deny it. It’s true, and it sears right through him.

“Why can’t I ask?” he says instead. “Just tell me no and let me go and just. Just let me hear no. I never asked before. I never did. Why can’t I ask now?”

“Because I’ll say yes, now,” Boyd tells him

Raylan whips his face to him. “What?”

“If you ask now, I’ll say yes,” Boyd says, “So if you don’t ask, I can’t say yes. So, please, don’t ask.”

Raylan scrambles around in the dirt, burying his fingers into the earth, trying desperately to see Boyd’s eyes.

“No, no,” Raylan says, desperate “I can’t ask if you tell me not to. I wouldn’t do that, not to you, so don’t. Don’t ask me not to ask, please.”

Boyd groans. “You’re killing me, God, you’re killing me. Raylan, now you’re asking me this?”

“Just let me ask. You don’t have to say yes. I won’t ask today, even, please,” Raylan pleads with him.

“Raylan, god,” Boyd says.

Raylan tackles him, pushing him up against the back of the truck. He tears open Boyd’s jeans, frantic and desperate. He pulls them down just enough to grab Boyd’s cock, just enough room to pull him out.

Raylan buries himself in the dirt, finding the best angle to suck his lips around the head of Boyd’s cock. Boyd groans underneath him, and Raylan buries Boyd deeper into himself, taking him in.

He kneads his left knuckles into Boyd’s thigh, helping him hold Boyd’s legs open.

He guides the rest of Boyd’s cock deeper down his throat, as deep as he can manage, and he feels tears prickle in his eyes, already leaking from the anger earlier.

He uses his free hand to press down against Boyd’s stomach, above his cock, hold him still in place.

He shoves his own pants down and tries to finger himself open while still choking on Boyd’s cock. It’s awkward and terrible and desperate, but Boyd takes in such a wrecked breath of air, Raylan thinks he might not look as pathetic as feels.

Boyd reaches over him, bending over Raylan’s back so he can slide one of his one fingers in alongside Raylan’s.

Raylan nearly chokes, the pressure too intense, and he gets dizzy trying to focus on both the sensation, prepping himself, and trying to suck Boyd down. He moans, and his hand pressing down claws uselessly over Boyd’s skin as he tries to find purchase, anything to ground him.

Boyd’s whispers filthy promises in his ear, and Raylan burns with it.

“I’m going to make a wreck of you, boy,” Boyd tells him.

Raylan pulls himself back, too full, too much, and Boyd pulls Raylan up by his nice white collar to kiss him, to force his tongue between his lips, to lick up the roof of Raylan’s mouth and bite hard along Raylan’s lips.

Raylan adjusts himself. He grips Boyd by his cock and angles Boyd in and he sinks down, shuddering as he does so.

He breaks the kiss, too loose and wild to keep their mouths connected, and he bounces himself up and down to fuck himself on Boyd’s thick cock.

Boyd bucks into him, and they move from a disjointed pace to something well and truly special.

Raylan groans, and Boyd repeats Raylan’s name over and over and over, and he says it that way Raylan loves, like Raylan’s name is special, like Raylan might be special too, or at least special to him.

Raylan comes, and he muffles a shout by biting deep into the top of Boyd’s shoulder.

Boyd continues to fuck up into him, and Raylan’s a little sore, but he loves it, and he lo—

Boyd follows, and Raylan groans. He stays where he’s seated, even when Boyd wiggles just a bit underneath him.

He pants, already well beyond too much, over-sensitized. He’s in pain, and he will be for the next few days, but still he digs his heels underneath Boyd and keeps his weight down, preventing Boyd from moving.

“Let’s just. Let’s just stay like this a little longer, okay?” Raylan begs.

Boyd looks up at him, surprised, and Raylan doesn’t know what to say or how to say it, he just needs this, and he hates himself for begging, for letting Boyd see this side of him, but he doesn’t know what Boyd will do, so he just continues mumbling into his ear, “Please, please, just—just a minute—just a little longer, okay? Let’s just stay like this a little longer. Just stay with me.”

They sit there, a moment, still. Raylan keeps his face buried in Boyd’s neck, keeps his fingers clutched in Boyd’s shirts.

Boyd trails his fingers up and down Raylan’s back, and Raylan shivers under the touch. 

Miami, Now

Raylan stares at Dan. There’s a bleakness in his eyes Dan doesn’t quite understand.

Dan is starting to feel uncomfortable. He had seen the man, after he had come back from Nicaragua, clearly traumatized, blood splatter still painting his face, still flecked behind his eyes. The stare then had been a little less haunted.

“Dan, you can’t transfer me,” Raylan says, a frightening desperation clawing up his throat.

“Raylan—” Dan starts.

“Dan, you cannot transfer me,” Raylan says again, more worn and tired than Dan has heard in a while.

Dan sighs, “Raylan, I know going home won’t be… ideal for you, but you can’t just—”

“You don’t understand,” Raylan says, his hands in tight fists. “Boyd is up for promotion to Vice Principal. I can’t ask him to turn that down. He will leave me before he does. He will kill me before he leaves me.”

Dan has met Boyd Crowder. An unpleasant number of times. And each interaction had been more unpleasant than the last. Dan thinks that maybe divorcing Boyd Crowder would be good for Raylan. He realizes, immediately, that is not how their relationship could end, as he expects there to be nothing short of a fiery wasteland upon such an occurrence. He thinks Miami may not survive, burnt to the ground in the fallout.

He had once heard about Boyd’s penchant and history with Emulex.

“Oh, boy,” Dan answers him, understated and awkward upon his understanding.

Raylan steps back. He runs his hand through his hair and keeps it gripped in there. His hat has been knocked aside to his desk, jostling the few photos he has displayed:

Boyd, dressed in the dorkiest combination of suit jacket-bowtie-sweater vest—Raylan is an idiot, because he can’t help but want to fuck him in it.

Boyd kissing Raylan’s cheek, Raylan in his graduation robes, cap hanging in his hand, a rueful smile on his face, a faded polaroid taken by Ava ages ago, one of the many she had taken that day.

A wedding photo of Boyd and Raylan both in their suits, smiling under a gazebo in front of the glittering ocean.

Raylan picks up the gazebo photo. God, how much he and Boyd both hated that fucking gazebo. It had been pretentious and overpriced, and probably beautiful if you are into that sort of thing, but the problem is that Boyd and Raylan aren’t. Neither of them had even planned to get married to begin with, but they had done so to take the stupid photos because a teacher had bragged and bragged and bragged about her fucking wedding shoot, and Boyd just had to fucking win. Boyd had to win at wedding photos.

Raylan loves him.

This is all to say: Raylan will be fucking devastated if he’s fucked up his marriage by killing Tommy Bucks, even if he had been justified.

Boyd, certainly, won’t blame him for that. Just for the fallout that will take place.

Boyd has wanted the position of Vice Principal for a while—and obviously, from there, Principal. And he’s finally gotten it, and now Raylan is moving across the country because he has PTSD, because he’s the angriest man anyone’s ever met, because Tommy Bucks had deserved to die, even if maybe it hadn’t needed to be by Raylan’s hand, choose one.

Lexington, Then

The lease is under Raylan’s name, and Boyd just tells everyone he is Raylan Givens if they ask which apartment he’s in. This causes no small amount of confusion, but since everyone knows better than to stick their noses in other peoples’ business, it never amounts to much. The landlord is a cantankerous, bigoted son of a bitch, but he’s also half blind and never knows who he’s talking to, be it Raylan or Boyd, can’t tell the difference between them, and just accepts he’s talking to a Raylan Givens at any moment.   

They both job hunt right away. Raylan has already been accepted to UK, he just has to rearrange the details of his deferral, and he finds construction work immediately.

Boyd applies to job after job, all at once, everything the newspaper has listed. He sees the job ad for tutoring, and he turns the page over to Raylan as a joke. “Can you imagine? Me in charge of a bunch of illiterate brats?”

Raylan takes a moment. And then, “Yeah.”

Boyd stops laughing. His face falls, a little taken aback. He hates when Raylan does this, gets all serious and soapy, his face all scrunched like he he’s about to go to war with you about what he has to say.

“Yeah, Boyd, I can actually picture you, with an ornery, angry child, one for whom apparently formal education has failed, and I can see you quite easily teaching them how to read,” Raylan says, as if he’s trying to prove something, but he doesn’t quite know what, even to himself.

“Raylan, I think you may be forgetting where we both come from. I am a Crowder. I certainly am no proper fit for the education system,” he says, awkward, defensive.

Raylan sets down his own half of the newspaper, from where he’s been seeing if he could get anything else to fill his hours in between classes and construction and fucking Boyd, because apparently, they are going to have a Talk, goddamn him, and he resents Boyd for bringing it on.

“Boyd, goddamn you, you taught me how to read. Do you not remember that? Do you not remember teaching me how to read in first grade with fucking picture books and dumb little stories you made up because I’d get bored and bastardy and couldn’t sit still unless it was about a cowboy or an astronaut? Because my Daddy sure never taught me and everyone else thought I was a lost cause like the rest of my paternal line. Are you telling me you can’t do something now you could do as a child? How about you apply to the damn job because we need money for rent and you don’t want to be my kept boy? How about that? How about you quit chickening out on yourself because you think there was only ever going to be one way you could end up as and now all your doors are open and you’re too afraid to walk through them, huh?”

“You don’t get to condescend to me, Raylan—” Boyd starts, an exposed live wire.

“Condescend!” Raylan laughs, “Those were compliments, dipshit, beside you being a coward and all, but I’m just saying you’ll stop acting like one real quick if you put in the goddamn application.”

Boyd huffs, and he says he will, just to laugh at Raylan when he is so sorely rejected.

Raylan huffs back. “You call me out on my shit all the time. How I’m a coward about my Daddy, how I’m a coward about the mines, how I’m a coward about the home we grew up in. You can accept some accusations yourself, because I was under the impression that was how you told me you loved me, and if I’m wrong about that then—”

But Raylan is cut off by Boyd tackling him to the floor, his teeth biting Ralyan’s bottom lip, and they fuck like animals on the tile, because Raylan and Boyd have never said the word love until now, and Raylan had said it so factually, that he could hear Boyd’s “I love you” this entire time, and that he had been saying it himself just as long. And it is true that they have been saying it, but now it’s real and solid and they have to suffocate it with each other now before they let it sink in too deeply and let it change them forever.

Boyd gets an interview, and then another, and each one is a bigger joke than the last until he’s sitting in a classroom with some angry, frustrated, scared child, and Boyd is there teaching her how to read.

Raylan grins at him when he gets home that night, after that first day, when suddenly the day is no longer surreal but solid, and Raylan kisses him, nice and pleasant, as if he isn’t gloating over being right. Boyd smacks him on the ass, just to get the smile off his face, but Raylan is Raylan and his smile only grows wider, and his eyes only more squinted with satisfaction, and Boyd lets himself laugh with him.

Boyd gets a job as a bartender and a shelver for the library, barely scraping together a schedule between the three places. He makes a fair amount in tips as a bartender, considering he is a charming charismatic bastard, and Raylan wants to be jealous except in the way they can splurge on the meat when they go grocery shopping, and then there’s no room for jealousy at all.

Boyd prefers the job as the shelver, and he could probably make more if he had taken the other job receptioning for the bank, but Raylan would be worried about Boyd blowing his brains out accepting a job like that, so he’s glad Boyd takes work at the library.

Raylan really loves Boyd, he finds, unsettling and unfortunate, as he clutches his heart, and he grows more and more fearful by the day that Boyd is unhappy or Boyd is going to leave him or Boyd knows secretly deep down he’s too good for Raylan.

Boyd is always right in calling him a coward, he just. He just wishes he had less to fear or that he was better at not being afraid or better at being alone, maybe.

When the two had left together, Helen had warned Raylan that the two of them were each other’s life boats, and he shouldn’t to be too hurt when they walk away once they make it to shore.

Raylan tries to find storms to steer them too, to make Boyd hold on just a little longer.

Raylan joins the school year, and around this time, Boyd is offered a promotion for the tutoring company, who would love to have him on throughout the school year, and Boyd takes it, because the income is good and the hours are better, and he can drop down to two jobs instead of the three, giving him more time to read the books he picks up from his library shifts.

He acts shamefaced when he tells Raylan he’s dropping the bartending, even though the hours and tips are so much better, and Raylan bites him, because he hates that Boyd thinks that he’ll be mad or that he can’t sacrifice some of their tiny luxuries or that it’s somehow not fair when Raylan’s the one sinking money on classes instead of spending those hours at the construction site.

He applies to be a TA for some random hunting elective, and he asks Boyd if he should show shame for that, getting his money through teaching, and Boyd just kisses him, because they’re both idiots.

By the time the fall semester of Raylan’s sophomore rolls around, Boyd has been offered another promotion, if he just takes a few education courses over at the community college, credits all funded by the program, and he accepts, because the raise is fairly more significant than the last, if the two can just make it through the semester without Boyd’s additional hours going to work.

They make do on rice and peanut butter for a little bit, but they also survive on college campus freebies, like pizza days and noodle parties and they both sit through more people with poorly written pitches than they’d like to stomach, but Raylan had nearly gotten arrested at the grocery store when peanut butter was on such a spectacular sale there was no excuse not to buy so much extra that he had seen red and almost strangled Boyd.

He had eaten the peanut butter, but they had only spoken when they were having sex that week, and even then, it had mostly been Raylan growling at Boyd to fuck him like he means it.

By Raylan’s junior year, Boyd is officially subbing in Lexington and her sister suburbs and taking full time classes at the same community college.

Raylan had been offered work over the summer that would contribute to his Marshal credits, but he had quietly turned it down, because he’d have to leave Lexington, and he doesn’t want to know if Boyd will come with him, if he had to ask. So he doesn’t bring it up and pretends like he doesn’t wake up in a cold sweat, nightmares that feature his daddy, sure, the mine, obviously, but also Aunt Helen’s words, and how Raylan is going to be alone when Boyd doesn’t need him anymore to help fill up his own coffers that pay for the rent and groceries and the few books Boyd has to buy instead of check out and the beer and every little thing.

Boyd is now also officially enrolled in a teaching program, and sometimes it makes Raylan’s heart itch, about how it makes him feel, about Boyd understanding these discouraged, prickly children better than anyone else, about Boyd spending half his library shifts looking up grants and programs and scholarships for them, and how the head librarian lets him because she thinks it’s a good use of his time.

Raylan still T.A.s for the hunting class, now also a new shooting elective that had only been put on hold for lack of educators, and he picks up less construction shifts, but he also gets a job as a dog walker, something easy to pick up between classes.

By the time Raylan’s senior year comes up, the two have managed to get a not-insignificant portion of both their educations covered by the United States Marshals and Boyd’s reading charity program, and Raylan’s heart can’t stop beating too hard in his chest with anxiety, because Raylan’s Glynco training is coming up after his graduation, but Boyd still needs some time before he graduates himself, and then Raylan gets his office placement, and Boyd’s going to leave him, he knows it, he knows it, he knows it.

Raylan dreams that the mine collapses over the two, but before the ceiling crushes them to pieces, the dirt drops underneath them, and they fall into the ocean. Raylan tries to hold on to Boyd’s hand so he doesn’t lose him, but Boyd lets go.

He wakes up panting and sweating, and Boyd smacks him in his sleep. Raylan spends the rest of the night staring at him, his classes and tests and shifts be damned, because he doesn’t know how long until he loses this for good.

Miami, Now

They pant, sharing a breath after climaxing. Boyd eases himself down, but he doesn’t pull out quite yet. Raylan soaks in the heat, in Boyd’s warmth, in Boyd’s presence. He clutches tightly to Boyd, and he tells himself just a minute. Just a minute longer. Just two more minutes. Just. He’ll let Boyd go. He will.

Boyd kisses Raylan’s neck.

“Just go to bed, baby,” he murmurs, and Raylan realizes he’s half asleep, “You’re thinking too loud.”

“You’re—” Raylan says, not sure how to find where he’s going. He doesn’t mind if Boyd falls asleep in him. He just. Boyd might mind.

A hand flops over Raylan’s face. “Sleep,” Boyd commands, and if Raylan doesn’t protest or fight back, it’s not because Boyd is particularly persuasive or bossy, but because Raylan had already been halfway there before Boyd had said anything. Boyd’s weight presses down into him, and Raylan sinks as deep into sleep as he is pressed down into their bed.

Raylan wakes up in the morning pleasantly sore. He feels sated and marked and claimed and like he isn’t all his own. Which is a good thing, because he isn’t the best at taking care of himself on his own. He feels everything from last night, all over, and it settles in him and it washes over him. He had known something had dislodged itself in his heart, but it feels like whatever it had been has rehomed itself inside him.

The water is running in the bathroom, and Raylan knows Boyd’s getting ready for his last day in the Miami school system. He goes over to their closet, picks out his favorite of Boyd’s nice tight button ups, his favorite of Boyd’s dorky hot bowties, his favorite warm stupid sweater vests. He pairs them with a sharp blazer and Boyd’s tightest pair of dress pants, and he leaves them on the bed for Boyd to come back to.

He puts on a pair of underwear and heads to the kitchen. He decides he’s going to prepare a champion’s breakfast for Boyd, something special for Boyd’s last day. If they’re moving, they’re going to need to empty the fridge anyway, so Raylan uses the last of their eggs, all of the breakfast sides they had planned for the next two weeks, including sausage, bacon, and hashbrowns. He puts a pot of coffee on.

Boyd enters the room, dressed to the nines, and Raylan smiles sleepily over the sizzling of bacon.

Boyd kisses him, grabbing a fistful of ass, and Raylan laughs into the kiss.

“Darling, you are my sun, you are the moon, you are every pretty thing in the night sky,” Boyd says.

Raylan rolls his eyes. “It’s just breakfast, Boyd,” he says.

Boyd bites his ear, a quick nip to punish. “You are a gift, Raylan Givens, don’t you sass me,” he scolds.

Raylan rolls his eyes and plates up the food to take over to the kitchen table.

Raylan moves to his chair, but Boyd grabs him by the hips, manhandling him onto his lap.

Raylan ducks his head, embarrassed. Boyd, blessedly, lets him eat his own goddamn meal, but he feels overwhelmed and contented.

They talk about Boyd’s curse of a performance later today. He’s not likely going to be denied. As Boyd tells him, it had caused quite a stir when he had taken so much time off, caring for his poor husband, an American hero. Raylan glares at him, but secretly he thinks it’s hilarious. Or not so secretly, because Boyd’s eyes gleam like he knows what Raylan’s thinking. He probably does. Asshole.

Boyd laughs at him, and he squeezes Raylan’s ass again for good measure.

Raylan winces from the attention, but also groans into it, and wiggles on Boyd’s hips.

Boyd breathes, “Jesus, darling, I have places to be today.”

Raylan bites him. “I’m nice and tender from you sleeping in me,” he defends himself. “What did you expect?”

“Raylan,” Boyd says his name, and he says it in that special way he always does, like Boyd had been born to say it, like Raylan had been given the name just for it to come out of Boyd’s mouth.

Raylan shifts in Boyd’s lap. Boyd knows how that affects him.

Boyd raises an eyebrow.

“What?” Raylan asks.

Boyd bites back a smile. “Nothing,” he says. Liar. He runs a hand through Raylan’s hair. He’s not hesitant so much, maybe thinking.

Raylan thinks they might be having a Conversation.

“Raylan, darling,” he trails, unsure, but Raylan’s not sure what about. Boyd frowns. Not mad or anything, still thinking.

“Baby, you always want me to stay inside you after a big thing like this,” Boyd confesses.

Raylan frowns. “What do you mean?”

Boyd huffs a laugh, like Raylan had said exactly what he expected him to. Raylan hates when he does that. Or loves it. He can’t tell the difference.

“What I mean, baby,” he starts, and he continues to pet Raylan’s hair, “is that whenever you think I might be walking out the door, you appreciate just the little extra bit of attention.”

“I don’t do that,” Raylan says reflexively.

Boyd keeps his mouth shut. It’s probably a herculean effort for him, Raylan thinks spitefully. Boyd just lets the corners of his lips turn up and lets his eyes do all the talking.

Raylan buries his face into Boyd’s neck. “I do that?” he asks, somewhat baffled. He frowns, no longer upset, just another reflex.

He lets himself think for just a moment, before far, far too many examples pop up in his memory. He groans. He stops thinking. “Oh, Jesus, I do that.”

Boyd laughs. “Do you hear me complaining? Do you see me upset, darling?”

“This is mortifying,” Raylan grumbles.

Boyd kisses the top of Raylan’s forehead. “It was the first time you ever asked that I decided to move to Lexington with you, do you remember that, baby? You asked to just stay with me a second longer, and I realized I wasn’t ever going to leave you at all.”

Raylan kisses his shoulder, not removing himself from where he’s buried in Boyd’s neck.

“Now, up, baby, I have places to be, performances to give,” he says, tapping Raylan’s thighs.

Raylan grips tighter around Boyd’s neck. “No,” he grumbles petulantly, “I need attention, don’t I?”

Boyd laughs, and the heave of his chest underneath him comforts Raylan something fierce.

Boyd lifts him up, carrying him back to the bedroom in a bridal carry. Raylan grips around his neck, because Boyd is sure to drop him if he doesn’t. Out of spite, even, rather than from the weight. Bastard.

Boyd does drop him, but on the bed, and Raylan turns to put a pillow over his head. Tommy Bucks should have just killed him the first time. Put a stick of dynamite in Raylan’s mouth instead of some poor fuck’s.

Boyd kisses Raylan’s shoulder. “I love you,” he says.

“Love you, too,” Raylan groans into the mattress.

Boyd slaps his ass. “Now, I’m going to need you to do something for me, alright? Think of me all day, darling. Can you do that? Let me sit in the back of your mind, watching you all day as you pack up our things.”

Raylan feels his neck go hot.

Boyd spanks him again. “What was that, sweetheart?”

“Fine,” Raylan growls. Boyd laughs.

“I’m heading out now. Give me a kiss,” he demands as he leans down.

Raylan turns around just enough to meet him.

Boyd leaves him for work. Raylan lets himself turn over and sniff Boyd’s pillow, a small indulgence, before rolling out of bed to start packing.

He starts by heading to the boxes left in the study, some still unpacked from their move from Glynco, and Raylan rubs his face in embarrassment. Yeah, that checks out. He grabs a couple of empty ones and starts with the bedroom, because neither he nor Boyd will need their work clothes until after they’re in Kentucky.

He eventually breaks for lunch, and he calls the office for the realtor number while he throws a frozen pizza into the oven.

He stays in the kitchen with more boxes and starts dividing the kitchen between Raylan’s cooking utensils and all of Boyd’s baked good accoutrement.

Boyd comes home, grinning and proud, which Raylan can only take to mean “mission accomplished.”

Raylan grins. “Are all your children suitably afflicted with the curse known as “Misbehavin’?” he asks.

“Sure are,” Boyd says, holding out his phone for Raylan to watch the Youtube video of it.

“Oh, man, you got her to join you?” Raylan asks, grinning.

The video displays Boyd and the new vice principal performing the song and dance by Aimee-Leigh and Baby Billy.

It is such a thing that is blasted throughout Bible Belt schools across the county. It was an ear worm you could never gouge out, not even with death. Raylan is sure that many kids have heard it in Kentucky, but it is probably something new to these Miami city kids, and now they, too, are burdened with such a tune for the rest of their lives. Raylan thinks of the first time he found out that not every school in the United States has to learn square dancing. It is more of a shock that not every kid has to sit through either a video or a performance of “Misbehavin’” by the time they are twelve, let alone eighteen.

Boyd and the new vice principal do a real good job, and Raylan’s surprised to see her clogging passable, on such short notice, and Boyd’s is impeccable as always. “We gotta send this to the gals,” he says, referring to all of their friends spread out across the country. Boyd grins.

“Good time to tell some of them about the move, too,” Boyd says. Raylan groans. Saying goodbye to Natalie and Christine is going to be tough. Boyd is planning to impart some bear claws for the couple on the way out, take some of the edge off.

Lexington, Then

Ava decides she wants to apply to UK when Raylan’s in his last semester.

Boyd has some time to go yet, and they offer to help her with applications, scholarships, and financial aid.

Raylan is glad she’s taking him up on his offer. He’s also a little relieved, too, because Boyd hasn’t talked about Bowman in years, and Raylan is a little worried about it. Raylan knows he’s not the best person to do anything about it, because he had always thought Bowman had been an ass. And after, when Raylan had a question burning up the back of his throat, he had been resentful. He had known it hasn’t been right, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself.

Ava stays with them, and at first they agree on a week, but they don’t want her to leave after that.

She’s such a good girl, they both half fall in love with her. She had stayed in Harlan, a couple years after she had graduated, and she had spent the time with her Uncle, who had allowed her to save her earnings at the salon to save up enough to do something with them, not charging her rent or bills.

They both respect that, and Raylan knows they wouldn’t be here without his Aunt Helen’s help either.

They both cook, but Ava is much better at it than both of them combined, and she insists on doing it for them as thank you for letting her stay on their couch for a couple of days.

They wish they could offer something better, but she tells them she’s nice and tiny and fits perfectly.

They splurge for better groceries, because she can do something nice with them, and she makes them a fantastic ham dinner.

It’s over the meal that she gets a little wet. “Sorry, sorry, boys,” she says, rubbing at her eyes, “It’s just… this was Bowman’s favorite. I had a friend’s Mama teach me how to make it to surprise him one day—and—” she jokes, breaking up into tears.

Raylan gets up and hugs her, holding her against his chest, and Boyd sets his utensils down quietly, stares at the table, lost.

Then, Boyd speaks up, low and melancholic, “I went to all of his games. He hated seeing me there, said I was being gross about it. But damn, I was so proud of him. I watched every one as long as I wasn’t working, usually hidden between some bleachers so he wouldn’t bitch at me.”

“Also to sell a little weed, I imagine,” Raylan comments, even as he runs a soothing hand through Ava’s hair.

“That, too,” Boyd admits, half smiling.

Ava barks a laugh. “What about you, Raylan, do you have any memory you wanna share?”

And her eyes also hide some small challenge, and Raylan’s not going to deny either of them this. He searches for something good, something he can share, something kind, until he finds a good one with a small laugh. “I think I might actually,” he says. He goes to sit back in his chair.

“I remember this once—” he looks to Boyd, as if half expecting Boyd will know it, “I was waiting on you. I came up to your porch, hollering away, and he was the one who answered. You were out with your Daddy, and he pulled me in, said he had a question for me.”

Raylan realizes Boyd has never heard this story before, the way Boyd’s eyes are soft, open.

“He showed me two of your signatures, Boyd, and at first I thought they looked exactly the same. He says, ‘Raylan, can you tell the difference between these two?’ and I take a good hard look, and I can’t tell the difference at all. Can’t see anything that would set them apart, save for my gut telling me they could be different.”

Boyd pauses, cuts in, “I remember that. There was a time when he was forging all kinds of signatures. Doctor’s notes, hall passes, detention slips.”

Ava laughs, brittle but sincere. “He would write me a permission slip to be out of class, and one for himself, and we’d meet under the stairwell to make out.”

Raylan nods. “And I told him I could, even if it was just a feeling, and he goes, ‘Well, which one did Boyd write then?’ And I couldn’t say why, I just picked one,” he trails, feeling a stronger nostalgic fondness for Bowman than he’d expected to.

“And then Bowamn cursed, cause I picked yours, Boyd, and he goes, ‘No one else could tell,’ and I shrugged, and he goes, ‘Shoulda know you could though, Givens.’ I said, ‘Why? Because I’m well accustomed to sifting through Crowder bullshit?’ and he said, ‘Nah, you just know Boyd better than anyone knows anyone else,’” Raylan tells them, thinking of that moment.

Raylan shrugs, rolls his shoulders back, “And I thought—I don’t know, I thought, man, Bowman could have said it and gave me shit for it. Or he could have said I knew you,” he looks to Boyd, “better than anyone knows you. But he said I knew you better than anyone knows anyone, and I realized he only asked me because he thought it’d actually prove something, and I thought, I’d never expected him to use me to measure anything. Never realized he cared, or could care, or something like that.”

Raylan looks to his fingers, distracts himself by running his thumb of each one, repeating the process for the other hand. “And then we were packing up boxes, after the funeral, and I found a sheet of paper with your name in cursive all over, and I realized I couldn’t tell the difference at all anymore.”

They share a look over him.

Bowman had been Boyd’s bratty kid brother to Raylan. And then he had become Boyd’s ungrateful kid brother. And Raylan had resented him for keeping Boyd in Harlan, for shooing Boyd away for “fussing.” Raylan had let a lot of that go, at the funeral, the only thing that could sway Boyd in any way, in miserable, guilty gratitude. He lets the last of it go now.

They invite Ava to stay another week, and then another, and then just one more, before they finally find a futon at a student furniture swap and pick it up without a second thought.

Ava tells her uncle that she’s staying with an upperclassmen girl she knew from high school and not to worry.

They spend more dinners talking about Bowman and Harlan and everything else, and Raylan likes that Ava’s really easy to talk to, especially about school.

He helps her dig through a ton of majors and even more classes, and they decide to set her up in a bunch of requirements first, to see if she likes any of them the best, and they plan to have her try a bunch of things just for the hell of it after that.

She admits she is curious about a couple of things, and she wants to try a class on philosophy, a class on sociology, and a class on rhetoric, and they figure that covers some of the humanities and writing credits, so they also get her into a marine biology class for some science credits.

She asks if it makes sense to plan so far ahead when she hasn’t even been accepted yet, but Raylan rolls his eyes.

“Ava. You are one of the smartest people I know, and I’ve seen those essays you and Boyd have polished to shine brighter than a diamond. You’re making it in, and I don’t want you to pick your classes too late like I did, or you end up in shit classes and scrambling to make the credits line up,” he tells her.

She smiles at him, before blushing and turning her head away quickly.

She picks up a job as a waitress at the campus diner, and they visit her often. She wears a retro fifties apron that they all get a kick out of, and she gives them a twirl with a smile. She slips them free slices of pie when she sees them, but they never save money because they tip her more than what the pie is worth every time, even though she rolls her eyes at them and tells them to fuck off.

She sips whiskey with Boyd over the kitchen table, both of them swapping stories about Bowman. Usually they laugh, sometimes they get angry beyond belief. At Bowman, at his teammates, at his coach, at each other.

She huddles over applications and deadlines with Raylan, and Raylan thinks she just might be on track for pre-law, which blows his mind, and he is so, so proud of her.

She’s accepted a month before Raylan graduates, and they all celebrate by drinking themselves silly, before passing out in a puddle on their living room floor, waking up in a nest of blankets and pillows and cushions and sweatshirts.

Raylan’s last exam falls two weeks before his commencement, and he spends the entire time working. He gets a job as a bartender at Boyd’s old place, and he picks up shifts back with his old construction crew, pulling in fourteen hours of work a day.

He reassures Ava that he’s not avoiding her, he just wants to make the most of his time.

Boyd doesn’t even ask, but he does watch him, from the kitchen table. Raylan thinks he knows that he’s actually avoiding him.

He’s a coward. He can’t help it. Usually, Boyd has to be the one to call him out on it, to tell him to buck up.

Raylan’s not sure why Boyd lets him get away with it, with packing his schedule and passing out as soon as he gets home.

The night before commencement, he catches Ava and Boyd huddled at the kitchen table, the lease and a pen between them, and Raylan almost throws up. He grabs a handle of whiskey set on his bedside table, and he drinks it until he passes out, so he doesn’t have to torment himself to sleep with thoughts of Boyd and Ava sharing the apartment with him gone.

Boyd rouses him in the morning, getting him ready, shoving him into a nice shirt and slacks, and Raylan frowns at him the entire time, especially when Ava uses up a third of a disposable camera with him in his cap and gown.

“Awww, you didn’t have to get that,” he says, and he turns away, but he can’t help the smile he has for this.

Boyd kisses his cheek, and Ava squeals as she captures this on film, too.

Raylan sighs. “You know you’re gonna have to go to that place on Loudon to have those developed, right? They’d throw ‘em out if you go somewhere else.”

Ava huffs. “Yes, Raylan, I know. And I know you know that because I spoke with the owner just like you did over at that place on Main.”

“I’m just saying you could’ve saved yourself a trip, is all,” he mumbles, knowing he shouldn’t be so snappish when she’s being nice.

Boyd pinches him in the side, his way of saying the same.

They walk on over to the stadium, surrounded by a sea of matching black, with the only swatches of color coming from friends and family and the polka dotted spots of cap tassels.

Raylan leaves Boyd and Ava to head to the student entrance, and a classmate from his last Astronomy class—something chosen to desperately pick up the last few science credits he needed—passes him a flask. Raylan drinks it, pleasantly surprised by how strong it is.

The guy gives him a startled look.

“What?” Raylan asks, handing back the flask.

“That’s Everclear, dude,” he says.

Raylan laughs at him. “My family ran moonshine in the Prohibition. It’ll take a lot more than this to knock me back. Why are you passing this shit out?”

He mutters something about it being funny to watch, and this guy is a douche, but Raylan thinks it probably is funny, like the Yankee version of watching Yankees drink moonshine.

He grabs for the flask again during the ceremony, because it’s just as boring and long as promised to be. The speakers are all idealistic at best, out of touch as a whole, and actively idiotic at their worst.

But still, he grabs his diploma, and it all actually kinda feels worth it when Boyd and Ava run up to him when he finds them in the parking lot at the end.

Ava runs into his arms, tackling him with a hug, and he barely catches her.

Boyd holds back, but his eyes shine with unshed adoration, and his voice is thick with feeling when he tells Raylan how goddamn proud he is of him.

Raylan blushes, happier than he’s ever thought he even could be. Ava snaps more pictures, and they head home, and she prepares Raylan’s favorite fried chicken in celebration.

Ava takes more pictures, of the food, of the cheap streamers they had insisted on putting up, of Boyd and Raylan kissing more and more in celebration.

And then Raylan goes back to picking up extra shifts. He buries himself in work. He thinks he’ll never have to think again.

Boyd smiles at him, like he has Raylan’s number, like Raylan is his to chase, and Raylan can’t run from him for long.

Raylan knows it to be true, and still, he runs and runs and runs.

Raylan catches the glint in his eye, as he rolls out of bed in the morning. Boyd eyes him from the bed, with a smile, hands behind his back. He’s a predator. Ice spills down Raylan’s spine, and he goes to work half hard, rosy cheeked and wild.

He sets his day for his fitness test before Glynco and he goes home to drink himself to sleep when he’s done.

The bar won’t give him enough hours, so he works extra for the construction site. He works and he works and he works.

He works himself to breaking.

He wakes up, one morning, and he can’t lift himself up, arms heavy and sore.

That’s when Boyd corners him, wide-smiled, and he sits on the side of the bed as Raylan moans in pain.

Boyd smirks down at him, and Raylan growls back up at him. Boyd tucks a lock of Raylan’s hair behinds his ear.

“I got you, Raylan,” he says, voice low and charmed.

Raylan wants to bat Boyd’s hand away, but his arm is heavy and his muscles ache. He sets the pain down on the scale against visible protest, and it just doesn’t measure to be worth it.  

Boyd trails his fingers down, letting his knuckles graze against Raylan’s cheek, down his neck, over his chest. His fingers dance a beat over Raylan’s heart.

“Raylan, my love,” he says, and he sounds so soft and gentle and loving, especially for someone who’s here to gloat.

“I caught you,” Boyd teases with a singsong.

Raylan hisses. He bites at the air, and Boyd draws his fingers back up, puts them over Raylan’s lips.

Raylan bites them, but without force. He doesn’t break skin.

Boyd smirks. He brushes his thumb over Raylan’s bottom lip.

“You think you can run from me, huh, boy?” Boyd asks.

Raylan bites down deeper.

“You think you can slip out from my fingers? You think you can live a life without me?” Boyd asks. He grips Raylan’s tongue between his knuckles, pulls it out of his mouth.

“Or did you think you were going to spirit me away from my home, drop me in another city, and then leave me all by myself?” Boyd asks, releasing Raylan’s tongue, pressing down on it.

Raylan’s eyes start to burn. He bites down, hard, hard enough to draw blood.

He lets the liquid slide down his throat.

Boyd uses his free hand to wipe the tears from his face.

“My Raylan,” Boyd whispers.

Raylan sobs.

Boyd takes his hands from his mouth. He slides down the bed, lies down, and holds Raylan in his arms.

“You’re gonna leave me,” Raylan cries.

“Here we go,” Boyd says, he rubs circles over Raylan’s chest.

“What am I gonna do when you leave me?” Raylan sobs, burying himself into Boyd’s arms.

“I’m not gonna leave you,” Boyd says, running his fingers through Raylan’s hair.

“You are,” Raylan chokes, “You’re too good for me, and I’m leaving for four months, and you’ll see, you’ll see when I’m not here how much you don’t need me.”

“There we go, there we go,” Boyd comforts.

“You dropped your entire life for me, and what have I ever given you?” Raylan says, and he’s not drunk enough for this, and he’s in a tremendous amount of pain, and he can’t even talk about his feelings without spiraling into a pile of shame.

Boyd holds him tighter, “Everything, you fool boy, everything.”

“No,” Raylan protests, and his face is gross and snotty, and Boyd is going to leave him, he is.

“You gave me this,” Boyd says, holding Raylan’s face in his hands. “You gave me this gift, too precious for words, that has never been given to anyone before.”

Raylan rumbles with a question, and he can’t get ahold of his words, can’t understand what’s being said to him.

Boyd kisses under his eyes, “Raylan, this is something you’ve never shown anyone. Something you never would. It’s something I never asked for, and here you are giving it to me, so freely, and you think, what? That I’d throw this away? That I don’t know when I have solid gold sitting in my hands when I’m staring right at it?” 

Raylan shakes his head, because he can’t be that, he can’t be that dear.

“You are, darling, you are,” Boyd tells him, “You’ve given me every open door I’ve stepped through since I got here in Lexington, and every open door I chose to walk away from, and you gave me those choices, too.”

“Don’t leave me,” Raylan begs. “I didn’t ask then, you just came with me, and I never knew why, but you can’t leave me now.”

“Well, you can’t leave me, either, Raylan, can you agree to that?” Boyd asks.

“I’d never,” Raylan says, and he looks up at Boyd, and he’s so stricken, and he pauses in his tears, just from shock.

“I can’t know that, sweetheart. You’re making plans without me. I can’t know if you’ll just leave and never come back,” Boyd says.

Raylan sobs. “I’m a coward, Boyd, you know I am. I’m so fucking scared that if I ask you to wait for me or to move with me when I get my district placement that you’ll say no.”

Boyd pulls back, and Raylan gasps like he’s in pain.

“Ask me, dearest. Please,” Boyd asks, locking Raylan with his eyes.

“Please,” Raylan begs, “Please, wait for me to get back from Glynco. Move with me when I get my placement. Please, please, please.”

“I will,” Boyd says, “I will, I promise, I will.”

Raylan cries brokenly into Boyd’s chest. His breaths hitch and it’s ugly and stupid. “You better,” he says, finally, “You better. I’ll—I’ll kill you, if you try and leave me now. I don’t know what I’ll do without you. I’ll kill you, and I’ll get away with it because I’ll be the best damn lawmen you’ve ever seen.”

Boyd laughs, and he pulls Raylan back against his chest. “I wouldn’t want anything less, Raylan.”

And Raylan never knows what to do when Boyd says his name like this, because he always says it like a promise, and it always makes Raylan feel like he can trust him, and that’s scary too.

Raylan is tired. He hasn’t cried like this in such a long time. There had been a time when he had thought his Daddy had beat all the tears out of him. Maybe he had. Maybe he doesn’t have any tears left for pain or anger or fear, and the only ones he has left are for love.

Raylan doesn’t know.

This is the second time Raylan has thought he’s been stuck between choosing Boyd and chasing his heart, and the second time Boyd has told him both sit at the other end of Raylan’s reach.

Raylan buys them rings. He goes to the nearby pawnshop, and he digs through a couple of large ring holders. He finds one with a horseshoe, which he decides to keep for himself, and one with a wishbone for Boyd. He likes that they’re both lucky, like a set. They’re the sort of people who could use luck.

He shoves the box in Boyd’s hands, as he leaves the house for the airport, because they know they’re not ones for a wrought airport goodbye.

He doesn’t say anything, because he can’t, and because he’s still a coward, but at least now he’s a coward who can give Boyd some of his fears, this question included.

Boyd hands him a box in return. Raylan opens it on the plane. It’s a letter opener. A note says, “Don’t forget your own address.” Raylan smiles.

Miami, Now

“Do you think you could make me some brownies for Art?” Raylan asks, as they pack away another 11 x 9 tin. Raylan wants to say they have too many, because this is the sixth he’s had to find a home for amongst their many boxes, but Boyd would just say he won’t make brownies anymore, which would make Raylan cry.

Boyd pauses his packing of his measuring cups and spatulas—why the man has eighteen of them, Raylan could not even begin to try to guess at, but Boyd’s assures him it is all part of the process, and Raylan doesn’t question it.

“Oh, so we’re asking favors, am I getting that right?” Boyd asks, and Raylan has to choke down a laugh, because he wants to play it like this.

“I suppose I am, darling,” Raylan smiles, always excited for Boyd’s games.

“Well, then, Raylan, what would you say if I had a favor to ask from you as well?” Boyd proposes, grinning.

“I’m a fair man, Boyd. I would say I would love to return a gesture,” Raylan grins. Boyd has never let him down with his favors before.

Boston, Then

Raylan gets his first posting, and Boyd finds his first job as teacher, as opposed to just tutor, and despite all of the training and student teaching and theory, it is still an adjustment. He had crammed four years of content into three, behind Raylan’s back, for the eventuality of moving with him. He’s a little exhausted, but it’s worth it.

He doesn’t know anybody here, neither of them do, and Ava Randolph is the only person either of them has ever liked on any significant level besides each other. They’re bad at making friends. They’re both charismatic enough to get by, but liking people is difficult for them. Not that they have a lot of practice for it, what with their entire lived experiences. Between their Mama’s, Aunt Helen, and Ava, they have never really met anyone in Harlan who even constitute as likable.

Raylan had once liked Bob Sweeney, he thinks, vaguely. Boyd had liked Bowman, in some way.

They learn to get along okay with coworkers. There is always some amount of distance, when they meet people who say things that are so far removed from what they have always known to be reality, they also kind of like that in a way. And they at least always have home in each other.

Raylan really likes his Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal Siobhan Mahoney. She’s probably one of the funniest people Raylan has ever met hands down, including his Boyd, and including all the times she’s being funny at Raylan’s expense.

Boyd finds that high schools are a lot more fun than tutoring. Almost immediately. Every child holds hatred in their eyes, half the staff is fucking each other and parting in increasingly messy breakups, and the administration is so unbelievably incompetent, Boyd knows he’ll be able to get away with murder. Which he might, actually, attempt, given just how annoying every single person is.

He starts stealing chemicals on his second day of the job, and he amuses Raylan in their apartment’s shared yard by blowing up bottles with dry ice.

He forms an alliance with Hillary Rossi, a history teacher almost as old as the subjects she supervises. She’s wicked sharp and hates everyone as much as Boyd does, if not more. They share lunches in the teachers’ lounge, bitching about the same students, laughing at the follies of the same staff.

By Boyd’s second semester, he has learned more from her than he has any other single human being, including his daddy, and she has asked him to call her Tilly.

Boyd and Raylan are still quiet about themselves, at this point, and she invites Boyd over to bring his girl or whatever with him.

“Now what makes you think I am so attached?” he asks with a smile. He mimics the one Raylan often gives girls, and he lets himself find he’s funny, even if he doesn’t share the joke.

Tilly rolls her eyes. “You being so shy like this is suspicious, you know that, right? It’s suspicious. I know you have a lady, because you carry yourself like you do. You don’t participate in the teacher’s union monthly key party despite being union, and you aren’t half as sad as any man I’ve ever met who needed to fend for himself. Now fess up, who is this girl? Married? A student?”

Boyd laughs. “A man!” he tells her, wondering if that will scandal her any.

Tilly slams the table, victorious. “Wonderful! Bring your faggot boyfriend for dinner then.”

Boyd chokes on his sandwich, wheezing at the way she so happily invited someone like that.

“What?” she says, frowning, “Is your faggot boyfriend too good for an old bird like me? Or are you afraid I’ll steal him away with my wiles?”

Boyd doesn’t correct her, because without any malice in her old heart, it is possibly the funniest thing he has ever heard.

She continues to call Raylan his faggot boyfriend whenever he talks about him, which is often enough lately. Raylan is an easy point of conversation, because his job has him active and in a lot of strange positions. Also, Boyd loves him. It’s stupid and weird to be so smitten about him this late, but he is, and he doesn’t know quite how to hold it down without it bubbling up his throat the moment he lets his guard down.

Raylan manages to catch a man hiding in a chicken coop, and while the arrest looks real nice on his record, Boyd cries tears of laughter when he shows up at home covered in feathers, straw, and bird shit.

Tilly gets a good laugh out of that one as well. Boyd regales her with the story Raylan had shared with him, of the man thinking the chicken scent would prevent the dogs from finding him. As if he hadn’t been leaving footprints and marked bills behind him like bread crumbs leading right up to the damn fence.

She invites them to dinner, one that involves her three adult children, all of whom are older than Raylan and Boyd’s combined ages each. She introduces Raylan as Boyd’s “faggot boyfriend” and her eldest son drops the bottle of wine he had brought, crying out a loud, aghast, “Mom!”

Raylan also laughs so hard he cries. “I know why you like her so much,” he says, grinning, as Tilly’s daughter goes to help clean up the wine with a sigh.

“What? What? What am I doing wrong?” she asks, huffy.

“You’re not supposed to say ‘faggot’,” her youngest mutters, groaning into his hands.

“Why not?” she asks, offended.

“It’s rude,” her daughter answers, back with a dustpan and broom.

“It’s bigoted,” her eldest son—they’re really going to need to finish introductions at some point—clarifies.

She turns to Boyd, “Is your boyfriend a faggot or isn’t he?” and that’s what really gets Boyd and Raylan laughing, because they do not know what she thinks the word faggot means, but somehow only Raylan is one, because she never uses the word for Boyd.

Her children groan, and eventually Boyd and Raylan are able to find out their names are Roger, Tabby, and Theo.

Miami, Now

They lie in bed, Raylan tucked under Boyd’s chin and limbs and secured safely in place.

“Raylan, I can understand why you are feeling no small amount of trepidation for our upcoming days, but I think you’re forgetting just how much fun we had in that old Lexington apartment,” Boyd murmurs.

Raylan smiles under his hold, kisses Boyd’s bare chest.

“I loved that place,” Raylan says, because it was the first place that wasn’t Harlan he had ever lived, the first place that was his own.

Boston, Then

Boyd starts baking in Massachusetts.

He learns early on that the currency of high school functions is baked goods. The best baked goods make the best profit in bake sales, and the teachers who leave treats in the break room are the most highly revered. Aside from blackmail, which Boyd is finding to be an easy side gig, baked goods are an incredible motivator for favors.

He tries his hand at chocolate chip cookies, and Raylan eats them just fine, but Boyd knows it’s because Raylan is his idiot. Boyd had done something wrong, because they’re flat and dry, and Raylan is wonderful, but they’re definitely not at the level Boyd needs them to be.

He grumbles about it to Tilly during one of their breaks, and she offers to teach him.

None of her children had ever wanted to learn. They’re all willful assholes, and when Tilly says she doesn’t know where they get it from, Boyd laughs so hard spills leftover lasagna on his sweater vest. She winks at him.

They spend ages in the kitchen. Boyd visits her after school, most days, and even a fair number of Saturdays. It gets to the point where Boyd is actually starting to worry Raylan might think she’s stealing him away. Raylan is one of the most jealous, possessive men he knows.

Boyd tells him this once, and Raylan frowns hideously and asks, “You know other men?”

Raylan can’t help but laugh at his own joke though, ruining his thunderous face with a smile.

Boyd isn’t entirely certain it is only a joke, is the thing. The two of them have realized that they don’t know how to talk to other men.

It’s not like Raylan knows how to have hobbies like a healthy person, where he’d learn how to talk to people like a human, and Boyd knows he had hated every single player of his high school baseball team. As much as he can get along with his male coworkers, there is a certain underlying machismo in his profession that Raylan threatens. He’s a queer man, but he’s a better shot than you. He’s an incredible asshole, but his arrest record speaks for itself. He gets along with his female coworkers, because he respects them, but also because he’s easy on the eyes and acts as a tremendous flirt, so they forgive him for more than they should. He makes some friends, but he prefers to spend time at home with his boyfriend. He’ll go out for drinks, but he kind of acts like he hates anyone for asking, and he always judges what everyone’s drinking.

Meanwhile, Boyd works in a field dominated by women, and the few men who do share his profession place distance between themselves and the only openly queer man on staff. He doesn’t like most people in general, and he has little tolerance for posturing, quick to shut it down and grind it into the dirt with his foot. His upbring is rougher than any man he meets in his line of work, and Boyd can’t tolerate whatever show they feel the need to put on to justify their work to themselves.

So when Raylan asks, “You know other men?” Boyd hears, “You know other men well enough to know how jealous they are? Are they jealous over you?”

Raylan is ridiculous. Boyd is obsessed with him.

Despite this, Boyd still grips Raylan’s face tightly between his palms to ensure Raylan maintains eye contact and pays attention when he says, “Raylan, dearest, I love you more than God the Father loves his children, but if you bother me about this one more time, I am never going to blow you again.”

Raylan settles, a bit, with this, and he begrudgingly spends more time at the bar with Siobhan after shifts.

She’s someone who he likes more than tolerates, which is refreshing for him.

Raylan manages to even get her out on weekends, and she laughs every single time he cries about how much he misses his stupid boyfriend, and how stupid Boyd is for leaving him to himself like this, and this is how he gets in trouble.

Raylan starts a bar fight, because Boyd is his self-control, because he needs to let off steam. Boyd just laughs at him when he gets home, doesn’t even fuss over him like he ought to, so Raylan can’t even hiss at him not to.

Siobhan is a good friend, even if she is his boss, but she’s probably the smartest and best at establishing and maintaining boundaries. She has lines even Raylan knows not to cross, and he respects the hell out of her for it, even if her entirety is a bit foreign to Raylan’s understanding.

She’s making fun of one of their coworkers, something Deputy Morgan had done during an asset forfeiture, and Raylan bellows with laughter.

He’s so tickled, he doesn’t notice a fist headed toward his face, which isn’t even right, because he hadn’t even provoked anyone this time.

Raylan holds his cheek, sprawled on his ass, his stool upturned next to him. He stares dumbstruck for a second, as some man screams obscenities.

The guy starts screaming at him about sleeping with his wife, and Raylan smirks, leaning in hard. If this man wants to make wild accusations, Raylan is happy to bring this man’s worst nightmares to fruition.

“Yeah, I slept with her!” he smiles, wide and mean. “Damn, she was nice too, so good for me, moaning and screaming my name!”

The man tries to push Raylan down with a punch, but Raylan gets him by his legs.

He punches the man’s face, continuing to taunt him. “Ohhhh, she was sooo good for me, sucks cock like a champ, did you know?” He decks the man again. He holds the man’s legs down with his own. He grins manically, happy to have the excuse. He punches the man again and again.

The man tries to buck him off, but Raylan has been scrapping all his life. This fucking north eastern yuppie isn’t going to do shit against him.

Raylan feels himself being lifted up by his collar by an amused Siobhan.

“Ahhhh,” Raylan smiles sheepishly, “Sorry about that, Chief.”

“You are one of the biggest assholes I have ever met, Givens,” she says with a wry grin. “I know for a fact you’ve never slept with this man’s wife, and yet you were one hundred percent willing to fuck with him. I almost respect that about you.”

Raylan stabilizes himself on two feet and rubs at the already blossoming heat of his cheek. “I could have,” he protests weakly, “You know how busted up I am over Boyd leaving me on my lonesome.”

She rolls her eyes. “Setting aside the fact that you would never,” she says, putting her hand on her hip, “I am his wife.”

Raylan looks awkwardly between the two. “Ohhhhhh,” he says.

“Yeah, ohhhh,” she mocks. “As for you,” she says as she gives her apparent husband a light kick on the ground, “We’re going to have to have a nice long talk when we get home. God bless you for assaulting a Marshal and thinking you would win that fight.”

The man picks himself up off the floor, glaring at the both of them. “Maybe your Boyd,” he spits, “Wouldn’t be leaving you by yourself if you quit acting like a fucking faggot!”

Raylan raises an eyebrow at Siobhan. “He’s the not the brightest one, your boy, is he?”

She rubs her temples. “This isn’t his best first impression, I’ll give you that.”

Siobhan waves goodbye, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Givens. Don’t stay out too late by yourself. It’s fucking pathetic to mope in your spirits alone.”

Raylan waves her off, and she spares a quick, “Say hi to Boyd for me,” and Raylan nods. Boyd had made her cannolis last week. Boyd is now her favorite. Boyd also has never told her husband he’s been cuckholded to his face.

Raylan smiles, proud of his boy, as he picks up the stool and settles back at the bar.

He holds his drink to his face, letting the condensation cool off the bruise that is surely blooming.

He waves down the bartender, who, now that Raylan is paying attention to him, is a bit shaken.

Raylan narrows his eyes.

The man grabs him some ice, but lingers, and Raylan makes small talk, because Siobhan is right. It would be sad if he drinks alone.

He orders a whiskey for the bartender, and Raylan has discovered his name is Jack, and he seems overly curious about the altercation.

Raylan grins over his own whiskey. “Ahhh, jealous husband,” he explains, and he smiles ruefully.

Jack hovers, hesitant. “Did you really sleep with her?”

Raylan nods.

Jack looks stricken.

Who says the same joke can’t be just as funny the second time?

Raylan is very much looking forward to sharing this with Boyd when he gets home. It is just as much fun as he expects, and Boyd even shares some of his spoils with him, some pizzelles he’d made with Tilly.

“You’re not funny, Givens,” is the first thing Siobhan tells him when he gets to the office the next morning.

“Boyd thinks I’m funny,” he retorts, because Boyd is his best defense now, because Boyd is the man with sweets.

She glares back at him. “Boyd’s your dumb other half. He can’t insult your humor without insulting his own.”

Raylan gives her a knowing look. “You didn’t seem this upset when we parted last night.”

“Last night, I received a frantic phone call from a second desperate, insecure man. You’re an ass, Deputy,” she says, and she sends him back to his desk, “I hope Boyd fucks that old woman.”

“No, you don’t,” Raylan laughs, “Because whatever would happen next in the fallout would cause a dozen and a half problems for you minimum.”

She gives him the finger through the glass wall of her office.   

Lexington, Now

Raylan walks into the office, encumbered by baked goods, feeling like he smells too much of sugar and vanilla to make an accurate first impression.

He carriers two brown paper bags in a hand each, nodding his head as he meets eyes with new coworkers.

Art near sprints from his office over to Raylan, and the only mistake he makes is in which hand contains his gift.

“Ah, ah, ah, these are for Winona, Art,” Raylan says, stepping his left foot back with the bag. He holds the actual peace offering out in front of him with his right, “These ones are for you.”

Art giggles, and Raylan does get some fair amount of amusement taking in the astonished looks of his new coworkers, knowing they have never seen Art make that noise and face before.

Raylan smiles.

Art digs through the bag and shoves a brownie in his mouth, groaning in excitement.

“Give my thanks to your boy,” Art says, tearing through chocolate and caramel.

“Oh, I assure you I have,” Raylan says with a grin, maybe too lecherous for a work environ.

Raylan knows how good they are, he had shoved three of Boyd’s bourbon caramel brownies in his mouth before he shoved Boyd’s cock down his throat too.

Art rolls his eyes.

“You see this, Raylan?” he says, though it’s hard to find antagonism in a voice filtered through brownie, “This is why people don’t like you. You have it too good.”

“I thought people didn’t like me because I’m an asshole?” Raylan asks with a wry smile. 

Dallas, Then

Raylan comes home, a split lip, split knuckles. Boyd looks at Raylan and shakes his head.

“Okay, Raylan,” he says, voice hard, “This is something I let you get away with in Kentucky and Massachusetts, but I think we might actually have to have a Talk about this.”

Raylan hates having to have Talks. He juts his chin out at just the idea of it.

Boyd presses down on a bruise gracing Raylan’s jaw, and Raylan hisses in pain.

“What?” he grouses.

“It’s fucking embarrassing, Raylan, to have my name so entangled with a man so piss poor a fighter. I’m embarrassed that you keep getting your goddamn ass kicked, coming home looking like a deer carcass post hunting season,” Boyd says, hissing.

Raylan raises an eyebrow, and winces when it irritates a cut above his eye. He deserves it. “What is this? An intervention?” he asks, angry and bemused.

“I’m not telling you to stop fighting, asshole,” Boyd growls, taking him by the lapels and pushing him back. “I am telling you to stop losing fights, because I have tied my horse to yours, and your horse currently looks like it needs to be shot behind the barn.”

Raylan glares at him, and that is something Boyd has never shied away from.

“Now let’s see the rest of the damage,” he mutters, helping Raylan unbutton his plaid.

“Jesus Christ, Raylan,” Boyd says with a heavy sigh.

“What would you have me do?” Raylan barks. He groans when Boyd presses his thumb into a bruise Raylan has received on his clavicle.

“Win fights or stop picking them,” Boyd growls back, “I can’t have myself bound to a man who can’t do neither.”

“Oh, so you think you can tell me what to do?” Raylan asks, picking a fight.

Well, Boyd thinks, Raylan might as well if he wants to keep his shit track record up at losing them tonight. “Oh, you think I can’t?”

Raylan shoves Boyd a few steps back.

“Your problem, Raylan,” Boyd tells him, even as Raylan crowds his space, “Is that you think that if you hit a man, that makes you just like your Daddy.”

Raylan seems to sober, at those words, takes in their positions, and devastation rolls across his face like tidal waves crashing against the shore. He steps back, and he looks at his hands, as if they’ve been acting without his permission.

Boyd takes those steps forward, takes them back, crowding Raylan in return.

“Now, if I were a better man,” Boyd starts, close and angry, “I would tell you that you could stop hearing your Daddy’s voice in your fists if you would just stop making them.”

Raylan furrows his brow, looks around, lost.

“But I don’t think you would even if you could,” Boyd says, cutting and cruel. He doesn’t stop for the hurt across Raylan’s face, doesn’t pause even when Raylan’s hands curl back at his sides.

“So instead, I will tell you this,” he starts, and he lifts one of Raylan’s fists between them, between their gazes, “Take a good hard look at where you aim this, and remind yourself that you are hitting someone you want to hurt. Not me, not your Mama, and not some child. Maybe then you’ll stop pulling your punches.”

“I don’t pull my punches,” Raylan frowns, deflecting from everything else.

“Then you’re an idiot,” Boyd tells him, “Who loses fights anyway.”

And then he kisses Raylan gently, because he knows Raylan wants angry sex right now, and Boyd likes keeping him on his toes.

He lies Raylan down in their bed, he sits on Raylan’s cock, and he sets their pace smooth and slow as he rides him.

Raylan thinks Boyd leaves the conversation with this, and he is smug about it, until he’s not.

Boyd invites him to watch a game at a sports bar a short walk from their apartment. Ralyan doesn’t suspect anything, because they can have date nights without anything being a thing.

They drink more than they should, considering both have babysitting to do tomorrow—Boyd has distraught teenagers, and Raylan has surly prisoners, but the outcome is roughly the same.

On their walk back, Boyd intertwines his fingers with Raylan’s own. Raylan raises an eyebrow, but he’s nice and contented, and he lets it be.

They’re stopped by drunks from that same bar, and when one man yells, “Faggots!” at them, Boyd screams back with a cordial invitation, “What are you going to do about it!?”

And that’s when Raylan realizes his disagreement with Boyd is far from over, and also a new conflict is on his plate in front of him.

A man bull rushes Boyd, and Boyd throat punches him seconds before he’s tackled to the ground, and Raylan punches that man’s buddy in the face.

As it turns out, Raylan is particularly motivated to win fist fights when his boy is right there in the middle of it, just as much of a target.

Raylan kicks the man Boyd has downed, while Boyd tackles the man Raylan has just decked.

Boyd is more tender in caring for Raylan’s wounds, later that night, when they’ve gotten home and Boyd has pulled out frozen peas to apply to Raylan’s shiner.

Raylan thinks Boyd doesn’t ever feel guilty, because he never does anything he doesn’t want to do, but this is still his way of handling consequences and settling circumstances inside himself.

Boyd holds him tight that night, slowly fucking him into the mattress, dragging out their pleasure both. He caresses each of Raylan’s scars, kisses each one of Raylan’s bruises. He kisses Raylan tenderly, like Raylan is something precious and beloved.

Raylan almost wonders if Boyd is not just a little bit worried for him, that one day Raylan will pick a fight that will give him permanent damage.

He also suspects Boyd is just feeling wily and misses the feel of blood under his nails.

He gets to test his theory, because this is not the last night Boyd executes this stunt.

He invites Raylan out, and Raylan can guess at how he chooses his days. When Raylan sees the bodies of victims thick under his eyes after a long shift, when Boyd confronts a problem with a bruised student that can’t be solved with talking or scheming or any good thing in the world.

They laugh, over stiff liquors and greasy burgers, run commentary on the baseball game. Boyd quizzes Raylan on baseball stats and laughs when Raylan gets so riled about the Cubs he dips his elbow in his fries.

Raylan grumps about the stain, and Boyd smiles at him so fondly.

They leave, hand in hand once again, and once again they are stopped by someone with an opinion, and Boyd goads them on, and Raylan shows up to work the next morning with bloodied knuckles once again.

Raylan tells his boss he has been having trouble with hate crimes lately, and while it is not untrue, Raylan knows Chief Robinson probably thinks he’s street fighting, which is also not wholly untrue.

Every so often, they make it home without interruption, and on those nights, Raylan wraps his arms around Boyd, and they try not to feel too overwhelmed by the ways in which the world changes, with or without permission, for the better or for the worse. They try not to let home bite too deeply into their heels, her angry jaw clamping down with memories and fears and feelings of the past, of all the risks they’ve ever taken, of all the odds that have tipped closer to their side of the scales.

Lexington, Now

“He’s actually my husband now,” Raylan says with a grin, flashing a gold band in Art’s face.

Art guffaws, “Took you two long enough, I suppose!”

Art turns to the two Marshals standing next to them in curious interest. “You tell Raylan your favorite desserts now, so he can have ‘em ready for his Boyd next time he pisses you off.”

Rachel’s favorite is coffee cake, and Raylan knows he’ll have to come back for her favorite flavors as Boyd finds the perfect recipe that isn’t dry as ash, like caramel or almond.

The other marshal—Tim, Raylan thinks absently—puts in his order for peanut butter cookies as his favorite, and even though Raylan feels a chill run down his spine at even the mention of peanut butter, he accepts it, because he is an adult and Boyd hasn’t let their mutual hatred for the stuff stop him from using it as an ingredient yet. They just don’t feast as much on the leftovers.

Dallas, Then

Celia Bryer is a snide fucking bitch, and Boyd is going to end her entire life.

She’s the Assistant President of the PTA, and her husband is a descendent of a very wealthy oil baron. He’s still pulling up black liquid today, which makes them more wealthy than god and also no better than Black Pike’s den of snakes. Her wretched child attends a public school like Boyd’s own because the bastard has been kicked out of no less than six private institutions.

Boyd would hate her on principle—in fact, he already had hated her on principle— but she truly draws Boyd’s ire when she spearheads a charity project for the school that she uses to place herself directly in Boyd’s path.

She comes in, she makes shitty comments about bake sales and cake walks—and oh, Boyd hates her for what she says about those cake walks. She only says it because Boyd makes five cakes every year for those cake walks and without fail his cakes are picked up first and hers are picked up last. Jealous, scheming woman. She just knows that she couldn’t bake a cake worth half as much as one of Boyd’s own sugar encrusted dumps, so she thinks she’s going to play a different fucking game. Well, Boyd can win that too.

She talks about a basket auction, and she is so smug, because she thinks that she has him beat, that there is no way Boyd is going to bring in some good worth whatever she has lying around—Boyd already knows she is planning on buying something outrageous anyway, despite all her talks of the event being inclusive and accessible and proper for everyone’s budgetary limitations.

She leaves the room, laughing with one of her lackeys—no better than Bo with Arlo as a leg breaker, if you ask Boyd.

They laugh, and she catches his eye as she whispers theatrically, “I hope no one brings in baked goods! That would be sooooo embarrassing!”

Her minion laughs, something agreeable.

Bryer, of course, has to pretend like she is not Lilith the she-devil, mother to all evil, and she adds, “It’s just, the dietary restrictions! I want something we can all enjoy! No one has to worry about allergies or hygiene or anything!”

And now she’s calling him dirty? Is that a jab at him being with Raylan? Boyd doesn’t often read into garbage like this, because people should come outright with what they mean, but he will read between the lines today for spite of her.

So he knows he has to bring in his big guns. The biggest guns he has.

When he gets home, he starts on Raylan’s absolutely favorite, his most beloved of all time, some insane vanilla monstrosity that takes a precious fourteen hours to make spanned across two days. They had seen it made on some baking competition once. Boyd had made it the first time as a test of skill, and Raylan had fallen in love with it, and as much as he loves Raylan, it is a rare kind of delicacy that necessitates a special occasion.

When Raylan comes home, that night, after a long day of chasing fugitives across a large swath of Texas, he follows his usual routine of pouring himself a glass and meandering over to Boyd’s latest project to give him a kiss.

Then he takes a look at what the dessert of the day is, and his heart nearly stops.

“Oh, Jesus, what happened?” Raylan asks, distraught.

Boyd is not unprepared for such a reaction, and to be honest, he has a mighty big favor to ask, so Raylan is not wrong for his brain churning up the worst.

Boyd keeps his mouth in a line, because he has to play this very, very fine. “Okay. For the continuation of your still beating heart, everyone’s alive.”

“That doesn’t narrow anything down at all, oh my god,” he says. He sets his bourbon down the counter. He looks around, wildly, as if looking for some evidence of what the cake could portend.

“Did you cheat on me?” he asks.

“No,” Boyd assures him.

“Are you leaving me?” Raylan asks, more desperate. It’s somewhat telling which he thinks is worse. Boyd knows they really have to talk about this. They have before, but it doesn’t always stick.

He sets down his piping tool and turns to Raylan. He grips his face. “Boy, I am not leaving you, I am never leaving you, and if I was? I wouldn’t be spending fourteen of my precious, God-given, Earthly hours baking for you.”

“You would, though,” Raylan says, face pale, eyes distant, living in his own made-up world where Boyd would even know how to do such a thing in the first place.

The truth has to be what saves them both.

“It’s a bribe,” Boyd explains.

“For who?” Raylan hisses, narrowing his eyes. Setting aside the fact that not many people would even understand how incredible this bribe is, Raylan thinks he would have to kill them for eating this at all. It’s too precious. It would actually be worse than Boyd cheating on him. No, it would be like Boyd is cheating on him.

“For you, silly man,” Boyd says, and he can’t resist a smile, even in this dire time of desperation, for his boy so filled with avarice for Boyd’s creations.

Raylan takes this in, lets it soak. And then, after careful deliberation and measured contemplation, he says, “Okay. I accept.”

“You accept?” Boyd wonders, having not even ironed out the details. Usually his boy is smarter than that, to accept a deal he doesn’t have all the information on. “Just like that?”

“One,” he says, holding up his finger, “If it’s big enough to break this out, it’s big enough for me to come to bat for you.”

Boyd feels an unrulable fondness in his heart for him, for his Raylan.

“Two,” Raylan says, holding up his second finger, “If you tell me, I might say no. And I want to eat this,” he pauses, waving his hand over ingredients, mid creation, “Without a thought on my mind.”

“I love you, Raylan,” Boyd tells him.

Raylan closes his eyes. “It’s bad. It’s so bad, isn’t it?” He shakes his head, freeing himself for the moment.

“It’s not illegal,” Boyd shares, because if he were to ask Raylan to defy the law for him, he would not do Raylan the disservice of couching such a question.

“Of course, it isn’t. You’d just ask if it was,” he says, absently. His brow is furrowed, and he’s trying to puzzle out what could be such a big ask. “But it is bad.”

Boyd nods. Sometimes he loves how well his boy knows him. This is. Well.

Boyd continues to prepare the dessert, layers three and four are proving to be tricky for no good reason tonight, and it doesn’t help that Raylan hovers at the kitchen table, staring holes through him.

“It’s not illegal. It’s something I should want to say no to, ordinarily,” he mutters. He looks up, “Is it a sex thing? Is it a sex thing you think I won’t want to say yes to?”

“You usually say yes to sex things, Raylan,” Boyd reminds him.

“That’s true, that’s true,” he accepts. “Is it a chore? A boring chore? We usually share the work. I wouldn’t try to be ornery about that.”

“Which is why it isn’t a chore, Raylan, darling,” Boyd answers.

“Oh, Jesus, do you want to talk about feelings? Like… real stuff?” Raylan says, appalled.

Boyd barks a laugh. “God, no, bless your heart, Raylan, but I don’t ever want to talk about our feelings neither. No more than you, at least.”

“Is it—” Raylan starts.

“Do you want to guess, or do you want me to tell you?” Boyd asks, just to make sure.

“I don’t want to know yet at all. I’m just stalling,” Raylan says.

“Then keep your guesses to yourself. I’m busy, darling,” Boyd tells him.

This is their night now. Boyd had started around four, which means he will have only this occupying his attention until a little past midnight. This and a little bit of Raylan, but Raylan is, as always, his own special category of everything.  

Raylan orders takeout, because they’ll need to eat, and even if Boyd hasn’t placed a blanket ban from the kitchen, he knows better than to try and get in here and possibly interfere with Boyd’s process.

He feeds Boyd bites of rice pilaf and forkfuls of kabob when he finds openings, but mostly they chat while Boyd works.

Boyd receives a call from Winona the next day. “What are you planning that has Raylan so riled?” she demands.

Boyd tells her.

“Yeah, okay, there’s no way I’m missing that. Make sure you have an event ticket for me.”

Boyd receives a similar phone call from Ava shortly thereafter. She’s buying plane tickets.

“Winona is coming, too,” he tells her, “We should introduce you.”

She is excited to meet her.

Boyd continues to bake. Raylan has to work this Saturday, so he has the kitchen to himself. He pauses around lunch, finds a sandwich Raylan had prepared for him this morning. Raylan is still so good to him, despite his suspicions. Boyd almost feels bad about what he’s going to ask.

Raylan gets home, kicking off his boots. He kisses Boyd hello, and by now the dessert just has to set. Raylan takes over the kitchen, cooking them both burgers with a side of fries, and they talk over dinner. Raylan is clearly excited for dessert, looking at the freezer every so often.

Raylan tells Boyd that his Chief Robinson had figured out that Raylan has something to look forward to tonight, and Boyd laughs, because he’d be a pretty shit marshal if he couldn’t figure that out, though the Chief had assumed that Raylan had some special sex thing planned instead. Boyd isn’t entirely sure it isn’t some sex thing, the way Raylan gets about vanilla sometimes.

They pause between meals, because Raylan is very particular about savoring his dessert, especially when it comes to Boyd’s, and especially, especially when it comes to this several hour affair confectionary.

Boyd reads while Raylan rests his head in his lap, unwinding from his day.

When Boyd gets to the next chapter, Raylan decides it’s time to eat again, and Boyd brings out the cake slices.

Raylan devours each bite, making histrionic moans with each one. He finishes the cake with flourish and a wide smile.

He leans back in his chair, folding his hands serenely over his chest. He revels in his own contentedness, happy for the sweet aftertaste still settled on his tongue.

Boyd grins over to Raylan, gazing at him over the table, his hand holding the weight of his head.

He knows he must look like a besotted fool, but it’s hard not feeling that way about Raylan sometimes.

Raylan gets up, and he pulls Boyd to the couch. He pushes Boyd down, and lies his head back in Boyd’s lap, and Boyd is amendable, so he starts petting through Raylan’s hair.

“Okay,” Raylan says, determined and relaxed, his eyes closed and a smile on his lips. “I have mentally prepared myself. What is it that I have signed myself away to?”

Boyd laughs. He presses a kiss down on Raylan’s forehead. “Strap in, son,” he says, and Raylan makes him laugh by wiggling his shoulders in show of settling.

“So, you know what a heinous bitch that Celia Bryer is, correct?” Boyd starts.

“Yes,” Raylan answers, and his eyes are still closed contented, because he’ll say what he will, but he truly enjoys hearing Boyd gossip, “She is your archnemesis.”

Boyd frowns, only a little irritated Raylan can’t see the displeasure on his face, so he makes sure it’s clear in his voice, “She is an awful woman, Raylan, don’t diminish what I feel for her like this.”

“My apologies,” Raylan says, insincerity thick on his tongue, and Boyd wishes Raylan wasn’t about to do him a huge favor, or he’d be able to flick him in the forehead. “She has a heart blackened by oil, just as our old employers' hearts are blackened by coal. She will one day meet Satan as an equal.”

Boyd does flick him. “Well, she has made a fine job of rallying against me, and she has decided to hold a basket auction instead of one of our classic bake sales, cake walks, fairs, or even banquets. She snubbed me directly, saying how happy she is that no one is risking any allergies, and how much she looks forward to bringing in a big-ticket item,” Boyd seethes.

“How dare she?” Raylan murmurs, still enjoying Boyd’s ministrations in his hair.

“So I’m going to show her up at her own game. I’m going to bring in the biggest single ticket auction of the night,” Boyd says.

“And that’s where I come in,” Raylan says, and he is resigned.

“Yes, Raylan, oh star of my heart, oh sun in my sky, that’s where you come in,” Boyd tells him.

Boyd explains the plan. Raylan’s eyes snap open, and he doesn’t ask if Boyd is serious. Of course, he is.

Raylan laughs. “Of course, you bribed me with special vanilla cake! I never would have said yes otherwise!”

Boyd pets his hair. “Was it an appropriate price, darling?”

Raylan grins, “Close enough, I think. As fair a deal as I was going to get. Maybe you could sweeten it for me, gimme a blowjob.”

Boyd grins, “Why, Raylan, if you wanted to negotiate, you should have done so before you agreed.”

Raylan rolls his eyes, nipping at the fingers that have strayed lower.

“Ava is coming in, by the way,” Boyd says.

Raylan raises an eyebrow.

“After you called them in tizzy, Ava and Winona both called me to see what I had done to provoke such a reaction. When I told them, they both said they weren’t going to miss it for the world,” Boyd says.

“Of course,” Raylan says, amused and exasperated. “Well, I’m sure this will be a disaster.”

“It certainly will be,” Boyd smiles.

They are a little nervous to introduce Ava and Winona. Two of their closest and only friends. It’s not that they’re worried they won’t get along. No, no. Much worse. Raylan and Boyd are worried Ava and Winona will get along a little too well.

And they are right to be.

“No, no!” Ava corrects Winona. “It’s more like,” she pauses, taking another sip of her whiskey. “It’s more like, Raylan,” she says. The way she says “Raylan” is her very refined and impressive impression of Boyd when he says Raylan’s name. It is. Horrifically embarrassing to be a witness to, as one half of the couple.

“Raylan,” she repeats again, her voice pitched low and mockingly sensual. “You gotta say it like you’ll die if you don’t. Like if you just say “Ray”? You’ll be shot on sight. You gotta get the desperation,” she instructs Winona, who cries fat tears in her laughter.

Winona clutches a whole cabernet red to herself— because everyone else is on spirits—and she is just delighted.

“Raylan,” Winona tries again, which in turn has Ava clutching her sides in response. “Raylan,” Winona repeats once more, and she must have it this time, because Ava screeches with laughter. “It’s gotta be the part where he, like, acts like he’s superior somehow? Like he should be getting an award for how he says it.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Winona pauses, and she takes another chug of wine. She sits herself up more properly in the couch. “We gotta do Raylan next, we gotta do Raylan,” she giggles. And then she pitches her own voice and does her imitation of Raylan now. “Boyd,” she mimics, making her voice lower, somewhat stern, but terribly affectionate even to Raylan’s own ears.

“Boyd,” Ava parrots.

Winona screams, and then “No, no, no, no, no,” she slurs, “You gotta—you gotta make it breathier, it’s gotta be Boyd,” she calls again, and it certainly is breathier.

Ava takes another sip from her glass tumbler. She puts an exaggerated frown on her face. “Boyd,” she repeats, but she also sounds breathier.

“Boyd,” Winona says.

“Ohhhhh, there it is, there it is!” Ava laughs. “It’s—it’s—the breathiness is because he can hardly stand it. Boyd.”

The two of them laugh so hard they stop breathing. They squeak together, clawing at the couch for air.

Raylan tucks himself deeper into the love seat, his own bourbon nestled in his arms, and he will just. Be right in worrying about how well they’re getting along. They spend the first forty-five minutes of their newfound friendship making fun of Raylan and Boyd simply for how they say each other’s names. Ava and Winona then spend the next forty-five minutes making fun of them for being so lovesick for each other.

“Oh, oh, oh,” Winona continues, “What about Raylan’s fetish for Boyd’s dorky little bowties?”

“What about his fetish for Boyd’s dorky little sweater vests?” Ava continues.

“His fetish for those dorky little argyle socks,” Winona challenges, holding out the wine bottle and pointing likes she’s got her.

“I raise you,” Ava ripostes, “Boyd’s fetish for Raylan’s whole cowboy everything.”

They howl in laughter.

“What about the look in Raylan’s eyes when Boyd goes to the bathroom?” Winona asks.

“I thought you were never ever coming back ever, so I panicked,” Ava guesses, high pitched and wicked, “That look?”

“Or when Raylan says or does anything and Boyd looks around the room, all, ‘Are you getting this?’ ‘Are you seeing this?’” Winona asks.

“Right!? He’s so: ‘Did you see this thing Raylan did? Did you? Are you not half in love with him already?’ And then if you’re not looking at Raylan like the sun has just dropped out of his asshole, then Boyd looks at you like you’re crazy,” Ava adds.

Boyd drops himself on Raylan’s lap, and surely such a thing is only to incur another round of teasing, but in such a position Raylan can tuck his face into Boyd’s neck, so it is worth it.

“They are tearing us apart, darling,” Boyd whispers into Raylan’s ear.

Raylan just laughs.

The two women wind down by making fun of Raylan and Boyd point blank for an hour. This, at least, gets more laughs from the two, because they can at least join in by getting the other.  

“Raylan likes vanilla ice cream. Vanilla. Boyd can make ice cream, and he’d only ask for vanilla,” Ava whines. “He could ask for strawberry caramel, but he won’t.”

“I once saw Boyd jump into a dumpster to avoid talking to a parent of one of his students,” Winona dishes.

“I once saw Raylan thrown into a dumpster when he picked a fight with a Cubs fan,” Ava giggles.

Boyd grins. “See, Raylan? Aren’t you glad we’ve been practicing your right hook when you’re reminded of things like that?”

Raylan bites him.

The couple certainly is not going to stop them. It’s not undeserved, after all. Winona had said, once, that Gary somewhat suspects all the nasty things the two say about him during their coffee dates with Winona, which she claims puts undue pressure on their relationship. Raylan and Boyd won’t regret that, but they also won’t begrudge Winona’s right for fair play.

Ava gets to rib on them because she’s Ava.

The night progresses smoothly, especially now that Winona and Ava have all the teasing out of their system. It’s certainly not over by any means, but now they can talk about more than just Raylan and Boyd’s many follies and foibles.

The topic winds to when they had been younger. Ava hadn’t shared any classes with Raylan and Boyd, but she did share a school, and they happen upon the topic of “Misbehavin’” which is a Kentucky school constant, shared even with Winona’s private school in Lexington.

Winona and Raylan decide to perform together, in honor of the memories.

Winona digs through her purse in preparation, pulling out a bright red lipstick, which she helps apply for Raylan.

Boyd had never thought to ask for such a thing before, but he knows in the moment he’s going to want to see it again.

Raylan looks over to him, as if knowing what he’s thinking, and he winks.

They start the song, and it is almost difficult for Boyd and Ava not to sing along, this being a song so deeply engrained in them from a young age. Boyd doesn’t know if the song has ever stopped anyone from any mischief, but he knows he’s thought of it enough when committing acts of delinquency. Actually, the thought of having the earworm in one’s head may be enough to dissuade someone, if only to avoid having the song on loop for the next couple of days.

Raylan makes show of getting caught wearing lipstick, and he makes this face, this incredibly overblown acting of flaming faggotry, limping his wrist and all, and Boyd laughs so hard he nearly falls from his seat.

Winona makes a show of shaving her legs when she gets caught shaving, and the underlying narrative is that she’s going on a scandalous date, which is a very fun spin on such a moralist song, but what really gets Boyd is when she pantomimes a blow job in a later verse about a pickle. He and Ava tumble into each other in the center of the couch, leaning on each other to stay even close to upright, clutching their stomachs in wheezing laughter.

They finish the song with a dramatic wink, no more misbehavin’ for them, but considering their body language, it’s blatant lies. The juxtaposition of actors and lines tickles Boyd right on his funny bone, and Ava feels the same, because they collapse into each other in a laughing mess once again.

They keep drinking, and Raylan relaxes, in a way even Boyd rarely gets to see. His shoulders are lax, his smile is loose, and he lets Ava and Winona do him up.

His lipstick is already smeared off, and Boyd has the lipstick imprint proof from the resulting fun, several neat marks on his face, with a smeared line trailing down his neck.

Winona and Ava debate about foundation, before pulling away in disgust that it doesn’t matter if neither of them have anything to match his skin tone, because his skin is too nice to begin with.

“Is this legal?” Ava hisses, “Is this right or just?”

She applies blush while Winona debates between eyeshadows. “What do we think?” she asks, holding up a few options for Ava’s judgment. The decide on a warm brown smoky eye with a highlight of green to bring out the topaz of his eyes.

Boyd watches the whole undertaking, nursing a bourbon in hand. 

They end with mascara and a reapplication of lipstick, this time finding a darker, purple red for Raylan.

“Raylan, you are just too pretty,” Ava says, turning her head side to side. “It just ain’t right.”

Winona sniffs proudly, “Damn, but we do good work.”

Boyd stands, walking over to cradle Raylan’s face in his hands. “Ladies, would you mind terribly if I excuse myself and Raylan for the evening?”

Winona smirks, “I would be more offended if you didn’t.”

Ava giggles. “You boys have fun tonight. Winona and I are going to keep talking,” she says, holding up another bottle of wine.

The two stumble to their bed, just aware enough to close the door behind them.

Boyd pushes Raylan down to the mattress, kissing him like he might somehow eat Raylan alive if he just tries hard enough.

Soon enough, they part, giggling.

Raylan grins up at him, “Am I pretty, Boyd?”

“Jesus, Raylan, you are the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve always felt that way, but tonight you’re really blowing me out of the water,” Boyd groans.

Raylan smiles up at him, and then he hooks his legs around Boyd’s waist and rolls them over. He grins down at Boyd.

He pressed Boyd’s back against the mattress, copping a feel of Boyd’s firm chest as he does so, his smile curling up his face.

“I wanna try something tonight,” Raylan tells him, crawling up to sit on his chest.

“Anything, darling, everything,” Boyd mutters.

“I prepped myself earlier,” Raylan grins, pawing further up Boyd’s body, “How about you eat me out, baby?”

Boyd grabs Raylan by the hips and pulls him the rest of the way to his lips. Raylan’s thighs enclose around Boyd’s ears, and Boyd groans. He grips Raylan’s cheeks, pulling them apart, and licks flat against Raylan’s hole.

Raylan purrs above him, and Boyd thinks he has slipped through a fault in the Earth and into some Heaven of his own creation.

“That’s it, baby, that’s it,” Raylan groans, sinking lower on his thighs.

Boyd spreads his asshole wider with his thumbs, and he licks into Raylan. He brings his tongue up and against the rim, letting his tongue catch and linger on its way out.

Raylan’s groan stutters above him, and Boyd smirks a smile into Raylan’s cheek. He turns his head just enough to bite at the inside of the skin. He sucks around the bite, before turning forward again, licking over Raylan’s hole once more.

Raylan squirms above him. “Boyd,” he groans.

Boyd fucks Raylan with his tongue, pressing in and out. Raylan drops his weight down, losing strength in his thighs.

Boyd holds him, licking as deeply as he can, pressing his tongue along the walls of Raylan’s entrance.

Raylan grips his hands through Boyd’s hair, angling Boyd’s mouth, searching for an angle that can drive Boyd deeper.

Boyd slips the tip of his thumb around the edge, creating additional stretch, more room to press deeper still.

Raylan grips tighter into Boyd’s hair, pulling, like he can’t help himself. Between the sensations, the taste, and Raylan’s lack of control, Boyd moans, sending the reverberations around Raylan’s rim.

Raylan arches, and his thighs push him up as he startles.

Boyd slides his other hand up around Raylan’s thigh, and he digs his fingers into the meat of him. He presses the pads of his fingers down, strong enough to bruise, and he pulls Raylan back down to his face. He renews efforts in eating his boy alive.

Raylan brings one hand up to hold desperate onto the bedframe, the other hand still deeply entangled in Boyd’s hair.

Boyd focuses on pleasuring his Raylan, his boy, his precious, precious boy.

He moves his thumb away, swapping the digit with his two forefingers instead.

He explores the extra space the fingers give him with his tongue.

Raylan grinds down on him, seeking his own pleasure, and Boyd is over the moon. His boy is the hottest, prettiest, sexiest thing in the world, and he’s all Boyd’s.

Raylan continues the pace, before finally removing his hand from Boyd’s hair. He moves up to his own cock and jerks himself off with a grunt.

Boyd feels come in his hair and he knows it’s also going to be a pain to clean from the bedframe and pillows, but he is well too far gone to care.

Raylan rolls them over again, positions Boyd to his hands and knees. Boyd obliges, because his boy has something in his head tonight, and he’s happy to let him have it.

Raylan slides down the bed. He jerks Boyd off from underneath him, and Boyd is thrilled with where Raylan wants to end tonight.

Boyd comes, all down Raylan’s face and chest, and he feels he could go again, just from the sight.

Instead, he leans down to kiss Raylan, take Raylan’s lips into own. He bites his bottom lip and pulls until Raylan whines. He pulls back, gives Raylan a quick kiss, before going to the bathroom for a wash cloth.

Raylan hears Ava and Winona’s drunken cat calls from the living, and he huffs a laugh. Boyd comes back and wipes them both clean.

Raylan smiles. “What, not gonna let me wear the proof I’m yours tonight?”

Boyd kisses him again. “I got proof in these rings, proof in your heart. What I don’t want is for us to wake up crusty and gross in the morning.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” Raylan says, and he already is feeling sleepy.

Boyd throws the wash cloth to the side, pulls Raylan against his chest.

“Thank you,” Raylan whispers against Boyd’s neck.

“Baby, I should be thanking you, that was incredible,” Boyd murmurs.

Lexington, Now

Raylan walks down to the court house, and he catches Winona through a window. She has a desk of notes in front of her, and Raylan watches her with a powerful fondness before knocking on her door.

Raylan sees detestation roll over her face—one look probably saved special for coworkers— before passing into joyful excitement as she runs over to him as he steps through the door.

“Raylan!” she cries, at least having the courtesy to greet him with a hug, before also ripping the paper bag from his hands and digging into the maple pecan scones in the wrapping.

“It is good to see you too, Winona,” he tells her, and the sarcasm is only minor in its offering.

She grins at him, smacking him lightly on the shoulder.

“You can say that because you already had three of these yourself, don’t even try me, Raylan Givens,” she says, a mouthful of scone taking some of the heat out of the threat.

Raylan grins at her, leaning down to kiss her forehead. “Oh, I’ve had more than that.”

She grins back at Raylan, tucking herself under his arms.

“I never thought we’d meet in Kentucky,” she says, thinking of circumstances.

Raylan presses a kiss into the crown of her head. “Me neither. I’m mighty sorry to hear about your mother, darling,” he says, hoping to provide some comfort.

“Thank you. I’m sorry about Bucks,” she says, and it’s strained, but he loves her, so he lets the comfort soak into his skin as much as he can.

They stand there a moment, letting the moment sit, but are interrupted by an obnoxious guffaw from down the hallway.

Raylan’s brow furrows, discontent for the interruption of their shared grief, and sees a man in judges robes give them an all-too-pleased smile.

“Hello, Judge Reardon,” Winona says with a tight smile. She steps back from Raylan, still close enough for his body heat, but no longer touching.

“Judge,” Raylan says, tipping his hat, playing along for her sake as an employee rather than a true meaning for deference. He thinks he remembers the name, some phone conversation he’s had with her, and tries to remember the details.

The judge winks, wandering away, and Winona sighs.

“Troublesome coworker?” Raylan asks, trying to relieve some pressure.

Winona rolls her eyes. “Something like that,” she says with a huff. She leans her head against his chest.

Raylan puts his hands on his hips. “Well, how about I take you out for lunch?”

She smiles, a little tired, and Raylan can see the weight of the year on her shoulders. The divorce, losing the house, her mother’s passing, all there along with everything before it, all those things that she only once told him and Boyd over a bottle of wine. All of it crushing her, for Raylan to see.

Raylan takes her out, taking them to the café across from the courthouse, ordering lunch as they sit down with some coffee.

Raylan is in the middle of a big bite of burger when he sees the door open from their booth with Gary Hawkins walking in, pissed as hell and looking around the seating.

Raylan holds his hand over his gun, holding a finger out to pause Winona in case he needs to step in front of her belligerent ex.

Winona gives him a look, before turning around to follow his line of sight.

“Oh, Lord,” she groans, burying her head into her hands.

Gary finds Raylan, and he storms over with a crazed look on his face, teeth gnashing and eyes blown wide.

“Now, Gary,” Raylan starts, attempting a peaceable smile.

Winona groans into her hands again.

“Winona—” Gary starts, incensed and ignoring Raylan’s smile.

Winona places her hands on the table, on either side of her plate.

“Boys, are we going to play nice?” she says, a demand to be met before she even thinks about engaging in this conversation.

Raylan gives her an incredulous look. It would be funny, if it weren’t so stupid.

Gary slams his fists on the table in protest, making it real easy for Raylan to look like the bigger man by simply saying, “Anything for you, Winona.”

She eyes him, knowing exactly what he thinks he’s doing.

He takes another bite from his burger, in show of moving his hand away from his holster and also, “Look, see? I can’t run my mouth if it’s full.”

He follows a standard interrogation technique in that often people will hang themselves with their own words if you give them enough time and rope.

And Gary immediately does (fucking asshole), because he demands from Winona, “Are you fucking him?”

Raylan chokes on the burger.

“Here we go,” Winona says, rubbing deep circles into her temples. She points at Raylan first (which is probably more insulting to Gary than she means it to be, but Raylan’s always loved this casual coldness about her). “Shut up.”

Raylan takes another bite of his burger, sneaking an amused peek to Gary’s red face.

“Gary,” Winona starts, leveraging her gaze over to Gary, “Why would you say that?”

“I—” he starts. “I just wanted to pick you up for lunch and everyone was talking about how you two kissed!”

“Oh, Lord, Gary, you know how Judge Reardon gossips,” Winona rolls his eyes when he starts to protest. The word gossip does help Raylan place a name to a specific vent session. That Judge Reardon.

“And Gary,” she says with a mean, sarcastic grin, “You knew Raylan was coming in today. You knew he and I had plans for lunch. Why are you coming to pick me up when you knew this?”

Gary lets the question hang in the air.

Raylan certainly has some questions for himself, and he’s starting to guess Gary isn’t an ex anymore. He tucks away the feelings he may have about that, because Boyd has cultivated in him a better sense of time and place than what he was born with, which is probably a blessing.

“I just—” Gary starts.

“You’re just,” she interrupts, “acting petty and jealous and mean. And I wish I could say it was based on some stupid rumors, but you walked yourself down to the courthouse to catch us in some act before you heard them.”

Raylan thinks Gary must want to deflect some of the guilt, some of the shame, because he shouts at her about the kiss anyway.

The burger is really starting to turn to ash in his mouth, not as good as it had been before he’d been accused of betraying his husband for a quick fuck with one of their closest friends. He frowns, setting it down, and starts eating the fries for something to do, because unlike the burger, they are pretty shit, and not something he cares about spoiling.

Winona wants to handle this, so he’ll let her. Or at least he thinks he will, until Gary shouts, “Of course he wants to fuck you! Have you seen his ugly bastard of a husband!? Why wouldn’t he want to be all over you!?”

And that is when Raylan stands, very carefully, breathing in to center himself, to stop himself from jumping this man right here in front of all these witnesses, right across from his new place of work. He almost convinces himself it would be worth it, but then Boyd might ask what had caused such a thing, and he’d only laugh at Raylan for being an idiot in thinking his honor needs defending. So it is only Raylan thinking that Boyd laughs at him enough as is for Raylan to spare Gary any amount of civility.

Raylan points at Gary. “Winona, if that man even looks at one of the pastries my husband has so lovingly made, I will make sure you never get to see one again. I am not kidding. I nearly came to blows with a man whom Boyd was trying to poison because I thought he was getting something more special than he deserved. It is something I cannot abide by.”

“Boyd was trying to poison someone!?” Gary yelps. God, he is such an asshole.

Winona sucks in her bottom lip. She’s a smart woman, and she can see this statement for what it is. She can read through the intricate tapestry of vulnerability and idiocy and stubbornness that Boyd and Raylan tie themselves in, can read this as a declaration of broken trust.

“I promise, Raylan,” she mutters, digging into her Caesar salad with finality.

“Good.” Raylan turns to Gary. “You can go to hell,” he says simply, before throwing a few large bills on the table and walking out.

Dallas, Then

Boyd looks around the auction room, sipping his bourbon, a nice top shelf that had been donated by Bryer. He does not like the woman, but he will not deny himself Earth’s fine reserves just for spite.

The woman smirks at him, when she catches his eye, and Boyd thinks she is just too precious to be crowing over her victory like this. Boyd’s auction spot is currently empty, a simple sign in its place reading “TBA.”

She must think he’s running frantic. As if.

He mingles with guests, and he garners interest in his potential auction item. People love a good mystery, and he makes fun by having folks guess what could possibly warrant such a question of it.

He stops by Ava and Winona, who both have drinks in their hands, buzzing with anticipation. They gossip a little, laugh when he tells them how he’s been entertaining himself. They are debating on going in on a spa basket together.

When he feels the moment is right, when folks are just liquored up to be loose with their wallets, but not so drunk they can’t keep attention, he makes his way to the MC for the evening. The MC, chosen by Bryer herself, someone she so clearly thinks she has in her pocket, cheats on his wife every Thursday at a local motel. He is ever so generous in offering Boyd a special spot amidst tonight’s tightly packed programming.

Boyd grabs the mic, and he walks up to a small stage area that will later be used to announce winners of the blind auction. The lights go dim around the room save for the stage, and Boyd clears his throat for the audience. Of course, he had also spoken with tonight’s electrician. She had been a fair sport, desiring only a batch of caramel macchiato cupcakes for her participation.

He grins. “Hello, all, thank you so much for attending this fine evening tonight, so generously directed by our own Celia Bryer.”

The crowd politely claps, and she gives them all a beatific smile, and Boyd sees killing intent behind her dead, soulless eyes.

“Now, I know we are all excited to see the results of our blind auctions tonight, but I thought I’d prepare something special for us all in the meantime, get the blood flowing, get those wallets open,” he says. “I know we don’t have the time to live auction each basket tonight, but I have one that’ll be particularly fun, so let’s make this special, shall we?”

The crowd cheers.

Boyd grins. “Alright, folks, now I know we’re all on the edges of our seats, so I’ll give you the rules real quick and dirty, okay?” he says, layering lust just a little heavy on his tongue, but still just inside the bounds of acceptable.

“First and foremost, let’s all be our best selves, right? This might get a little rowdy in a moment, but I want us to be respectable and behaved,” he starts with the rule that will best grab the audience’s attention and curiosity, accenting it with a compelling wink.

“All bids must go up by at least fifty dollar increments, and once I call three, that’s the final bid, so pay attention. All bids are final, so no getting cold feet, and you must be able to pay in check to the fine institution of Creekview High upon completion. And you won’t want to see what happens if that check bounces, understood?” Boyd grins as the audience laughs. He looks into the crowd, and they are suitably primed for Boyd’s fun. Party time.

“Alright then! Let’s get started! With a starting bid of one hundred dollars, you can win one picnic basket date with Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens!” he cries, throwing out his hand to introduce Raylan. “Everybody, welcome Deputy Givens to the stage with a hearty round of applause!”

Boyd starts the clapping over his head, careful of the mic. Boyd is very pleased to have planted Caroline Belleweather to scream her goddamn head off, because she really helps stir the crowd.

Raylan saunters up to the stage, dressed his very sluttiest for the occasion.

He is Boyd’s perfect little cowboy wet dream. Dark jeans cling tightly to his thighs, and sharp cowboy boots peak over them. His Henley hugs his skin, unbuttoned at the top to reveal hand-to-God cleavage of Raylan’s pectorals. Over the Henley is an open plaid, sleeves rolled up his forearms. His hat sits prettily on his head, and his hair is mussed ever so wildly. A gun holster rests over the Henley, but instead of guns in the harness—which Boyd hadn’t wanted to test if they could get away with—it holds flowers in one side and chocolates in the other. A pretty little picnic basket sits in the crook of his arm, red gingham falling over the top like petals of a flower.

Boyd already feels drool pooling in his mouth, and he actually gets to hold this man tonight. He cannot imagine what this sight must do to the unlucky attendance.

Raylan gives a toothy white smile as he moves up to Boyd, his dumb cowboy swagger highlighting his height, his muscles, his strength.

“Now, Deputy Givens, can you say hello to everybody tonight?” he asks, and then holds out the mic.

“Howdy,” Raylan greets, deep, low, a fucking bedroom voice. He waves to the audience. God, Boyd loves his man.

“One hundred dollars!” a woman calls, giggling at the end.

“Well, I already have one hundred dollars,” Boyd grins. “How about two hundred, can I get two hundred?”

A hand flies up. “We have two hundred, as well— three?”

He gets three. Boyd smiles. Eat your fucking heart out, Celia Bryer.

Boyd continues along these lines, until, “One thousand dollars! Now, that’s mighty generous. How about we pause, let us all catch our breaths, and let’s talk about what else this fine listing includes. You will enjoy a full picnic lunch in the beautiful greens of Brackenridge Park with a dessert of your choice baked special just to your taste and dietary restrictions. Your basket also comes delivered by the handsome Marshal here to guide your afternoon.”

The crowd stirs.

“Twelve hundred!” goes up a hand in the crowd.

“Twelve hundred,” Boyd calls, and he continues his cattle rattle.

Raylan smiles at him, but he also plays the crowd, winking at every bidder. Someone hikes the price by seven hundred dollars, and Raylan blows her a kiss.

Boyd sees a group of gals pooling together stashes amongst themselves. The leader of the little gathering raises a sharp eyebrow in question, and Boyd answers with a barely perceptible nod of permission to continue as a group. 

She grins sharply, and one of the gals pulls at the hand of another friend into the circle.

“Three thousand,” Boyd reaches, and his smile is very, very sharp. Oh, this is going so well. “How about we take another breather, folks? Deputy Givens, why don’t you tell us a little about yourself?”

Raylan takes the mic, and his man strokes it over once with his fingers before gripping it, and sure enough, the crowd eats that right up.

“Hello, y’all,” he croons into the mic, practically kissing it, “I’m Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, and I’m here to protect y’all in his fine state of Texas from at large fugitives and injustice of many kinds.”

“Fuck me!” some woman, a little too drunk, screams from the audience.

Raylan winks, “We’ll have to see, but now, y’all will have to keep me honest. I am a law-abiding man, after all.”

The crowd is putty in his hands, Boyd is ecstatic.

“I hail from Harlan, Kentucky,” Raylan continues, “My favorite sport is baseball, and my favorite food is vanilla ice cream.”

“Did you hear that, folks? His favorite food is vanilla ice cream,” Boyd says into the mic, “With that in mind, how about we bring the bid up to thirty-four hundred?”

Boyd continues his auction cry, and Raylan tells him later that he’s missed his true calling.

The bidding soars higher and higher, and Boyd’s grin grows wider and wider.

Another group of three have got their eye on Boyd’s first little group, and their faces are twisted into snarls, hands curled into claws.

Boyd likes them already.

The bidding war narrows down to Boyd’s two clans. He loves them.

He’s never seen such blood lust, not even in Harlan County, U.S.A.

Raylan will never agree to this again. Boyd truly needs to make the most of this right now.

Still, his showboat of a partner is somewhat enjoying himself, tipping his hat, bowing, winking, and even dancing.

Boyd hits five thousand. Raylan makes an attempt at clogging in celebration, and the crowd applauses.

Bryer’s face is a deep shade of red, and light must glow in Boyd’s eyes. He hadn’t known before now he could get this rush without an explosive in his hands.  

And then Boyd sees Ava and Winona in the crowd. And then the dread washes over him.

Ava has the Chershire Cat’s own smile on her lips, and he can see it as plainly Alice could as the rest had disappeared.

She is chatting with the mouth of one of Boyd’s little parties.

Boyd does not know what she is telling them, but Boyd knows it spells trouble.

He speeds up his cattle rattle. He cannot let Ava poison this moment for him.

She smiles up at him, like she knows what he’s doing.

The price keeps climbing, but for every extra bid, Ava has an extra moment to spread her dark word amongst the bidders.

Raylan sees the panic in his eyes, in the speed of his speech, and he catches Ava’s eyes in the crowd. She winks at him.

Raylan looks between them. Boyd can see judgment weighing scales in his brain. He witnesses the exact moment when the love of his life betrays him.

Raylan grabs the mic. “Seven thousand dollars!” he croons, practically having sex with it, the fucking whore.

“That’s mighty generous of y’all,” Raylan continues. “Mr. Crowder here is sure to make good use of these contributions in his chemistry classes. But I think we can give just a little more, don’t you? And to encourage all you fine people to be magnanimous in your donations, I’m personally going to up our ante. The winning bidder will also get to decide on my attire. How does that sound?”

Ava’s eyes glow with amusement.

Boyd shows just as much of his pearly whites as is expected of him.  He swipes back the mic. “Why, Deputy Givens! This is mighty unexpected of you. I hope you’re not feeling too pressured when you are a guest this evening.”

Raylan grins back at him. It his most genuine of the night. Boyd thinks he sees a woman faint out of the corner of his eye. Alcoholic wretch.

Boyd runs through the auction. Sprints with his words, faster and faster, and at $9,350 he calls sold to Ava’s little group, and Ava has her arms crossed in satisfaction.

Last he had checked Bryer’s highest bid for cruise tickets in a basket, she had three thousand something.

Boyd has well over shot her price. He does not know if it is worth it.

He hadn’t accounted on Ava using her sweet, sweet lawyer money for evil.

Okay, he had. He hadn’t planned on her using it against him.

Boyd gives pleasantries to the crowd, and he reminds them of the itinerary for the rest of the night. He has the group of ladies meet him near the stage with Raylan to finalize details.

There are nine women in the group, since he includes Ava and Winona.

Raylan smiles at all the women, extending his hand, a lot more enthused than he had been this morning.

They giggle. A woman in a suit, the one Boyd had fist made eye contact with, takes Raylan’s hand and kisses it, and Raylan gets that twinkle in his eye like he likes her. Boyd does too.

It’s Ava for whom he holds suspicions.

Suit woman, Charlotte, smiles, confirms Boyd’s worst suspicions, “Ava here told us that you make a lot more than cupcakes and decorated icing cookies.”

And though it pains him to say it, Boyd concedes.

“Wonderful,” she says with a bright smile. “We’ve made a list of our requests!”

Boyd scans along the list. It’s a trainwreck. He can distantly hear Raylan asking them what they want to see him wear, as Boyd reads Croquembouche at the top. Raylan giggles—giggles! His fucking slut of boy!— and says, “Now, I’m sure I told you to keep me honest!” when they answer, just as Boyd reads Baked Alaska.

Ava holds a hand over her mouth, holding back belly laughs, Boyd is sure.

Jesus. The rest of the list is about the same. Mocha Dacquoise, Lemon Meringue, New Orleans Doberge Cake, Baumkuchen, Napolean, Crème Caramel.

And, of course, Raylan’s special eight layer vanilla cake.

Boyd reels.

Ava, that opportunist. He has to say he admires her for this one. 

Lexington, Now

Raylan has been working for Lexington for about three weeks when Art approaches him with a large file and a smile on his face.

“Gotta little gift for you, Ray-Ray,” Art grins, smug as a snake.

He holds a file above Raylan’s desk, waving it a little.

Raylan looks up, confused, because that had not sounded like sarcasm as it usually does.

Art opens it, flips through pages. “Well, not a gift actually,” he says, coy, “More like a bribe. Or an agreement, of sorts.”

Good case then. Raylan should want it, for whatever reason, and Art’s going to give it to him, but he’s probably going to have to have Boyd make some apple turnovers for Leslie.

“Yeah, yeah,” Raylan says reaching for the file. Art gives it to him, and Raylan flips through. Dumb shitkicker, violent, didn’t show up for his hearing, shouldn’t be too hard to track down though. Raylan doesn’t immediately see what makes this case so special, until he gets to the part where his sister is an educator for the same school Boyd works at.

Raylan grins, staring up at Art with a sparkle in his own damn eyes. “I can have this one?” he asks, excited, already half standing to run out the door.

“It’s all yours,” Art tells him, and Raylan has to hold back a whoop.

He double checks he has his wallet and keys on his way to the door.

He buzzes with excitement. He should visit Boyd more often at work, he just never has a good enough excuse.

He picks up some flowers on the way, already planning on make a real show of it, which’ll surely please Boyd. Raylan knows how good he looks, and he’s sure Boyd’ll be happy to soak in the jealous attention of his fellow educators. Not to mention, it might take some of the pressure off Ms. Hall to have an excuse for him to be there.

Good idea to stake his claim fast and early. He doesn’t want any lonesome single teachers thinking Boyd’s available, after all, never mind the ring. Doesn’t hurt to show everyone what they’d have to compete with, should they want to try anything stupid.

He gets a visitor’s badge from the office, and he walks to Boyd’s room, and Boyd is in mid-lecture, hair already frazzled from his enthusiasm, and Raylan knows he cannot keep how far gone he is off his face.

Raylan can hear when the first student spots him, the gossip hits hard and fast in schools, and then the classroom is loud and clamoring in trying to get a look at him. He can see Boyd’s irritation, small and short, because Boyd never lets the kids know they’re getting to him. Always has to have the upper hand. And he can see the exact moment when Boyd makes a switch, seeing Raylan in the door, eyes going gooey and melty, and Raylan loves him just a bit more than he did seconds before.

Boyd puts on that grin of his, one where Raylan knows there’s about to be a spectacle, and Raylan smiles at that too. He can’t help it.

Boyd strides over to the door, loud in his steps, performative in his gait, and Raylan prepares for a scold Boyd doesn’t mean at all.

“Now, Deputy,” Boyd starts, and Raylan gets a little thrill in the way Boyd says it, in the way Boyd says deputy like he says Raylan’s own name, special and direct, “I can’t have you interrupting my class like this. You should know better than to infringe upon the American educational system as such. I know you government funded types think you all are the most special folks in the world, but I can’t accept you taking up my time on top of my funding.”

Raylan grins, but he takes his hat off in a sign of faux penitence. “Oh, I’m mighty sorry, Mister…” he trails purposefully.

Boyd holds back a snort. “Crowder,” he informs, strictly, all part of the play.

“Mr. Crowder. Very sorry to interfere, I didn’t mean to at all,” Raylan says, dropping as much charm as he can.

“Well, now that you have, you best make it worth my time. You chasing a fugitive all the way down here? Because I can assure you, they ain’t in this classroom,” Boyd tells him.

Raylan smiles, sensual and smirking, “Oh, I thought I’d do a little chasing, I will admit to that.”

Boyd huffs a laugh. “Oh, you are?”

“I certainly am,” Raylan says, leaning down through the doorframe, into Boyd’s personal space. He looks down at Boyd’s lips, just because he can’t help himself.

He knows the students’ eyes are unapologetically riveted to the scene. This will certainly be all the news around the school today. Raylan hopes Boyd has their wedding photos on him, for Boyd’s sake. He might actually give a shit about showing off the ocean for once—in a landlocked state like Kentucky, it might actually mean something to Boyd. Kentucky has its own gazebos, after all.

Raylan gives up the game and holds out his bouquet from behind his back. It’s full Raylan’s favorite buttercups and Boyd’s favorite thistles, a cheap looking thing full of wildflowers, but terribly sentimental nonetheless.

Boyd grins up at him, but Raylan can see the shark behind the sentiment.

Boyd kisses him on the cheek, and Raylan scratches the back of his head, as good natured and innocent as he can manage.

“Oh, Raylan, you are lucky I have a free period in twenty, or I would be mighty cross with you for stopping by when I can’t even chat,” he says, and now he’s all fondness and warmth. It’s a weird game Boyd plays—it’s all for show, as far as Raylan can tell, but it buries underneath some amount of truth that only Raylan can see. Like if he makes it just enough of a show then he’ll have some amount of distance.

“Congrats on the full time position, darlin,” Raylan smiles, and he really is proud.

Boyd taps him gently with the bouquet. “Hush, you. Now go sit in the back and make yourself small so I can maybe finish the last fifteen minutes of my lesson with some amount of peace.”

Raylan knows it’s as much of a joke as anything in the world, but still, he goes to sit in the back at a lab desk, on a stool. He rests his head in his palm and makes a show of hanging on Boyd’s every word.

Boyd takes out a larger beaker, runs some water for it to act as a vase for the bouquet.

Boyd makes a show attempting to actually teach for about five minutes, before pretending to huff.

“Alright, alright. Fine. It seems we aren’t getting any learning done, anyway, so ask away,” Boyd says, exasperation a lie in his throat.

A dozen hands shoot up at once. Raylan hides a grin behind the hand holding up his head.

Boyd answers each question as they come.

Who is this man? “My husband,” he says with a proud grin.

Who proposed to who? “Oh, it seems we both did, at different times.”

Where did you meet him? “We were born and raised together in Harlan, Kentucky.”

How did you fall in love? “We dug coal together, out in the mines.”

He’s so hot. “Aren’t I lucky?”

The bell rings and several students are ironically reluctant to leave their seats.

“Go on, shoo,” Boyd ushers them out, holding the door open wide.

He closes the door behind him and meets Raylan at the work station in the back.

“Now, Raylan, truly what do I really owe for the pleasure of your shining face upon my darkened days?” he says, pulling Raylan’s face up to meet him in a kiss.

Raylan kisses him, long and slow, neither in too much of a hurry.

They pull apart, and Raylan smiles. “I actually am running after a fugitive today.”

Boyd pulls back, an eyebrow raised.

“There’s a lead amongst your coworkers. Art let me have the file, knowing how happy I’d be to stop by,” he adds.

“Oh, yeah? And he’s okay with you spending time on the clock to come flirt with your husband?” Boyd asks.

“I’m sure he knew that’s what I’d do with it,” Raylan grins, “Though, I’m sure if you’re ever so worried, you can help your husband out with a few apple turnovers for that lovely wife of his."

Boyd puts on airs of displeasure, “You always use your husband for this, Raylan. I am merely a bakery to you.”

Raylan bites at Boyd’s neck, a quick little gift for the day.

“Oh, you’re always more than that, my love, always everything,” he says.

Boyd groans, embarrassed by the sudden show of sincere, genuine love. He always hates when Raylan does that so suddenly.

Raylan lets him squirm for a second, but quickly corrects with the obnoxious behavior Boyd surely expects from him, “And don’t tell me this doesn’t tickle you. Every little bit of gossip that swirls around you is just a chance for you to show off all those wedding photos burning a hole through your wallet.”

Boyd smirks. “You know me.”

Raylan returns the smirk, “That I do. And I figure I can use all that gossip as an easy cover to talk to that lead of mine, out here, take some of the heat off.”

“Oh, well, if that’s the case, Raylan, we might as well make a production of it,” he says, with a lecherous grin. Raylan smiles, biting deeper around Boyd’s collar, sucking a nice little red spot under Boyd’s button up.

The continue to kiss, and Raylan sets Boyd up on one of the stools. He grips his hands into Boyd’s waist as they deepen the kiss.

The bell rings, and Boyd pulls back. “Damn, son, you always gotta tease me like this, huh?”

Raylan blushes, but grins.

Boyd scratches him under his chin. “My perfect boy. Now, go back to your job. I have students to mold into fine, upstanding young men and women, to develop into the leaders and thinkers of our tomorrow.”

Raylan presses a kiss into Boyd’s forehead. “Have fun tormenting the youth and bragging in front of your equals in the breakroom,” he says, heading out.

Boyd winks at him, which affects quite a stir among the students already filtering in for their next class.

Raylan heads to the break room and knocks. “Sorry to intrude. I know this place ain’t typically for visitors, but I was hoping I could grab a coffee for my husband? I did interfere with him grabbing one during his free period, after all.”

The teachers in the room tell him they don’t mind, and Raylan knows Boyd is sure to love the incoming hurricane of gossip. Boyd Crowder has a husband who stops by with flowers just to congratulate him on him acquiring full time. On top of that, he is so thoughtful as to grab him coffee?

It hits two birds with one stone, as Raylan uses the cover to sneak a peek at the free period schedule posted on the bulletin board. It would be too lucky if his lead had one now, but she has one next, which Raylan can work with.

He drops the coffee off to Boyd, and Boyd shakes his head at him, fondly. “Oh, you,” Raylan can hear from the movement. He leaves the room, already full of a flurry of questions and gossip.

Raylan fakes a phone call in the office, stalling for time.

By the next bell, he manages to catch his lead in the middle of grading papers in her room.

She raises an eyebrow when he walks in.

“Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens,” he introduces himself, holding up his badge.

“Boyd’s husband?” she asks, a bit bewildered.

“The one,” he smiles.

“I’m not sleeping with him, if you’re worried,” she says defensively.

Raylan gives her a rueful smile, “I’m here to ask about your brother. Nate Hall?”

The humor leaves her immediately, she sits straighter in her chair and she grips her red pen tightly in her hands. She pushes back just an inch, and her feet tense as if preparing to bolt.

Raylan’s not the only exit, there’s a door that leads to another classroom.

“What about him?” she asks, eyes narrowed, now suspicious.

“Well, we can’t find him. I was hoping you would have an idea of where he might be,” Raylan tells her.

“So you come to my place of work?” she hisses.

“Now, now, ma’am. Everyone will be talking about how sweet I am on my husband. No one will connect nothing back to you,” he assures her.

She sighs, not quite letting down her guard, but showing an opening.

“I figured, I could have come down to your home, but neighbors are just as chatty as coworkers. At least your coworkers have something else to chat about today,” he says.

“What do you want from me?” she asks, giving another inch Raylan will gladly take.

“Have you talked to your brother recently? Know if he had any plans?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “Not that he told me.”

“Any little bit could help,” Raylan encourages. “Maybe he had some hidey-hole you’re familiar with? Some sort of home base?”

She huffs, but she relaxes her fingers, stretching her palms across her desk. “He has a friend up in Louisville. Grant or something. Probably the only person he hasn’t hit with the shrapnel in the firebomb that is his life.”

Raylan will take the lead.

He stops by Boyd’s class to give him a wave and blow him a kiss. Boyd makes a show of snatching it out of the air, tucking it in his breast pocket and patting it down, protective. Raylan laughs and heads up.

Salt Lake, Then

Boyd gets a letter in the mail, and he raises an eyebrow at the contents. It’s his old tutoring agency. They have a new teaching and tutoring program in Georgia. They think Boyd is a huge success story and want him to share his experience with a new generation of teachers.

Raylan is really proud of him. Raylan is so proud of him.

Raylan is a little more violent during prisoner transport. It’s not right of him. He just doesn’t want to take this clawing, consuming irradiation home with him.

Chief Deputy Glenn tells him to sit at his desk with some paperwork and figure his shit out.

Raylan buries his face in his arms over his paperwork, because Boyd is going to leave him.

Raylan knows he’s being ridiculous. He knows. But his brain is really good at sending him adrift into that sea he once shared with Boyd.

He sets the steaks on the grill, when he gets home, and he paces as he listens to them sizzle. He can’t pace in the apartment, or Boyd will know something’s up. He can’t pace at work, or they’ll give him shit for it. He has a lot of restless energy and not a lot of good places to put it.

He’s going to have to transfer, he knows that. But. But what if Boyd doesn’t want him to come?

It’s like those six months out of college. When Boyd was in school and Raylan was in Glynco, and—

He doesn’t know what makes him so upset about this move. Boyd and him have moved together several times. He shouldn’t be so crazy about this one, he knows, he knows, he knows.

They eat dinner and he stews, and Boyd can tell something is up, but he lets Raylan have his moment, some time to sift through his thoughts. When they finish, Boyd takes out some work, and Raylan disappears.

Boyd grades papers at the kitchen table, when he can feel Raylan hover in the door. He can feel the wind of the tsunami blowing through his boy’s mind reach him all the way from across the room, so he knows Raylan either wants to ask for something or pick a fight or pick a fight to get around asking for something.

Boyd leaves him to himself. Raylan has a gordian knot in his head at any given moment, and as much as it would be easy to recommend that he try to untangle the thoughts, Raylan usually just needs to take his sword and swing it down with a decision.

Raylan walks up to him. Boyd takes off his readers and looks up, quizzical smile inviting Raylan to spill his guts for once in his obstinate life.

Raylan sits down, abruptly, at the chair next to Boyd. He folds his fingers over each other between his knees, and he’s hunched small, like he sometimes does, as if he isn’t six foot something.

Boyd stares in Raylan’s eyes. He swears he can hear the cogs and gears making a cacophony behind those eyes of his.

Raylan fidgets with his fingers, not like him, and that’s when Boyd knows he has to somehow take the reins of this conversation.

“You want to ask me something, yes or no?” Boyd asks.

Raylan’s head shoots up. He bites his bottom lip. He holds up a hand just enough to turn a flat palm on its axis.

Kind of. Okay, Boyd can work with this.

“I’m gonna sus out what you have in that lock box of a head of yours using yes or no questions. This is okay for you, yes or no?” Boyd starts.

Raylan nods.

“You think I could get angry, yes or no?” Boyd begins, resting his palms on his thighs.

Raylan shakes his head.

“But you’re worried, yes or no?” Boyd continues.

Raylan shrugs, so Boyd will take that as a yes.

“You want something from me, yes or no?” Boyd asks.

Raylan freezes. But then he nods, ever so slowly.

“Is it something I have within my power to give, yes or no?” Boyd asks.

Raylan looks to the side, but he nods again. 

“Okay,” Boyd says, and he can work with this too. “Whatever it is, I want to give it to you.”

“That’s—” Raylan says, his voice breaking roughly, “You don’t even know what it is.”

Boyd nods. “You’re right. I don’t know. I want to give it to you anyway. So let’s figure out how to get it to you. Do I need to buy anything for it?”

Raylan shakes his head.

“Do we need to go anywhere special for it, or does it need a special timing?” Boyd asks.

Raylan shakes his head again.

Boyd nods. “Okay, so we’re in a good place already.” He runs his fingers through his hair. It’s probably a sex thing, but Boyd has no idea why Raylan is acting so shy about it now.

That’s the only thing that’s making him second guess.

But Raylan isn’t good at asking for things. Or expressing himself. So it must be important to him, but in a way that’s more emotional. In a way that makes him feel things.

So. It might be that one thing.

Boyd isn’t entirely sure if Raylan himself is aware of it, but he often has a thing where he wants Boyd to stay inside him after they climax. He’s not sure what emotions Raylan has tied up in the act, but it usually bowls him over, overtakes him.

Boyd is terribly, terribly protective of this Raylan. It is not a side of Raylan he sees often, but Boyd carries such fond sentimentality for this facet of him.

He usually sees it during big things. Like when Raylan had graduated first, or when he had needed to move to Texas after Massachusetts, and then from Texas to Utah. Moving always seems to ruffle him. Especially the first, when Boyd would have given up his life if Raylan had asked in that moment.

They’re moving to Georgia, soon. Boyd hasn’t officially accepted the post through his old boss, but he really wants to. Raylan keeps telling him to say yes, in between wiggling himself like a snake in anxiety. He tells Boyd that they’ve moved four times at Raylan’s request, which is true, and that he wants to give this back to Boyd, if even once.

Boyd has never minded the moves, though, except for maybe only the first. He likes Utah well enough, more than Massachusetts, less than Texas. He doesn’t know how he’ll feel about Brunswick, but he’s open to the idea.

Raylan has never asked directly, for Boyd to warm his cock inside of him, but Boyd has gotten good at listening for that specific question.

So, it might be something similar, but something he’s figured out he wants enough to ask for outright. Or not outright. Boyd loves the man, but he has problems with using his words, especially in an order that could imply vulnerability.

Boyd runs through a list of every sex act he knows, including the ones he’d only ever heard as rumors as a teen and the slightest whispers that might provide a clue.

Between circumstance and conjecture, he thinks he might have it.

He has to tread on some shaky ground, though, and God only knows if he even has guessed correctly. So.

“How about this?” Boyd starts, careful, careful, “I’m going to ask something from you. You can say yes or no, give it or don’t. And I’ll give you your thing in exchange, does that sound fair?”

Raylan narrows his eyes. Well, Raylan knows him well, then. For Boyd to offer on its surface such a fair and even deal, with no bartering or rigging of the game, it is certainly not his style.

“What is it?” Raylan asks, and this suspicious, contrary son of a bitch is closer to the man Boyd is used to, but Boyd knows better than to trust Raylan’s face.

“I want to try something. Something we haven’t done before,” Boyd grins, still playing this game cool and easy.

“Okay,” Raylan trails, uneasy. He wipes his palms on his jeans. “You usually ask, though. There a reason you keeping this one to yourself?”

Boyd gives him a wry grin. It would be easy to say he had only just realized to ask. Easier still to call Raylan a hypocrite. “I’m asking now,” he says lightly, and finally he allows himself to reach over to Raylan, to cross into Raylan’s territory, now that Raylan is a little less uneasy. He sets his hand over Raylan’s where it rests low on his thigh.

“Here’s my thing,” he says, crowding into Raylan’s space, “I have a stack of these tests to continue grading. It would please me something fierce if you could keep my cock warm while I get that done.”

Raylan shakes. The air vibrates with it underneath Boyd. Boyd just might have guessed right. He rubs his hand over Raylan’s thigh.

“Now, I can’t be getting no blow job while I grade these, because I need to focus. But I wouldn’t mind some nice fellatio after I’m done,” Boyd spares a glance to his stack of sheets, makes a quick estimation, “in about half an hour.”

Honestly, it should take longer than that, but Boyd abides by the phrase “Know thyself.”

Raylan stares at him. His eyes are glassy and wide. He half smiles, even with barely parted lips.

Boyd rubs his thumb over Raylan’s bottom lip. This is something he has never really thought of in a concrete context. It is something he now very badly wants.

“Now,” he says, swallows, “Raylan. Is this something you would be willing to do, yes or no?”

Raylan nods.

Boyd grabs at the wooden chair next to him, pulling at the removable cushion. He sets in on the floor between them, and he gently pulls Raylan down to his knees.

Boyd unzips his jeans, and he untucks himself. He’s half hard, but he is certain he will get there soon. He buries his fingers in Raylan’s hair at the back of skull, and he gently pulls Raylan closer to him.

He guides Raylan’s mouth over his cock, and he grunts.

He hadn’t expected it to feel like. This.

Raylan’s mouth is warm, and beyond the sexual aspect, he’s just very comfortable. Which is not to disregard the very sexual nature of this act—it’s just. He feels very loved. Which is strange. Not that Raylan doesn’t love him, and not that he doesn’t love Raylan a great deal, but this is a different kind of intimacy, and Boyd is starting to understand that they have a great deal of trust between them for something like this to even be possible.

He keeps one hand buried in Raylan’s hair. He scratches Raylan’s scalp, curls strands of his hair around his fingers. He knows that Raylan himself must be feeling very exposed, despite his fool boy approaching him for this in jeans and flannel. Boyd wishes, somewhat, that Raylan had come to him in a tee-shirt and sweats, something more comfortable, but he’ll file it away for next time.

Boyd thanks several deities above that he is ambidextrous, because it makes grading the papers a lot easier. He wishes he could just enjoy the moment and focus on Raylan’s mouth around his member, but Raylan is weirdly finicky about details, and would probably get insecure about something or other if Boyd doesn’t actually finish his work.

So Boyd marks tests with his red pen, and if he grades the papers less strictly than he otherwise would, then he’ll tell his kids it’s a good bye present.

He rubs his thumb behind Raylan’s ears, scratching and tugging, and Raylan moans around him, and Boyd is fully hard at this point. He eyes his papers. He has sheets left in his stack yet.

This is an incredible test of self-control, on both their parts, and Boyd thinks he should have asked for this earlier, even without knowing it is something Raylan wants like this.

Boyd enjoys the challenge of it, the restraint he needs to not buck into Raylan’s mouth every time Raylan swallows down his pooling saliva. He thinks about how good and wonderful his boy is, showing such patience and steadfastness, holding nice and still, keeping his jaw open despite the discomfort, nice and steady on his knees.

Boyd wipes some drool off Raylan’s chin with his free hand, and, God, that does something for him, and he knows the sight of Raylan, looking even more wrecked, will mess him up but badly, so he still doesn’t look down, still focuses on his tests, on red lines over black and blue ink.

He continues to show Raylan affection. He pets Raylan like his own darling kitten or maybe some mutt dog. He scratches behind the ears, cards his fingers through his hair.

He can pretend he isn’t obsessed with Raylan all the time forever, and he can pretend even now that he isn’t finely in tune with what Raylan might need, but Raylan needs something specific from him, so he’ll give it, by God, he will.

Boyd sets aside the last of the sheets. He turns to look at Raylan, finally, and he is rewarded with exactly what he had expected, and still the sight of him hits Boyd like a truck.

He feels like the wind is knocked out of him, like he can’t breathe at all from the weight on his chest. Raylan’s hair is wild and unruly, his eyes are glassy and unfocused, and tears well up in the corners of his eyes. Drool puddles down his chin, and his cock strains against his jeans.

So, so, so at peace, a peace Boyd has never seen his boy hold.

Boyd needs a moment to collect himself. He thinks, distantly, of setting the world on fire, or maybe planting a tree for each second he gets to spend with Raylan.

Boyd caresses his hand down Raylan’s cheek, the other petting back in his hair. It takes a moment to catch Raylan’s attention. He looks up, slowly, distant, and Boyd smiles at him.

Raylan doesn’t seem to process anything at first, no absent unspoken question. Then he remembers he had also agreed to give Boyd a blow job proper, and Boyd has no expectation he will last long.

Raylan sucks him deep, hollowing his cheeks, and Boyd moans hard and loud, as Raylan bobs himself back and forth. He uses his hands to jack Boyd when he pulls back each time, and Boyd is done quickly.

When he feels himself close, he holds Raylan away after he moves back, and comes over Raylan’s neck and chest.

Boyd finds himself breathless.

Boyd pets over Raylan’s hair, and he does not know where his boy has floated off to, but he’ll hold him, catch him, whatever he needs.

He helps Raylan up, sets Raylan on his lap. He takes Raylan’s cock out of his pants, jacks him off quick, sucking marks into his neck. Raylan also comes quickly, and Boyd kisses his temple.

He holds Raylan on his lap, Raylan trusts his weight against him, and Boyd holds him close. His fingers trace aimless patterns over Raylan’s chest, and he thinks about every reason he loves Raylan, and he finds himself saying them out loud, one by one, absent in his own way. He doesn’t think Raylan can hear him, or at least not well enough to process what he’s saying, but sometimes the act of speaking is more important than the state of being heard.

Raylan drifts back, as he does, always comes back to Boyd eventually, and Boyd smiles, traces his fingers over Raylan’s small frown.

“Something up?” he asks.

For a moment, he wonders if he had guessed wrong. If Raylan had gone along with him, but he still faces a battle to get past Raylan’s Fort Knox.

And then Raylan buries his face back against Boyd’s shoulder, and he whispers, gutted, “Thank you.”

Boyd is brought back in time, for a moment, cradled in a hot, dry Dallas night.

He kisses aimlessly into Raylan’s hair. “Anything for you, darling, everything. Always.”

Lexington, Now

Raylan makes a call to the office, double checks a hunch on who Grant might be and takes off.

He stops by an apartment, something cheap but serviceable, something Raylan’s lived in before.

He knocks on the door, bright smile ready.

A young twenty-something opens the door, but the chain is on. Raylan keeps his smile, but this is already going to be something.

Raylan has his star ready.

Kid’s got a baby face, bright eyes, soft curly hair. Raylan sighs internally, because the kid definitely doesn’t need to blow his life up for a guy like Nate Hall.

“Are you Grant MacKinnon?” Raylan asks.  

Kid doesn’t open his mouth, just glares.

Raylan presses the flat of his palm against the door.

“Now, I won’t tell you how to handle this,” Raylan tells him, “But I assure you Nate Hall is not worth you getting a charge with obfuscating justice or worse, aiding and abetting.”

“He’s not here,” MacKinnon speaks.

“Then I am sure you would not begrudge me stepping inside for a cup of coffee, huh?” Raylan charms.

“I would mind,” he says.

Raylan feels him push back against the door, but he’s strong enough to keep the crack open.

“How about we talk here, then? And I can see if you can help me any by answering any questions,” he says, instead.

“No,” he says.

Raylan thinks he likes this kid, despite himself.

“Then how about I tell you what I know then?” Raylan says. “Grant MacKinnon, age 22, currently in your fourth year of University of Louisville, which you attend with a full coverage scholarship,” he lists off.

MacKinnon looks behind the door. Kid can’t help himself, despite his spine.

“You met Nate Hall in Lynch, Kentucky. You were raised together. You lost your dads roughly the same time, seven and eight respectively,” Raylan reads. “Now, that’s what I know. Allow me to speculate some.”

“You get out of your home town with college, Hall gets himself out with some trouble,” Raylan continues. “Hall comes waltzing in, with a smile that you remember with no small amount of fondness and no less guilt, and maybe you think you owe him, but you listen to me, son, he’s using you.”

MacKinnon glares.

“Did Hall tell you why I’m here?” Raylan asks.

“It’s a mistake—” he says.

“Rape. Murder. Grand Larceny, son,” Raylan tells him.

“He’s innocent—” MacKinnon protests.

“He’s not,” Raylan says, shaking his head.

MacKinnon’s eyes well with tears. He blinks twice, and Raylan takes it as a sign.

He steps back from the door, and Raylan hears the clicking of the door chain.

He opens the door cautiously, gun up and ready.

MacKinnon steps off to the side. His face is a mess. Raylan guides him closer to the door. He gestures for him to exit to safety by waving two fingers to the door.  

“Now, come on, Hall,” Raylan calls.

“Seriously, Grant!?” Hall yells back.

“You lied to me!” MacKinnon cries.

“Now’s not the time, boys,” Raylan tells them.

Hall comes out of the bedroom, a piece of his own.

“How about you lower this weapon—” Raylan starts.

But Hall takes aim for MacKinnon, and Raylan takes his shot at Hall, and a bullet pierces him from the back. Raylan realizes he’s played this wrong. He should have kept a better eye on MacKinnon.

Glynco, Then  

Raylan brings a plate of pignolata to the staff room, and he grabs the empty tin that had contained mini blueberry muffins. There is enough staff on campus that Raylan can always count on the food being gone, even if Boyd bakes three times a week or more.

Boyd had blood behind his teeth arriving home after the first day of the program. Another educator had brought chocolate chip cookies the first day, a little welcome gift, or so she had said, and Boyd had responded with a vengeance.

“She is trying to establish dominance, Raylan!” he had said in a fury, whipping up a batch of turtles. He had the mixing bowl in hand, and Raylan had laughed as the fire of the gas stove reflected blue light in Boyd’s eyes.

Raylan brings goodies so often that he has received a minor reputation for it, one falling just behind in terms of popularity to “the hottest man you’ll ever see in your life” and “Hey, isn’t he that gay marshal?”

Raylan likes Gylnco a lot more the second time around, when he isn’t worried Boyd is going to be gone by the time he gets back, or that he’s going to run off with Ava or someone from his teaching program.

He also likes it better when he’s the one yelling at the idiots, instead of having to stand next to the idiot getting yelled at. He had kept his head down, the first time around, a single-minded focus in ending the program without incident, so he could get back home and see Boyd with his own eyes, to make sure there was someone he was coming back to at all. Boyd had promised, but his heart still went off to sea, all on its own, adrift in waves battering against Raylan’s insides.

He heads home, stopping by the grocery store on the way to get ready for dinner. He makes chili, heavy with ground beef, and it’s almost done by the time Boyd is home.

This is new for them, Raylan getting home first, Boyd coming home late and wrung out.

They don’t mind it terribly though, and this placement for them offers a lot of differences from their usual living situation that they get to experiment and flex and stretch a little. Ralyan can push himself a little more, never worried about pursuing a fugitive the next morning, having to vault over fences or sprint through creeks.

Boyd kisses Raylan as he enters, and he smiles to Raylan, big and wide. “What would you say if I have you return that favor you owe me today, Raylan?”

And Raylan’s eyes widen. He hadn’t expected anything for tonight, but now he is excited.

“Oh, yeah? And what would that be?” he asks, licking his lips.

“I got us a present,” Boyd says, as Raylan sets the table with dinner.

“Us?” Raylan asks, and they sit down to eat.

“Us,” Boyd confirms, winking.

Raylan rushes through dinner, more than he should, but Boyd runs his toes up and down Raylan’s calf to tease him, and it seems Boyd has something special in store.

They finish quickly, throwing their dishes in the sink before Boyd grabs Raylan’s hand and leads them to the bedroom.

Raylan follows Boyd, just like he followed him to Georgia.

Boyd has them undress before bringing them over to the bed. He has Raylan seat himself up against the pillows, while he leans over to his side table.

He pulls out a nice dark blue leather box, a few inches high, but several inches tall and wide, gold accents decorating the edges.

Raylan takes it from him and opens it. A dark blue leather collar, rimmed with gold studs, warm in how they catch the light. Soft fabric pads the inside around.

He touches the plush lining, gently, hesitant, and he swallows something catching in his throat. “Wow,” he says, breathlessly.

It’s not what he had expected, but it certainly isn’t unwelcome.

His mind whirs, just a little, background noise like a fan.

The dark blue of the collar matches the box, and it sits gently on a cream-colored cushion.

An O-ring hangs from the center of the collar, perfect for tugging, for— Raylan finds himself a little dizzy.

He lets his lips part in wonder, and Boyd slides a thumb in between.

“My precious boy, my gorgeous precious boy,” he smiles, and Raylan groans, shaking.

“What do you think?” Boyd asks, eyes alight.

Raylan looks at him, taking his eyes from the box for the first time.

He shoves the box back in Boyd’s hands, blushing furiously and turning away.

“Uh,” Boyd says, frozen and kind of shocked. “Did you not like it then?” he asks, caught off guard.

Raylan buries his face in his hands, shaking his head furiously. “Put it on me,” he says, quiet and small. “Please,” he adds, an afterthought, but to make sense of their game.

“Ahh,” Boyd answered, relaxed with relief. “Of course, anything for my precious, precious boy,” he murmurs.

Boyd takes the collar out of the box, holding it gently, even if it is made for durability, and he carefully unhooks it. “C’mere, darling,” he says, patting his lap. Raylan crawls over to him, soft pads that leave creases in their comforter.

He sits on Boyd’s lap, and Boyd wraps the collar around Raylan’s neck, teasing him with subtle touches to skin, letting his fingers linger at his jugular. He presses down, feeling how fast Raylan’s heart must be beating, and Raylan feels it with him under his thumb.

Boyd links the collar around the back. He tests the give, hooking two fingers in between, checking the space.

“Good, good,” he hums, so quiet Raylan thinks he’s speaking to himself. “God, baby, you’re gorgeous like this. I knew I’d love the sight of you, but I feel like I’m a starving man, and you’re the only thing in the world to devour, and I’m gonna, oh boy, am I gonna.”

Raylan feels himself curl up under the words, from embarrassment, because he’s overwhelmed.

Raylan doesn’t think he deserves… well, whatever Boyd is, or gives him, and he pretends well enough, but he knows deep down Boyd is going to catch on to that. But here, now, it’s hard to hold onto, it’s hard to feel it to be true. Feelings like that live a million miles away.

“Are you going to be good for me, Raylan? Are you going to be my precious boy tonight?” Boyd asks, kissing Raylan’s collar, around it. He strokes his fingers through Raylan’s hair, while his other hand trails down Raylan’s chest.

He kisses down Raylan’s neck, before biting hard into the top of Raylan’s shoulder.

Raylan groans Boyd’s name, over and over.

Boyd presses his palm down on Raylan’s chest, pushing him to the center of the bed, urging him to lie his back against their blankets.

Boyd kisses down Raylan’s chest, and Raylan writhes underneath him. Boyd slips two fingers around the O-ring and tugs.

Raylan’s breath stutters, but he holds still, ever so still, at Boyd’s prompting.

“Good boy,” Boyd says, sweet and low. “Hold still for me, baby, alright? Can you be a good boy and do that for me?” he commands, and he takes Raylan’s nipple between his teeth and sucks hard.

Raylan groans again, but he holds still for Boyd. Boyd is very, very proud of his boy.

Boyd contents himself, sucking Raylan’s nipple, moving over to the next one. Raylan twitches underneath him, but he doesn’t flinch or writhe or pull back, and Boyd is very proud of him.

He kisses down Raylan’s stomach, licking around his bellybutton, stroking up and down Raylan’s sides with his hands. 

“My gorgeous, beautiful boy,” Boyd says reverently, caressing Raylan’s cheek, “You’re doing so well, holding so still for me.”

Raylan shudders underneath him.

“Do you know how good you are, baby? Do you know how good you are for me?” Boyd asks. “You can nod or shake your head.”

Raylan shrugs helplessly underneath him.

Boyd bites him, sucking a huge bruise over his heart. “Now, boy, that wasn’t a nod or a shake. You’re a good boy, so you’ll follow my command when I ask you again. Do you know what a good boy you are?”

Raylan shakes his head no.

“Well, baby, we’re going to have to teach you tonight, huh?” Boyd says with a smirk.

“You can move where I lead you, baby,” Boyd informs him, guiding Raylan by the collar once again. He leads Raylan to sit up, and then he turns Raylan onto his hands and knees. He kneels behind him, and he presses a kiss over Raylan’s spine.

“Now, baby, we’re gonna have you show me how good you are, alright?” Boyd says. “You can nod yes or shake your head no.”

Raylan nods.

“I’m going to spank you, okay? And you’re gonna be a good boy for me, and you’re not gonna make any noise, and you’re not going to move, okay? Does that sound good, yes or no?”

Raylan nods.

“What’s your safeword, baby?” Boyd asks, “You can speak to answer.”

“Hayloft,” Raylan answers, voice trembling.

“You can also speak whenever I ask what color we’re at. Tell me now, darling,” Boyd demands.

“Green,” Raylan answers, shaking still.

“Good, good, baby, very good,” Boyd mumbles, and he rubs his hands over Raylan’s cheeks in anticipation. He massages him, just briefly.

“Before we start proper, I’m just gonna give you a few to start us off, okay? And when I do, I’m going to need you to rate the pain on a scale one to ten, okay? You can speak to answer.”

He spanks Raylan lightly, and his boy is being real good for him, not laughing like Boyd knows he must want to, and he answers simply, “One.”

Boyd tests different strengths against him, and his baby is so good in answering each time. Raylan’s ass is warm to touch, and Boyd presses his cheek against him, feeling the heat radiate off him.

“I’m going to start now, okay? Remember, darling, no noises,” Boyd warns him.

He slaps Raylan, quickly, but his boy is good and holds in his surprise.

Boyd kisses him, on the cheek he just spanked. “Good boy,” he murmurs.

“I’m going to spank you five times, boy,” he promises, and he spanks Raylan once, hard.

Raylan holds still for him, under his hand. And Boyd spanks him twice, quickly, thought lighter.

He pauses, and he trails his knuckles over the vertebra of Raylan’s spine. He can’t help himself. His boy is just too beautiful.

He spanks Raylan’s other cheek, after, and he keeps his boy on his toes, figuratively speaking.

He spanks him again, reaching five.

“Good boy, Raylan, you are such a good boy. You took your five so nicely, so prettily, and you didn’t speak or move. I’m so proud of you, you’re my gorgeous, beautiful boy,” Boyd comforts him, using his knuckles to rub out some of the sting.

He kisses Raylan’s lower back. “Such a gorgeous, beautiful boy. Tell me what color you’re at, darling,” Boyd mumbles.

“Green,” Raylan answers again.

“Good, good,” Boyd says. “I’m going to make this harder, but you’ll be just fine, because you’re my good boy, I know it. I’m going to spank you ten times, and you’re going to count for me, okay? You’ll only speak to count, understood? Yes or no, move your head.”

Raylan nods.

Boyd spanks him, quick, and then spanks him once again on the other cheek.

Raylan counts the one and two.

“Good boy, my good boy,” Boyd encourages him, even as he spanks him thrice more.

Raylan counts to the five, and Boyd spanks him harder than he has all night.

The air is knocked from Raylan’s lungs. Raylan grunts a pained, “Six.”

“I’m so proud of you, baby, you’re doing such a great job,” Boyd tells him, kneading over the skin once again.

He slaps lightly over where he had spanked hard, and Raylan counts to seven.

Boyd delivers two spanks over the other cheek, quick, making them each a heavy strike.

Raylan counts to nine.

Boyd pauses, drawing his hands up and down Raylan’s lower back. He wants the last one to be nice and pleasurable. He kisses Raylan’s back, he draws his hands over his baby’s thighs and grins when Raylan stiffens underneath him. He calls Raylan his precious, his darling, over and over.

He spanks ten, same spot.

Raylan breathes out ten.

“Good job, boy, you did a perfect job,” Boyd praises, “You were so quiet, so good, so still for me, you did that just for me. Do you think you did good? Yes or no, answer with your head.”

Raylan takes a moment. Boyd waits. Raylan finally nods, hesitant, slight, like he might have to take it back.

“That’s right, baby, you’re right. You did good, I’m glad you know you did good,” Boyd continues. “How about your color, boy?”

“Yellow,” Raylan answers.

“Okay, okay,” Boyd says, “C’mere, c’mere.” He guides Raylan by the collar to sit in his lap.

“Thank you for telling me, baby,” Boyd tells him, and he hugs Raylan from behind. “You’re free to move and speak for me, boy, however you want.”

Raylan shakes in his arms, like a tether holding him together within him has been snapped.

“Let it out, baby, let it out,” Boyd tells him. He kisses the back of Raylan’s neck, and he grabs Raylan’s hands in his own, putting him back together.

“I’m bad,” Raylan whispers.

“No, baby, no, you’re my good boy,” Boyd assures him. “You proved it, just now, for me.”

“Bad,” Raylan repeats.

Boyd cards his fingers through Raylan’s hair, kisses his crown. “My cherished boy,” Boyd says again.

Raylan still shakes in his arms, but he calms down, and they sit like this for a moment, with Boyd whispering into Raylan’s ear.

“Can we continue?” Raylan asks, after some time.

“Now that depends, sweet child,” Boyd answers, “Are you my good boy?”

“I’m your good boy,” Raylan answers, and his eyes are sure and steadied.

Boyd kisses his forehead. “Okay, we’re gonna continue. But we’re gonna switch gears, okay?”

Raylan nods.

“You were so good for me, earlier, so good, so I’m going to reward you, okay? Reward you for being so good for me,” Boyd whispers, and he guides Raylan down to the bed, lying him down.

“I’m going to blow you, sweetheart, please you like you’ve pleased me tonight, and you can make as much noise and move as much as you want,” Boyd instructs, “The only thing is you can’t come until I tell you to, understood?”

Raylan nods.

“I’m going to tap your thigh with two fingers,” Boyd says, demonstrating, “And you can come when you get this signal. But not until then.”

Raylan nods again, and Boyd smiles, slinking down his body to put his sweet boy in his mouth.

Boyd sucks Raylan down, and Raylan is already keyed up from his spanking, even if they had taken a moment and cool down.

His stomach is tight under Boyd’s hand, and Boyd feels the muscles clench underneath his touch.

Raylan moves underneath him, his legs push up, his toes curl, as Boyd takes him deeper.

He holds two fingers up to Raylan’s lips, and Raylan sucks them down in an instant. His cheeks go hollow, and he moves to lick between Boyd’s fingers, coating them with spit.

Boyd takes them back, even as Raylan whines, and he uses them to circle at Raylan’s hole.

Raylan groans and cries at the front of the bed, and Boyd thinks he is the luckiest man on this green earth.

“Please, please, please, please,” Raylan begs.

But Boyd just continues, rubbing his fingers against Raylan’s prostrate, even as Raylan writhes underneath him.

Raylan breathes through his teeth, losing himself in concentration.

Boyd drags his hand down from Raylan’s stomach to his thigh, and Raylan’s breath hitches in anticipation.

Boyd has teased him enough for today. He taps two fingers against Raylan’s thigh, Raylan comes down his throat with a high-pitched whine.

Boyd swallows it all down, and Raylan pants below him.

Boyd flips Raylan over, and places himself between Raylan’s cheeks. He ruts between Raylan’s thighs and ass until he gets himself off with a guttural moan. He paints come up Raylan’s back, and Raylan squirms underneath him, overwhelmed and so, so happy.

Boyd rolls over to their bedstand, and Raylan whines at the sudden loss around him. He feels cold and abandoned, and he knows it’s crazy. Or somehow, it must be crazy, because it doesn’t feel crazy at all, it feels like he’s going to die, alone and unloved.

Boyd grabs a leash from the bedstand and turns back to him, wrapping his arms around him once again.

He sees how messed up Raylan is from just that, and he coos at Raylan, presses kisses into his hair. “My sweet, sweet boy,” he tells him, and he holds the leash in one arm and he holds Raylan close to him for the moment.

When Raylan feels himself settle, Boyd takes the leash and attaches it to the ring in the center of Raylan’s collar.

Boyd gives it a little tug close to the attachment, and Raylan sways closer with the movement.

Boyd tucks a strand of hair behind Raylan’s ear, scratches the spot.

He moves back slowly, and Raylan follows him with his eyes, slowly, but Raylan knows he isn’t leaving him, because they are connected.

Boyd gets off the bed, and tugs the leash once more, “C’mere, boy.”

Raylan crawls to the edge of the bed and swing his legs over the edge. Boyd takes his free hand in his own and helps Raylan up. He guides Raylan to the kitchen with the leash, sitting him in a chair he’s pulled up while preparing leftover peach pie slices for them both. He puts a scoop of vanilla ice cream on Raylan’s slice as well. He grabs and wets a dish towel while he’s there, too lazy to grab a washcloth from the bathroom. The leash is wrapped a few times around his arm, and Raylan stares at it while he waits patiently for Boyd.

Every so often, Boyd will absently pet through Raylan’s hair, and Raylan will lean in to the touch, nuzzling at Boyd’s hands.

Boyd has two plates for them, and he guides Raylan over to their table. He sets Raylan in his lap, and Raylan settles down easily, leaning his weight against Boyd’s chest. Boyd feeds him, alternating bites between themselves. He kisses Raylan on his temple as Raylan chews.

He rubs gently against Raylan’s tender skin, making sure Raylan is okay.

He presses his forehead down to Raylan’s shoulder, trapping a kiss to his skin.

Raylan feels himself come back to himself, little by little.

“I feel like that was more of a favor to me, rather than returning one back to you,” he says, shifting to hold his own weight.

Boyd kisses him, a sparkling smile spread across his face, “Oh, I promise you, Raylan, that was mighty fun for myself.”

Raylan runs a finger around the inside of his collar. “Man, this is nice,” he says, with a smile still small but no less genuine.

Boyd raises his hands up to his neck, hovering over the clasp in question. Raylan nods.

Boyd unlatches it, holding it in between the two of them. He turns it over in his hands, running his thumbs over the soft leather.

“Real nice,” he repeats. “How much does something like this even cost?” he asks, but there’s humor behind his eyes, and Boyd kisses him, not bothering to answer the question at all.

“Thank you, Raylan,” Boyd tells him, and Raylan smiles back, if a little tired.

“Thanks to you, too, Boyd,” Raylan says. “I really like this,” he says of the collar in his hands, of the belong he had felt in it.

“Then we’ll have to keep it around,” Boyd says.

Now

Raylan slips between worlds. He dreams of Boyd. Of Boyd looking wrong and not like how he’s supposed to, full of hate, sometimes, sometimes dressed to the nines, but never his sexy librarian look, never his sexy little bow tie. He falls through layer after layer, and sometimes Boyd is looking like a proper historical outlaw, sometimes he wears his own Marshal’s star, sometimes he’s fronts as a politician. He wears crosses on his hands, he guts that old house. There’s wolf creatures, there’s zombies, there’s ice cream. He falls and falls and falls, and he misses Boyd, his Boyd, thought he finds love for all the other ones he sees as well.  He falls between places and people, of lovers and children. He sees magic and ghosts. And mostly, he just misses Boyd.

Miami, Then

Their wedding day is wonderful.

Winona comes down from Atlanta to act as witness, though she doesn’t stay long.  They offer to take her somewhere nice for lunch, but she just laughs loudly at them both. They end up at a hilarious saloon-themed bar, drinking bourbon until their photo appointment is scheduled.

Winona’s emotions oscillate on a scale between sobbing because her marriage to Gary had failed to sobbing about how happy she is for two of her best and only friends in the whole wide world.

Raylan and Boyd refrain from pretending to be classy, spending half of their time in the bar roasting Gary like a hog in a pig pickin’. They hadn’t thought he was worth Winona’s time from the start, and they had not been shy about it during the relationship.

She declines their invitation to the venue, calling it asinine, even with the free liquor offer from the open bar. 

The only thing Boyd and Raylan regret about the ceremony is that Helen and Ava had declined to come. Ava had planned a trip to Las Vegas with her husband for their anniversary, and she had said she wasn’t about to miss it for their impulsive assholery. They had laughed and apologized for their timing, and she had laughed at them in return for their apology.

Helen had laughed so hard she irritated her ribs, and then she had hung up on them. It is only after the wedding itself, when they had later sent her pictures, did she laugh once again and say she hadn’t thought they’d really do it.

So they hit town hall, get hitched, and then spend a stupid amount of money on a photographer to make the photos look good, and then spend even more of their hard earned money on the fucking venue. They had gotten a fair enough deal on it, considering they were able to squeak their timing in the morning right before another, larger wedding.

They had been told they could keep the gazebo and all the chairs and tables set for it, as long as they didn’t mess anything up that couldn’t be fixed in the half hour between bookings. The photos take a fraction of the booking, and the photographer leaves early, giving Raylan and Boyd too much time to wander about the huge outdoor property.

They help themselves to the bar—they had to buy a package, so they got the one that included drinks, even though, and Raylan wants to be clear on this, they had only booked the venue to take photos, so that Boyd could rub them in his coworkers’ faces.

The bar is well stocked and they have time to kill, so they plan to get their money’s worth. They drink so much that they pass out underneath one of the tables.

When they wake up, cuddled on top of one another. They later claim they had been overcome with their love after sharing the intimacy of wedlock—or, Boyd had said that, in their statements. They are just drunk.

The bride and groom—who had spent real money, on a real wedding—are less than happy to discover the two, and Raylan had just known the place is ritzy enough to attract couples who aren’t even happy for the story.

The venue later changes their booking policies, and enforces that the bar be staffed by the property as a new clause for all their contracts. Raylan’s a little proud of that one, despite himself.

Raylan thinks Dan still holds that against Boyd. Dan also had never enjoyed his parent teacher conferences with Boyd, but it’s not Boyd’s fault his oldest won’t stop texting in class or that his youngest is a smartass with a problem with authority figures.

Still, it probably is worth it all for the frankly spectacular photos of the two—they never had been much for taking pictures of themselves, just what their friends would take for them. Boyd crows about those photos for months, lording them over every single coworker who had the extreme displeasure of having no excuse to get out of talking to him. He talks those photos up to every single teacher, admin, janitor, and student who so much as makes eye contact. Every question about the wedding itself is met with some airy nonsense about how it had been a small, intimate affair, but really, have you seen the photo of him and Raylan on a bridge? What about him and Raylan in the gazebo—no, no, he knows he’s shown you that other photo of them on the other gazebo but this is a different photo of them in a different gazebo.

Raylan thinks his husband—which, okay, maybe it is nice to be able to call him that—is the funniest person he’s ever met, and Dan had once said that he makes his opinion about Boyd everyone else’s problem because he encourages him.

Raylan does once ask about the particularity of the gazebo, as opposed to, say, the beach which had also been visible and gorgeous in many of the photos, and Boyd scoffs.

“This is Miami, Raylan,” Boyd says, “Everyone has pictures of the beach. The gazebo is the center piece.”

The whole thing is also decidedly worth it for the great drinks they have that day—Boyd and Raylan move from the top shelf down and it doesn’t change the price of the booking. The place has stocked Old Forrester’s Birthday Bourbon but doesn’t charge extra by the bottle, so really, Boyd and him are just trying to recoup their investment. It is not their fault that wedding venues are evil and extortive, and Boyd appeals to Raylan’s sense of justice via extremely fine bourbon.

The sex itself is spectacular, even if it is interrupted, and they at least get to finish in the back of the police cruiser with a highly unentertained cop in the front seat, but it is in April, so Raylan knows the cop has seen worse that week, if not that very day from wasted coeds who don’t know better than to drink their body weight in liquor. 

When they rouse themselves, underneath the distant table, a pop song plays for the dance floor, muffled just a tad by the thick table cloth. Truly they must have been out quite a bit of time to last through that much of the reception. It is a wonder they hadn’t been discovered, but then again, the table cloths were a long, thick cotton. The wedding they are now crashing is child free, no wandering feet crawling in and under tables. Boyd and Raylan had at least managed to park themselves as far away from anything else as they could, so the table might have been a spare in any case.

The song is some nonsense Top 40 that neither care much for. If it were a little newer, Boyd might have carried an active disdain for it, hearing it too often in his classrooms or from his students.

They catch each other’s eyes and immediately have to stifle a laugh, because this song tells them everything they need to know about how they’ve dodged a bullet by having a court wedding. Raylan puts a hand over Boyd’s mouth, holds his other finger up between them. He is lying over Boyd, one of his legs wedged between Boyd’s own. Boyd has a glint in his eyes when he takes an intentional lick up Raylan’s palm, and then through his fingers. He sucks Raylan’s ring finger in, circling his tongue around the gold band, and Raylan feels the exact moment when all his reason runs from him, fleeing to the water.

Raylan rips Boyd’s shirt open, scattering buttons around them, and Raylan has half a mind to think of them as their equivalent of a rose petal bed or maybe a rice shower. Boyd moans around Raylan’s fingers, and thankfully the sound is muted by Raylan’s fingers and the music reverberating around them, some sort of dance song meant to “get people on their feet.”

Raylan licks down Boyd’s neck, down his chest, using his free hand to unbutton Boyd’s slacks, sparing a moment of gratitude that they had decided against renting tuxes.

He pulls Boyd’s cock out, a firm steady hand giving him a few strokes.

He trails his fingers down Boyd’s body, letting them catch on first Boyd’s lips, then on his nipples, then sauntering down to tease at Boyd’s hole.

“Pocket,” Raylan murmurs, between kissing and sucking on Boyd’s chest. Boyd moves his hands to pull Raylan up by his lapels, bringing him down for a kiss before hunting through the inside pockets.

“Raylan,” Boyd grins, intoning a very cheesy, “are you happy to see me?” when he also finds a gun amidst the fabric.

Raylan rolls his eyes, kissing Boyd to shut him up in the best way he’s discovered so far. He takes the small tube of lube from Boyd’s fingers, groaning as Boyd holds him closer, pulling at Raylan’s hair, sucking urgent kisses against Raylan’s neck.

Raylan grins, feeling silly and drunk and somewhat dizzy.

“I love you,” he says, pulling back, just in time to see Boyd roll his eyes at him.

“Please,” Boyd demands, grabbing at Raylan’s hand, spilling lube over his fingers, “I need you to get with the program, son.” He pulls at Raylan’s belt, tempting and inviting.

Raylan huffs a laugh, but moves his lips over to bite at Boyd’s neck, right under his ear. “You look so fine today, darling,” he whispers into his ear. He presses his fingers into Boyd, licking over Boyd’s ear as he relishes in the stretch around his fingers, in the moan Boyd bites behind his teeth.

“That’s something more like it,” Boyd huffs, stubborn as ever, pawing Raylan’s shirt out from its tuck. He moans again as Raylan presses deeper into him, wiggling his fingers once he’s past the knuckle. Raylan enjoys having his fingers where they are, loves that soft heat as he presses deeper still.

Boyd’s fingers claw into Raylan’s love handles, intentional, deep enough to bleed.

Raylan stifles his own groan this time, licking at Boyd’s neck as Boyd undoes the buttoning of Raylan’s trousers.

Raylan trails kisses along Boyd’s neck as he pushes his fingers deeper in, stroking along Boyd’s prostrate, grinning when Boyd’s hands fall from his ministrations, catching around Raylan’s thighs, leaving more cat scratches in their wake.

Raylan loves it, loves him, loves the ache he leaves behind, leaving Raylan looking like a tiger for all the stripes he marks on him.

Raylan bites into Boyd’s neck, leaving a piece of himself behind as well.

He scissors his fingers, stretching Boyd wider, before he adjusts them. They work together to kick Boyd’s jeans further down his legs, and Raylan lines himself up with Boyd’s entrance.

Boyd’s fingers climb up Raylan’s back, under his button to cut new columns down his skin.

Raylan thrusts into him, and they both groan and smile, in their own little world of lust and love. Raylan finally thrusts in deeply, once to make Boyd squirm, and once again to start a pace they both enjoy.

They don’t have long, before Boyd’s moans grow too loud without Raylan’s hand or mouth to cover him.

The officer who is called is none too pleased to have to lift a six foot man off the floor, and even less so when he has to handcuff him, all while Boyd follows behind him up and kisses Raylan through the arrest. Raylan feels the man should have at least appreciated the consideration Boyd had shown him in tucking both himself and Raylan back into their pants before accepting the handcuffs for himself.

Raylan and Boyd keep kissing, even in cuffs, as they are corralled into the back of a cab.

The cop certainly regrets not cuffing them to the seats, because it is not long before the two of them kick off their pants to the bed of the car. Boyd slides over Raylan’s hips to sink himself down on Raylan’s cock.

Raylan thinks he might hear the cop say something about it, but he can’t pay too much attention, too preoccupied trying to time his trusts up with Boyd’s sinking himself down.

He bites where Boyd’s shoulder meets his neck, letting up only to lick the blood away.

They make their timing count, knowing they only have so long before the cruiser arrives back in the Miami legal district, so Raylan lets himself let go more quickly than he normally would.

He pulls back, and uses the floor to catch his weight as he pushes in deep enough to send himself over the edge, pressing Boyd against the divider glass.

Raylan comes, grunting with pleasure and exertion. He eases them back down, still buried to the hilt, and he groans again when Boyd lifts off, kneeing Raylan’s side to have him face the other way.

Raylan huffs a laugh. He turns to the door, and he tries to catch Boyd’s smile in the reflection, before he gives the strangest hand job he has ever performed in his life.

He leans back against Boyd, giving his arms as much space for leverage as he can find. Boyd leans down over Raylan’s face to kiss him as Raylan does his best to make his hands pleasurable and consistent. Boyd growls into Raylan’s mouth, an acknowledgment, and Raylan grins as come dances up the back of his suit jacket. He thinks some manages to get inside to, sticking his jacket to his dress shirt, and the idea strikes him as so funny he doesn’t stop laughing until they arrive at the station.

The cop even has the two pose for mugshots, which becomes its own ordeal. Boyd wolf whistles at Raylan as Raylan grins at the camera. Raylan blows kisses at Boyd and Boyd keeps acting all flustered about it, and even the booking officer laughs at them, as if a man being brought in for indecent exposure is embarrassed over an air kiss.

The real production begins when they move to take Raylan’s personal effects from him, and discover his badge, but more importantly, his service pistol that had not been confiscated upon arrest.

The gun saves their dumb asses more than the badge does. It had been a feat of gross negligence that Raylan hadn’t properly been patted down, though Raylan can’t imagine himself wanting to be the one to part a necking couple. Raylan had been a little too busy sticking his hands down Boyd’s pants to alert the officer to his mistake, you see.

In the end, the paperwork is not worth keeping either Raylan nor Boyd any longer. Between the inter-departmental cooperation that neither party would truly desire to engage with in any sort of fashion, as well as a proper incident report that would surely not look good on any promotion applications, the chief decides to shred the whole case, though not without a thorough dressing down for the officer in question.

Raylan grimaces as his handcuffs are removed, when the officer walks into the glass walled office, and then especially when the shutters comes clattering down.

“You okay, baby?” Boyd asks, moving to rub Raylan’s wrists, in case the frown is from pain.

“Yes, sweetheart,” Raylan answers, pressing a kiss to Boyd’s lips. “It’s just that I’ve been on the other side of that glass wall one too many times not to feel sympathetic.”

Boyd gives him a hearty laugh at that, still a little drunk and happy, despite their location.

Raylan loves him so much in the moment that he needs to grip Boyd’s face in his hands, needs to have him, to prove something, and he kisses filthily into Boyd’s open mouth.

Boyd surges back against him. He throws his arms around Raylan’s neck, nearly bowling them both over with his sudden weight.

An officer slams her palm on her desk to get their attention. “You two have just evaded one public indecency charge, are you really so eager to risk another one?”

They laugh together, not breaking apart too far, still hovering in each other’s space.

“Oh, you know,” Raylan grins, as Boyd slides his hands down Raylan’s back pockets and rests his head on Raylan’s shoulder.

“I don’t,” she says, and while her tone is scathing, her eyes are mirthful, and Raylan likes this woman a lot. He checks her badge—Officer Hernandez—Raylan will have to remember that.

“Why didn’t you flash that shiny star of yours when he came to pick you up?” Officer Henandez asks, like she’s trying to figure something out. She walks them out to the front door, like maybe she might be able to pin something on them without getting her buddy, Officer Rookie Mistake, in a shit load of trouble.

Raylan grins, “We were too drunk to drive home. I thought, if the man was kind enough to give us a lift, it would be rude to refuse such a nice little wedding gift.” Since they’re standing around and chatting, he wraps his arms around Boyd’s waist, hugging him from the side.

“You could have called a cab,” she answers flatly.

Boyd grins, and Raylan can tell he likes her too. “So expensive! Maybe your friend in there can give you details about how nice that venue was, but I can assure you it was not cheap. Not on a Marshal’s dime and certainly not on an educator’s in this fine state.”

Her eyes narrow, and she knows they have one last joke between them.

“And that solves your problem, how?” she asks slowly, and she sure is fun, to set them up for their last punchline, “You still have to get home.”

They shake their heads, laughing before the joke ends. They’re terrible comedians, could never do stand up—too giddy for that. Raylan smiles into Boyd’s shoulder, kissing his neck, but light as a feather, nothing that Officer Hernandez would hold agasint him.

“I’m sure we’ll manage,” Boyd finally says, in between bitten back laughter. He winks at her. 

“You two are too drunk to walk out of this office without hanging off one another. How are you going to do that?” she asks. She puts her hands on her hips, and that mirth in her eye is sparkling away.

“Oh, well,” Raylan smiles, flashing his teeth in a way he knows lets him get away with more than he should, “Home is right there,” he tells her, pointing to an apartment building a few blocks away. It’s not the super expensive one, landed directly between the court houses and Marshal Services, but it’s pretty damn close all things considered, and not too much of strain on their budget.

Officer Hernandez looks between where Raylan’s pointing, then back at the two, then back at the building.

She laughs so hard she cries, bent at the waist, having to stop to gather breath every so often.

Her name is Officer Natalie Hernandez, and she becomes a very close friend of theirs in Miami, through her promotion to Detective, to them introducing her to her now wife Christine, the doctor who had once stitched Raylan up from a stab wound.

She’s the one who gets them their mugshots from the day, even photoshopped them with a heart, and honestly, Raylan loves that framed piece more than anything the professional had done for them. He just won’t prop this one up in his office of fellow law enforcing federals, is all.

Louisville, Now

Raylan wakes up to frantic beeping, to fingers running through his hair.

Boyd shushes him, whispering sweetly. Raylan’s breath is labored and loud, he’s panting desperately, trying to get air into his lungs.

He turns to Boyd, and Boyd is wearing a tee shirt and sweats, and Raylan feels himself cry, because he had woken up in the wrong place.

“Baby, baby, baby,” Boyd hushes him. “You’re okay, you’re okay.”

Raylan sobs. He hasn’t cried this hard since the last time he was in Lexington, two decades, maybe, or maybe not, because he fell into one of the worlds where Boyd isn’t Raylan’s Boyd.

Boyd tries comforting him, but Raylan doesn’t know this man.

“Where’s your bowtie?” Raylan sobs. “How come you never have your bowtie?”

“Oh, Lord, Raylan,” Boyd whispers.

“I love your stupid sweater vests,” Raylan says, and his breath hitches.

“Darling, my love, you are confused because of the anesthetic. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay,” Boyd says.

“How come you never wear your sexy sock garters?” Raylan asks.

Boyd laughs. “Darling, darling, darling, I am sitting vigil at my husband’s hospital beside. I cannot be dressed to suit your fetish today.”

Boyd rubs over Raylan’s chest, in the way Raylan likes, and maybe Raylan had fallen through so many worlds he had come right back around and had ended up back home.

“Are you coming back to me, darling?” Boyd asks.

Raylan blinks, tries to fight through fog. He’s floating, but maybe he can swim to the surface.

“Do you like teaching, Boyd?” Raylan asks.

“Do I—Baby, you are all over the place,” Boyd says, and he’s so fond. He must love Raylan so much.

Fat tears run down Raylan’s face. He loves Boyd too.

“I love you,” he cries, and he tries to grab Boyd’s hand, the one on his heart. He can barely move his arms, he’s tangled in wires and tubes, so he wails, but Boyd, his Boyd, understands him, so it must be his Boyd, because he coils his fingers between Raylan’s own.

“These pain killers are sending you on quite the trip, darling,” Boyd says.

“I wanna see your bowtie,” Raylan mumbles, but he’s already falling asleep, and he cries harder, because what if he wakes up somewhere lost again?

Miami, Then

The shine of teaching kids is wearing off. Teaching chemistry is fun for Boyd, as it gives him access to a shit ton of chemicals the Florida school system certainly isn’t equipped to keep a proper eye on. And Boyd does enjoy finding an experiment for every lesson, especially the big ones, like chemical reactions, dissections, imploding steel drums due to temperature/pressure changes, tricking his kids into thinking he’s drinking poison.

Boyd nearly gets a human cadaver, putting in all the right paper work, sliding all the right forms in between mounds of paperwork when his boss is at her most overworked.

He goes through all the proper channels, makes everything look as legit as possible, and has all the right people turn their heads at just the right moments.

He gets caught, however. The vice principal rats him out just days before everything finally flies through, and Boyd holds onto a drive for vengeance for this man so fiercely Raylan thinks he will likely reconcile with Arlo before Boyd forgives him. Raylan can’t blame him. He’s been out of Harlan for almost two decades and some lessons run bone deep, particularly ones about snitching.

Raylan is someone who professionally relies on criminal informants, and he can somehow ease the dissonance in his head over this, but a man like Boyd’s vice principal is a tattletale. Informants at least get something for themselves, that man had told for the sake of telling.

Boyd finds himself reborn anew, like that bird from those ashes. He sets aside all of the fun he makes in lesson planning, and instead he picks up arms valiantly against restrictions of educators’ freedoms and creativity and the stifling of young minds.

Raylan fondly watches Boyd laugh maniacally over sugar, butter, and flour as he prepares a homemade pie, one made with Mags own moonshine and Raylan’s Mama’s own recipe that he had specifically gotten shipped from Aunt Helen. He makes two, one for Raylan, who is already drooling over Boyd’s shoulder, and one for his own nefarious plots. Raylan attaches himself to Boyd’s back in the kitchen, sucking kisses into Boyd’s neck whenever he can steal a chance, sticking his hands down Boyd’s pants whenever Boyd lets him.

Boyd laughs through the entire night, especially whenever Raylan murmurs nonsensical insanities into Boyd’s ear, drunk on the moonshine that hadn’t gone into the pie. “You’re so sexy when you’re being evil,” he says, but knowing Boyd probably hears, “I love you, I love you for making this recipe, I love you for giving this piece of my Mama back to me, and, also, still, you are so sexy when you’re being evil.”

Raylan hates that Boyd is probably right, so he sinks down to his knees and blows Boyd against the kitchen counter while the pies bake in the oven.

He presses his hands over Boyd’s thighs, into their cabinets, and takes in as much of Boyd as he can.

He feels Boyd stretch against his lips, he feels the weight of Boyd press against his tongue, and he groans, quick and easy and far too lovey for him on his knees like this.

“God, Raylan, it’s like you were made to do this, like you were built to suck cock,” Boyd tells him, and he grips his hair tightly in his hand. Raylan quickly sets aside those tender feelings, sets them on the floor beside himself with care, and he focuses on Boyd’s fingers against his skull.

He pulls back a little, just enough to beg, “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck my face, please.”

Boyd complies, holding Raylan still while he presses deeper and deeper into Raylan’s open mouth with each thrust.

“You’re so good for me, Raylan, so good,” Boyd moans over him, low and rough with emotion he too can’t quite set aside.

Raylan pulls out his own cock, jacking himself furiously as Boyd nears his orgasm.

“So beautiful, Raylan, so gorgeous, God, you have the prettiest mouth, do you hear me? The prettiest goddamn—” he tells him, before choking a gasp.

Boyd comes over Raylan’s face, and Raylan finishes soon after over the tile flooring.

Raylan slides into work real smooth and gooey the next morning, perfectly content and satiated, having moonshine apple pie with a vanilla ice cream scoop for breakfast and having the man who served it for dessert.

He is well fed, like a contented tiger upon its meal, licking its paws in the treetops, and everyone resents him for it, which only satisfies him further.

He doesn’t even mind as he spends his afternoon on prison detail, punishment for “being too happy,” especially since he can finagle the timing in just the right way to get home early.

Boyd is gleeful in his success when Raylan gets home. “I got him, Raylan,” Boyd grins, biting a kiss to Raylan’s lips, “I got him hook, line, and sinker.”

It’s not poison. Boyd is not poisoning anyone. Raylan cannot emphasize this enough.

The vice principal has Celiac’s but not the self-control needed for it. So it’s definitely not poisoning, because Boyd is helpful in putting a little card in front of the pie with all its ingredients and in what amounts and all the man has to do is not eat the pie. Both Raylan and Boyd both had known that he would.

It is so wrong, it is so not right of Boyd to do this, but also makes Raylan laugh just enough for him to be very wrong, too.

“Kind of a petty revenge, though, don’t you think?” Raylan asks, in between licking whipped off Boyd’s stomach and cock. He has the pie in the bed with them, and sure it’ll be a bitch to clean off the sheets later, but it’s worth the fun.

Boyd laughs. “Well, clearly this is only step one,” he says with a grin and then a moan, because Raylan is good at what he does.

After they have their fill and a needed shower, they move back to the bed, all the blankets kicked between the bed and the wall. Their pillow talk drifts to Boyd’s nefarious exploits. He’s the kind of guy that is too smart for his own good, and he needs projects to distract himself, or he ends up blowing up the high school’s toolshed and needing Raylan to act as an alibi. Raylan does not spend a lot of time thinking about it having been so easy to be one.

“By the way, Raylan, thank you ever so kindly for the dog collar you bit around my neck,” Boyd hums, “I quite enjoyed being the dead center of every rumor that passed the lips of the gossip inclined.”

“Yes, you did,” Raylan points out. He’s bone tired and lets his whole weight sink Boyd deep into the mattress, “Because every time you heard your name you could whip out the wedding photos you have of me.”

Boyd grins into Raylan’s shoulder. “It was a perfect cover, actually. Everyone was so busy talking about my juvenile exploits, they couldn’t get a word in to ask about what the occasion was for pie.”

“I knew there was a reason you kept me around,” Raylan grumbles, already slipping into unconsciousness, fully prepared to trap Boyd beneath him for that inevitability.

Days later, Raylan wakes up to the smell of oven-baked cinnamon rolls and fresh coffee, and he groans into his pillow, pleasant and guttural.

Maybe the real problem with Raylan Givens, Dan had once mused, is that he wakes up to such bliss as this, that Raylan thinks he could never have done anything too terrible for this not to have been taken away from. Raylan is wrong. Dan needs you to know this. Raylan is wrong, and he does not deserve this, and he should have to face a little more repercussion for his everything. (Boyd had once heard Dan say this at a party once. Boyd knows it had been a joke, knows that he has the kind of relationship with Raylan that allows him to say such a thing, knows that Raylan himself would have laughed at such a joke. Still, Boyd decides he doesn’t need to make himself any more pleasant for Dan after this. Because Dan is wrong. Boyd needs you to know this—Raylan deserves all the nice things Boyd gifts him and more).

Raylan rolls out of bed, nearly tripping over the blankets that had fallen the night before in his haste to the kitchen. Boyd slides a cinnamon roll right in his mouth before Raylan can even get out a “good morning.”

Raylan mumbles one out under the bite anyway, muffled and half passing as a moan of pleasure. He grabs the cinnamon roll, letting the icing roll down his hand as he moves to kiss Boyd, another “good morning,” and to share in his pleasant wake up.

Raylan breaks the kiss, bites down at Boyd’s neck, sucking deeply at his throat. He has to refresh the little necklace he made for Boyd, especially if Boyd is scheming some new act of villainy for this afternoon that may need a little less attention than it could get. Boyd moans, takes the moment to lick up Raylan’s wrist, catching the icing as it falls.

Raylan pushes Boyd down to the floor, backing him up against the kitchen cabinet. He reaches out and grabs olive oil and starts fingering himself open in front of Boyd as he bites deeper into Boyd’s neck.

Boyd pants small puffs of laughter out between groans, asks, “What if we don’t have time for a quickie?”

“What if we—” Raylan laughs at the question. “Oh, so you’re going to wake up early enough to make spite-amon rolls, but not early enough to fuck me? Shut up.”

Boyd groans at the pun, or maybe at Raylan using the pause to impale himself on Boyd’s cock. Raylan feels a full body shiver run through him as he settles in, truly the perfect start to this morning.

“You’re awful. You’re terrible. I love you so fucking much,” Boyd murmurs into the skin of Raylan’s chest.

Raylan leaves for his office, once again radiating satiation and self-satisfaction.

He works late, and does so for the next few days, a pile of paperwork on his desk only a little bitter in its making, but he is quite literally too blissed out to be upset.

He comes home, to the smell of chocolate fudge cupcakes—the ones that Ava’s Randolph’s Mama used to make at the bake sale every year. She’s Ava Carter now, married to a fine man in Lebec—one who had managed to earn their love in a way Gary never had. And still, Raylan can only imagine the kind of favor Boyd now owes her to get this recipe. She may be a California woman now, but that doesn’ make family recipes any less deeply protected. Family recipes are more stringently guarded than the Underworld by Cerberus.

Boyd stands at the counter, piping chocolate butter cream onto individual cupcakes with what Raylan knows has ganache baked into the center.

Raylan approaches, hungry, in more ways than one, ready to pounce on his husband, when— “What the hell? Truly? What the hell?”

Raylan pauses at the tiny little pictures of himself, glued to little blue toothpicks, sticking out of the already prepared cupcakes.

Boyd laughs loudly, having to set down his frosting piper so he can grip the counter top.

Raylan picks up one of the freestanding toothpick flags to hold up to eye level, as if to prove to himself he is actually seeing what he thinks he’s seeing.

“This is a culmination, Raylan,” Boyd begins, already ready to put on one of his little performances, and Raylan might be ready to indulge in the dramatics, as long as he can have some frosting while he’s at it, so he grabs a spoon.

“A culmination of all my work. The photos, the baking, the hickey claim you’ve laid upon me—” Boyd begins, waving his hands out, gesturing to encapsulate a “plan.” Raylan snorts. He’s an opportunistic bastard, but a puppet master he is not.

“Tomorrow Vice Principal Seychelles is going to enter the high school premise thinking ‘Today I will be strong! Today I will resist temptation!’” Boyd continues.

Good Lord, Raylan thinks with a physical eye roll. He licks the scoop of butter cream instead of saying it out loud, because he will not have his cupcake privileges revoked today, thank you.

“And tomorrow he will be wrong. Oh, he may have been getting better. Last week he ate a whole slice of apple pie. But then he only ate half a cinnamon roll, the regret of the pie fresh in his mind and his stomach,” Boyd says, pushing a strand of Raylan’s hair back, like he’s seducing him with this.

Maybe Raylan’s an idiot, then, because he does find it hot, so he takes an extra languid lick of the spoon in response.

“But tomorrow,” Boyd says, waving a hand over the cupcakes in front of him, “He will see my husband on these cupcakes, one of the hottest men alive—”

Raylan points to himself, a coy “who me?” in his eyes.

Boyd pauses his dramatic monologue to stick his tongue down Raylan’s throat. He pushes Raylan up against the counter perpendicular to the one he’s using, hoisting Raylan to sit on top of it, pushing him back against the kitchen wall. Raylan wraps his legs around Boyd, letting himself be manhandled. He thrusts his hips against Boyd’s, rolling them to gain some friction.

“Yes, you,” Boyd answers the silent question. “You, you, always you,” he continues. He trails his lips down Raylan’s neck, finds where Raylan’s annoying tan line meets where his shirt collar is buttoned up, and Body sucks deep right on the line.

Raylan groans, from the action, from the promise of the chafing reminder he will have all tomorrow, from the way he knows he’s going to have people see just the peak of it, and from knowing they’ll know Raylan belongs to Boyd.

Boyd moves his tongue up to Raylan’s ear, whispering hotly over Raylan’s skin, “A man thinks he can covet his neighbor’s husband and find peace within himself?”

Raylan shivers, realizing that a fair portion of Boyd’s maniacal revenge plot had not just to do with bitterness and boredom, but unhinged possessiveness of Raylan’s person that sure reaches deep into Raylan’s core. A smarter man would run, but Raylan is only smart where it counts, and Raylan thinks sometimes he needs a love like this to chain him down to the flat of the earth, or else he risks running right off it.

Boyd bites in deep once again, encouraging breathy pants in response. He grabs lube from next to where the cupcakes cooled, and Raylan has to laugh that he is so prepared, but it’s not like Raylan had been unpredictable in what Boyd’s baking did for him.

He fingers Raylan loose while he bites deeper down Raylan’s chest, sucking deeper, nastier marks where Raylan’s shirts will cover.

Raylan throws his arms over Boyd’s shoulder, accepting all that he is given and begging for more.

Boyd adds a third finger, and Raylan bites into Boyd’s shoulder to take the edge off some of the sting.

“Now, now, now,” Raylan pants, grinding into Boyd’s cock.

Boyd lifts Raylan up by his thighs, setting his feet on the ground before turning Raylan around.

“God, Raylan, God, do you even know? Do even know what it’s like? How good it feels having you be all mine? Have you beg for my cock?” Boyd whispers low into his ear.

Raylan bends down, guided by a warm, thick hand on his neck, and he scrambles his lands, gripping for purchase on the cool, laminate countertop.

Raylan groans in satisfaction when Boyd presses up against him, entering him from behind.

“I’m—I’m gonna fall,” Raylan warns, already feeling his feet slipping, losing the strength to hold himself in when a well-placed thrust has him seeing stars. 

“Don’t worry, baby, I got you, I got you,” Boyd assures him, wrapping his arms around Raylan, taking on some of Raylan’s weight. Boyd uses one hand to play with Raylan’s nipple, the other presses into one of the dark bruises blooming over his skin.

Raylan loses his footing at that, catching his balance only in Boyd’s grip.

“You don’t know, God, I don’t think you can know,” Boyd says, “I can’t belive you, begging for my cock the way you do, taking it like you were meant for me and just for me, like my cock fits your ass just ever so perfectly.”  

Boyd continues his rhythm, biting Raylan’s shoulder as Raylan hisses with the pleasure blending with the pain.

“Beautiful, Jesus, you are so beautiful for me. With your tight as and your perfect body and your pretty face. Goddamn son, how did I get so lucky?” Boyd asks in his ear.

Boyd groans, kissing over his bites, and comes in Raylan, holding Raylan tight against the counter. Without pulling out, he holds Raylan steady with one arm, and he winds the other down to Raylan’s cock, pumping Raylan through an orgasm.

They stand there for a moment, panting and grinning, before Boyd pulls himself out to wet a dish towel to wipe off.

He washes his hands while he’s at the sink, and Raylan pulls his pants back up and jumps back up to sit on the kitchen counter, finding it more comfortable than standing.

Raylan sits on the counter, though a lot more relaxed and pliable, licking at a new spoonful of butter cream as Boyd finishes icing the last of the cupcakes.

“You never did tell me the rest of the plan, darlin,’” Raylan says, running the back of his trigger finger down Boyd’s cheek, some aimless affection.

Boyd turns to him with a smile, feeling appropriately indulged, and takes a playful bite at Raylan’s finger.

“Well, Raylan,” Boyd says, and Raylan is in the recital once again, “Vice Principal Seychelles is going to paint himself a tragic figure, one in a traditional sense, as he will be the making of his own undoing. Tomorrow morning, he is going to grab a cupcake, because his eyes are going to linger just a little too long on your gorgeous visage,” Boyd pauses, a little wink, and Raylan gives him a conspiratorial wink back, “and he doesn’t want to invite any of the questions it could bring about his sexuality. Then, when I am in the break room later, I am going to see or at least imply to see him staring soulfully at my decadent chocolate assortments—certainly it is not my own husband he is looking at instead—and I am going to offer one myself, real nice like—”

“You’re not nice,” Raylan interrupts.

“Yes, but it’s essential to be likable,” Boyd tells him. He dashes chocolate frosting on Raylan’s nose, “Which you absolutely know, because that is how you get away with as much as you do.”

Raylan smiles at him, all “you know me,” and Boyd grins back, holding Raylan under the chin, “Yes, exactly, Raylan, this smile right here is exactly the one I’m talking about.”

“So, I’m going to offer one myself, real nice like,” Boyd repeats himself, catching himself back to place, “And put one in his hand, all don’t be shy, aw, don’t be coy, aw, I definitely don’t know nothing about you having Celiac’s.”

Raylan smothers a laugh that bubbles up despite himself. He wipes the chocolate from his face and licks it, a very coy smile as he does so.

“And the killing blow, of course comes from Amy James—”

“The girl who asked you for a recommendation letter three days before it was due in the middle of finals?” Raylan interrupts.

“The one and the same, Raylan,” Boyd confirms.

“Ah, so you’re cashing in the favor you extorted from her then,” Raylan teases.

“It was a business opportunity, Raylan. She’s a smart girl. She’d come bearing baked goods as an offering, so she knows exactly how to play the game, but a child can’t bake anything better than I can to make it worth it for me,” Boyd explains, waving a hand over the cupcakes in evidence.

“And does she know what a pivotal role she is playing in getting you a promotion?” Raylan asks.

“She knows not to asks questions, now let me continue,” Boyd says, to which Raylan nods seriously.

“Young Ms. James will deliver this,” Boyd says, waving his hand over a fancy looking cronut, delicately adorned with looks to be Boyd’s very best lemon-sugar drizzle and cut strawberries and meticulously wrapped in lace paper and a rosy dessert box.

Raylan is just insane enough to feel a violent surge of jealousy that some other man is going to eat something especially made by his husband. He is only just sane enough to beat the feeling back with a stick.

“Oh, Raylan,” Boyd says, calling Raylan’s attention to him, and Raylan finds something soft gracing his face, but he doesn’t know how to read it. There’s always something to the way Boyd says his name, but sometimes that something has more to it, like now, and it does something wild to Raylan. Something harmful and big, like Raylan is posed just so to have his guts spill out if he’s not careful.

Boyd kisses Raylan, even despite Raylan’s questioning hum.

“Ms. James will deliver the box,” Boyd says, but this time closing the lid and pushing it away, “With a sincere and earnest thank you, for everything he’s done for her career with the high school.” He has a light laugh, as if he think’s Raylan has done something endearing.

Raylan pushes his face into Boyd’s neck, but he’s listening.

“And she will stand there, expectantly, for him to eat it, eyes on that box, and he will,” Boyd smiles, glinting with unhinged expectation.

Raylan is not above finding it sexy.

“And then he will get sick,” Boyd says, the glint simmering down to something warmer, a little amused, “Because that’s what I’m doing, Raylan, dearest. I made something to make him sick.”

He holds Raylan’s face in his hands, enunciating the detail as if Raylan is missing something.

Raylan frowns in the confusion.

Boyd laughs at him, “Because you seem to think that because I made something for him special, it somehow takes something from you.”

Raylan’s frown deepens, and he pulls Boyd to him. “I don’t think it’s weird to be upset that my husband is making a whole Valentine’s display for some other man.”

A snort rips from Boyd’s chest. “It is when it is for the purposes I just described! Which is why I clarified, dumbass,” Boyd says, and he is having quite a lot of fun at Raylan’s expense, “because I felt surely you must have forgotten to have furrowed your brow so deeply.” He rubs his thumb down the bridge of Raylan’s nose, something Boyd had discovered has a mystifying calming effect on him.

Raylan sinks into Boyd’s arms. Boyd laughs at him, because he’s a jerk, but Raylan is too relaxed to care much.

Boyd carries him to bed, because somehow, someway, he must love Raylan like Raylan loves him, and it’s too much for Raylan to bear, so he lets sleep take him completely.

Seychelles is out on medical leave for two weeks. After this, his wife notifies the school that he is stepping down from his responsibilities to focus on his health. Boyd interviews for the position within the week.

But then Raylan is kidnapped, and Boyd spends several weeks at his bedside, even when Raylan is perfectly fine, and Boyd is just fussing.

Boyd smacks him on the back for saying that, and Raylan coughs up blood. Boyd’s smirk is mean but his eyes are still worried, which bothers Raylan.

Boyd jokes that there’s no way Raylan is any worse for the wear after this than when they had gone getting their asses beat in Dallas every other week, trying to get Raylan somewhere passable in a fight.  

Louisville, Now

He wakes up again.

His mouth tastes like ass, and he’s sore all fucking over, and his side is killing him.

All in all, he thinks he’ll live.

He groans.

“Darling, my love, are you here with me?” Boyd asks. Raylan feels him brush the hair back from his eyes.

Raylan looks over to him.

Boyd is sitting over him, dressed up in his full teaching regalia, bow tie, sweater vest, suit jacket.

“You’re wearing your bowtie,” Raylan smiles. He can feel himself get all dopey and silly.

Boyd huffs, “Yes, I am wearing the bowtie. Jesus, you are still on the bowtie?”

“I love that bowtie,” Raylan says, he feels like a cat purring in a sunbeam.

“Raylan, you cried when you saw me without it. I had to get Tim to go pick it up from the apartment,” Boyd tells him.

“It’s my favorite bowtie,” Raylan tells him. Boyd has to know.

“Raylan,” Boyd grins. “You are so damn cute.”

“Tim probably went through our drawers,” Raylan comments.

“Wonder if he saw your collar,” Boyd laughs.

Raylan smiles back, “I hope he did.”

Art stops by to check on Raylan, while Boyd goes to grab a coffee. He sighs. “Raylan, you’ve been here less than a month.”

Raylan is still on drugs, but they’ve cut him down from the harder stuff. He’s clearheaded enough to ask, “What happened to the fugitive?”

“Hall is dead. MacKinnon is in cuffs,” Art tells him.

Raylan huffs. “Too bad. I was starting to like MacKinnon.”

Art rolls his eyes at him, “Raylan, he shot you.”

“Yeah, well, I did shoot Hall,” he answers.

“Wasn’t Hall aiming at him?” Art says, narrowing his eyes.

“Some things aren’t so easy. They’re Harlan boys. I suppose I’m letting myself get sentimental,” Raylan muses.  

Art sighs. Raylan’s used to that.

“I heard Boyd had to have Tim stop by your apartment. Did you really cry over his bowtie?” Art changes the subject with a laugh.

Raylan shrugs, even if he does flinch a little with the movement. “Memories are hazy, but I can see myself doing such a thing.”

Boyd re-enters the room, and Art gives Raylan a look. Raylan can’t quite interpret the meaning, but then again, he is still a little fuzzy around the edges. Art waves goodbye to them both, and Boyd promises some bourbon brownies and apple turnovers both. Art tells him to save it for when he’s not living in a hospital room.

Raylan thinks the nurses are overreacting and the doctors are just trying to protect themselves against a malpractice suit. He’s fine and should be able to leave.

Boyd laughs at him. His suit jacket is hanging off the back of his chair, and he’s back in sweats with Raylan’s permission. The bowtie stays. Boyd says he’s afraid Raylan will burst into tears if he takes it off, and Raylan calls him an asshole, but he’s not entirely convinced Boyd has it wrong. The pain meds have been doing a number on him.

Boyd pushes Raylan’s hair back, letting it catch between his finger webbing, letting his palm settle warmly against Raylan’s scalp.

“You never get caught unawares, sweetheart,” Boyd muses, and Raylan realizes they’re Talking. His own fault. Boyd wouldn’t have pushed it if he wasn’t okay, but Raylan is pushing that he’s okay.

“Shit,” Raylan grumbles.

“Yeah, ‘shit,’ baby,” Boyd says, and he holds his other hand over Raylan’s heart. Raylan hates it when he does this. Raylan always wants to tell him everything when he does so.

Raylan tries turning his head away from Boyd’s gaze, but Boyd’s hand in his hair keeps him turned toward him.

“Asshole,” Raylan mutters.

“Oh, I’m the asshole,” Boyd mocks, “I’m the one who let his ass get shot by some senseless child. Art let me in the office, baby, MacKinnon looks like one of the twinks we see panting over you in bars.”

Raylan groans again. He tries to cover his eyes with his hands, but he’s still in a ridiculous, unnecessary tangle of wires and tubes.

“Let’s try this again, my love: you let your guard down. Why?” Boyd says, and he gaze boars right through Raylan’s soul, pins him down to the Earth.

Raylan’s eye lingers over the button that dispenses his pain meds, and Boyd catches him. His hand tightens in Raylan’s hair.

“Can I ask you something first?” Raylan asks instead, “I promise I’ll answer your question after.”

Boyd nods, “What is it?”

“Do you regret going into teaching?” Raylan asks.

Boyd slides back in his chair. He squints down at Raylan, like he’s trying to figure something out. “You asked me something similar earlier. Are you really worried about that?”

Raylan frowns. “I don’t know. I had a weird fever dream. Can’t remember it very well now. But it made me wanna ask.”  

Boyd hums. “I never really thought about it, to be honest.”

“Not even when Seychelles tattled on you?” Raylan asks.

Boyd laughs. “No, not even then,” he says, and ponders, “It was something I fell into. I never gave it much thought. There’s a lot I like about teaching, a lot I don’t like, too.”

“But—” Raylan tries again, not knowing what he wants to ask, but knowing he needs something. He’s just not sure what.

Boyd sighs. “There was a time when all I wanted was to pick up my Daddy’s mantle and wear it as my own. And then a time when all I wanted was my brother to be back and for me to be buried in his stead. There was a time when all I wanted was to rip open your chest and live inside you every day and never have to be a person on my own,” he pauses, smiling ruefully at the last bit.

Raylan smiles back at that. There are some days when Raylan wants the reverse, for him to live inside Boyd and never be a person either.

“In the end, there are some things I only have because of how things have turned out by becoming a teacher. Our marriage, the baking, Tilly’s friendship, the auction, that kind of thing. Stuff I never would’ve known without you. The teaching was never the point, Raylan. It was always what I got out of it,” Boyd answers.

“Oh,” Raylan says. “Thank you, I guess, for answering.”

“Anytime, darling, anytime,” Boyd says, and he relaxes his grip in Raylan’s hair, pushing his hair back again.

Raylan sighs. “MacKinnon reminded me of you,” he says, softly.

“Oh, baby,” Boyd says softly, and his hand moves to cover Raylan’s own.

Raylan does look away, then, exhales the rest before he chickens out. Still a coward after all these years.

“They were both from Harlan. Both grew up together. I guess. I guess I got distracted, thinking about what could’ve happened. If I had lost you. Who I might’ve become,” he says.

“Baby, you’re not like Hall. You never would’ve been like Hall,” Boyd tries to reassure him.

“I don’t know,” Raylan mumbles, “I can’t know. Larceny, murder, I could’ve done it just like Arlo. Hell, sometimes I think that could still be me. I hid from it well enough, but it’s just waiting for me, somewhere, down the line. Or it’s chasing me, and I’ve done a fine job running from it, but it’ll catch me the moment I pass out on the side of the road from exhaustion.”

Boyd twines his fingers in Raylan’s. “And you, what? What, Raylan? You let yourself get shot because you saw yourself in the fun house mirror that they made?”

Raylan turns back to him, stares Boyd dead in the eyes. “I could so easily picture you, you with your big brains and limitless opportunities, and I could see me ruining that for you.”

“Raylan,” Boyd says, scolding, “Every door I ever had— you opened them up for me yourself. I’ve told you this before.”

“I guess sometimes I still have a hard time believing it,” Raylan says.

“I know. I know you,” Boyd says.

“Sometimes I still have a hard time believing I’m any good for you,” Raylan says, and he thinks, if he voices it out loud, Boyd will tell him he’s right and walk out the door.

“But sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you get it, right?” Boyd asks.

“Yeah,” Raylan admits with an awkward shrug. “When you make me special vanilla cake without it being a bribe. When you move with me when I get relocated. When we lie in bed together on Sunday mornings, crushing each other to death with our weight. When you wear a bowtie just because I cry about it.”

Boyd grins at that. And then, “You’ve always wanted to be a Marshal, Raylan.”

“Yeah?” Raylan says, because even if it’s true, he doesn’t know where Boyd is leading.

“There was a time—more than once, even—when you felt you had to choose between getting out and me,” Boyd continues.

“But I never did,” Raylan says.

“Why does it feel like you did today?” Boyd asks.

And Raylan. Raylan doesn’t know. He’s always stunned when Boyd gets to the heart of the matter, asking a question Raylan would never have guessed could cut him so deep.

“I let MacKinnon shoot me, because I never thought he’d do it. I saw too much of you in him,” Raylan says. It doesn’t quite answer the question. It answers the first one, at least.

Boyd grins, at that, strangely.

“You’re right. I never would,” he says, like to prove something. Raylan thinks it does.

“It’s why he did though. Shoot me. Hall was aiming to kill him, and he didn’t even think twice about it,” Raylan adds.

“And who are you in this, honey? Did you see yourself as Hall? Did you think you deserve to have gotten shot because of where Hall himself was aiming?” Boyd asks.

Raylan turns away again. “Yeah. I guess so.”

Raylan had dreamed of different worlds and different people. He had dreamed of guns and shootings and bodies on the floor. He doesn’t remember it clearly, but he thinks he didn’t just see Hall go down, but himself and Boyd; and body after body hit the ground all at once, all superimposed over the one, ghosts and phantoms and afterimages all sharing the same space. The memory blurs together with the dream. It’s just one thing. Just one shooting.

He thinks of something. “Boyd, what do you think is the opposite of walking out the door?”

Boyd leans back. He gives it a good, long thought. “I’m not sure, Raylan. Spiriting me away. Baking a pie,” he answers, and knowing love twinkles in his eyes.

Raylan laughs. “I think so, too.”