Fic: Take Care of You 5/6 Part 3 | Justified | Boyd/Raylan

[norgbelulah]

Justified. Boyd/Raylan.

AU. Sequel to Set Fire to this House and Tear Down These Walls.

~27,000 words. Explicit. Chapter 5/6. Chapter One is here. All chapters here on the AO3.

Part One is here. Part Two is here.



Boyd had the Cubans hide themselves low in the bed of his truck and he drove this time right up to the cabin, his gun in his hand, safety off.

Bo was waiting for them on the cabin's porch. He had a pistol in his hand. Boyd did not bother to conceal his weapon and, as he exited the vehicle, when his daddy saw that he was carrying, the man raised his gun. "Where are those boys, Boyd?" Bo asked slowly, a certainty of suspicion in his tone. "No way you killed them."

"Are you sure?" Boyd asked. "There's a possibility I got these lawmen so far in my pocket on account of Raylan, Daddy, that they'll slide me a manslaughter plea for defending myself. Could be I only get probation for murderin', like Ava did."

Bo bristled at the mention of Bowman's death, but he recovered in a moment, unfazed. "There's oversight for that shit, son. You ain't foolin' me. There's another department or three, federal, state, local, they won't all look the other way."

"You know that they do, sometimes."

"Not for the likes of you, or of Raylan fucking Givens. He's not high up enough. He's a shit-kicker for them, an errand boy, a problem and a half sometimes as well. I looked, Boyd. You think I didn't?"

"You heard, Daddy. There's not much looking to do behind bars. You'll find that out again soon enough."

Now Bo looked both surprised and pissed as hell. "You got them comin' here for me? You called them in? You fucking--where are those boys, Boyd?"

Boyd smiled. This was the thing Bo feared. He didn't have those children's loyalty, nor did he hold enough fear over them to stop them from rolling over on him. If things went sideways, Bo had planned to kill all four. Boyd hoped they would be grateful, for his saving their miserable lives.

"I'll tell you, if you give me Raylan. I did what you wanted, got rid of that semi--"

"How do I know, huh? You don't have them boys here to tell me so."

"Don't you trust me, Daddy?" Boyd asked sweetly, and then his eyes widened and his heart gave a great stutter because Raylan himself, beat to hell, skin all blue and black and red, rumpled clothes covered in blood-splatter and grime, came walking, real slow and deliberate, right out the front door of the cabin. There was death in his eyes, deep anger and sincere hatred and a cold remoteness that Boyd only remembered seeing once before, the day Dickie Bennet's knee met the hard side of a teenaged Raylan's aluminum bat.

"Fuck you, Boyd--" Bo had been saying, oblivious. The man Boyd knew as Raylan, loved like his own life, seemed barely there as he stepped softly right up behind Bo and pressed the barrel of his gun to the back of his neck.

"You're dead, asshole," Raylan said.

Then the Cubans stood up, three feet higher than anybody else in that holler, and Boyd shouted, "Raylan, get down," wishing that in the process he hadn't warned Bo as well, before he threw himself off to the side and out of the line of fire.

Raylan was on the ground in a second, training blessedly keeping his reflexes quick, and Boyd told himself there hadn't been enough time for one of those automatic bullets to burrow deep into his flesh. He was crawling his way behind the pillars of Boyd's grandmother's porch. Bo had done the same on the opposite side.

"Do not shoot the second man," Boyd yelled to the Cubans as they jumped out of the bed and Angela nodded, continuing to shoot at Bo in short, controlled spurts. The bullets going straight through the old, weathered wood of each pillar and rod in the fence and railing. Boyd had never known such terror, seeing those deadly things come so fast, so close to his boy.

Bo got off a shot or two from behind the sturdiest pillar at the edge of the porch between rounds of the automatic and one hit Angela in the shoulder. She cried out, loud and pained, and Ernesto lost it. Boyd couldn't do anything, too afraid of what Raylan would do if he entered the fray now, as he watched the boy let off an extended round, pulling that trigger until there was no ammunition left in the weapon.

Angela was still on her feet and she was shouting rapidly at the boy in Spanish, but he didn't hear her in time and the gun was empty and Bo got him in the chest while they were looking at each other. Angela fell to her knees then, crawling desperately towards him, gun still in hand.

Bo stepped out as she wept, clutching at her nephew's shoulder, but with her body angled still towards the danger. Bo thought she hadn't seen him, but Boyd could see her face and she was seething through her tears, but patient, waiting for him to get near enough. She pulled a smaller gun, a derringer or some such from her boot, out of Bo's sight, but could not raise it fast enough to aim at his head before he put her down. She pulled a second later and hit him in the gut, when he'd got her, as he had Ernesto, high in the chest.

They both fell at the same time. It was Angela who Boyd ran to first.

She was coughing up blood, wet and thick, when he reached her. "Guess...that I did not make it, after all," she said slowly.

Boyd did not offer her assurances. There was no way the Marshals, or anybody else, were close enough to save her. "I'm so sorry," he said. He did not touch her, either. He didn't believe that would be welcome.

"I know...that your cousin...wanted Gio's business--"

"Please, don't--"

But she kept talking, raising her hand to silence him. "You...have him tell Gio...you boys... can be trusted... in the same way as his... Tommy Bucks..."

"What?" Boyd wasn't certain now that she even knew she what she was saying any longer.

He heard Raylan's slow approach, knew the sound of his boots on gravel, but he couldn't look away from Angela. Her eyelids were drooping, her voice coming softer and tremulous as she continued, "Jus' like Tommy, you a nightmare...to deal with...but you get...the shit...done. Say to him...just that. He know...he will..."

Raylan was standing next to him, but Boyd still couldn't look up because she was fading, so fast. "A man named Tommy Bucks killed two witnesses and a Federal Marshal in Nicaragua three weeks ago," he said, his voice hard and still so remote, as Angela died. “He put a stick of dynamite in a man’s mouth.”

Everything was quiet for just a moment, so little time, before they heard Bo moving. He was dragging himself, blood pooling up and out of his wound, toward his gun, which had fallen just over a foot away from him.

Boyd watched Raylan walk over, in a slow, larger than necessary circle, to the piece and kick it out of the way, further beyond Bo's reach. Then he stepped casually on his outstretched hand, grinding his boot heel into Bo's fingers.

"Raylan," Boyd cried, as his father yelled in pain, and he pushed himself to his feet, coming between them and shoving Raylan back. Raylan wasn't looking at him, just at Bo’s face, unyielding.

“Let’s go,” Raylan said, though there was barely any recognition in his features of who he was talking to.

Boyd sank to his knees, his eyes scanning his daddy, his heaving chest, his seeping wound, red and dark. Boyd stripped off his jacket, crumpling it into a wad of sorts and pressing it into the bullet hole. “No,” he said to Raylan. “We can’t.”

Raylan looked between them, Boyd and his daddy, like he’d never held any warmth for either of them at all. “Why not?” he asked.

Boyd knew this look, this manner. He’d seen it before in battle abroad and at home, he’d felt it before himself. Raylan was going to come down from it soon. He was. He’d come down and he’d shake his head like he’d had one too many, he’d forget he ever said such a thing, and he’d never look at Boyd that way again.

“He’s dying, Raylan,” Boyd said. “I have to try and save his life. We’re not monsters.”

That seemed to shake Raylan a bit. He blinked at Boyd and frowned, but then he gripped his weapon tighter. Boyd wondered where the other two boys were, but he didn’t ask. If they weren’t out here yet, they wouldn’t be coming.

“You can holster that,” Boyd told him. Sometimes--and he was thinking of the boys in Iraq, Devil when he’d shot that security guard--sometimes all they needed was a reminder, a little nudge.

“No, I can’t,” Raylan snapped back, like they were having a spat. He was just staring at Bo’s pain-ravaged face, so Boyd let him have it, deciding not to say anything else. Raylan would come down soon. It would be fine.

He walked around again in that slow circle, keeping a safe distance from the dying man, and sat down at Bo’s head, a few feet away from Boyd. He settled down, Indian-style, and propped his Glock up on his knee, pointing straight at Bo, but as far as he could get it from Boyd.

Boyd let him have that too, pressing down hard on Bo’s wound. Boyd wished the man had just died. Boyd also wished that he had found that zone in which Raylan seemed to have got himself lodged, that battle clarity that divorced a man from his morals, from his feelings, and the finer points of human sense.

Boyd remembered that feeling, though in the hazy way of a visceral dream, and he would have welcomed it today. But he hadn’t gone there, and now he couldn’t leave his father to die alone.

Then, to Boyd’s increasing dismay and horror, Bo began to speak.

“You sure got me, son,” Bo said with a strange, dark humor in his tone. “Fooled me one good. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Boyd bit the inside of his cheek. No, of course the man couldn’t just die of a God damn gun shot wound like everybody else. “I know, but I had incentive, Daddy,” he replied, unwilling to just listen to him talk.

“Ah, but your incentive,” Bo coughed, that triumphant smile on his face again. "He didn't think you could do it, either."

Boyd stared at his father. "What?"

"He thinks he made you different, with all your fucking around. Weaker. He thought he'd killed you with it."

Boyd whirled on Raylan. "What did you tell him?"

But Raylan just looked blankly back at Boyd, the Glock in his hand the only thing steady about him. "What?" he asked, his tone vague, like he was anywhere but present in that moment, like he didn’t even understand the question.

Boyd frowned. This wasn’t just adrenaline, this wasn’t just the madness of anger or fear. Something was wrong with him. "Raylan, did you--"

"He told me a hell of a lot, son," Bo laughed, wet and wheezing. "You wanna hear it?"

"Not just this minute," Boyd replied, then said, staring at Raylan, who looked more than shell-shocked now. He seemed barely conscious, though his eyes were wide open. "You gave him something else. Not just the tranqs."

Bo smiled wickedly. "Could be. Or maybe he just couldn't wait to spit it all out. He's got quite a complex there, son, maybe more than one. He sang me a pretty little song all about it. All about you two."

Boyd could have killed him. His hands itched to. He looked at Raylan, who was blinking at him like before, but now it was in a way that made Boyd think he wasn’t fully aware. Boyd thought, for a moment, he could do it. Raylan might not remember, and even if he did, the crime was so great, so horrifically invasive, Boyd might be forgiven. Raylan might even lie about it, once he knew.

But then his thoughts caught up with reality. The doctors would know. You don’t die from gut shot so swiftly. If he strangled his father, they would see those marks. If he thrust his hand inside that open, seeping, wound, they would know that he’d done it. He would go to jail, and he’d already told Raylan he wouldn’t be doing that.

“We should kill him,” Raylan said. His voice was flat, toneless. Maybe he could follow the conversation, or maybe he was just out for blood, his base instincts let loose by all that shit in his system. Boyd still didn’t know about those boys inside the cabin.

“No,” Boyd made himself protest. If Raylan couldn’t hold himself back, Boyd would have to do it for them both. No one--except Bo, if he lived--was going to jail. “We can’t kill him. You know that, baby.”

Raylan blinked at him and he seemed to waver, his weapon hand in particular, for just a moment, before he steadied himself again, his gaze transferring back to Bo. He didn’t say anything.

Boyd gritted his teeth, pressed down harder on his father’s wound. “You think if you live, you ain’t goin’ to jail, for a long long time? You fucked him up bad, Daddy. They won’t go easy on you for this. This is... this is torture.”

“Don’t you try n’ tell me about torture, Boyd,” Bo wheezed. “And I ain’t gonna make it. At least I can put my last moments to good fuckin’ use.” He lifted a hand and grabbed at Boyd’s wrist, clamping hard around the flesh and bones, stronger than he would have thought possible. “He’s a selfish little cunt, son. He’s not worthy of what you gave him, said so himself. He’s ruined you. Even if my plan,” he laughed now, bitter and something like defeated, then continued, “had worked. You’re not even close to the man you could have been. He knows that.”

Boyd stared at his father then looked at Raylan, who hadn’t moved at all and was still gazing at them both with distance, long empty space, in his eyes. Boyd didn’t care if he understood in that moment or not, he still told his boy, “I don’t want to be that man, Raylan. It wasn’t just that you couldn’t or didn’t want him, I didn’t either. It was only ever a way to get by, ‘til you came home.”

Bo laughed again, this time like something was real funny and Boyd felt his hatred roil into something not only intense, powerful, but sinking lower to profoundly disturbed. He didn't want to be anywhere near this man any longer. He didn’t want his blood all over his hands. He thought he might be sick.

“”Til he came fucking home,” he said, the words cracking from Bo’s mouth, bit out harsh and short. “I remember when this little fucker left town. It was all anybody talked about for a week. Even your grandmother knew. You know what else I remember, Boyd?”

Boyd didn’t answer, he looked at Raylan and shook his head. But Raylan was looking at Bo now, brows furrowed, like he was a puzzle that needed to be solved. “Don’t, Daddy,” Boyd tried.

“I remember you were a fucking mess. I thought it was a girl. Pretty little Ava took up with Bowman just about that time. I thought it might have been that. Not your skinny-ass miner boyfriend.”

Raylan shook his head, still frowning. “Weren’t boyfriends,” he said and Boyd looked at him sharply. Raylan just licked his lips and watched Bo.

“Daddy, please,” Boyd said.

“Oh, I know,” Bo said, ignoring him, responding to Raylan’s words, but speaking only to Boyd. “Because now, this asshole tells me, before he left you poured your little heart out to him, served it on a goddamn platter. You weren’t fucking him, but you wanted to. Boy, how you wanted to, because no son of mine would beg for something like that unless he couldn’t help himself. And this little pissant, this sad excuse for a man, said no, then looked at you with his teary eyes, and his pathetic, home-wrecked, quivering lip, until you said, ‘Fine, go ahead, Raylan, rip out my heart and I’ll thank you for the privilege. I’ll smile so big you’ll think--”

Bo cried out then, because Boyd pressed down so hard on his wound he might as well have been thrusting his fist into it. “Shut up,” he hissed.

“You looked like a ghost in those days, Boyd,” he coughed. His eyes were hard, just as dangerous as they’d always been. He knew what he was doing here and Boyd’s hands were at his wound and not across his mouth, so he just kept on talking. “Didn’t eat. Didn’t sleep. Barely talked. You looked like the devil raked you over his coals. Didn’t change, ‘til you came back from Kuwait. Then you were hot and cold, but never for anybody, only for the game, and for your fuckin’ emulex.”

“Shut up,” Boyd said, but his eyes raised fast to Raylan. He never wanted to talk about this. It was over. Done. It didn’t matter, had never mattered. Not to him. Because Raylan came home.

But Raylan was looking at him like he’d somehow been lied to. And when Boyd thought about it, maybe he had. He tried so hard, to make it seem like it was nothing. That was why he’d never been angry with Raylan for not knowing. Boyd knew his own powers. That smile had been his greatest work, his most brilliant lie.

That night, he'd been dying inside, it felt like. He may not have ever recovered. Not fully. And he’d stretched that smile so wide. After, he thought he could get through anything, could tell whatever lie struck his fancy, to anyone, he’d been so good.

Raylan was still looking at him and he was easier to read now, with his sincere confusion, his furrowed brow and concerned eyes. Boyd knew what he would say, even if the words themselves made no sense.

"Why?" he asked simply.

Boyd shifted his jaw and forced himself to answer. He knew they were done with lies now. The time for all that was over, for sure and certain. "Because you left me, Raylan,” he said, barely realizing he was yelling those words, the ones he’d always longed to say. “Even before you said goodbye, you were gone. You left me here. Alone."

Bo was laughing, but Raylan didn’t seem to hear it. His eyes were on Boyd still, but there was a tremor in his hands, both of them. “I had to...” he spoke softly, trailing off without even finishing the thought.

“Yeah, I know that,” Boyd said with a sigh, “But, baby, it don’t make it hurt any less. Even now.”

Raylan’s eyes grew large at that, like he’d just been stuck with a knife to the gut. The gun, while still held cripplingly tight in his hand, dropped to the dirt by his knee, as if he’d lost all strength in his arm. His shoulders slumped and he raised his other hand to his eyes and Boyd was terrified for a moment that he would begin to weep.

“Raylan,” he said, but the boy just shook his head and Boyd fell silent. He didn’t know what he was going to say anyway. He’d never planned to talk about this. He’d never, ever wanted to.

Raylan raised his eyes to Boyd and they were raw and open, but dry as a bone and full of regret. “Boyd, I--I’m sorry. I don’t--I don’t know how I could have--but I didn’t think. I never do, I just couldn’t. But I always thought about you even when I wasn’t and I was so scared, of here and him and you--”

“Raylan, stop,” Boyd ordered, deeply frightened of the strange, disjointed manner in which Raylan was speaking, like he was incapable of ordering his own thoughts. “We don’t need to do this now. I know, baby, I know you’re sorry. I know you didn’t have a choice. We can talk about it later.”

Raylan shook his head again, stubborn as always, his brows still furrowed. “You never want to talk about it. You never said and I didn’t know--but I hurt you, Boyd. I hurt you and that was the very first thing I did--all I ever fucking do--”

“That’s not true,” Boyd said with wide eyes, marvelling that this was how Raylan saw himself, staggered by this guilt and shame that ran so deep even he had never seen its extent before. “You gave me the house--and that place--Raylan, you saved my life. I didn’t even ask for that, you just gave it to me.”

“It’s a monster,” Raylan retorted with terrifying vehemence. “I just didn’t want it and I was selfish--I just wanted-- maybe you--maybe it would have been better if I’d never come back at all. If I wasn’t--”

“Raylan, I’d be in jail if you weren’t here. I might be dead. I might be so far gone nothing could reach me, so lost in all that anger and bitterness--”

“Because I left--”

“But then you came back, Raylan. It doesn’t matter anymore that you left. It still hurts, but it doesn’t fucking matter. I love you and this is where you belong.”

Raylan’s mouth, which had been left open in anticipation of speaking once again, snapped shut at Boyd’s words and he looked at him, wide-eyed and almost disturbed. He was breathing hard, and now that he thought about it, so was Boyd. But soon he found himself smiling softly at his boy’s silence. “Are you so surprised?” Boyd asked.

Raylan shook his head vehemently and he blinked, like his thoughts were miles behind his actions. “I don’t know,” he choked, looking away, down at the ground, then back to Boyd, as if lost. “I’m--just so sorry... and I--I don’t know.” His hands, his knuckles, raw and red, were pressing hard into the dirt at his knees. His body was shaking, either from the injuries or the drugs or the strain, all except his fingers around that weapon.

Boyd looked down at his own hands, felt his father’s insides quake under him, heard the dying man cough again and spit a trail of mucus and blood onto the ground at his side. Boyd felt nothing but revulsion.

He pulled his blood-covered hands, sticky and feeling heavy, slow with the weight of it, from the seeping wound. He grasped Bo’s hands in his and placed them over the red and sodden remains of his jacket. “You can staunch the flow of your own blood,” Boyd told him. “It won’t be long now.” Bo only coughed again.

Boyd picked himself up from the ground and slowly, so carefully, approached Raylan, who was looking up at him like he’d forgotten Boyd could be in such close proximity to his person. He was almost leaning away.

“Hey,” Boyd said reassuringly, or so he hoped, and sank to his knees in front of Raylan. This time, when he reached for him, Boyd’s hands did not shake, but they left a trail of red as he drew his fingers across Raylan’s cheeks and into his hair. “I’m here, baby,” he said.

Raylan sucked in a fast, loud breath of air and he shuddered, his whole body shaking more violently than before like Boyd’s touch was too much for him and Boyd pulled him close, slow, but with a steady strength that brooked no argument. He tucked his Raylan’s head under his chin and felt hot breath coming faster than he’d like across his neck. Raylan’s skin was warm as well, too warm, and Boyd wondered again about the reopened holes in his shoulder.

“I never wanted to hurt you,” Raylan told him, voice quiet and muffled.

“I never thought you did,” Boyd answered, stroking his hair. “I’ve hurt you too, Raylan. I know I have. When you didn’t want to hear it, to put a name to us. You remember that. You were hurting that night because of me. That’s what you do when you love someone like I love you, like I know you love me. We can’t help it, because it’s so much--”

“Too much--” Raylan’s voice was close to breaking.

“No, Raylan. Never that. Never too much to stop.” Boyd knew under any other circumstances, Raylan would never have said such a thing, admitted such doubt. He felt his chest constrict painfully at the idea that Raylan, after the events of that day, would be driven to such depths of despair. “Just,” Boyd told him, pulling him away just far enough to meet his eyes, still so wide open, his dilated pupils bottomless and somehow uncanny. “Trust me, baby. You know me.”

And Raylan smiled, and it was smooth and natural, almost like nothing was wrong, like none of it had happened. But it also seemed paper thin, given to blowing away in the wind, like it was nothing at all. “Yeah, okay, darlin’,” Raylan replied.

Then they heard the ambulance siren and Bo started shaking like Raylan had. It took Boyd far too long to realize it was from laughter, so weak and faint, it was soundless. He saw the black vehicles with tinted windows and government plates roar up the hill, through the trees and he felt Raylan pull away, move to stand.

Boyd looked up, too surprised to speak. Raylan looked very much like himself in that moment, if the lacerations to his face and the blood and bruises across his skin could be ignored. His eyes were on Bo and they were again frighteningly remote. “We should have killed him,” Raylan said and he swayed, for only half a second, but his right hand was steady.

Boyd took a slow breath and said, “Well, we didn’t.”

Bo raised his head, with significant effort it seemed, and looked at Raylan, then long at Boyd. “You’re going to hell, son,” he croaked. “They got a special place for you.”

Boyd smiled grimly and got to his feet, raising his hands in the air as Art Mullen exited his vehicle and approached them, weapon in hand. “Then, I’ll see you there, Daddy,” he replied.

“Raylan, Jesus,” Art called when he came near enough to hear, glancing quickly down at Angela and Ernesto’s bodies, then lowering his voice the closer he got to them. “Where you been, son?”

Raylan stared at him like he had no idea how to answer that, but luckily Art looked down at that moment and saw who was at their feet and exactly what he was busy doing. “Shit,” he swore and called the paramedics over.

Boyd kept very still with his hands raised, but he saw that Raylan had backed up, moving away, the more people rushed over to them. They watched as Bo was put onto a stretcher and bandages were broken out of plastic wrapping, then pressed hard over the wound. They kicked dirt into the blood on the ground and their shoes were stained with the mixture.

Art was talking to one of them, a short woman with steely eyes and a compact efficiency of movement. He came back over to them when they began to cart Bo away. “They’re gonna try to save him, but she didn’t seem too optimistic. Something about blood pressure and shock from transfusions,” he looked at Boyd, who was glad for the man’s forthright honesty. “She said she’d be surprised if he makes it to the hospital, especially from this distance.”

Raylan shifted at that and Boyd’s eyes went to him, an intense wave of concern washing over him at the thought that Raylan could collapse at any moment. They were safe now, the danger had passed. But Raylan somehow looked fine, or could pass for fine if Boyd didn’t know any better. He shrugged and said with a strange, too jovial smile, “Well, guess we didn’t have to commit no murder today, Boyd.”

He saw Art give Raylan a funny look at that, but then shrug it off and step up to Boyd’s back, taking his raised arms down gently by each wrist. “Art,” Boyd began, intended as a warning.

“Art, what the hell are you doin’?” Raylan asked, before Boyd could continue, like he had absolutely no notion.

“My job,” the man said flippantly.

Boyd looked over at Raylan who was shaking his head like he didn’t believe what he was seeing. “Why is he in cuffs?”

Art sighed, and answered like Raylan was supposed to know, “He blew up a tractor trailer with a rocket launcher early this morning, Raylan.”

When Raylan looked for confirmation, wide-eyed and unsteady, Boyd nodded and tried to assure him, “Raylan, it’s fine.”

But Raylan wasn’t listening to him, his eyes were on Art, like his boss was the one who’d done something crazy. “He was coerced!”

Art turned to Raylan, impatience in his tone and stance. “I know that, Raylan,” Art said. “We talked to those boys he tied up, and his close-mouthed cousin--what little we could get out of him. But it has yet to be proven We can’t just let him go when we’ve got these charges. I’m sure--” He broke off as a shudder ran through Raylan’s entire body, violent and visible. Art stiffened behind Boyd and he said tentatively, “Raylan? Are you--” breaking off when Raylan raised his gun, shaking his head in denial. Boyd wished desperately that he had thought to disarm him before the Marshals got there.

“Raylan, Jesus Christ, what the hell are you doing?”

Boyd found his tongue again. “Art, I’m not certain he has any notion of what he’s doing or saying right now. My daddy shot him up with something, beat him to hell.”

“Shit,” Art swore. “We thought he was working outside the channels, lookin’ for you. We didn’t... Jesus, Raylan, sit down, son.”

But Raylan shook his head and kept his gun pointed straight at Art. No one from the rest of the contingent seemed to have seen yet what was going on.

“He’s been here, tied to a chair mostly, goin’ on twenty-four hours. He’s been interrogated in some fashion--what else, I’m not even sure. He needs medical attention. He can’t be held responsible for this, okay?”

Art let go of Boyd’s bound hands and took a tentative step towards Raylan, despite the gun aimed at his chest. “Yeah, okay, Boyd,” he said. “What do you suggest we do about our current situation, though?”

Boyd heard Tim shout now, from behind him, a shocked and questioning, “Art? What the--”

“Stand down, everybody,” Art yelled, then said much softer, “you too, Raylan.”

Raylan shook his head again, blinking slow but frowning hard. “He can’t...” Raylan mumbled. “I won’t let...”

Boyd leaned forward, turning his head to look at Raylan straight on. “Raylan, I’m not gonna go to jail. Raylan, look at me.” Thankfully, Raylan did look. He was listening now. “You know about the rules. You’re the one says we gotta follow them all the time. Art’s not gonna let me go to jail. We’re gonna tell ‘em what happened, and I’m gonna be home, with you, by tomorrow. You keep this up, you do somethin’ stupid, I don’t know what they’re gonna do to you. Don’t make me be the one has to visit the other behind those goddamn bars, I swear to God, Raylan. Not after what I did and did not do for us today. Just lower your fucking weapon.” And when Raylan didn’t comply, Boyd shouted desperately, “Look at who you’re aimin’ at, for God’s sake.”

Raylan stared at Art again and his eyes grew wide, though he froze, every limb stiff with shock or terror. He did not put down the gun.

“Raylan,” Art said quietly, “son, I cannot imagine what you’ve gone through today, so for right now you’re gonna get a pass. But if you don’t put down your service weapon right now, Marshal, I’m going to be extremely pissed off.”

Raylan blinked at him and swayed again and Boyd finally felt a rush of relief as the tension in Raylan’s arm released and he tried to holster the damn thing, missed, then finally just let it fall to the ground. “Shit,” he murmured, sounding dazed as he pressed his left hand to his head.

Art approached him slowly and bent to retrieve the gun from the ground at Raylan’s feet, flipping on the safety and sliding it into his jacket pocket. Boyd stayed where he was, though he longed to rush forward. He’d been arrested before, he knew how it went, and he wasn’t about to press his luck with Art today.

He heard the chief ask Raylan a few questions, his name, his title, the date. Raylan said he didn’t know the last one. “Did you go to Little Sandy yesterday morning, Raylan?”

“I don’t think--” Raylan began, but Boyd interjected, “Yes, he did.”

“That was yesterday?” Raylan groaned and nearly fell over.

Art had his hands on Raylan’s shoulders in a flash, but Raylan flinched away, gasping, when fingers brushed the old, reopened wounds and then again when Art tried to steady him at his chest. “Mother of God,” Art breathed, distress in his voice as he stared, finally looking hard to assess the damage. “Boyd, what did they do to him?”

Boyd remembered the blood on the floor and on that bag. He’d seen beatings like that go down before so he answered as truthfully as he could, “Bo had two boys beat him, whatever way they wanted. Then he kicked him, once or twice, hard in the chest or stomach, hard enough to move a body across the floor, and had him tied to a chair. So he’s got at least a broken rib or two, and the scattershot from the motel, all those wounds are open again. I think he’s running a fever and, when Daddy let me see him, Raylan said they gave him tranqs at first. Raylan, do you remember that?”

Raylan had his hand on Art’s shoulder, instead of the other way around, and Art’s hand was steady on Raylan’s lower back as they tried to make their way over to the cars. It was going to be slow going. He looked at Boyd and frowned. “Maybe,” he said.

“Do you remember if he said what he gave you after that?” As he asked, Art and Raylan came abreast of him then walked on past and so Boyd turned to keep his eye on them and found, though he really shouldn’t have been surprised, that a group of about ten to fifteen people, including Tim, Rachel, and several Staties Boyd was sure he’d seen before, were all staring at them.

“I forgot that was anything, Boyd,” Raylan said, like it was normal for him to be so absent-minded. “I thought... we were just talkin’. It was just talk. I wasn’t thinkin’ about it.”

Boyd knew that was bullshit, but he didn’t have any notion of what kind of drug would bring about such a radical change in Raylan concerning topics he would usually keep so private. Raylan had told Bo things even Boyd didn’t know, after six years of intimacy. He shuddered, not wanting to think about it any longer.

“Tim,” Art called impatiently when no one moved forward to help them. “Get over here. The paramedics all left?”

“No,” Tim visibly shook himself and strode forward. “There’s one still here. He’s inside the building tending to two suspects, both shot in the kneecaps.”

“I do remember that,” Raylan said grimly.

“Well, at least you didn’t kill them,” Boyd replied.

“Thought you might not like that.” Boyd wasn’t sure if Raylan was talking to him or to Art at that point.

“Well, get him,” Art ordered Tim, who practically sprinted to obey. “As you can see, Raylan’s in sort of a bad way right now. And Rachel,” he said, as the other Marshal looked attentive, holstering her own weapon now. “Make it look like Mr. Crowder, here, is actually under arrest, not just wandering around with his hands in cuffs. I’d really rather not be written up for this massive conflict of interest any more than I already have to, all right?”

Boyd kept walking, in pace with them, even as Rachel came around to his back and laid a impersonal hand on his forearm. She asked him politely if he wanted his rights read and he told her, no thanks, as he knew them. He turned to Raylan then and asked, as though both of them hadn’t just been talked about like they were absent from the party, “How the hell did you get your gun back, anyway?”

Raylan shrugged, as much as he could at any rate, and said, “Can’t remember.”

Art just laughed.

They let Boyd stay nearby when Raylan finally reached the paramedic’s SUV, which had been utilized instead of a second ambulance as there were already too many vehicles in his grandmother’s little holler. They sat Raylan down on the opened tailgate of the SUV and Boyd settled himself quite close, standing but leaning against the tailgate as well.

The paramedic, looking just as efficiently competent as his female counterpart from earlier, examined Raylan with a disturbed expression on his face, though he did not voice any trepidation. Instead, he asked Raylan most of the same questions Art had, then started mumbling about slowed reaction time and pupil dilation.

“I can’t give you anything for the pain right now,” he explained, “since we don’t know what you already have in your system. But I’ll take some blood and we’ll find out as soon as we can.”

Raylan nodded at him, but he looked as though he wasn’t quite following, or was unsure if he had followed properly, so Boyd scooted just a little closer and brushed his fingers, hands still bound together behind his back, against the nearer of Raylan’s wrists.

Raylan glanced at him and Boyd nodded, prompting a grateful smile from his boy.

“Now,” the paramedic continued, “The other ambulance is twenty minutes out. We can wait for it, or we can just go now with you laid down in the back of the SUV. It’s not ideal, and it won’t be great for your ribs, but you would get out of here and get treatment faster.”

Boyd looked at Art, who was also hovering nearby, though keeping an eye on all the other goings on in the holler. Raylan was frowning and hesitantly opening his mouth, like he wasn’t sure what to say. Boyd knew, up until then, most of Raylan’s decision-making had been either following or ignoring orders he’d been given. This question required a little more thought.

When Art grudgingly nodded at him, Boyd grasped again at Raylan’s wrist and said, “That sounds like a good idea, baby. We just wanna get out of here, get you some medicine, some rest. Right?”

Raylan nodded again and replied, “Yeah. Okay.” He turned then and thrust his face into the crook of Boyd’s neck, not even bothering to do anything with his arms. He just leaned there and breathed Boyd in.

The paramedic looked between them like he hadn’t made the connection before. Boyd put a face on that dared him to say anything and the man turned away, climbing into the front of the vehicle and pulling down seats so Raylan could lay more comfortably.

Boyd wished he could raise his arms to offer some additional relief, but the cuffs rather handily prevented such a motion. Boyd looked at Art again and the man seemed to want to sputter or grumble or something, but instead his shoulders sort of deflated and he came around to Boyd’s other side, saying, “I’ll cuff you to the goddamn seat, okay? But this is only because I’ve never seen that boy in such a state. Try to remember that legally you are under arrest and we’ll try not to get into an accident, all right?”

And they got Raylan into the back of the cab without any additional fanfare.

The paramedic told him to lay on his back, to reduce stress on his ribs, but Raylan either wasn’t listening or didn’t care, because he promptly turned to his side and curled loosely around where Boyd was sitting, back straight against the driver’s seat. Boyd’s left hand was cuffed to the handlebar attached to the door, but he sunk the fingers of his right hand immediately into Raylan’s hair.

Art climbed into the passenger seat at the front, giving Boyd a look that said, “you thought I was gonna let you two out of my sight?” Boyd smiled at him tiredly. Art gave some additional instructions to the two remaining Marshals and they rolled out of the holler soon after.

They kicked up thick, dry dust, from the tires on their way out and all Boyd could think of was his daddy’s blood, Angela’s and Ernesto’s, Raylan’s too, all ground into that dun-colored dirt, enough to make a puddle of rusted-red mud. He thought of his grandmother’s cabin, stripped of its warmth and Raylan’s blood underneath her carpet. He shuddered.

Boyd never wanted to look upon that place again.

He was certain, after a few minutes on the road, Raylan would fall asleep. He kept his eye on his boy, waiting for him to close his eyes and drop off, but he didn’t. He was just staring into space and every once in a while his fingers would twitch a little closer to Boyd, until finally Boyd just took Raylan’s hand in his and set it in his lap, rubbing the pads of his fingers soothingly across Raylan’s knuckles and fingertips.

"Boyd,” Raylan said cautiously a moment later. Art turned in the front seat at the noise, but Boyd only had eyes for Raylan.

“Yeah, baby?”

“You're wearing my belt," he stated with some confusion.

Boyd smiled. He’d actually forgotten. "Yes, Raylan, I am."

Art began to laugh softly and Boyd shot him a look. He know they didn’t seem like the type of couple to share clothes, and in reality, they weren’t. These were extreme circumstances.

“Why?” Raylan asked after a moment, like he could not think of one reason. Case in point.

Boyd looked down at him and answered truthfully when he replied, "Because I thought I might have to strangle somebody and I knew this belt would hold up best under pressure."

There was a beat of silence in which Art stopped laughing, then the paramedic at the wheel choked rather dramatically, and Raylan answered with an, “Oh," of comprehension. “It looks good on you,” he said a moment later, like it was nothing and Art started laughing again, almost to tears.

Boyd could not imagine what was so funny.

He turned now to the window and watched the trees lining the state road speed past them, just a green blur, as he kept his free fingers working on Raylan’s clammy hands. The hospital, Boyd knew, was maybe ten minutes away now. He hadn’t been there--to Harlan County General--since his mother died. Crowders were not hospital people. If you weren’t dying, you didn’t go.

If he had his choice, he’d just bundle Raylan up--he knew how to set a cracked rib or two--and take him home. But, Boyd was in cuffs and he was damn lucky he even got to sit here in the car with Raylan after what happened that day. But knowing that didn’t stop him from longing to be back at the house, lazing away the day in bed with Raylan smiling at him, hair mussed up right by the pillow and threatening that if they didn’t fuck soon he was just going to take himself back to Lexington.

“Boyd, we’re here,” Raylan said, his voice still sounding slow, off, in that subtly frightening way. Of course Raylan needed the hospital, they still had to find out what the ever-living fuck his daddy had done to him. “You fell asleep.” Raylan stated this in the strange, matter of fact, yet confused way he’d pointed out the thing with the belt. Like he had no notion why Boyd would have fallen asleep in that moment.

“I did not,” Boyd told him. “I was thinking. My eyes were just closed.” He looked down and forced the soft smile that had crept on his face to stay right where it was, despite the fact that not looking at Raylan for a few minutes had caused him to forget what a terrible sight his boy was, how beaten he looked, how broken.

Boyd had never been one to misplace blame. He knew this was not his fault entirely. What blame could be laid at his feet was doubled by what Raylan had done to put himself there--Boyd was carefully not thinking about the lies that boy had told him over the goddamn weekend--and tripled or more by what Bo had done to them both.

No, Boyd could not blame himself, did not feel any misguided guilt. What he felt was a profound sensation of a heady and bitter combination of disgust and anger and fear. He could not recall feeling anything so awful in his life, not in connection to looking at Raylan, not even the night he’d told his lies with a only a smile and then descended into his own private purgatory for ten years.

Raylan grinned at him and he began to bleed again where his lip was split. It was staining some of his teeth red. “You did,” Raylan insisted, teasing, and Boyd thought he might cry, but he was just blinking back tears because they’d opened the back up and the unfiltered sunlight was streaming in.
]

Raylan woke with a start in a darkened hospital room, tubes stuck through his arms, a thick layer of bandages around his chest, and bed sheets tucked tight around him. He turned to the side and saw Boyd, looking at him with sleepy eyes, but a wakeful stare, maybe attempting to assess his state of mind.

They looked at each other for a long moment, until Raylan smiled and Boyd sighed, knowing he was back in his right mind.

“How much do you remember?” Boyd asked softly, running his hand across Raylan’s thigh through the blankets.

Raylan licked his lips and spoke honestly. “Most of it, I think,” he said. “Don’t tell Art.”

Boyd nodded then looked away. “Is there anything you want to know? Anything you want to ask me?”

Raylan thought about it. He had a lot of questions, actually. He knew the memories of what had happened in the last few days were there inside his head, when he reached for details he could find them. He remembered the smell, the densely hot feeling of the bag over his head, the sharp, thudding pain behind his eyes after they’d beat him again and again.

But there were larger facts that seemed to be swinging around in his mind, and when he tried to catch them, they slipped away from him. They were the things that happened later, things he either didn’t know or wasn’t able to grasp near the end of it all.

“Is Bo dead?” That was the most important question, he thought.

“Yes,” Boyd replied, no grief in his voice, though his eyes seemed dark, guarded. “He didn’t make it to the hospital.”

“Did I kill those boys?” All Raylan remembered of that time was a blind, red-tinged rage. He still didn’t know how he’d got the gun.

Boyd looked at him, surprised. “No. You shot ‘em in the kneecaps, both. You don’t remember talking about that?”

Raylan thought about it, remembered his hand on Art’s shoulder, how painful it suddenly became to walk even that little distance, how Art had laughed at him when he said he didn’t know how he’d got the gun back. “Yeah, now I do.” He rubbed at his forehead. “Sorry,” Raylan murmured. “It’s kind of a jumble.”

“I’m surprised you remember any of it,” Boyd replied. “The doctors said you wouldn’t.”

Raylan smiled and tapped the side of his head lightly, keeping his eyes steady on Boyd. “Steel trap,” he said and Boyd laughed, low and welcome.

Raylan wanted to pull him close, but he sensed Boyd was holding himself back for some reason. He thought back to that morning, if that was the appropriate amount of time, and remembered... he’d been upset, not exactly at Boyd, at something he’d done, but with Boyd, or about him. He’d said some things, to Bo, to Boyd, that he hadn’t meant to, raw, painful things, even he had barely realized were lurking inside him.

“What did he give me?” Raylan asked.

Boyd looked uncomfortable now, prompting Raylan to lean forward, wincing as he did through the ache in his muscles and bones, to place his hand, dragging those creepy tubes along with it, on Boyd’s cheek. He drew the pad of his thumb across Boyd’s high cheekbone. He wondered when Boyd had last eaten, because the hollows in his face looked more pronounced than usual and there were dark circles under his eyes.

Boyd met his eyes again. He smiled ruefully. “They said I might not want to tell you. But they really don’t know you very well.”

Raylan frowned. “What was it?”

“Well, you were right. First it was tranqs. Later, as far as they can tell, alternating some kind of barbiturate and methamphetamine. It’s supposed to work like a sort of truth serum. That’s what the boy said, the one that shot you up. His uncle was a clinic doctor, learned about it from him, but the kid got caught up in dealing,” Boyd just kept talking and Raylan knew it was because he was unsure, as close to nervous as Boyd ever got. He didn’t get that way much, but when he did, that’s when he would ramble.

When Raylan opened his mouth, however, Boyd closed his tight, like he knew exactly what he’d been doing. “Your daddy shot me up with meth?” Raylan asked slowly.

Boyd grimaced. “Among other things.”

“But,” Raylan shook his head, completely at a loss. “Boyd, yesterday--or whenever it was--I’ve never felt so terrible in all my goddamn life. I remember that. Ain’t that shit supposed to get you, you know, high? Euphoric?”

Boyd tilted his head, in acknowledgement or something, and replied, “Well, yes, but in the kind of low dose they gave you, and with that other shit, all it really ended up doing--all they really wanted it to do--was get you to talk.”

As soon as the word came out of Boyd’s mouth the things around Raylan, the bed, the room, the air, fell away fast, swallowed up in darkness and all he could think, all he remembered was everything he told--he told Bo everything and then there were hands at his face and he went stiff and everything was painful and he tried to push them away.

But Boyd was speaking to him softly, telling him, “I know, baby, it’s okay. It’s all right, Raylan. He took it all with him, he took it to the fucking Devil--” and Raylan lunged forward then, gasping at the sudden movement, but clung fast and hard to Boyd regardless. He forced their lips together, pressing hard, fiercely, because all he needed to know, needed to be certain of, was that Boyd still loved him--

“My God, Raylan,” Boyd murmured, but with a steely fervor, pulling away, “we gotta talk about some of your shit, eventually, okay?” When Raylan looked at him blankly, unaware that he’d even been speaking aloud, Boyd shook his head, almost indulgently, “Of course, I still love you, baby. I loved you first and last, I love you despite myself and despite yourself, because I don’t know how to do anything else, all right? Now, is there anything else you want to know?”

Boyd hadn’t yet taken his hands from Raylan’s face and he leaned forward and pressed a long kiss to his forehead as Raylan tried to slow down his breathing, his heart rate. His hands were shaking, and he tried to still them. Of course, Boyd still loved him. There was no way anything Bo had done, or Raylan had said--at least that he remembered--could change that.

Raylan smiled, or tried to, in spite of his aches and pains, of the throbbing of his head, and the thudding of his heart, and asked shakily, “How long was I out?”

Boyd answered without pulling away, his lips brushing Raylan’s furrowed brow. “You were with D--at the cabin almost a full day. I saw you in the late morning and didn’t come back ‘til just before dawn. We got you here, to the hospital, around ten. Right now, it’s nearly nine o’clock in the evening.”

“You must be tired,” Raylan said.

Boyd sighed, breath coming slow across his skin, like a warm breeze. “I slept a little while you did.”

“Did you eat?”

He laughed now. “Tim came in with fried chicken a few hours ago. Stop worrying about me.”

“I will when you no longer look like death warmed over, darlin’,” Raylan replied. He raised his hands to Boyd’s face, though his arms were tired and sore and those tubes pulled at his skin, so that they mirrored each other.

“Pot and kettle, baby,” Boyd murmured and Raylan supposed he was right.

He squirmed, his muscles straining too hard, and Boyd moved off him, sitting back down in the chair he had pulled up close to the bed. Raylan laid back and let out a deep sigh.

“Push your button, Raylan,” Boyd told him, indicating the red circle on the remote stuck to his bed. “For the pain meds.”

Raylan was familiar with the concept and he was aching, from deep in his bones to the surface of his skin. But he shook his head. “I need,” he said slowly, “to think about things.”

Boyd’s eyes widened a little and he looked away. “I’m not sure that you do, baby. Not today.”

And Raylan thought, that’s what got him here, Boyd too. That’s all they ever did. Avoid. Stop thinking, stop talking. It got them through the beginning, when things were fragile and they didn’t know what the hell they were doing, but it nearly cost them everything in the long run, the happy ending Raylan realized now they might actually be able to have.

He was done with lying to himself, at least about Boyd. All that got him was beat to hell and shot up with meth, pointing guns at the people he cared about most--and goddamnit he was never going to tell Art he remembered doing that.

He knew this whole thing could be a catalyst for change. Without realizing, he’d used his Arlo’s death, the ownership of the house, as a similar kind of starting point. He didn’t see any reason he couldn’t use being kidnapped and tortured in the very same way.

It was sort of poetic, taking these dark turns, these shadowy paths in his life to bring about something brighter, something new and good for him and Boyd.

Raylan blinked, thinking there must have been some remnants of whatever kind of pain-killers or the tranqs or the fucking meth left in him, for his mind to wander so far off its usual course.

He remembered Boyd suddenly in the yard in front of that cabin, shouting at him to get down. He’d been so close to pulling the trigger on Bo, the only thought in his head centered directly on hurt and pain and murder. It hadn’t even been about Boyd in that moment, all it was to Raylan, all it seemed then that it had ever been was vicious, ice-cold revenge for the pain that had been dealt to him. And then Boyd had called him back, again and again, telling him things he knew, but couldn’t understand then, that he couldn’t kill a man in cold blood, couldn’t take that kind of revenge, and not die a little himself.

Boyd knew that about him, knew that he couldn’t--no, shouldn’t do it, and stopped him. Not because Boyd didn’t want his daddy dead, Raylan remembered seeing his boy’s own anger and hatred, fear and disgust with what had happened, but because he was willing to make Raylan’s choice for him, when he wasn’t able.

And Raylan had thought Boyd wasn’t strong enough. He took a quick breath, a sharp hiss of realization and Boyd stirred, taking his hand. “Just push the button, baby,” Boyd crooned. “We can--”

“Bo told you what I thought,” Raylan said, before he lost his nerve, looking at him intently. Boyd’s expression darkened and then he wouldn’t meet Raylan’s eyes. “I remember that.” Raylan hadn’t been able to answer when Boyd asked him what he told Bo. Raylan didn’t understand at the time, because nothing had made any sense, but he remembered now the words Bo had said. There was no question.

“He did,” Boyd agreed quietly.

There was a low beeping sound between them, some machine that was monitoring him. Raylan couldn’t decide if the tension in the room was created by it or just heightened.

“I’m sorry,” he spat out his apology too quickly, like it was going to burn his tongue the longer he held it in. There was no way he could swallow it long enough to wait until he was stronger, or until they were home. “I was wrong, Boyd. I--”

“You didn’t come back here to save anybody,” Boyd interrupted him, finally lifting his eyes to Raylan’s face.

“I didn’t,” Raylan denied, feeling stricken. He’d almost forgotten he’d said that.

Boyd really did look exhausted now. Raylan wanted to touch him, but he found he couldn’t move under the scrutiny of his gaze. “But that’s what you thought you had to do,” Boyd told him.

Raylan didn’t bother denying it. “I was wrong.”

“I fucking know you were, Raylan,” Boyd replied, not any louder, but a hell of a lot more intensely. “You didn’t listen and you took on all that danger--danger meant for me--on to yourself. And all I had, Raylan, all I had left was this fear. Fear of what he was doing to you, because of me, and fear that he was right, that you were right too, that I couldn’t--or I wasn’t--”

“Boyd.” Raylan couldn’t listen anymore. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you are.” He sounded tired again. “I’m not surprised, Raylan. I damn well shouldn’t be, because you’re you and you’re a fucking asshole half the time, but--”

“Boyd--”

He put his hands on Raylan, both of them, sliding up his thighs to his hands in his lap and Raylan fell silent under the calm intensity of his gaze.

Raylan was sorry. He’d been sorry even as he’d been doing it, lying to put himself in front of a bullet they both knew was for Boyd. Boyd had said they’d do it together, and Raylan had heard him, but he couldn’t stop himself, unable to get the image of his broken boy in that motel room, half-mad from fear of loss and the threat of his daddy, out of his head. Raylan couldn’t ever see him there again. He couldn’t. So he underestimated him and he lied and he’d nearly got himself killed.

Boyd lifted a hand, taking Raylan’s chin between his fingers, making him look him right in the eyes. They weren’t angry, Raylan could see that. They were tired and Raylan was so so sorry.

“Just don’t do it again, God damn it.”

“I won’t,” Raylan breathed.

“You disagree with me, you think I’m wrong or full of shit or whatever you think, you tell me, son. I do not need to be watched over by your better angels, however sacrificial they are feeling at any given moment, you got me?”

“Yes,” Raylan said desperately. “I promise, Boyd.” He heaved a sigh then and closed his eyes, opening them as he grasped at Boyd’s hand. “You know me, darlin’.”

Boyd smirked at him, slightly bitter but somehow still beautiful. “I do, baby,” he said, his mouth turning up into a small, but real, smile. “You’re such an asshole.”

He put his hand over Raylan’s on the remote for the meds, sliding their thumbs across the cold plastic to the indent of the big red button. They pushed it down together.

Raylan felt like he could sleep for weeks.