Fic: Set Fire to this House
Justified. Raylan/Boyd.
AU. Pre-series.
~3000 words. NC-17.
Thanks to beta rillalicious for taking a look. <3
Short disclaimer: All characters and scenarios belong to Elmore Leonard and Graham Yost and NOT ME.
Summary: Raylan's father died three weeks after his 30th birthday. It was a real inconvenience.
Written for write_light for the Fall Fandom Free-for-all, hosted by oxoniensis. The prompt was "canon-who-cares, set-fire-to-this-house porn." So, automatically my brain went to AU and I got 1500 words of plot and 1500 words of porn. I hope people enjoy.
Set Fire to this House
Raylan’s father died three weeks after his 30th birthday. It was a real inconvenience.
He was headquartered in Salt Lake at the time and he’d been seeing a real nice girl from Kentucky. But he flew home anyway, took a rental from Lexington to Harlan, home, if he could call it that anymore.
He’d been back for his mother’s funeral about three years before, but he’d been just out of the training academy at Glynco back then and it hadn’t been so far to drive. Now, it was a three day affair, one to get there, one to stay, one to get back, and he’d taken a few personal days recently, so he wouldn’t even get the paid time off.
But go Raylan did. He sat through the viewing, smiled politely, stood through the funeral, looked just the right amount of grim, and drank through the wake. He wasn’t happy about any of it ‘til he saw Boyd Crowder walk through the front door of that house.
Raylan watched Boyd make the rounds, bend low to talk to Helen, shake a few hands. He saw Boyd’s eyes shift every once in a while to the corner that Raylan had parked himself in with his bottle of Wild Turkey.
Raylan picked himself up and looked over his shoulder at Boyd, motioning for him to come out on the back porch if he wanted. He didn’t particularly feel like subjecting the entire wake to their conversation. Voices had a tendency to carry in this house.
A few minutes later, Raylan heard his steps coming through the kitchen. He looked up from his bottle and met Boyd’s eyes as he came out the door. Boyd wasn’t wearing a suit, he probably didn’t own one, but he had on a dark vest and some black pants that looked appropriately mournful. It made Raylan’s own Men’s Warehouse attire feel stiff and itchy.
“Raylan,” Boyd said, their usual greeting from the mine days.
Raylan smiled and realized he was drunk. “Boyd,” he answered and passed the bottle to him.
“If this was any other day, I’d say it’s a little early,” Boyd commented before he took a swig himself. “This your daddy’s stash? I always thought you were a Jim Beam man.”
“I dunno,” Raylan replied. “It’s harder to be so picky out in Salt Lake. Today, I ain’t picky at all. Fuckin’ Arlo had this in his sock drawer, unopened. Helen was drinkin’ it yesterday before she asked me to take it off her.”
“She know you were planning on drowning in it?” Boyd looked at him without judgement and Raylan remembered that was one of the things he’d always liked about this boy, he didn’t look down on anybody. Boyd passed him the bottle back.
Raylan laughed softly, drank again. “There was no plan, Boyd.”
“There never is, Raylan.” The look in Boyd’s eyes after he said that gave Raylan just a little pause, reminding him of a night over ten years before when they had almost done something about it, almost gone that way.
Boyd had stepped up apace to where Raylan was leaning against the porch railing, he was against the pillar, hip cocked, arms and legs crossed over one another. He didn’t look so much older, but there was something different about his demeanor.
Raylan wasn’t really aware of any thought process he went through before he stepped forward and pressed his lips to Boyd’s. He heard a surprised in take of breath, like a hiss but the opposite direction, and Boyd’s mouth opened for him. Raylan pushed his hand up through the rough hair at the back of Boyd’s neck and pressed himself hard up against him. Boyd’s reaction was no less earnest.
Raylan almost fumbled with the bottle between them, but Boyd’s hand rose and grasped at the neck of the glass tight around his hand. Boyd pulled away then, and smiled ruefully at Raylan as he said, “I think it would be prudent to set this aside, for now. I’d hate for you to lose such a treasured heirloom of your father.”
Raylan let Boyd have the bottle, watched him take another drink from it, and bend to set it on the stair below them. “Ha, ha,” Raylan breathed to Boyd’s lips as they met again, this time, softer, lingering.
When Raylan moved onto press his lips to Boyd’s neck and collar, Boyd said quietly into his ear, “I think we should save this too, Raylan. Anybody could walk through that door, at any time.”
Raylan wasn’t done kissing Boyd, but he paused long enough to answer, “I’m flying back tomorrow. Fuck anybody.”
Boyd pushed Raylan away, rough but not exactly a shove. “Shit, boy, what’d you do that for?”
“Last time I came back I was here for the whole weekend, but you were gone. How’m I supposed to know where you are, what you’re doing? I had to take this time off too, Boyd. I do work for a living,” Raylan snarled. He wasn’t at Boyd’s beck and call, he didn’t have to justify his choices.
Boyd didn’t take the easy come back of what Raylan had chosen to do for his living, and Raylan was grateful for it. He didn’t want to have that argument at that precise moment. Instead, Boyd sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, speaking tightly, “When your mother died, I had two months left on my tour. It wasn’t like I could just call up command, tell ‘em sorry, I had to be in Harlan that week to take it up the ass from an old friend.”
Raylan rolled his eyes. “Well, thanks for telling me you’d joined the goddamn army, Boyd. I had to find out from fuckin’ Johnny when I went to look for you.”
Boyd pushed himself back further, straight against the column, like he wanted to be as far away from Raylan as possible. “What? So you could send me care packages? We’re not in some kind of relationship, last I checked.”
“Jesus, fuck you.”
It was Boyd’s turn to roll his eyes right back as he grumbled, “Maybe later,” and looked away.
Raylan shook his head, anger put temporarily on the back-burner. “This is what I’m telling you Boyd, there ain’t gonna be no later. Are we gonna do this, or not?”
Just as Raylan finished asking, the door to the kitchen opened and Helen stepped out, pack of cigarettes and lighter in hand. “What are you two looking so hot and bothered about?” she asked. When neither answered, she raised an eyebrow and said, “Pass me that bottle, if you ain’t drinkin’.”
Boyd moved to pick it up before Raylan could gather the brain-power. His eyes were dark, angry, but contemplative too. He gave the bottle to Helen without a word. She took two swallows in quick succession and passed it back to him. “Don’t give him any more,” she ordered, gesturing towards Raylan.
“I wasn’t going to,” Boyd replied, not looking at her, then asked, “Can I bum one, Helen?”
“Sure thing, honey,” she said and Raylan sat himself down on the steps. “You want one, Raylan?”
“No, thanks,” he said tightly. He put his head in his hands.
Helen laughed. “Just thought I’d ask.”
Raylan looked up to see Boyd taking a long drag. He put his lips around that thin little stick and the end of it glowed red. It was somehow fascinating. He thought about what he could do with the lit end of a cigarette.
“I don’t want the house, Helen,” Raylan said suddenly. “I know you’ve got your own place. If you don’t want to rent, sell it, or I’ll burn it down.”
“Hell, Raylan,” Helen hissed. “What’s the matter with you? I told you earlier we’d save it for another day, all right?” She gestured roughly with that little piece of fire caught between her fingers. Raylan’s eyes followed it and he itched to snatch it from her. There was lighter fluid next to the rusted out grill. There was gas in the back shed.
Boyd’s voice cut through his thoughts, flat, but sharp. “Did he eat anything today, Helen?”
She made a frustrated noise in response.
Boyd flicked his half-smoked cigarette to the floorboards and stamped it out with a dark boot. Raylan was staring at it when strong hands pulled him to his feet. His vision spun, but Boyd held onto him. “Shit,” he murmured. The last few swigs had hit him hard. He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against Boyd’s shoulder. He smelled like smoke and strangely, gunpowder.
“He needs a lie down,” Raylan heard Helen say.
Boyd’s hands pulled Raylan’s arm around his shoulders, taking on some of his weight. “I’ll get him to bed,” Boyd replied.
It sounded like Helen went ahead of them to clear some people out of the hallway. Raylan could walk well enough to do the stairs properly, so it looked mostly like they were just going up to get something for the party.
Boyd took Raylan to his own room, largely untouched since the night he ran away with Helen’s money and Boyd’s blessing. The bed creaked noisily as he sank slowly into the bedsheets and the air was momentarily suffused with the dust and must of disuse, of neglect.
“City livin’s making you soft, Raylan,” Boyd whispered from somewhere above him.
“I ain’t soft,” Raylan said, though it came out in a whine. The room had stopped spinning, but now his head just hurt.
“You’re gonna prove that to me later.” And there was a feather-light touch across his brow. It moved his hair like some kind of breeze as he sank further down.
Raylan woke, hot and constricted. His jacket had tangled around his waist and the arms were tight around his shoulders. It felt like something was trying to strangle him a foot below the neck.
He rolled over and shrugged out of the garment, throwing it vengefully across the room. He took a moment to roll up his sleeves, then retreated to the bathroom for a glass of water. Raylan heard Boyd approach as he was drinking.
“The people cleared out about a half hour ago,” Boyd said, leaning against the door frame and eyeing Raylan carefully. “Helen went home too. She says you better be at her place for breakfast before you leave tomorrow or she’ll come find you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Raylan said with a smirk, glass still raised to his lips. He’d heard it before. “And I know that won’t be pretty.”
Boyd didn’t say anything immediately. He just looked at Raylan like he was waiting for something. Then, he smiled and Raylan realized it was the first time he’d seen Boyd smile since he’d walked into the house that morning, since Raylan had last laid eyes on him in more than a decade. He wondered when the man had become so grim, or if it was just something Raylan brought out in him.
“You are something else, Raylan Givens,” he said and his smile was as wide and as wicked as it always was, like it had been there all along.
Raylan set down his glass and said in a low voice, “What do you want to do, Boyd?”
Boyd’s hand snaked out from where it had been in the crook of his arm and seized Raylan’s collar, pulling him close and backing out of the tiny bathroom. “I want,” he said, just as low, filled with latent desire, “to do all the things we been waitin’ ten years to do, Raylan. You want to set fire to this house? I want to start the blaze right here in this goddamn room.” He spoke these words with his mouth on Raylan’s, with his hands threaded up through Raylan’s hair.
Raylan felt the old feeling rise up in him, the one that he’d always had to tamp down, the want, the need to get closer to Boyd, to put his hands on him, to push and pull until they were one and the same. Raylan had always hated this feeling, it had felt wrong and right and different, until the night he realized Boyd felt the same. It was the night he’d told Boyd he was leaving.
He remembered Boyd’s eyes, dark under the stars and glimmering strangely, when he’d finally said Raylan should go. “You’ll come back,” he’d whispered in the cold. “You’ll have to. Someday.”
They’d both held onto that, like they were holding onto each other now.
“Shit, Boyd,” Raylan moaned with that familiar ache, so close now. He heard it in his voice, the pain of waiting.
Boyd’s hands were on Raylan’s shirt, tearing hard at the buttons, sliding his fingers, his palms across Raylan’s chest. “Shut up,” he said, bending to press his lips to the sweet spot along his collarbone. He pulled back up again swiftly and looked Raylan in the eye. His expression was hard, fierce, and his pupils were blown wide open, exposing desire that mirrored Raylan’s own. “We’re not going to do that. Don’t think about the time. Just burn me up, Raylan. I want you to burn me up with the Devil’s own fire.”
Raylan didn’t need any more coaxing. He surged forward, stripping away at his tie and shirt and Boyd’s fucking vest with breakneck speed. They tripped over each other’s feet, pushing and pulling, crashing together on Raylan’s childhood bed.
Boyd was under Raylan, stripped to the waist and smiling like he’d hit the powerball. But Raylan stopped dead at the sight of a large black tattoo on his left upper arm. He grabbed hard at Boyd, just above the elbow, staring at the dark, thick, inked swastika.
“What the hell is this?” Raylan’s eyes darted from the offending mark to Boyd’s eyes.
The room had grown darker with dusk and the man’s expression was partially obscured as he spoke. He didn’t flinch or look away. “It’s just something I’ve been doing, Raylan.” His voice was quiet, but strong and not far from dangerous.
“Something you’re doing?” Raylan repeated incredulously, his grip growing harder around Boyd’s arm. “Like a hobby? Tell me you don’t believe this shit, Boyd.”
“You know me better than that. It’s nothing more than a way to make money.” The tone in Boyd’s voice had turned conciliatory, but it was still careful, like he didn’t want the matter to be probed any further.
“And how do you make that money?” Raylan asked. That Glynco training was hard to ignore.
“You really want me to answer that, Raylan?”
When he did not give a reply, Boyd reached up and brought Raylan’s lips down hard on his. His tongue darted in and out of Raylan’s mouth his teeth did more of the work than was strictly necessary, but it was sexy as hell and it served to get the dark imprint of that symbol on Boyd’s skin out of his mind in a hurry.
“Fuck you, Boyd,” Raylan cursed between kisses. “Fuck. We’re talking about this later.”
Raylan reached down to Boyd’s belt and fly and made short work of them. Boyd shucked his trousers and underwear all at once then stretch himself up to trail searing kissing along Raylan’s neck as he took care of his own pants. “Sure thing, Raylan. Later,” he said.
The bed was already loudly protesting their abuse of it and it only complained more as Raylan climbed further up on Boyd, whose lips had not ceased their journey across the skin of his upper body. Raylan traced his fingers along the lines of Boyd’s torso, down his stomach and to the base of his cock. Boyd’s breath hitched against Raylan’s nipple, sending a shivering thrill all through him.
Boyd drew away and scooted himself up closer to the headboard of the skinny bed, rumpling the sheets and blanket as he went, eyeing Raylan with a smile that wouldn’t quit. “You sure you still want to fuck me, Raylan?”
Raylan was breathing hard, his cock was throbbing with a very specific need. “You know it, asshole,” he answered, breathless. “You think the lube I kept in that drawer to your right is still good?”
Boyd raised his eyebrows. “Only one way to find out.” He took it out and tossed the dingy, half-empty bottle across to Raylan, who put it to good use.
Raylan took his time loosening Boyd up. He kept his fingers playful and he pressed sighs and smiles to the skin of his legs, to his hips and stomach. He watched Boyd’s smile fade to an open-mouthed pant before he sunk his cock into him and watched the pleasure echo back across Boyd’s expression.
Raylan began to move to a slow rhythm. Boyd was full of him now and he felt so tight and so good. Boyd moaned just a little then wrapped one arm around Raylan’s neck, pulling their faces closer together. He said, breath hot, sweat-soaked, “Raylan, you better start moving faster or I swear I’m gonna flip this operation over and ride you backwards. Come on now.”
Raylan huffed out a laugh and gave a deep pull then thrust into Boyd as he bore down on his mouth in a searingly hot mangle of lips and tongues and teeth. He let himself loose and pulled their bodies together, grabbing at the metal bars the cheap old headboard was made of until it creaked and squeaked like a rusty axel.
Boyd’s hands scrabbled at Raylan’s back and his moans turned to groans turned to yells into Raylan’s lips and neck and shoulder. He cursed to God and the Devil and he said Raylan’s name like a zealous prayer. The sound of it spurred Raylan on until every part of his mind and body was focused on the point at which he met with Boyd. It was a blaze of nerves and boundless pleasure and it sparked and expanded until Raylan saw stars and nothing else but Boyd’s face as he came.
He wasn’t sure what sound he made, but he heard Boyd’s own vulgar yell just a moment later and they collapsed together, arms and legs in a tangle, half on and off the bed with deep sighs and grins slapped on their faces.
They looked into each other’s eyes as they came down, breath slowing, muscles twitching tiredly. “If you want, you can stay in the house,” Raylan said. “Just pay the utilities and the property taxes and there won’t be any rent.”
Boyd smiled ruthlessly. “I don’t currently pay any taxes, Raylan.” He drew his hand up and down Raylan’s arm, grabbed possessively at his hip bone. “Why should I start now?”
“You pay your taxes, Boyd, you keep outlawry to a minimum and out of my goddamn house and you can live here for next to nothing,” Raylan answered savagely. “And,” he added with a slow smile and a knowing look in his eye, “I promise to come back more than twice in a decade.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Raylan Givens,” Boyd said and kissed him, long and sweeter than usual.
AU. Pre-series.
~3000 words. NC-17.
Thanks to beta rillalicious for taking a look. <3
Short disclaimer: All characters and scenarios belong to Elmore Leonard and Graham Yost and NOT ME.
Summary: Raylan's father died three weeks after his 30th birthday. It was a real inconvenience.
Written for write_light for the Fall Fandom Free-for-all, hosted by oxoniensis. The prompt was "canon-who-cares, set-fire-to-this-house porn." So, automatically my brain went to AU and I got 1500 words of plot and 1500 words of porn. I hope people enjoy.
Set Fire to this House
Raylan’s father died three weeks after his 30th birthday. It was a real inconvenience.
He was headquartered in Salt Lake at the time and he’d been seeing a real nice girl from Kentucky. But he flew home anyway, took a rental from Lexington to Harlan, home, if he could call it that anymore.
He’d been back for his mother’s funeral about three years before, but he’d been just out of the training academy at Glynco back then and it hadn’t been so far to drive. Now, it was a three day affair, one to get there, one to stay, one to get back, and he’d taken a few personal days recently, so he wouldn’t even get the paid time off.
But go Raylan did. He sat through the viewing, smiled politely, stood through the funeral, looked just the right amount of grim, and drank through the wake. He wasn’t happy about any of it ‘til he saw Boyd Crowder walk through the front door of that house.
Raylan watched Boyd make the rounds, bend low to talk to Helen, shake a few hands. He saw Boyd’s eyes shift every once in a while to the corner that Raylan had parked himself in with his bottle of Wild Turkey.
Raylan picked himself up and looked over his shoulder at Boyd, motioning for him to come out on the back porch if he wanted. He didn’t particularly feel like subjecting the entire wake to their conversation. Voices had a tendency to carry in this house.
A few minutes later, Raylan heard his steps coming through the kitchen. He looked up from his bottle and met Boyd’s eyes as he came out the door. Boyd wasn’t wearing a suit, he probably didn’t own one, but he had on a dark vest and some black pants that looked appropriately mournful. It made Raylan’s own Men’s Warehouse attire feel stiff and itchy.
“Raylan,” Boyd said, their usual greeting from the mine days.
Raylan smiled and realized he was drunk. “Boyd,” he answered and passed the bottle to him.
“If this was any other day, I’d say it’s a little early,” Boyd commented before he took a swig himself. “This your daddy’s stash? I always thought you were a Jim Beam man.”
“I dunno,” Raylan replied. “It’s harder to be so picky out in Salt Lake. Today, I ain’t picky at all. Fuckin’ Arlo had this in his sock drawer, unopened. Helen was drinkin’ it yesterday before she asked me to take it off her.”
“She know you were planning on drowning in it?” Boyd looked at him without judgement and Raylan remembered that was one of the things he’d always liked about this boy, he didn’t look down on anybody. Boyd passed him the bottle back.
Raylan laughed softly, drank again. “There was no plan, Boyd.”
“There never is, Raylan.” The look in Boyd’s eyes after he said that gave Raylan just a little pause, reminding him of a night over ten years before when they had almost done something about it, almost gone that way.
Boyd had stepped up apace to where Raylan was leaning against the porch railing, he was against the pillar, hip cocked, arms and legs crossed over one another. He didn’t look so much older, but there was something different about his demeanor.
Raylan wasn’t really aware of any thought process he went through before he stepped forward and pressed his lips to Boyd’s. He heard a surprised in take of breath, like a hiss but the opposite direction, and Boyd’s mouth opened for him. Raylan pushed his hand up through the rough hair at the back of Boyd’s neck and pressed himself hard up against him. Boyd’s reaction was no less earnest.
Raylan almost fumbled with the bottle between them, but Boyd’s hand rose and grasped at the neck of the glass tight around his hand. Boyd pulled away then, and smiled ruefully at Raylan as he said, “I think it would be prudent to set this aside, for now. I’d hate for you to lose such a treasured heirloom of your father.”
Raylan let Boyd have the bottle, watched him take another drink from it, and bend to set it on the stair below them. “Ha, ha,” Raylan breathed to Boyd’s lips as they met again, this time, softer, lingering.
When Raylan moved onto press his lips to Boyd’s neck and collar, Boyd said quietly into his ear, “I think we should save this too, Raylan. Anybody could walk through that door, at any time.”
Raylan wasn’t done kissing Boyd, but he paused long enough to answer, “I’m flying back tomorrow. Fuck anybody.”
Boyd pushed Raylan away, rough but not exactly a shove. “Shit, boy, what’d you do that for?”
“Last time I came back I was here for the whole weekend, but you were gone. How’m I supposed to know where you are, what you’re doing? I had to take this time off too, Boyd. I do work for a living,” Raylan snarled. He wasn’t at Boyd’s beck and call, he didn’t have to justify his choices.
Boyd didn’t take the easy come back of what Raylan had chosen to do for his living, and Raylan was grateful for it. He didn’t want to have that argument at that precise moment. Instead, Boyd sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, speaking tightly, “When your mother died, I had two months left on my tour. It wasn’t like I could just call up command, tell ‘em sorry, I had to be in Harlan that week to take it up the ass from an old friend.”
Raylan rolled his eyes. “Well, thanks for telling me you’d joined the goddamn army, Boyd. I had to find out from fuckin’ Johnny when I went to look for you.”
Boyd pushed himself back further, straight against the column, like he wanted to be as far away from Raylan as possible. “What? So you could send me care packages? We’re not in some kind of relationship, last I checked.”
“Jesus, fuck you.”
It was Boyd’s turn to roll his eyes right back as he grumbled, “Maybe later,” and looked away.
Raylan shook his head, anger put temporarily on the back-burner. “This is what I’m telling you Boyd, there ain’t gonna be no later. Are we gonna do this, or not?”
Just as Raylan finished asking, the door to the kitchen opened and Helen stepped out, pack of cigarettes and lighter in hand. “What are you two looking so hot and bothered about?” she asked. When neither answered, she raised an eyebrow and said, “Pass me that bottle, if you ain’t drinkin’.”
Boyd moved to pick it up before Raylan could gather the brain-power. His eyes were dark, angry, but contemplative too. He gave the bottle to Helen without a word. She took two swallows in quick succession and passed it back to him. “Don’t give him any more,” she ordered, gesturing towards Raylan.
“I wasn’t going to,” Boyd replied, not looking at her, then asked, “Can I bum one, Helen?”
“Sure thing, honey,” she said and Raylan sat himself down on the steps. “You want one, Raylan?”
“No, thanks,” he said tightly. He put his head in his hands.
Helen laughed. “Just thought I’d ask.”
Raylan looked up to see Boyd taking a long drag. He put his lips around that thin little stick and the end of it glowed red. It was somehow fascinating. He thought about what he could do with the lit end of a cigarette.
“I don’t want the house, Helen,” Raylan said suddenly. “I know you’ve got your own place. If you don’t want to rent, sell it, or I’ll burn it down.”
“Hell, Raylan,” Helen hissed. “What’s the matter with you? I told you earlier we’d save it for another day, all right?” She gestured roughly with that little piece of fire caught between her fingers. Raylan’s eyes followed it and he itched to snatch it from her. There was lighter fluid next to the rusted out grill. There was gas in the back shed.
Boyd’s voice cut through his thoughts, flat, but sharp. “Did he eat anything today, Helen?”
She made a frustrated noise in response.
Boyd flicked his half-smoked cigarette to the floorboards and stamped it out with a dark boot. Raylan was staring at it when strong hands pulled him to his feet. His vision spun, but Boyd held onto him. “Shit,” he murmured. The last few swigs had hit him hard. He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against Boyd’s shoulder. He smelled like smoke and strangely, gunpowder.
“He needs a lie down,” Raylan heard Helen say.
Boyd’s hands pulled Raylan’s arm around his shoulders, taking on some of his weight. “I’ll get him to bed,” Boyd replied.
It sounded like Helen went ahead of them to clear some people out of the hallway. Raylan could walk well enough to do the stairs properly, so it looked mostly like they were just going up to get something for the party.
Boyd took Raylan to his own room, largely untouched since the night he ran away with Helen’s money and Boyd’s blessing. The bed creaked noisily as he sank slowly into the bedsheets and the air was momentarily suffused with the dust and must of disuse, of neglect.
“City livin’s making you soft, Raylan,” Boyd whispered from somewhere above him.
“I ain’t soft,” Raylan said, though it came out in a whine. The room had stopped spinning, but now his head just hurt.
“You’re gonna prove that to me later.” And there was a feather-light touch across his brow. It moved his hair like some kind of breeze as he sank further down.
Raylan woke, hot and constricted. His jacket had tangled around his waist and the arms were tight around his shoulders. It felt like something was trying to strangle him a foot below the neck.
He rolled over and shrugged out of the garment, throwing it vengefully across the room. He took a moment to roll up his sleeves, then retreated to the bathroom for a glass of water. Raylan heard Boyd approach as he was drinking.
“The people cleared out about a half hour ago,” Boyd said, leaning against the door frame and eyeing Raylan carefully. “Helen went home too. She says you better be at her place for breakfast before you leave tomorrow or she’ll come find you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Raylan said with a smirk, glass still raised to his lips. He’d heard it before. “And I know that won’t be pretty.”
Boyd didn’t say anything immediately. He just looked at Raylan like he was waiting for something. Then, he smiled and Raylan realized it was the first time he’d seen Boyd smile since he’d walked into the house that morning, since Raylan had last laid eyes on him in more than a decade. He wondered when the man had become so grim, or if it was just something Raylan brought out in him.
“You are something else, Raylan Givens,” he said and his smile was as wide and as wicked as it always was, like it had been there all along.
Raylan set down his glass and said in a low voice, “What do you want to do, Boyd?”
Boyd’s hand snaked out from where it had been in the crook of his arm and seized Raylan’s collar, pulling him close and backing out of the tiny bathroom. “I want,” he said, just as low, filled with latent desire, “to do all the things we been waitin’ ten years to do, Raylan. You want to set fire to this house? I want to start the blaze right here in this goddamn room.” He spoke these words with his mouth on Raylan’s, with his hands threaded up through Raylan’s hair.
Raylan felt the old feeling rise up in him, the one that he’d always had to tamp down, the want, the need to get closer to Boyd, to put his hands on him, to push and pull until they were one and the same. Raylan had always hated this feeling, it had felt wrong and right and different, until the night he realized Boyd felt the same. It was the night he’d told Boyd he was leaving.
He remembered Boyd’s eyes, dark under the stars and glimmering strangely, when he’d finally said Raylan should go. “You’ll come back,” he’d whispered in the cold. “You’ll have to. Someday.”
They’d both held onto that, like they were holding onto each other now.
“Shit, Boyd,” Raylan moaned with that familiar ache, so close now. He heard it in his voice, the pain of waiting.
Boyd’s hands were on Raylan’s shirt, tearing hard at the buttons, sliding his fingers, his palms across Raylan’s chest. “Shut up,” he said, bending to press his lips to the sweet spot along his collarbone. He pulled back up again swiftly and looked Raylan in the eye. His expression was hard, fierce, and his pupils were blown wide open, exposing desire that mirrored Raylan’s own. “We’re not going to do that. Don’t think about the time. Just burn me up, Raylan. I want you to burn me up with the Devil’s own fire.”
Raylan didn’t need any more coaxing. He surged forward, stripping away at his tie and shirt and Boyd’s fucking vest with breakneck speed. They tripped over each other’s feet, pushing and pulling, crashing together on Raylan’s childhood bed.
Boyd was under Raylan, stripped to the waist and smiling like he’d hit the powerball. But Raylan stopped dead at the sight of a large black tattoo on his left upper arm. He grabbed hard at Boyd, just above the elbow, staring at the dark, thick, inked swastika.
“What the hell is this?” Raylan’s eyes darted from the offending mark to Boyd’s eyes.
The room had grown darker with dusk and the man’s expression was partially obscured as he spoke. He didn’t flinch or look away. “It’s just something I’ve been doing, Raylan.” His voice was quiet, but strong and not far from dangerous.
“Something you’re doing?” Raylan repeated incredulously, his grip growing harder around Boyd’s arm. “Like a hobby? Tell me you don’t believe this shit, Boyd.”
“You know me better than that. It’s nothing more than a way to make money.” The tone in Boyd’s voice had turned conciliatory, but it was still careful, like he didn’t want the matter to be probed any further.
“And how do you make that money?” Raylan asked. That Glynco training was hard to ignore.
“You really want me to answer that, Raylan?”
When he did not give a reply, Boyd reached up and brought Raylan’s lips down hard on his. His tongue darted in and out of Raylan’s mouth his teeth did more of the work than was strictly necessary, but it was sexy as hell and it served to get the dark imprint of that symbol on Boyd’s skin out of his mind in a hurry.
“Fuck you, Boyd,” Raylan cursed between kisses. “Fuck. We’re talking about this later.”
Raylan reached down to Boyd’s belt and fly and made short work of them. Boyd shucked his trousers and underwear all at once then stretch himself up to trail searing kissing along Raylan’s neck as he took care of his own pants. “Sure thing, Raylan. Later,” he said.
The bed was already loudly protesting their abuse of it and it only complained more as Raylan climbed further up on Boyd, whose lips had not ceased their journey across the skin of his upper body. Raylan traced his fingers along the lines of Boyd’s torso, down his stomach and to the base of his cock. Boyd’s breath hitched against Raylan’s nipple, sending a shivering thrill all through him.
Boyd drew away and scooted himself up closer to the headboard of the skinny bed, rumpling the sheets and blanket as he went, eyeing Raylan with a smile that wouldn’t quit. “You sure you still want to fuck me, Raylan?”
Raylan was breathing hard, his cock was throbbing with a very specific need. “You know it, asshole,” he answered, breathless. “You think the lube I kept in that drawer to your right is still good?”
Boyd raised his eyebrows. “Only one way to find out.” He took it out and tossed the dingy, half-empty bottle across to Raylan, who put it to good use.
Raylan took his time loosening Boyd up. He kept his fingers playful and he pressed sighs and smiles to the skin of his legs, to his hips and stomach. He watched Boyd’s smile fade to an open-mouthed pant before he sunk his cock into him and watched the pleasure echo back across Boyd’s expression.
Raylan began to move to a slow rhythm. Boyd was full of him now and he felt so tight and so good. Boyd moaned just a little then wrapped one arm around Raylan’s neck, pulling their faces closer together. He said, breath hot, sweat-soaked, “Raylan, you better start moving faster or I swear I’m gonna flip this operation over and ride you backwards. Come on now.”
Raylan huffed out a laugh and gave a deep pull then thrust into Boyd as he bore down on his mouth in a searingly hot mangle of lips and tongues and teeth. He let himself loose and pulled their bodies together, grabbing at the metal bars the cheap old headboard was made of until it creaked and squeaked like a rusty axel.
Boyd’s hands scrabbled at Raylan’s back and his moans turned to groans turned to yells into Raylan’s lips and neck and shoulder. He cursed to God and the Devil and he said Raylan’s name like a zealous prayer. The sound of it spurred Raylan on until every part of his mind and body was focused on the point at which he met with Boyd. It was a blaze of nerves and boundless pleasure and it sparked and expanded until Raylan saw stars and nothing else but Boyd’s face as he came.
He wasn’t sure what sound he made, but he heard Boyd’s own vulgar yell just a moment later and they collapsed together, arms and legs in a tangle, half on and off the bed with deep sighs and grins slapped on their faces.
They looked into each other’s eyes as they came down, breath slowing, muscles twitching tiredly. “If you want, you can stay in the house,” Raylan said. “Just pay the utilities and the property taxes and there won’t be any rent.”
Boyd smiled ruthlessly. “I don’t currently pay any taxes, Raylan.” He drew his hand up and down Raylan’s arm, grabbed possessively at his hip bone. “Why should I start now?”
“You pay your taxes, Boyd, you keep outlawry to a minimum and out of my goddamn house and you can live here for next to nothing,” Raylan answered savagely. “And,” he added with a slow smile and a knowing look in his eye, “I promise to come back more than twice in a decade.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Raylan Givens,” Boyd said and kissed him, long and sweeter than usual.