The Hillbilly Remix Challenge - Ghosts That We Knew by xbedhead
Remixed Author: engage_protocol
Remixed Story: We've Both Believed in Mean Gods
Title: Ghosts That We Knew
Author: xbedhead
Characters: Raylan Givens, Boyd Crowder, with mentions of Arlo Givens & Johnny Crowder
Pairings: none
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Word Count: ~3,200
Spoilers: None - AU
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Justified belongs to Elmore Leonard and Graham Yost.
A/N: This is my first remix, so I really can't say if I did this right. I knew where I wanted the story to go, but really struggled with how to get it there. I hope it makes sense in the end. Title (and mood) taken from the Mumford & Sons' song of the same name. Also? If someone who has a better hold on Boyd would like to write his POV to this, I would be much obliged.
Summary: What if they were those bitter men?
*****
He eases himself into the rickety chair, his grunt of discomfort escaping finally as a sigh from somewhere deep in his gut.
The bleeding has stopped, but his finger - or what's left of it - is throbbing something fierce. There’s an empty bottle of bourbon in the middle of the cracked vinyl breakfast table and he remembers too late that the moonshine he’d had tucked away had succumbed to last weekend’s bender. His eyes dance around the dimly-lit room, searching desperately for anything that might take away this pain.
There’s dishes in the sink, soaking since last night because even after eight years, he still hasn’t figured out the temperature gauge on the oven he barely uses. He can still smell the lingering smoke, the acrid taste of the Jiffy Mix he’d tried to rustle up. The refrigerator - covered in magnets from used car lots and lawyers from the surrounding counties - and the cabinets beside it, two doors missing and one hanging from the top hinge. He should just take it down before it tears itself from the wood in a way that it won’t hold a screw if he ever gets around to fixing it.
There’s a box of cornflakes on the counter next to a loaf of bread, already showing signs of mold. There’s nothing in the fridge except for some old bologna and a bottle of mustard he’d watered down to make it stretch.
He remembers now that he had meant to go to Food City tonight and get groceries. And then this had happened.
The effort it'll take to make a bologna sandwich sounds just about as appetizing as a kick between the legs, so he toes off his work boots and makes his way into his bedroom. He spies a tumbler of something amber on top of his dresser, swipes it and drains more than half in a long gulp. He unbuttons his shirt with his good hand and eases out, leaving it where it falls to the floor as he shuffles into the bathroom.
He lathers his hands up gingerly, easing the ratty first-aid tape from the garage off his tender finger once the soap and water works through the adhesive. It’s purple, swollen halfway down, but it doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it might to bend it. The water and soap stings and he can’t make himself scrub too hard, so he splashes the last of his bourbon on it, hissing through his teeth and squeezing the porcelain rim of the sink. He doesn’t look in the mirror when he opens the medicine cabinet and shakes six Tylenol from the plastic bottle.
He swallows them with a drink from the faucet, grimacing at the metallic taste from the cloudy water, and switches the light off, finding his way across his room blindly. The covers are twisted up on the bed he hadn’t bothered to make that morning and he rests his left hand gently, placing it a foot away from his side, praying that doesn’t move much in his sleep. His pillow is hot and too soft in all the wrong places, but he doesn’t care enough to do anything about it.
The bathroom faucet is leaking and his hand throbs in time with its plink-plink into the sink. He stares at the ceiling until he sees no more.
-*-
“Mornin’!”
S’too fuckin’ early for this, he thinks as he gives Bertram Jessop a tight smile and buries his head beneath the hood of the Chevy he’s been working on. He sees Jessop moving closer out of the corner of his eye, but continues installing the fan belt he has stretched awkwardly between both hands.
“This Foley’s pick-up?” Jessop asks, leaning over the side of the engine but careful not to brush against the dirty fender.
He grunts in affirmation and goes to loosening the bolts on the tensioner.
“You finish it this afternoon, all right? He called my house complaining, sayin’ it shoulda been done by yesterday.”
“Yessir,” he replies quickly - then lets out a sharp hiss. His socket wrench pinballs through the engine before clanging onto the oil-covered cement. He’s half-doubled over, hand held tight to his stomach and eyes twisted shut.
“What in tarna - ” Jessop starts, coming around the front of the truck, bending himself to get a better look at his face.
He turns away, biting the inside of his cheek, breathes deep as his vision begins to clear and forces himself upright.
“Fell off the jack stand yesterday,” he explains, voice like gravel as he tosses his head toward Foley’s ‘73 Chevy. “Finger got caught, took the tip off. I’ll be fine,” he adds, looking Jessop in the eyes as he forces steadiness to his words.
Jessop eyes him warily, gaze bouncing between his face and the grease-smudged bandage on his left hand.
To make his point, he bends down and takes his wrench, starts back on the fan belt.
“You get it looked at?”
“I’m fine,” he repeats, hoping there’s an air of finality to his statement that even someone like Jessop can detect.
“You know I can’t afford no worker’s comp,” Jessop says quickly, holding a hand out toward his best mechanic, “and you ain’t even full-time, so don’t start gettin’ any ideas.”
He turns and slowly straightens, tightens his grip on the rachet and clenches his teeth, locking his jaws to keep from saying something he might not entirely regret.
Jessop is the first to look away, like he’s almost ashamed of what he’s just said. But it doesn’t last long because he turns on his heel and says over his shoulder, “Have it done before lunch,” then walks into his office.
-*-
He curses as he closes the front door.
The fridge is still empty (along with his bottle), and the grocery is at the base of the mountain, open another ten minutes if he's lucky and someone like Peggy Hendricks was taking their sweet old time combing through discounted Easter candy. It's not worth the effort, not to get down there and chance having the doors locked in front of him.
He flips the switch to turn on the kitchen light - only to duck out of the way as the bulb cracks and pops, burning out and leaving the room encased in the creeping shadows. "Of course," he mutters. He combs his greasy hair back with his fingers and props his ball cap high on the top of his head.
There’s only one thing he knows to do to make this night any more bearable.
So he puts on a clean shirt, grabs his keys and makes for Johnny’s.
-*-
The watering hole is nearly empty, but it’s Tuesday. And even in a place like Cumberland where the only thing left to do after work is bitch and drink, Tuesdays are slow.
He takes a spot at the corner of the bar, next to the wall and as far away from the jukebox as he can be. George Jones is tolerable most days, but not when he’s got what feels like a railroad spike being driven through the base of his skull. The barmaid comes over - some girl he vaguely remembers from high school who's probably got three kids by now - and chats him up. He replies out of what politeness his momma had managed to instill in him before she'd passed and she gives him a sympathetic comment about how worn out he looks and takes his order - a triple of Jim Beam on the rocks with a side of chili fries.
All she says is 'here you go, sugar' when she sets it down in front of him and he’s grateful for that.
The fries are too hot to eat just yet, so he props his hand on the table and eyes the oily bandage he'd tied around his finger. He takes a slow pull from the tumbler, sucks the smokey flavor from his teeth.
He supposes he should be thankful he hadn't lost his hand, something that very well could've happened when two tons of steel succumbed to the pull of gravity and faulty hydraulics. Funny how he'd run from the shafts, thinking mining might've done him in. Nearly twenty years since he last came out of that blackness and there hadn't been much more than a rumble and shake in those mountains. Of course they'd taken to just ripping them open now and peeking in from the top as opposed to digging straight across, but the principles - and dangers - were still the same. Instead of being crushed by the rolling rocks and breathing their last in a tidal wave of dirt, men got to keep dying real slow, lungs turning to the very coal they'd scrabbled on their hands and knees for throughout the better part of the last fifteen decades.
It’s nights like these he hates himself, hates what could’ve been, what should’ve been. If only he’d had the courage to leave.
There was a whole world outside Harlan and he’d longed to see it, touch it, live in it and maybe, one day, become a part of it. He had potential - at least that’s what people’d always told him - he could go places, be something. What, he’d had no idea. At first it was a baseball player but when that scholarship to Louisville fell through, it had shaken his world, got him to thinking that maybe things weren’t supposed to work out, that Arlo had been right after all.
He took a job at the mines because that’s what everybody else did, swearing to himself he’d save up some money, make enough to light out on his own. Every morning he rode the rail down into that pit and every evening he’d come up, suck in fresh air through rattling lungs, his hope dimming with each dusk.
He and Arlo fought each other bloody and he had to think hard to find anything good in his life - except for maybe Boyd.
Boyd who watched his back in the mines and always let Raylan decide when they'd call it quits. Boyd who would park his truck on a bluff in the holler and lay the tailgate down so they could stretch out and stare at stars all night. Boyd who let him dream out loud about playing for the Reds and what the rest of the country might look like and would never laugh, not once. Boyd who'd taken him into his hand and his mouth and blown him up like a charge he'd set, tore him open in a way that healed him.
Boyd who'd pulled him out of his fear and up to the surface as the world was crashing down around their heads.
Then Helen had slid that envelope of money - and possibility - across the table, making all that talk about breaking free a very near reality.
It was too much.
He’d spent the night on her couch, rising early the next morning, before breakfast, and heading back to the house. He’d tucked the bills away into his back pocket and they were a weight on his soul as he’d fried a breakfast of eggs and slightly-burnt toast for himself and Arlo.
They’d eaten in silence, save for a few comments - “Like you got somethin' against salt...” and “You ain’t gonna wet your pants goin’ down there again, are ya?” - and Raylan had left the dishes in the sink, went straight back to the mine.
He couldn’t leave Boyd...
...but they could never be anything more than they had been to one another. Not here, not in a place like Harlan.
He’d mentioned it to him once - said they should take off for the West Coast, learn to surf or live on a boat - and Boyd had laughed then, said he wouldn’t know what to do looking out into that much open sky. What was a life outside if it didn’t have the hills?
He’d never said another word about it, stopped himself from wondering if maybe Boyd was just as scared of leaving as he was.
So they both stayed. Each dancing around the other in this strange fashion, waltzing to a tune only they knew the steps to. Sometimes hating one another for making themselves so miserable, but unable to be the one to bare the blade and cut the cord holding them together.
He stayed on at the mine for a few more months, but things were different - they'd crossed a line that night and neither of them knew how to go back from it. So they didn't move. They spoke, but never touched, not even the playful shoving and slaps on the head that boys their age used to show affection to one another. It was like a magnet, drawing them together then switching poles at the last possible moment, creating an invisible wall that neither could press their way through.
The wall must've been Harlan - holding them there, but apart, for all those years.
When Raylan got a chance at a job pushing a broom and scrubbing oily tools at the auto shop, he jumped at it - eager to see daylight again and escape the current, live-wire strong, he sometimes felt whenever Boyd was standing too close. He learned the trade by watching over men's shoulders, handing them tools when they asked and eventually getting his own set of second-hand wrenches.
Boyd had stayed in the mine, dabbled in the petty crimes his father set up to test him, but he never had the desire to push it any further than that. He was content to rest in the shadow of Bowman, a presence he'd been readily eclipsed by most of his life. He was more at home in the mountains, blowing shit up and clawing at the walls looking for something black and shiny in the light of his headlamp. Bo could never understand that, could never see why his eldest chose a life crawling when he could've been sitting like a king.
Raylan sometimes thought he had it easy. There was no pleasing with Arlo, you just had to give in, lie down and roll over - he’d be too frustrated to kick then, more annoyed you hadn’t put up a fight.
And once he’d figured that out, he'd swallowed back every bit of pride he’d managed to hold onto and just...stopped. He'd let Arlo light into him a couple times a month, ordering him to fetch him a beer while grousing about how his his only son coulda made something more of himself (and by that, they both knew he meant he could’ve been successful as a second-generation Harlan County shit kicker). He’d bite back a snarl and turn his own bottle up, draining the last of his piss before nodding his agreement to his father and heading for his truck.
He’d spend all day on his back or buried in the belly of a two-ton Ford, trying not to remember what Boyd’s fingers on him felt like.
They never talked about it - that night. It was something kept between them, precious and whole, like the memory would fracture if they spoke of it aloud. Like anything else - anything more - and their world would come crashing down around them like a slate slide.
Maybe it's that he's thinking of him or just dumb luck, but some sort of devil must've conjured him because the next time the door opens, Boyd Crowder is slipping back into his stratosphere.
He comes in with his brother, sauntering the way that he does, and every eye in the room is on him and Bowman. He tips his head toward some men at the bar, takes their hands, claps a few on the shoulders and tosses out some small talk. The barmaid - Hazel, he remembers now that he's not thinking of it - pulls out a bottle of Elmer T and pours two fingers for him, two for Bowman. He's downing it when Raylan catches his eyes over the rim of his tumbler. Bowman must tell a joke because the men start laughing, ribald and wheezing as they slap their knees.
Then he holds a finger up to his brother and makes his way toward Raylan's corner of the bar with a bottle of Beam he'd snagged from the counter. He sets it down with flourish and flashes his teeth at the man before him. "Raylan."
"Boyd," he answers, and that's all of a greeting either of them need.
Boyd slides into the booth just behind Raylan and shifts so his back's flush with the wood-paneled wall. He sighs deeply and Raylan knows that his performance is over.
"How's Johnny?" Raylan asks over his shoulder, finally starting to pick at his chili fries.
"All right, I guess." Boyd takes a pull from the bottle and lifts one of his booted feet onto the vinyl-covered bench. "Gets his release next week, so I s'spect it'll be business as usual with him for a while."
"Mosely's got a hard on for you Crowders," Raylan comments absently, immediately wishing he'd phrased things some other way. He hears him shift and feels Boyd's breath against the back of his neck when he says, "Don't they all."
He drops his chili fry, hand still suspended. His spine is frozen, but there's something lava hot coursing through his veins.
There's a beat, then another. But Boyd backs off and the feeling passes and Raylan knows it's his own fault for coming out tonight, to Johnny's bar of all places. If he'd really wanted to avoid this, he could've just kept holed up in Helen's old house off Indian Line and watched I Love Lucy reruns until he fell asleep.
"That's your point makin' finger, if I recall correctly."
Boyd's a safe distance now and Raylan breathes deeper. "Yep. Got nine more, though," he explains, holding his hand up and extending his middle finger. "I'll make do."
Boyd coughs a little as he laughs and Raylan winces at the rattle.
Neither man says anything for the longest of moments - and that's okay. The chili fries are cool enough now and Raylan stuffs three or four into his mouth, licking the sauce from his fingertips.
“You ever wonder, Raylan,” Boyd asks finally, pausing in the usual dramatic way he has about him, “how things mighta been had we cast off the chains of Harlan and run for the beauties unknown?”
Raylan snorts a little and there’s a smile that holds no humor on his lips when he replies, “You honestly think we ever could’ve gotten outta here, chains rattlin’ behind us?”
“We had the chance,” Boyd says quietly, and there's an almost apology in his voice.
Raylan takes a sip of bourbon, wishing it burned just a little more on the way down.
“Yeah, but...that was a different life,” he replies, and an old weight slips onto his shoulders.
-END-
Prompt: "I don't care to know," Boyd says, with finality. There's a well of anger in him that Raylan glimpses occasionally, flashing dangerously in his eyes. He always steps into the line of fire, takes the brunt of it. It always passes, leaving calm in its wake. "We almost were those bitter men."
"That was a different life," Raylan Replies, and an old weight slides off his shoulders.
Remixed Story: We've Both Believed in Mean Gods
Title: Ghosts That We Knew
Author: xbedhead
Characters: Raylan Givens, Boyd Crowder, with mentions of Arlo Givens & Johnny Crowder
Pairings: none
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Word Count: ~3,200
Spoilers: None - AU
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Justified belongs to Elmore Leonard and Graham Yost.
A/N: This is my first remix, so I really can't say if I did this right. I knew where I wanted the story to go, but really struggled with how to get it there. I hope it makes sense in the end. Title (and mood) taken from the Mumford & Sons' song of the same name. Also? If someone who has a better hold on Boyd would like to write his POV to this, I would be much obliged.
Summary: What if they were those bitter men?
*****
He eases himself into the rickety chair, his grunt of discomfort escaping finally as a sigh from somewhere deep in his gut.
The bleeding has stopped, but his finger - or what's left of it - is throbbing something fierce. There’s an empty bottle of bourbon in the middle of the cracked vinyl breakfast table and he remembers too late that the moonshine he’d had tucked away had succumbed to last weekend’s bender. His eyes dance around the dimly-lit room, searching desperately for anything that might take away this pain.
There’s dishes in the sink, soaking since last night because even after eight years, he still hasn’t figured out the temperature gauge on the oven he barely uses. He can still smell the lingering smoke, the acrid taste of the Jiffy Mix he’d tried to rustle up. The refrigerator - covered in magnets from used car lots and lawyers from the surrounding counties - and the cabinets beside it, two doors missing and one hanging from the top hinge. He should just take it down before it tears itself from the wood in a way that it won’t hold a screw if he ever gets around to fixing it.
There’s a box of cornflakes on the counter next to a loaf of bread, already showing signs of mold. There’s nothing in the fridge except for some old bologna and a bottle of mustard he’d watered down to make it stretch.
He remembers now that he had meant to go to Food City tonight and get groceries. And then this had happened.
The effort it'll take to make a bologna sandwich sounds just about as appetizing as a kick between the legs, so he toes off his work boots and makes his way into his bedroom. He spies a tumbler of something amber on top of his dresser, swipes it and drains more than half in a long gulp. He unbuttons his shirt with his good hand and eases out, leaving it where it falls to the floor as he shuffles into the bathroom.
He lathers his hands up gingerly, easing the ratty first-aid tape from the garage off his tender finger once the soap and water works through the adhesive. It’s purple, swollen halfway down, but it doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it might to bend it. The water and soap stings and he can’t make himself scrub too hard, so he splashes the last of his bourbon on it, hissing through his teeth and squeezing the porcelain rim of the sink. He doesn’t look in the mirror when he opens the medicine cabinet and shakes six Tylenol from the plastic bottle.
He swallows them with a drink from the faucet, grimacing at the metallic taste from the cloudy water, and switches the light off, finding his way across his room blindly. The covers are twisted up on the bed he hadn’t bothered to make that morning and he rests his left hand gently, placing it a foot away from his side, praying that doesn’t move much in his sleep. His pillow is hot and too soft in all the wrong places, but he doesn’t care enough to do anything about it.
The bathroom faucet is leaking and his hand throbs in time with its plink-plink into the sink. He stares at the ceiling until he sees no more.
-*-
“Mornin’!”
S’too fuckin’ early for this, he thinks as he gives Bertram Jessop a tight smile and buries his head beneath the hood of the Chevy he’s been working on. He sees Jessop moving closer out of the corner of his eye, but continues installing the fan belt he has stretched awkwardly between both hands.
“This Foley’s pick-up?” Jessop asks, leaning over the side of the engine but careful not to brush against the dirty fender.
He grunts in affirmation and goes to loosening the bolts on the tensioner.
“You finish it this afternoon, all right? He called my house complaining, sayin’ it shoulda been done by yesterday.”
“Yessir,” he replies quickly - then lets out a sharp hiss. His socket wrench pinballs through the engine before clanging onto the oil-covered cement. He’s half-doubled over, hand held tight to his stomach and eyes twisted shut.
“What in tarna - ” Jessop starts, coming around the front of the truck, bending himself to get a better look at his face.
He turns away, biting the inside of his cheek, breathes deep as his vision begins to clear and forces himself upright.
“Fell off the jack stand yesterday,” he explains, voice like gravel as he tosses his head toward Foley’s ‘73 Chevy. “Finger got caught, took the tip off. I’ll be fine,” he adds, looking Jessop in the eyes as he forces steadiness to his words.
Jessop eyes him warily, gaze bouncing between his face and the grease-smudged bandage on his left hand.
To make his point, he bends down and takes his wrench, starts back on the fan belt.
“You get it looked at?”
“I’m fine,” he repeats, hoping there’s an air of finality to his statement that even someone like Jessop can detect.
“You know I can’t afford no worker’s comp,” Jessop says quickly, holding a hand out toward his best mechanic, “and you ain’t even full-time, so don’t start gettin’ any ideas.”
He turns and slowly straightens, tightens his grip on the rachet and clenches his teeth, locking his jaws to keep from saying something he might not entirely regret.
Jessop is the first to look away, like he’s almost ashamed of what he’s just said. But it doesn’t last long because he turns on his heel and says over his shoulder, “Have it done before lunch,” then walks into his office.
-*-
He curses as he closes the front door.
The fridge is still empty (along with his bottle), and the grocery is at the base of the mountain, open another ten minutes if he's lucky and someone like Peggy Hendricks was taking their sweet old time combing through discounted Easter candy. It's not worth the effort, not to get down there and chance having the doors locked in front of him.
He flips the switch to turn on the kitchen light - only to duck out of the way as the bulb cracks and pops, burning out and leaving the room encased in the creeping shadows. "Of course," he mutters. He combs his greasy hair back with his fingers and props his ball cap high on the top of his head.
There’s only one thing he knows to do to make this night any more bearable.
So he puts on a clean shirt, grabs his keys and makes for Johnny’s.
-*-
The watering hole is nearly empty, but it’s Tuesday. And even in a place like Cumberland where the only thing left to do after work is bitch and drink, Tuesdays are slow.
He takes a spot at the corner of the bar, next to the wall and as far away from the jukebox as he can be. George Jones is tolerable most days, but not when he’s got what feels like a railroad spike being driven through the base of his skull. The barmaid comes over - some girl he vaguely remembers from high school who's probably got three kids by now - and chats him up. He replies out of what politeness his momma had managed to instill in him before she'd passed and she gives him a sympathetic comment about how worn out he looks and takes his order - a triple of Jim Beam on the rocks with a side of chili fries.
All she says is 'here you go, sugar' when she sets it down in front of him and he’s grateful for that.
The fries are too hot to eat just yet, so he props his hand on the table and eyes the oily bandage he'd tied around his finger. He takes a slow pull from the tumbler, sucks the smokey flavor from his teeth.
He supposes he should be thankful he hadn't lost his hand, something that very well could've happened when two tons of steel succumbed to the pull of gravity and faulty hydraulics. Funny how he'd run from the shafts, thinking mining might've done him in. Nearly twenty years since he last came out of that blackness and there hadn't been much more than a rumble and shake in those mountains. Of course they'd taken to just ripping them open now and peeking in from the top as opposed to digging straight across, but the principles - and dangers - were still the same. Instead of being crushed by the rolling rocks and breathing their last in a tidal wave of dirt, men got to keep dying real slow, lungs turning to the very coal they'd scrabbled on their hands and knees for throughout the better part of the last fifteen decades.
It’s nights like these he hates himself, hates what could’ve been, what should’ve been. If only he’d had the courage to leave.
There was a whole world outside Harlan and he’d longed to see it, touch it, live in it and maybe, one day, become a part of it. He had potential - at least that’s what people’d always told him - he could go places, be something. What, he’d had no idea. At first it was a baseball player but when that scholarship to Louisville fell through, it had shaken his world, got him to thinking that maybe things weren’t supposed to work out, that Arlo had been right after all.
He took a job at the mines because that’s what everybody else did, swearing to himself he’d save up some money, make enough to light out on his own. Every morning he rode the rail down into that pit and every evening he’d come up, suck in fresh air through rattling lungs, his hope dimming with each dusk.
He and Arlo fought each other bloody and he had to think hard to find anything good in his life - except for maybe Boyd.
Boyd who watched his back in the mines and always let Raylan decide when they'd call it quits. Boyd who would park his truck on a bluff in the holler and lay the tailgate down so they could stretch out and stare at stars all night. Boyd who let him dream out loud about playing for the Reds and what the rest of the country might look like and would never laugh, not once. Boyd who'd taken him into his hand and his mouth and blown him up like a charge he'd set, tore him open in a way that healed him.
Boyd who'd pulled him out of his fear and up to the surface as the world was crashing down around their heads.
Then Helen had slid that envelope of money - and possibility - across the table, making all that talk about breaking free a very near reality.
It was too much.
He’d spent the night on her couch, rising early the next morning, before breakfast, and heading back to the house. He’d tucked the bills away into his back pocket and they were a weight on his soul as he’d fried a breakfast of eggs and slightly-burnt toast for himself and Arlo.
They’d eaten in silence, save for a few comments - “Like you got somethin' against salt...” and “You ain’t gonna wet your pants goin’ down there again, are ya?” - and Raylan had left the dishes in the sink, went straight back to the mine.
He couldn’t leave Boyd...
...but they could never be anything more than they had been to one another. Not here, not in a place like Harlan.
He’d mentioned it to him once - said they should take off for the West Coast, learn to surf or live on a boat - and Boyd had laughed then, said he wouldn’t know what to do looking out into that much open sky. What was a life outside if it didn’t have the hills?
He’d never said another word about it, stopped himself from wondering if maybe Boyd was just as scared of leaving as he was.
So they both stayed. Each dancing around the other in this strange fashion, waltzing to a tune only they knew the steps to. Sometimes hating one another for making themselves so miserable, but unable to be the one to bare the blade and cut the cord holding them together.
He stayed on at the mine for a few more months, but things were different - they'd crossed a line that night and neither of them knew how to go back from it. So they didn't move. They spoke, but never touched, not even the playful shoving and slaps on the head that boys their age used to show affection to one another. It was like a magnet, drawing them together then switching poles at the last possible moment, creating an invisible wall that neither could press their way through.
The wall must've been Harlan - holding them there, but apart, for all those years.
When Raylan got a chance at a job pushing a broom and scrubbing oily tools at the auto shop, he jumped at it - eager to see daylight again and escape the current, live-wire strong, he sometimes felt whenever Boyd was standing too close. He learned the trade by watching over men's shoulders, handing them tools when they asked and eventually getting his own set of second-hand wrenches.
Boyd had stayed in the mine, dabbled in the petty crimes his father set up to test him, but he never had the desire to push it any further than that. He was content to rest in the shadow of Bowman, a presence he'd been readily eclipsed by most of his life. He was more at home in the mountains, blowing shit up and clawing at the walls looking for something black and shiny in the light of his headlamp. Bo could never understand that, could never see why his eldest chose a life crawling when he could've been sitting like a king.
Raylan sometimes thought he had it easy. There was no pleasing with Arlo, you just had to give in, lie down and roll over - he’d be too frustrated to kick then, more annoyed you hadn’t put up a fight.
And once he’d figured that out, he'd swallowed back every bit of pride he’d managed to hold onto and just...stopped. He'd let Arlo light into him a couple times a month, ordering him to fetch him a beer while grousing about how his his only son coulda made something more of himself (and by that, they both knew he meant he could’ve been successful as a second-generation Harlan County shit kicker). He’d bite back a snarl and turn his own bottle up, draining the last of his piss before nodding his agreement to his father and heading for his truck.
He’d spend all day on his back or buried in the belly of a two-ton Ford, trying not to remember what Boyd’s fingers on him felt like.
They never talked about it - that night. It was something kept between them, precious and whole, like the memory would fracture if they spoke of it aloud. Like anything else - anything more - and their world would come crashing down around them like a slate slide.
Maybe it's that he's thinking of him or just dumb luck, but some sort of devil must've conjured him because the next time the door opens, Boyd Crowder is slipping back into his stratosphere.
He comes in with his brother, sauntering the way that he does, and every eye in the room is on him and Bowman. He tips his head toward some men at the bar, takes their hands, claps a few on the shoulders and tosses out some small talk. The barmaid - Hazel, he remembers now that he's not thinking of it - pulls out a bottle of Elmer T and pours two fingers for him, two for Bowman. He's downing it when Raylan catches his eyes over the rim of his tumbler. Bowman must tell a joke because the men start laughing, ribald and wheezing as they slap their knees.
Then he holds a finger up to his brother and makes his way toward Raylan's corner of the bar with a bottle of Beam he'd snagged from the counter. He sets it down with flourish and flashes his teeth at the man before him. "Raylan."
"Boyd," he answers, and that's all of a greeting either of them need.
Boyd slides into the booth just behind Raylan and shifts so his back's flush with the wood-paneled wall. He sighs deeply and Raylan knows that his performance is over.
"How's Johnny?" Raylan asks over his shoulder, finally starting to pick at his chili fries.
"All right, I guess." Boyd takes a pull from the bottle and lifts one of his booted feet onto the vinyl-covered bench. "Gets his release next week, so I s'spect it'll be business as usual with him for a while."
"Mosely's got a hard on for you Crowders," Raylan comments absently, immediately wishing he'd phrased things some other way. He hears him shift and feels Boyd's breath against the back of his neck when he says, "Don't they all."
He drops his chili fry, hand still suspended. His spine is frozen, but there's something lava hot coursing through his veins.
There's a beat, then another. But Boyd backs off and the feeling passes and Raylan knows it's his own fault for coming out tonight, to Johnny's bar of all places. If he'd really wanted to avoid this, he could've just kept holed up in Helen's old house off Indian Line and watched I Love Lucy reruns until he fell asleep.
"That's your point makin' finger, if I recall correctly."
Boyd's a safe distance now and Raylan breathes deeper. "Yep. Got nine more, though," he explains, holding his hand up and extending his middle finger. "I'll make do."
Boyd coughs a little as he laughs and Raylan winces at the rattle.
Neither man says anything for the longest of moments - and that's okay. The chili fries are cool enough now and Raylan stuffs three or four into his mouth, licking the sauce from his fingertips.
“You ever wonder, Raylan,” Boyd asks finally, pausing in the usual dramatic way he has about him, “how things mighta been had we cast off the chains of Harlan and run for the beauties unknown?”
Raylan snorts a little and there’s a smile that holds no humor on his lips when he replies, “You honestly think we ever could’ve gotten outta here, chains rattlin’ behind us?”
“We had the chance,” Boyd says quietly, and there's an almost apology in his voice.
Raylan takes a sip of bourbon, wishing it burned just a little more on the way down.
“Yeah, but...that was a different life,” he replies, and an old weight slips onto his shoulders.
-END-
Prompt: "I don't care to know," Boyd says, with finality. There's a well of anger in him that Raylan glimpses occasionally, flashing dangerously in his eyes. He always steps into the line of fire, takes the brunt of it. It always passes, leaving calm in its wake. "We almost were those bitter men."
"That was a different life," Raylan Replies, and an old weight slides off his shoulders.