Chapter Text
“Honestly, Raylan, you might as well stay there,” Winona says. She doesn’t even look upset over the video call, just—tired.
“What?” It’s not that Raylan expected Winona to be happy about it, but he’d thought she might have some kind of feeling, might even argue a little.
“You barely see Willa as it is,” Winona says. “When was the last time you went to—anything, for her? A school play?”
“Those are always during the workday—” And it’s just five-year-olds who can’t remember their lines.
“Can you tell me the name of her pediatrician here? Or her kindergarten teacher? Or a single one of her friends? You missed her birthday, Raylan.”
“I was chasing down a serial murderer! Do you know how many women he’d killed? I made it up to her, we had that party two days later—”
“I told you,” she says, “I gave up trying to change you a long time ago. You are the job. You’ll always be the job. It’ll always be your priority. I’d rather explain to her that you’re not there because you live in another state than because work got in the way again.”
Raylan feels like she’s punched him in the stomach, especially because she’s not wrong. He loves Willa, and if anybody ever threatened her, he’d shoot them in a heartbeat, but he can’t pretend he’s ever made just—seeing her a priority, and if he’s honest—if he’s really honest, her school plays and her soccer games and his weekends with her are never going to feel more important than his work. “We’ll—change the custody arrangement,” he says. “I’ll take a week or two off in the summer and one in winter, bring her here or fly down, no work phone, nothing—”
“All right,” Winona says, and he hears, I’ll believe it when I see it.
“I’m going—I’m going to go back to Miami for some of my stuff in a day or two,” Raylan says. “I’ll—I’ll talk to her about it then.”
“All right,” Winona says again. “Take care of yourself, Raylan.” She ends the call.
Raylan sits back in his chair. He’s stayed late at the office to call her, figured he oughta do it as soon as possible and didn’t think it was best to do at Tim’s, given—Tim’s reaction to the news, but now—and he and Tim drove together, which means he’s gotta take a cab back to Tim’s apartment and knock on the front door. Tim opens it and lets him in without saying anything. “I know we gotta talk about—what you meant,” he tells Tim, “but I just talked to Winona and either I’m drinkin’ here or at a bar, and I figure, I get belligerent, you can knock me out with a whole lot less damage than somebody at a bar.”
Tim walks into the kitchen and gets out a bottle of whiskey, which Raylan thinks is more or less agreement. “Raylan,” Tim asks, “you ever thought about a goddamn decision in your whole life?”
“Well, I thought through this one pretty well.”
“Bullshit, you walked into Rachel’s office and walked out about five minutes later—” Tim pours two pretty big glasses.
“Ah, no, I meant drinking here and not at a bar.” Raylan takes the glass from Tim and throws back half of it. “Potential consequences and all that.”
“Jesus Christ.” Tim sits down heavily on the couch, and Raylan follows because it’s not like there’s a whole lot of other places to sit. “What’d Winona say?”
“That I’m a shitty father, so I might as well move away anyhow.” Tim’s quiet. “You think I’m a shitty father?”
Tim hesitates. “I mean, it’s not like you smack her around. I assume.”
“That’s a pretty low fucking bar.” Raylan finishes off his glass and the burn in his throat makes him cough. “Of course I don’t hit her, or tell her she’s trash, or—”
“—yeah, or anything our fathers did, I get it,” Tim says. “How old was she, first time you ever met her?” Raylan can feel him watching when Raylan gets up to refill his glass. “I know you didn’t go see her when she was born—”
“Somethin’ like nine months, but—there was Drew Thompson—and that thing in LA—and then the Crowes and then Boyd and Markham—”
“Look,” Tim says, “I’m not telling you what you oughta do, all right?” He finishes off his own glass. “You might as well bring that bottle over, I got a feeling it’s gonna be more than a two-glass night.”
“What’re you sayin’, then?” Raylan brings it back to the couch with him.
“You wanted to know if I think you’re a shitty father, and I’m sayin’ I think you don’t give a shit about being a father.”
“Jesus, don’t sugarcoat it or anything.” Raylan tries to make himself go slow on this glass, but it disappears pretty quick too.
Tim shrugs. “I figure it’s just who you are. Doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, but I figure it does mean you oughta go back in time and pay more attention in high school sex ed.”
“Thanks, that makes me feel a whole lot better.”
“So you wanna get belligerent and try to punch me now, or you savin’ that for later?” Tim turns a little toward him, and he’s a whole lot steadier than Raylan right now.
“I wasn’t sayin’ it’s guaranteed,” Raylan says. He pours himself another glass, then holds the bottle out to refill Tim’s.
“I’m good,” Tim says.
“No drinkin’ when you’re sad or angry?” Raylan frowns. “You’re about two glasses past that.”
“Commiseratory drinking.” Tim doesn’t refill his glass, though. “What d’you wanna stay for? You never wanted to come to Kentucky in the first place, and it always seemed like you were just looking for your chance to leave.”
Raylan stares down into his glass. “Feels like—everybody else’s lives kept on going, and mine just stopped, soon as I went to Miami. Everything felt just a little wrong, an’ I didn’t realize just how it was ‘till I got back here.”
“Well that’s fucking sad,” Tim says. “Doomed to Kentucky forever.”
“When I went to see Boyd, that last time—he said maybe the only way to get out of Harlan was never to have been born there.” Raylan gives Tim a sharp look. “It seems to be just fine for you.”
“Fair enough.” Tim gets up and fills a big glass of water, passes it to Raylan, and says, “You’re gonna feel real bad in the morning, y’know.” Then he does splash a little more whiskey into his own glass. He sits down on the floor, leaning back against the couch, instead of sitting back down next to Raylan, and it means Raylan can’t see his face.
“Dunno exactly how to explain it,” Raylan says. “But I know the only time things felt right was in that conference room, and chasing after Boyd, and I guess I just figure that’s what I oughta do.”
“What was it, true foes, once met, are joined ‘till death? You’ve gotta be the most dramatic person I ever met.”
“Me and Boyd—” Raylan hesitates. “You asked if I ever did anything with a guy, before you.”
“I did.”
He wishes he could see Tim’s face. “Me and Boyd, we dug coal together—”
“So you’ve mentioned. I’m starting to think that’s a euphemism,” Tim says, and from what Raylan sees of the movement of his arm, it looks like he takes a drink.
“We were down this doghole mine—little one, kind of a shady operation—and there was an explosion.” Raylan can still feel the heat of it at his back. “Whole thing started to go. Boyd dragged me out in time. Two other guys died.” He takes a long swallow of his whiskey, and it goes down easy. “That night—we were living together, and that night we just—laid in my bed hangin’ onto each other, and—it ain’t like anybody came or something, it was just—”
Tim squeezes Raylan’s ankle gently. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I know what you mean.” Raylan tucks the water glass into the crook of his arm to free up a hand and slides his fingers through Tim’s hair. Tim sighs and tilts his head back against it like a cat for a minute. Then he lifts his head. “You oughta drink that water.” Raylan slides off the couch to sit down next to him. He jostles the water in the process, spilling a little onto Tim’s shoulder, and Raylan can’t help but follow it with his eyes, and then he keeps looking, to Tim’s collarbone, up his neck, to his face. Raylan finishes off his whiskey, sets down both glasses, and starts to lean in. He presses his mouth to Tim’s, and Tim kisses him for a few seconds, just long enough for Raylan to bring his hand to Tim’s chest and feel how hard Tim’s heart is beating. Then Tim pushes him back. “Don’t,” he says. “You’re drunk.”
“Like it a whole lot when ’m not drunk too,” Raylan says. He’s starting to lean to the side pretty badly, though, and his face is kinda numb.
“Look,” Tim says, “now you’re staying—you can sleep in the guest bedroom ‘till you find a place, but we’re not gonna—do this anymore.”
Raylan stares at him. “Now I’m stayin’, we’re not—” Tim nods. “I’m—okay, ’m too drunk for this.”
“Come on,” Tim says. He takes Raylan’s arm and hauls him up to stand, more or less, then walks him to the bathroom. Tim helps him lie down on the bath mat next to the toilet and then drapes a towel over him like a blanket. “I’ll check on you in a couple hours,” he says. “Try not to die in between.”
* * * * *
Raylan wakes up in the bathroom. Jesus Christ, his head. He’s lying on the bath mat with a roll of toilet paper for a pillow and his nose and throat are burning like he’s been throwing up. He’s pretty sure he has. He knows he hasn’t felt this bad since the last time he tried to keep up with Tim. His body doesn’t love standing up, but he hobbles over to the sink and drinks some water out of his cupped hands, brushes his teeth, and then spends a long time swishing mouthwash around his mouth. When he steps out, it’s just barely light outside and the apartment’s dim, all the lights off. Tim’s door’s closed, whatever that means, and he drags himself to the guest bedroom to lie down someplace softer.
He feels very marginally better when he wakes up again. Somebody—Tim, probably—is making noise outside his door, and he can smell coffee. Raylan walks real slow out the bedroom door and says, “I think I did die.”
“Sounded like you puked your guts up. Coffee should still be hot.” The coffee pot’s mostly full, which means—means Tim went out and bought some coffee and made coffee while Raylan was passed out. “You really are a lightweight now, huh.”
“You’re gonna tell me you went running this mornin’, aren’t you.” Raylan shuffles to the coffee pot, pours himself a cup, and retreats to the kitchen table. “You went running and you—did all your push-ups and shit—” Tim’s hair is wet. “You take a shower while I was passed out in the bathroom?”
“Got somebody to give me a sponge-bath,” Tim says. “A little awkward, actually. You want some eggs?”
Raylan’s not really up for making decisions right now, so it’s good when Tim puts some scrambled eggs and toast in front of him—is it good? His stomach’s not real sure. “I feel like—I feel like you said something confusing last night.” The first bite of eggs is okay.
Tim sits down across from him with his own cup of coffee. “I told you we’re not doing your special gay exploration anymore, now that you decided to make your transfer back to the office permanent.”
Right. “Yeah, you’re gonna have to explain that a lot more, seems like bein’ around would make it a whole lot easier.” He decides not to argue with special gay exploration, which is particularly insulting.
“Yeah,” Tim says, his gaze steady. “I learned awhile ago not to fuck people I work with.” There’s something painful in his eyes that Raylan doesn’t want to ask about, not right now.
“Arguably those’re the best people,” Raylan points out. He tries out a bite of toast, and that’s okay too. “Since you’re around each other so much. So—you were only doin’ it because I was gonna be leaving?”
“Yup,” Tim says bluntly.
“Oh.” Raylan’s not sure if that’s insulting or flattering or something else. It’s not like he thought Tim was gonna feel any particular kind of way, but maybe somewhere between all right with it and actually happy. He definitely hadn’t figured on Tim being so—definite about this.
“Like I said, I put a whole lotta work into not doing shit that’s bad for me, these last few years. I did that once, and it went—real bad, in the end.”
“In the Army?” Raylan’s trying to figure out how delicately he can point out that it’s not really the same circumstances, what with it not being illegal.
“Yeah,” Tim says. “Look, for once, don’t make this hard by tryin’ to persuade me, okay? We both had a good time this last week, there’s a whole lot of other men out there if that’s what you wanna keep doing, and what the hell, things’re never boring, workin’ with you, so welcome back to the office for good.”
“Okay,” Raylan says. He’s not drunk anymore, but he’s still having some trouble with it. “I mean, you don’t want me to argue, I won’t argue.” Not like he’d been thinking about all the other things he’d like to do with Tim, now that they’d have more time. Not like he’d been thinking about the desperate noises that Tim’d made when Raylan tried out sucking his cock, that he’d like to keep trying it until he could take more, put a couple fingers in him while Raylan did it to feel just how he’d react— “I guess I oughta find myself a place.”
He spends most of the day looking at some apartment postings online, even plans to go see a couple more tomorrow when he’s less hungover, and goes to bed figuring, all right, maybe it won’t be that hard moving here for good. Of course, once he lies down in bed, all he can think about is how it felt when Tim sank down onto his his cock, how Tim looked down at him—and Raylan’s thrusting hard into his hand, swallowing back any kind of noise as he comes.
Sunday oughta be an easy day, but Raylan casually looks over Carl’s file while they eat breakfast and asks Tim, “How the hell did he get parole?”
“Model inmate, apparently,” Tim says. “I mean, that or somebody paid off a couple people on the parole board, either one.”
“What d’you think?”
Tim rubs his thumb and forefingers together in a money kind of gesture. “There were three weird releases last year, no apparent connection between the parolees except how none of ‘em shoulda been eligible—all violent offenses, all had served a whole lot less than 85% of their sentences. No overlap between the parole board members at the hearings. Frankly, it was weird how cleanly they all didn’t overlap.”
“Nobody looked into it more?”
There’s a grin starting on Tim’s face. “Sure we did. We ran into a wall, it all being state shit, no federal jurisdiction, blah blah. But what with Boyd having escaped while serving part of a federal sentence, and Carl being a damn good suspect in facilitating that escape—well, that’d be a pretty good excuse to re-open it, wouldn’t it.”
“Yeah,” Raylan says, and he can’t help smiling back. This shit gets me hard. Hell yeah it does. “Where’s the parole board office?”
“Frankfort,” Tim says. “You wanna take a field trip tomorrow and make some bureaucrats real unhappy?”
“Can’t think of anything I’d like more.”
That’s how they end up spending their Sunday at the office, going over the old case files, the usual stuff—the financials of each parole board member, cross-checking all over again for any connections, the personal histories of each of the parolees, anyplace their paths might’ve crossed, jail records and phone logs, all the way down to the investigating detectives and arresting officers on the initial crimes. Somewhere along the way, Nelson shows up and says, “Hey, Raylan, I hear you’re staying! We’re lucky to keep you!”
“Thanks, Nelson.” Raylan does his best not to give Tim a meaningful look, like Here’s how somebody could’ve reacted. Tim can probably tell he’s thinking it, though.
“Okay, how’s this,” Tim says finally. “This board member on Carl’s parole case, Savannah, her kid graduated from Frankfort Prep last year. Two years ago an assistant gymnastics coach got fired from the school, and then he went to work at the beverage supplier for Audrey’s, which Earl was running at the time.”
Raylan whistles. “I’ll take it. Where’s the coach now?”
Tim clicks through a couple files. “Would you believe it, he’s been in Harlan County lockup for two months, waitin’ on trial in an assault case. You want me to call up Henry, get the police report faxed over?”
“We got a fax machine still?” Somehow Raylan’d assumed it’d be gone by now.
“Some of the littler counties still ain’t digitized their records, still easier for the deputies to just feed the files through the fax than scan and organize ‘em. Gimme half an hour, I’ll get it.”
Raylan checks his watch. It’s near six, and they never had lunch. “I’ll grab some food while you do it—anyplace new that’s good around here?”
“Vietnamese place, five blocks away,” Tim says. “Gimme the pâté banh mi. Don’t get the tripe pho unless you’re a different man than I recall.”
“I can safely say I’m not payin’ money for anything with tripe in it. You just get those records.”
The Vietnamese place is tiny, some starred newspaper review clippings taped up in the window and a teenager behind the cash register. Raylan gets an array of sandwiches, some plastic containers of soup, a bunch of spring rolls, and some crab rangoon, which he’s pretty sure ain’t Vietnamese at all, but he likes them. While he’s waiting, he checks his phone and winces when he remembers all those apartments he was supposed to see—but he’s not gonna see them tonight, and not tomorrow neither, the way things are going. Maybe next weekend. When he gets back, Tim’s got a nice stack of black-and-white printouts in front of him, and he’s on the phone with somebody. “See you in a couple hours,” he says and hangs up. “Our coach’s a great guy, all kinds of good stuff here. You buy out the whole place?”
“All except the tripe. What’d you find out?”
“Coach got fired once they figured out he was using a fake name. Turns out he’s a convicted sex offender.” Raylan picks up a sandwich in one hand and starts flipping through the pages with his other hand. “Jimmy was the arresting officer—turns out our guy got belligerent at Audrey’s after spendin’ some time with Honey, claimed he wasn’t supposed to have to pay to visit whores at Audrey’s and socked the bartender. Jimmy says he’s a peach, only reason he ain’t been released pending trial is that he also had the bad sense to whack Henry in the face with a food tray when it was feeding time at the jail.”
“Nice,” Raylan says. He watches Tim swallow down a sandwich in about thirty seconds flat. Eat it before somebody takes it away. “So who we gonna go see first?”
“If you’re up for it, I figure you and me go down to Harlan,” Tim says. “Have a little chat with the coach, maybe Honey, maybe the bartender. Earl, even, depending on what we find out. Nelson’s gonna go to Frankfort Prep tomorrow, see what he can find out there, maybe even see what prompted them to start investigatin’ the coach.” Nelson’s good for shit like that, one of the few of them along with Rachel who can wear a suit without looking like a kid playing dress-up, doesn’t make fancy people uncomfortable. “I checked in with Rachel, she gave us the green light, though I think she was trying not to laugh when she used the words ‘tread lightly.’”
“Lemme guess, that was Loretta on the phone?”
Tim nods. “The bartender works third shift. We drive down tonight, we can get an early start on him right when he’s gettin’ off work tomorrow. You good to go?”
“Swing by the apartment to get me some clothes, I ain’t living out of the bins in your car if we end up spending more than a night in Harlan.” Raylan sighs. “Can we get some money from evidence for our rooms, or do I need to hit an ATM too?”
“You try out your Raylan charms on the evidence locker guy if you want, but after that, you’re gonna be trying to charm the ATM.”
Tim drives them down to Harlan. “You look like a kid on Christmas morning,” Raylan says. Then he adds, “That means happy—”
“Asshole,” Tim says fondly. “I’ve seen TV, I know how kids look when they get a big heap of presents. I’ve been itching to pull this thread ever since Carl got released, the jurisdiction bullshit’s the only reason I haven’t yet. Money’s comin’ from someplace—money to get Carl out, money to get Boyd out—and I wanna know where. We don’t get to it, Boyd’ll be right back out again.”
“You know what I’m gonna say, I suspect.”
“It ain’t Loretta,” Tim says, almost before Raylan finishes. “She grew up since you knew her. She’s real careful to keep her money out of anything illegal. Information, yeah, that comes and goes, everybody underestimates her, but payin’ off a parole board member—let alone six—to get a couple violent criminals released, that ain’t her style.”
Raylan wants to think it isn’t too. “Those other parolees, might’ve just been to cover for the irregularity when Carl got released. That might be why we can’t find any connection.”
“Who’d’ve thought, you can be good at the job too when you apply yourself.” Tim’s smile is bright in the oncoming headlights. Funny how none of it ever felt like flirting until Raylan saw Tim naked.
Loretta’s on the couch in the living room with Henry, watching a movie, when they show up. “Marshals.” She doesn’t look away from the screen. “Same rooms as last time, same price.” Henry’s got an arm around her shoulders, but he pulls it back real quick when Raylan glares at him.
Tim elbows Raylan in the ribs. “Thanks, Loretta.” He leads the way upstairs. “Be nice,” he tells Raylan. “Henry’s a good kid.”
“Yeah, well.” It’s only about 9 PM, too early for bed no matter how early Tim’s gonna wake up and go running, and Raylan’s not about to suggest they go to one of their rooms. “You wanna see where I used to sneak off and hide when Arlo was in a real mood?”
Tim raises an eyebrow. “I thought that was your aunt Helen’s cabin.”
“No, she’d take me after.” Raylan suddenly feels awkward about it. “It’s just in the attic, unless Loretta did somethin’ real creative up there too.”
“No,” Tim says, “no, far as I know, she let the attic alone. Sure, Raylan, what the hell, let’s go climb around in your attic. If somebody breaks a leg, it had better be you.”
“Nah, I bet you’d still walk around on a broken leg. I’d be incapacitated,” Raylan says. He dumps his bag in his room, waits for Tim to do the same, and then leads him to the very back of the house, where the ceiling’s a little lower. The same metal ring still dangles from the ceiling entrance to the attic. “I used to have to find something to hook it pull it down,” Raylan says. It’s easy to reach it now, grip the ring and pull hard on it so that the entrance to the attic opens and the ladder slides down.
“I’ll let you go first, just in case it won’t hold your weight.” Tim’s voice is very dry.
“You just wanna look at my ass while I climb up,” Raylan says, and then remembers he’s not supposed to say shit like that.
Tim laughs anyway. “Get up the ladder and show me this magical hideout.”
The attic’s like he remembers, only smaller. Half of it’s got flooring, the rest of it nothing but rafters covered up by ceiling. “Back there,” Raylan says, once Tim’s up all the way. The eaves are low enough that he ends up sitting cross-legged by the little window. “There’s a crawlspace, you gotta step from rafter to rafter to get back there. I’d come up here, pull the ladder up behind me, cross the rafters and tuck myself away in that crawlspace, and he’d never find me there.” It’s dark, only lit by the setting sun outside.
“Nice,” Tim says carefully. “Wish I’d had a spot like this.”
“Yeah?” Raylan tries to keep his voice even. He figured Tim might have something to say about it.
“My father—” He hesitates. “My father would’ve found it and locked me up here, if he’d had any inkling, left me up here ‘till I was afraid of the place.” He shifts a little in place. “Some people, y’know, they knock their kids around when they’re drunk or angry, ‘cause the kids are annoying or in the way or whatever. Mine, he had a whole lot of meaning behind anything he did, like he wanted me to understand just how much he hated me.” His voice is steady, but Raylan can’t imagine how.
“Too bad he had the nerve to die,” is all Raylan can think to say.
“Yeah, I woulda liked to do it myself,” Tim says, “but my therapist figures it prob’ly woulda fucked me up worse than I am, and she’s usually right about shit like that.”
“Sorry,” Raylan says.
“Sorry I didn’t get to kill him?” Tim sounds almost amused.
“Sorry I never—realized, when I was here before. How bad you were doin’.”
“I know you’re pretty self-absorbed, but if it helps, I didn’t exactly realize either then. No reason to pay attention to it, ‘till it got so bad I couldn’t do my job anymore.” Tim’s face is shadowed in the fading light.
“What happened?” It’s a whole hell of a lot to ask, to ask for more than Tim’s already told him.
“Like I said, in the Army—there was this guy. Petrosyan. My spotter.” The one who killed himself, Raylan remembers. “I was in love with him,” Tim says, and from the way he says it, Raylan can only imagine how long he’s spent figuring it out. “We were, I mean. I think it mighta been the only thing keeping me from losing my shit. And then we got blown up. That IED.”
“Your scar?”
“Yeah. Our medic died, I nearly lost my liver, and Petrosyan, he lost his hand and a fair amount of brain function. The last time I talked with him, he said—we ended up saying some pretty awful shit to each other. Awhile later, I got a call saying he’d killed himself.” Tim says it all slow, careful, and he’s breathing very evenly, a five-count in and five-count out.
“Jesus, Tim.” Raylan can’t stop himself from reaching out and putting a hand on Tim’s knee, squeezing gently, because it’s not like there’s anything to say.
Tim doesn’t pull away. “Anyhow. Like I said, it was kinda the last straw, and I pretty much fucking fell apart.” He pauses. “I want you to know, I’m gonna get so many gold stars from my therapist for telling you all this shit sober.”
“Oh yeah? She gives you gold stars?”
“Mmhmm. Gives ‘em when I do good, takes ‘em away when I do dumb shit.”
“How many stars did she take away for—”
“Fuckin’ around with you? Been too busy to see her since. I figure I’ll build up some gold star material in the meantime before I wipe out my stock.”
“I’m dumb shit, huh.” It’s near dark in the attic and Tim’s knee is warm under his hand. “I can’t help but feel you’re makin’ up this gold star system. No therapist’s got some kinda chart in her office with stickers on it for you.”
“Yeah,” Tim says. His knee moves, and he sounds closer in the dark. “You got me, more of a personal gold star system. I set all the star values myself. Too wishy-washy otherwise.”
“So how many gold stars you get for telling me all that?”
“What, my deepest emotional traumas? Ten at least, plus let’s say a five-star bonus for not havin’ had a drink when I tell it.”
Raylan senses Tim leaning in, and then Tim kisses him, slow and careful. Raylan cups his cheek, feels the scratch of stubble under his hand, and Tim’s tongue is soft against his. When he pulls back, Raylan doesn’t try to follow. “How many stars’d that wipe out?”
“Five,” Tim says. “Plus two more for tongue.”
“Pretty big tongue penalty.”
“I can’t decide whether there oughta be more or less penalty if it’s sober, though.” Tim’s still close in the dark. “Usually I give myself extra stars for bein’ sober, but arguably it’s less bad to do dumb shit while I’m drunk.”
“So you got another eight stars left to lose before you’re in the red?” Raylan’s doing his best not to sound too encouraging, because Tim said not to try to persuade him—Raylan’s not sure if that’s still supposed to be in effect—but damn he’d like to do it again.
“Guess so,” Tim says, and he leans in again. This time his mouth’s hungrier, one hand hanging onto Raylan’s shirt to hold him in place like Raylan’d ever try to get away. Then Tim breaks away. “Okay,” he says, and his voice is rough. “Okay, definitely wiped out all the gold stars.”
“You get red stars when you go into the negative?”
“I try not to do that.” There’s rustling in the dark. “I’m gonna go back down. We got an early morning tomorrow to see that bartender.”
Raylan lets him have the lie. “Crawl straight back,” he says. “Just don’t kneel on any ceiling.”
When they’re both back down from the attic, Raylan pushes the ceiling panel back up until it clicks into place, then turns to look at Tim. Tim’s a little flushed and he’s got a dust bunny in his hair that he brushes away as Raylan looks. “So, 5:30 run, right?”
“You get a gold star every time you make me do something healthy?”
“Yes,” Tim says promptly, absolutely straight-faced. “Every mile is a gold star.”
“Bullshit, you gonna tell me that every half-hour earlier is a gold star too?”
“Obviously,” Tim says.
“6 AM, earliest I can do.” There is no part—well, all right, there are a couple parts—of Raylan that want to go running that early, but most parts think it sounds terrible. “Bet you’ll feel dumb if we gotta chase a suspect and I can’t keep up ‘cause I’m exhausted from running.”
Tim gives him a deadpan stare. “Yes, Raylan,” he says slowly. “I’ll feel very dumb if you’re too tired to keep up.”
“Go to bed.” Raylan doesn’t ask him other things, like just how far this gold star system extends, like how many times Raylan’s gotta go for a run with him so Tim can earn enough gold stars for a blowjob, or like if Tim just made up this entire fucking thing in the last hour so he’s got some control over what happens. He goes to his room and lies down on the lumpy mattress—he’s gonna buy a mattress topper, he decides, because he’s a goddamn adult who can pay for a mildly more comfortable bed—and thinks how it went before their last run together, sets his alarm for the morning and then gives in and jerks off because he’s never gonna fall asleep otherwise.
It’s probably some kinda sign that Raylan actually bothered to bring running clothes with him down to Harlan. Tim makes him actually stretch first and then they run six miles again—Jesus Christ—and then Raylan says, “One star for a half-hour early, right? I wouldn’t’ve got up until at least seven, if not for running.”
“I see what you’re doing,” Tim says. The asshole’s not even out of breath. “If I wipe ‘em out as soon as I earn ‘em, never get to work up to anything more,” and that makes Raylan shiver. “C’mon, we gotta talk to the bartender.”
* * * * *
The bartender won’t say anything other than that he’d never met the coach, Jesse, in his goddamn life before, and nobody ever told him the asshole was supposed to fuck for free. “Yeah,” Honey says, “when I told him it was two hundred bucks, he got pretty mad and said he didn’t do all that fucking work for Earl to stiff him on the free pussy.”
Raylan glances to Tim. “Two hundred bucks, huh?” Either Audrey’s has gone higher class since he’s been away or the guy wanted some weird shit.
“I heard he even went and punched the new guy who was tendin’ bar,” Honey says. “Glad it wasn’t me.” She looks between the two of them, and she’s looking real close. “I always told Tim I’d give him a lawman’s freebie—he wants to add you in, I ain’t complainin’.”
“Gotta keep on raincheckin’ that one,” Tim says, but he gives her a sweet kind of smile, nicer than the ones Raylan usually sees on his face. “You know me and Teena’re tight—you ever wanna do somethin’ like that, you lemme know.” He hands her a couple twenties.
“Still always gonna be Harlan,” she tells him. “You take care, Tim.”
Raylan’s never given a whole lot of thought to the girls at Audrey’s, beyond doing his level best to keep Ellen May handy—him and all the boys he knows had some variation on their first time, here—partly because if he stopped to be outraged every time somebody was being treated bad, he’d never catch anybody. “You spend a lot of time here tryin’ to—”
Tim shrugs, but it’s an awfully careful shrug. “Whores make pretty good CIs,” he says. “If they end up doing somethin’ else once they get the money for it, well—”
“Yeah,” Raylan says. “Yeah. You ready for Jesse the pervert coach?”
“Jesus knows I love a good jailhouse interrogation.” Tim grins at him. “Detour for donuts, though.”
Raylan figures on Tim inhaling the donuts, but he tapes the box of a dozen shut and gets one each for him and Raylan. “I know you’re gonna tell me to eat slower—”
Raylan thinks about what Tim told him up in the attic, how his father wanted Tim to know just how much he hated him. “You eat however fast you want,” he says. “Unless you get a gold star for eatin’ slow, in which case—”
“I can’t help but feel like you’ve developed some self-interest in my acquisition of gold stars,” Tim says, and he does finish his donut in two bites. “Maybe I oughta be savin’ ‘em up for a—pizza coupon, or a plastic trophy or something.”
Raylan exhibits incredible self-control in not asking how many gold stars a plastic trophy’d be worth. “Just wanna support you in your therapy progress,” he says, and it sounds like a joke when he says it but he does like knowing Tim’s doing better, even good.
They hand off the donuts to Henry and spend most of the rest of the day on Jesse the coach. He starts the conversation out by spitting at Raylan—Tim pulls him out of the way at the right minute—to indicate how little he’d like to talk to the cops, not because he wants to invoke his rights or anything, just that he’d like to dick around and waste their time for as long as possible. Eventually, Raylan sighs. “Look, Jesse, I don’t give a shit about you punching out some guy who works for Carl, and I do feel bad about young Henry’s face, so you mouth the word ‘sorry’ in his direction and we’ll call it good. All I wanna know is how it is that you helped Carl get let out on parole early.” That, it turns out, gets Jesse talking a little more.
After they leave the sheriff’s station, him and Tim get a pizza and some cheap beer and sit out under the big willow tree behind the shed at Loretta’s house, eating it while Tim types up notes on his laptop. “They always went for the kids,” Raylan can’t help saying. Jesse’d admitted—eventually—that it’d been threats to Savannah’s kid that got her to help out Carl, and how the other board members all sent their kids to fancy private schools around Frankfort, and what with traveling with the team to all the different matches at said schools, it was pretty easy to get a good sense of those kids, of how to get to them. That plus some money—and then the threat to expose the board members for what they’d already done—did the trick.
“Maybe they oughta only hire people for this shit who ain’t got kids,” Tim says. “Jail guards, parole board members—”
“Yeah, but most of them’ve got wives or girlfriends, and the ones that don’t, they’re prob’ly the ones selfish enough to just take the money.” Raylan sighs. “Y’know, it’s not even that Miami had particularly good pizza, but—”
Tim picks up a floppy piece of pizza and shoves it toward Raylan’s mouth. “You ain’t gone hungry enough times in your life if you’re still bitchin’ about goddamn pizza.” He takes a swig of beer. “Nobody’s saying where the money’s coming from, though. Far as I can tell, the whole parole board shitshow was just to get Carl out, the rest of it was smokescreen—good call on that—an’ I guess Carl was to get Boyd out, but I still dunno who’s got the money and wants Boyd out.” He’s quiet for a minute.
“Y’know,” Raylan says, “I really am glad you’re doing better, Tim. Even if you really aren’t ever gonna—”
“What, suck your cock again?” Tim throws a wadded-up napkin at Raylan. “You know you’re so bad at sounding selfless it just comes out sarcastic.”
Raylan throws a pizza crust at him. “Fuck you, here I’m tryin’ to do the right thing—”
Tim goes real still. “Hey Raylan, when’s the last time you tried to do the right thing?”
“Now, that’s getting downright unkind—”
“No, I mean it,” Tim says. “Remember how you’re definitely too mature and responsible now to have found Ava and just let her go?”
“No.” Raylan doesn’t like where this conversation’s going. “No, I distinctly don’t remember anything to do with Ava at all. Anyway, it was Jimmy gettin’ ready to leave town that made Boyd decide it was time to run, you said so.”
Tim frowns. “Okay, then, who else knows where any of that money’s buried, could’ve told Boyd?”
“She shot him!”
“Lotsa people shot him. You shot him. He seems to be the forgivin’ type.”
“No,” Raylan says again. He takes a long drink of beer to collect himself. “She was terrified of him, when I went to see her.”
“Raylan.” Tim sounds like he’s about to say that Raylan’s very stupid. “Ava shot her first husband, had every man named Crowder wrapped around her finger, reinvented herself as the crime queen of Harlan, got her own uncle who detests the Crowders to help Boyd dig out that mine, played both you and Boyd all through her time as a CI, stole ten million bucks from Boyd, and then managed to escape in your police car, probably with some untold amount of it in some untold way. You got a massive blind spot for that woman. You’re tellin’ me she couldn’t spend five minutes in front of you lookin’ terrified at the thought that Boyd Crowder might track down her and their son, even if she was tryin’ to make that exact thing happen?” Tim raises an eyebrow. “Enough to fool you, anyhow?”
“Fuck,” Raylan says. “Fuck.”
“It’s—a working theory.” Tim pulls another bottle out of the six-pack, pops the lid, and passes it to Raylan. “I’m just saying it works pretty well.”
“Fuck,” Raylan says again.
“You know we’re gonna have to tell somebody about you findin’ Ava. Get some bodies out there as quick as we can, just in case she’s stuck around wherever you found her for some unknowable reason.”
“Fuck,” Raylan says one more time, and lets himself fall back onto the grass, staring up at the underside of the branches.
Tim sighs and gets out his phone. “Hey, Rachel,” he says. “We might have a line on Ava. I’m sending you my report, but we think she might be holed up in—”
Raylan winces. “Lebec, California. A ranch out there.” Rachel’s the one who gave him the newspaper clipping in the first place.
“We’re thinkin’ maybe she had something to do with Boyd’s escape,” Tim says. “You want us back in Lexington?” Rachel’s response must be emphatic, because Tim says, “You got it, chief,” and ends the call.
“In my defense,” Raylan says, “she is the one who sent me to California knowin’ it was a damn solid lead.”
Tim glares. “Yeah, I’m sure this’s what she had in mind.” He sighs again and lies back next to Raylan. “KSP’s gonna pick up Carl and Earl. You and me’re headed to Tramble tomorrow for another heart-to-heart with Boyd.”
“My favorite,” Raylan says. The branches of the weeping willow are thick, and it makes it feel like they’re in a little shelter away from the rest of the world. He wants to not think about any of this, of how bad he fucked it all up.
“At least nobody died.” Tim sounds like he knows what Raylan’s thinking. “You know? You’re a blind idiot, not bringin’ Ava in, but nobody’s died yet ‘cause you didn’t.”
“You’re an angel of comfort,” Raylan says. “At least I can tell myself no matter how stupid I am, nobody died yet because of my failings.”
“Hey, I did plenty of shit coulda got a bunch of people killed,” Tim tells him. He stretches, hands over his head, arching his back, and his shirt slips a little ways up until Raylan can see a strip of skin. “Nelson got shot, while I was forgettin’ how to pull. Just lucky the bad guy had crap aim, really.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, he didn’t hold it against me, or not for long, but still,” Tim says. Raylan can’t help reaching out and running his fingers along that little sliver of bare skin, and Tim shivers, but he doesn’t tell Raylan to stop, or that it’ll wipe out however many gold stars. He stretches again, until Raylan can stroke his hand over Tim’s hipbone.
Fuck, Raylan wants to strip Tim down right here, until he hasn’t got a stitch of clothes on, and then lay kisses on every inch of his body and see what makes him react most—his neck, his nipples, along the insides of his thighs, up the length of his cock, and then see how much more of it Raylan can fit in his mouth this time. He doesn’t, of course, just lays there with Tim staring up at the trees. “Maybe they oughta stop letting me make decisions,” Raylan says.
“I feel like you’re tryin’ to get me to say otherwise,” Tim says, “when I think I’ve been pretty clear this whole time that your decision-making skills have got to be your very worst quality, among a whole host of failings.”
“Now, that feels like a hell of an exaggeration,” Raylan protests. “What, a whole host?”
“Yeah,” Tim says. “Like all the angels in heaven, whole fucking host of failings. Cherubs of flaws.”
“The little angel babies with bows and arrows?”
“Actually, Ezekiel makes ‘em sound terrifying, four different faces and four wings—” Tim stops. “Anyhow. Yeah, maybe let somebody else make decisions for now.”
Probably a good idea, given how many of Raylan’s decisions right now would tend to end up sliding his hands across more of Tim’s skin. “You know, it’s real jarring anytime you sound educated,” he says instead.
“Don’t worry.” Tim’s voice is very dry. “None of it’s me. Petrosyan, he knew a whole lot of shit, and there was a whole lot of time for him to tell me every bit of it.” Raylan mentally awards Tim a gold star for his explanation. They lie like that for awhile longer under the willow tree, until Tim finally sits up and says, “I’m gonna keep working on this report. Maybe it’ll help me figure out where Ava might be, if she had the good sense to take off after you showed up.”
“Sure,” Raylan says. It’s a pretty clear go away. “Sure, I’m gonna.” He doesn’t bother making up a lie, just stands up and ambles back into the house.
Loretta’s in the kitchen, poking around in the fridge. She looks at Raylan as he walks in. “You figure it out?” she asks.
“Maybe.” Whatever this faith is that Tim’s got in Loretta, Raylan mostly remembers her as a kid who kept getting in over her head doing questionably legal—or downright illegal—shit. “We’ll see.”
Loretta nods. “You figure out Tim?”
“Loretta, in all honesty, I could spend the whole of my life puttin' my whole mind to the task and not figure him out.”
Loretta gives him a very long look. “He ain’t that complicated,” she says, and then she takes a beer out of the fridge and heads right back out.
Raylan wanders upstairs, feeling a whole lot like the world’s conspiring to laugh at him. Maybe this is the stupidest place for it, but Raylan did bring lube with him, just—in case, and he’s been wanting to try something out, and there’s time here and now, he figures. He and Tim’re done for the evening, nothing to do and nowhere to be until Tramble tomorrow.
He takes his clothes off, lies down on the bed, and gets one finger slick. Go slow, he remembers Tim saying, and he does, running his finger back and forth across his rim just—just to see what it’s like. He’s getting hard, though he couldn’t say whether it’s from the feeling alone or if part of it’s the thought of Tim, of the next time he’ll get to touch Tim, whenever Tim decides he’s earned enough gold stars to blow them all on some dumb shit like Raylan. He presses a fingertip in, just a little, and fuck, it’s tight, his body’s clenched up against it. He slicks his finger up more, enough that some of it drips onto the sheets, and keeps rubbing it across his rim as he inhales and exhales slowly, and this time his finger gets a little further, especially when he slides it in and out over and over again. It’s like his body’s figuring out what to do, and it doesn’t hurt that he keeps thinking of Tim, thinking of Tim and the way he’d looked when Raylan did this to him.
Two fingers is a big adjustment, in some ways feels like it takes much longer, but now he knows how it’s supposed to go, how to coax his body open. He’s just gotten the second finger in all the way, pumping his fingers a little to adjust to it, when he hears somebody make a strangled noise. “Jesus Christ.” Tim’s standing in the doorway and his eyes are fixed on Raylan’s hand. “Jesus fucking Christ, Raylan.”
“Just—” Raylan’s voice is rough. “Just tryin’ out—”
“Fuck, how many—” Tim almost slams the door behind him.
“Two fingers. Took me since I came in here, but—”
“Lemme,” Tim says. “Fuck, lemme do it—”
“If you want.” Raylan tries to ignore the way he clenches around his own fingers at the thought of it and pulls them out carefully.
“Jesus,” Tim says, and he gets on the bed between Raylan’s legs. He slicks up one finger and starts all over at Raylan’s rim.
“I did—did that—” Raylan pants, but fuck, it’s so much better with somebody else, especially when Tim leans forward and kisses high on the inside of his thigh.
“Yeah, I figured,” Tim says. “Don’t mean I can’t do it again.” His breath’s hot against Raylan’s skin, and when he starts to slide his finger in, Raylan has to swallow back a groan. “You like that?” Tim asks, and it’s an honest question, not a tease.
“S’okay,” Raylan manages to say, and Tim bites very slightly at the inside of his thigh. “Yeah,” he tries again, “yeah—” and he spreads his legs a little more. Tim makes a noise in the back of his throat and slides his finger out, then back in again slowly, and Raylan says, “You could—I had two fingers—”
“You said.” Tim says the words against his cock, then licks just once, just enough to drag another groan out of Raylan. “If you insist.” Tim slides the second finger in very carefully, and it’s stunning how different it is when it’s somebody else’s fingers spreading him open. Tim works his fingers in and out in long easy strokes, until he hits something inside Raylan that makes it feel like his lungs have seized up.
“Ohfuck,” Raylan manages to say. “Fuck, do that again.”
Tim does, and it makes Raylan jolt and thrust down onto Tim’s fingers. Tim’s flushed red and he leans forward to suck Raylan’s cock into his mouth, keeps fucking Raylan in time with his fingers, and the world’s falling away, everything gone but Tim’s mouth and Tim’s fingers, and when Raylan comes, he squeezes hard around Tim’s fingers. Tim moans around his softening cock and the vibration is almost too much. Tim eases his fingers out slowly. “Okay,” he says, “I wanna be clear, that’s not why I came in here.”
“Didn’t even knock.”
“I knocked twice,” Tim says. He crawls up the bed to lie next to Raylan and kicks the sheet away. “You didn’t answer.”
“So you figured I was dead and came in anyway?” Raylan can’t help but notice Tim’s hard.
“Used to patrol the whole house, when I first lived here,” Tim says. His whole body’s restless. “Check every room, make sure the empty ones were empty and everybody was where they were s’posed to be.”
Raylan looks pointedly at his cock, or at least as pointedly as Raylan can manage right now. “You just gonna lie there like that?”
“I’m out of gold stars,” Tim says. “All out. Deep in the red now. Like a fuckin’ Soviet rally, so many red stars.” Still, he’s rubbing his thumb over the button of his pants.
“If it’s that bad—” Raylan leans over and kisses his mouth, then his neck “—not much harm in making it a little worse, huh?” He’s probably not supposed to be talking like that. “I mean, or you can go take a cold shower and go to bed without jerkin’ off, whatever your star chart tells you.”
“Fuck.” Tim does open his pants up, shoves them down far enough that he can palm his cock. “Don’t—help,” he tells Raylan. “Bad enough you watchin’,” but from the way he says it, the way he’s flushed red, Raylan kinda thinks he means it’s good enough. Raylan watches him, watches the way he grips himself and the kind of stroke he likes, but keeps ending up looking at his face, at the way he bites his lip when he gets close to keep from making noise, how blue his eyes are this close, the way his whole body tenses and then relaxes when he comes. “Oh fuck.” He wipes his hand on the sheet, hesitates for a minute, and then rolls onto his side and kisses Raylan slow and deep, one hand pressed to Raylan’s collarbone, until Raylan’s running out of air and doesn’t give a damn. Tim finally breaks away. “I’m gonna,” he says, and gets out of bed and hikes his jeans back up.
“6 AM,” Raylan says. “Not a goddamn minute earlier.”
Tim’s been looking awfully somber, but that makes him break out into a grin. “6 AM it is.”
* * * * *
The less said about the run, the better. Raylan wonders how long he’s gotta do this before it starts feeling better instead of worse. “You may as well drive us down to Tramble,” he grouses. “Got a fuckin’ cramp in my calf.”
Tim’s mouth twitches. “Maybe I oughta make you drive so you can stretch it out on the gas pedal. Hey, thanks Henry.” He takes two travel mugs of coffee—Raylan assumes—from Henry.
“He one of your rescues too?” Raylan asks as he hauls himself up into Tim’s goddamn SUV.
Tim doesn’t answer that. “I figure Loretta feels bad for how things happened with Jimmy, but she’s not much for apologizing and he doesn’t like to see her unhappy, so he’s doing nice things for us so she feels like we’re taken care of.”
“Jesus.” Raylan hopes Henry’s not gonna go in and change the sheets in Raylan’s room. He’d rather sleep on dirty sheets than think of some eighteen-year-old having to see the mess he and Tim made of those sheets. “Everybody wasn’t so fucking complicated when I was here.”
Tim gives him a look. “You can pick the music,” he says.
“What—oh, you’re tryin’ to be virtuous and self-improved, aren’t you.” Raylan turns on the audio console. “Counting on me not figuring that out?”
“Uh,” Tim says.
”When things go wrong, you'll find they usually go on getting worse for some time; but when things once start going right they often go on getting better and better. After about six weeks of this lovely life there came a long letter from Father in India—”
Tim hits the SOURCE button and it switches to the radio. “I was—”
“I read that book,” Raylan says. “When I was a kid, I mean. One of those Narnia books, right?”
Tim’s a little pink. “Yeah. I like it. I read—books for grown-ups too, now, but sometimes—” He shrugs.
“My momma, she didn’t have a whole lot of books, but she had a little beat-up set of all seven of those.” If Raylan thinks hard, he can feel the worn paper under his fingers, so fragile that when he’d folded a corner over to keep his place, it broke off altogether. “I used to—imagine maybe I crawled far enough back in the attic, it’d turn into somethin’ altogether different.”
“Yeah,” Tim says. “I never—read kids’ books much, as a kid, but I was in this group home one time, musta been sixteen, and these little kids were crying, so I just—took a book and started reading it aloud to quiet ‘em, and it was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.”
Raylan never knew Tim spent any time with CPS, but he guesses it’s not much of a jump, from how Tim’s talked about his father. “How’d they like it?”
Tim shrugs. “I only did it for about an hour, ‘till they were all s’posed to go to bed. Got sent back to my father two days later, hadn’t finished it by then.”
“You think about taking the book?”
The set of Tim’s shoulders is a little stiff, and Raylan almost regrets asking it. “No point,” Tim says. “He’d’ve thrown it out anyhow. I got it later, though. Always thought how sad it was, that they’d gone and lived these incredible lives, years and years, and then all of a sudden they got jerked out of it and turned into little kids again.”
“Never thought of it that way, I s’pose,” Raylan says. He can’t imagine how drunk Tim would’ve had to be to tell him any of this shit, back when he knew Tim before.
“Yeah, well. Petrosyan liked to explain all the fucking religious allusions in ‘em, and I spent a whole lotta time telling him I didn’t care, I just liked the books. Real fucking nerd.”
Raylan hears the affection in Tim’s voice as he says it. I was in love with him—we were, I mean. He fiddles with the radio dial. “You want—country—Jesus country—bluegrass—Justin Bieber—”
“Just pick somethin’, you know I’m gonna make fun of whatever you pick anyhow.”
* * * * *
“Raylan and Deputy Marshal Gutterson, this is an unexpected pleasure,” Boyd drawls.
Raylan recognizes that look in his eyes—he knows they want something, and he wants something in exchange. “No,” Raylan says.
Boyd raises an eyebrow. “No?”
“No, this is how it’s gonna go. We’re gonna tell you some things, and when that’s over, you’re gonna tell us some things, and then everybody’s gonna go on their ways. No deals, no nothin’ like that.”
Boyd looks at Tim in a sort of can you believe how unreasonable he’s bein’ look. “Whatever you say, Raylan.”
“Here’s what we’re thinking,” Tim says, “and feel free to not react or interject with any kind of remarks so we can speed this along.” Boyd’s face is a picture. “You were pretty sore at Ava over shooting you—”
“Wounded, even,” Raylan adds.
“At first, and then you got over that pretty quick, because Raylan says you loved her and I guess I gotta take his word for that.” Raylan’s always admired how good of control Boyd’s got over his face. “And she happened to know where just about eight or nine million dollars of money was, too.”
“And you knew,” Raylan says, because for all his control, Raylan still catches that flicker on Boyd’s face. “You knew she was pregnant.”
“And, continuing a streak of truly terrible taste in men—” Tim gives Raylan a significant look “—she decided sometime or other that she’d got to have you out of prison, maybe even with her, raising your son. You’d already got your plan for how you were gonna get away someday—”
“Poor innocent Jimmy,” Raylan adds. He wonders if Boyd was ever gonna tell anybody about Jimmy killing that guy, really, or if it was an empty threat.
“—and all you were waitin’ for was the right chance. She used Earl to arrange Carl gettin’ out early so Carl could do the arrangin’ hereabouts, what with Ava being carefully hidden away in California with little—what’s his name, Raylan?”
“Zachariah.” Raylan keeps his gaze steady on Boyd.
“Zachariah, right. Zachariah Crowder, kinda funny ring to it. Anyhow, Earl got Carl out so Carl could do all the local bullshit when the time came, undoubtedly both promised they’d be gettin’ some share of however many million they thought was comin’, since Ava being a fugitive, she couldn’t show her face anyplace she might be spotted, especially in Kentucky. And sometime along the way you decided to rabbit, and I’m gonna guess it was about the time my esteemed coworker here spun you a true tale of bullshit about Ava being dead, prob’ly ‘cause anybody hearing whatever cockamamie story he invented would’ve taken it to mean just about one thing, that he’d found Ava—”
“And that if I could find her, some other marshal could too—”
“—some other marshal with a little less of a bleeding heart when it comes to Ava Crowder,” Tim finishes. “You two figured, time to bust out, maybe even take a couple million less than you’d hoped if it meant getting out of the country.”
“Well, deputies.” Boyd leans back against his chair, and if the cuffs would allow, he’d probably stretch out his hands and tilt his head back against them, like some sunbather on the beach. “It sounds as though you’ve got a whole narrative worked out here. I’m not sure what kind of assistance I can provide.” He looks at Raylan. “Unless, of course, you ain’t quite managed to capture Ava since you were big-hearted enough to let her go that last time—I assume—and you’re here hopin’ I’ll provide you some kind of aid in findin’ her, undoubtedly for some sort of mess hall privileges or maybe an extra turn with the remote control every week.”
“You know,” Tim says, “older that kid is when we catch Ava, the worse life’s gonna be for him after. Real sweet, how the two of you’re gonna spend the rest of your lives in prison—not seein’ each other, of course, but you’ll both be inside someplace—and that kid’s gonna go place to place, and you know what, he may be a white kid, but even so, older he gets, less anybody’s gonna want him.”
Raylan’s been watching the anger spread beneath Boyd’s mask. “You think that’s how you’ll do it, deputy?” Boyd asks. “You’re gonna play on my feelin’ for some get of mine I never met?”
“No,” Raylan says abruptly. “But like I said, if there’s one thing I do believe—amidst all the other bullshit you’ve come up with over the years—it’s that you love Ava, an’ I do think you care about her feelings, and I do think you know she’d be heartbroken seeing that boy come to any grief.” There’s something of the Boyd he knew when they were teenagers, there in Boyd’s face, and it makes Raylan wonder, what would’ve happened, he’d stuck around after the mine explosion? If the two of them’d been in Harlan together—would everything have gone different, or would they have both ended up on the same sides of the law they’re on today?
“Guard,” Boyd says. “Guard, I’m ready to go back to my cell.”
“I’ll let you know when we get her, what happens to her, what happens to your boy,” Raylan tells him.
Boyd turns to look at him. “I’m gonna want more proof than some fake death certificate this time,” he says. “Guard—”
The Tramble guards take Boyd back out of the room. “Well,” Tim says. “Could’ve gone a little better.”
“Nah.” Raylan thinks of Boyd’s face while he talked about Ava’s heartbreak. “Nah, he just needs some time to think on it.”
Tim raises an eyebrow. “Time like stick-around-Tramble-today time? Or time like come-back-next-week time?”
“Next-week time,” Raylan says. “We oughta hit up a gas station before we drive back to Harlan, I know a cheap place nearby.”
* * * * *
They go up to Noble’s Holler on their way back and pick up a whole mess of barbecue to bring home to Loretta’s. There’s even more people there for dinner this time, not just Loretta and Henry, but Jimmy and two women about his age, Skylar and another Raylan’s never met who’s wearing nurse’s scrubs. Loretta’s eyes dart to Tim’s as he sets out all the food and Tim nods, and that seems like enough, between them. They all dig in while Jimmy talks about how he sent off his passport application and where he’s gonna go first, and there’s a moment when Raylan watches Jimmy make eye contact with Tim and they have a whole kind of conversation just with their expressions, including a whole lot of frowning and eye-rolling. After, Raylan washes his sticky face and hands in the kitchen sink and goes outside.
Tim’s under the willow tree, half-lying propped on his elbows. “Figured you’d be out once you cleaned up,” he says.
“I’m not giving you shit about how quick you eat, but I’m just sayin’ it takes the rest of us some more time. You out here to think by yourself?”
“Done a whole lot of that,” Tim says. “Plenty of room.”
Raylan sprawls out next to him. “Sure is somethin’, how you and Jimmy can talk without saying a single word.”
Tim laughs a little. “He ain’t exactly stonefaced. You wanna know what we were saying?”
“Well, yeah. I like to know things.”
“Same conversation we’ve had plenty,” Tim says. “Him saying maybe I hang on too hard to the shit I figured out would keep me steady, maybe I oughta be a little more open. Me saying it works for me and he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s saying, and him saying sure he does.”
“Hang on too hard?”
“Like I said.” Tim’s voice is a little dreamy. “I was real fucked up, Raylan. I got messed up as a kid, and nothin’ I did in the Army helped any with that. I was—hangin’ on by my fingernails after I got out, and I lost that when Petrosyan died. Took me a long time to—even realize that, a whole lot longer to figure a way out of it, and it scares the shit out of me to think I could end up back there.”
Raylan wants to touch him, but he doesn’t think it’s the right time. “Hence therapy, gold stars, et cetera.”
“Pretty much,” Tim says. “My therapist had her way, I’d prob’ly stop doing a job that involved carrying a gun too, but she and I argue about that one a lot. Anyhow.” He glances at Raylan. “That’s why—it’s one thing for me, fucking somebody who’s going away anyway. No risk, I like sex, everybody’s happy.”
“I could’ve been bad in bed,” Raylan offers. “Then nobody would’ve been happy.”
Tim gives him a look. “If there’s one thing I never worried about, Raylan, it’s that you might be bad in bed. Can’t imagine why else Winona woulda put herself through however many years and however many tries with you.”
“I feel like I oughta be insulted,” Raylan says, “but I don’t think you’re wrong. So what’s Jimmy’s point?”
Tim sighs and sits up fully, brushing dirt off his back. “His point is, what’s the point of me doin’ all that if I’m just gonna be—well, alone, I guess. That maybe I should be a little less rigid about it.”
“Seems like you’ve been pretty flexible to me.” Raylan thinks of last night, of the kisses in the attic—
“Yeah, well, you’re a bad influence. I figure, my therapist’s gold star system—”
“You stop with that bullshit about it being your therapist’s system,” Raylan says, “unless your therapist’s a kindergarten teacher—”
Tim grins at him, and something tight in Raylan’s chest loosens a little. “Yeah,” he says, “they got me socialized proper all the way through the preschool years and I finally made it to the emotional maturity of a kindergartener. Gold stars are great motivators.” He shakes his head. “But I’ve been thinking, I am a lot better than I used to be, and maybe I oughta let myself—have things I want, without thinking I’m in danger of falling apart if I lose ‘em.”
“I hope I’m on the list of things you want.” Raylan feels oddly vulnerable as he says it, like Tim’s gonna say of course not, this is all theoretical.
“I’d say you’re top of it, right about now.” Tim’s grin is a powerful thing when aimed at a man. “I figure, all I gotta do is keep being real mentally healthy and shit in every other part of my life, and maybe I’ll risk a trainwreck like you in this one part.”
“I like the sound of that,” Raylan says. Except for being called a trainwreck, but that’s besides the point right now.
“I wanna be clear,” Tim adds, “I’m still kinda fucked up over everything, even if I did figure out how to deal with it, or at least how to take it out and look at it without losing my shit. And I’m gonna want dates. All the shit I never got to do—last time.” That’ll probably always be a tender spot, Raylan thinks.
“Today counts as one, right? Took a nice little drive for the country, then ate a tasty meal together?” Raylan wants very badly to touch him, but he feels like he’s gotta let Tim do it first. “I mean, I’ll buy you ice cream, take you to the beach, whatever—”
“Yeah,” Tim says, “I know how you feel about ice cream,” and he leans over and kisses Raylan. Raylan—Raylan lets himself take his time, now he knows he gets to, figure out the shape of Tim’s jaw under his fingers, find the hollow of his collarbone where he’s a little sweaty from the heat and dip his head down to taste it. Tim’s lazy about it too, right up until he slides his fingers under the hem of Raylan’s T-shirt and across his belly.
“Now, that ain’t fair,” Raylan says softly. “There’s no door that locks on this tree, you know.”
“There’s no doors that lock at all in this house,” Tim tells him, “but you’re the only person barges in without knockin’ anyhow.” Still, he doesn’t move to stand up, only presses a kiss to Raylan’s neck.
“When you say dates,” Raylan says, “you mean you’re gonna wait to put out again?”
“Ugh, you’re so tacky.” Tim bites the skin of his neck just enough to sting and then stands up all of a sudden. “No, I don’t think I said anything of the kind.”
Somehow they make it upstairs to Raylan’s room, and when Tim pins Raylan on the bed, he leans in and says, “What’s it you want?”
“Fuck,” Raylan says, and Tim grins. Raylan’s developing a real thing for that dimple in his cheek that shows up when he does. “I want—I wanna try out sucking your cock again,” he says, before Tim can say something snide, “and then I wanna fuck you—”
“Yeah, I’m good with that.” Tim hasn’t stopped grinning. It feels like it takes no time at all before they’re naked on the bed together, and Raylan’s got three fingers inside Tim while he licks at Tim’s cock. “Okay—” Tim says. “I was promised—fuck—I was promised cocksucking—”
“You got somewhere to be?” Raylan’d be pretty happy to do this for awhile, sliding his fingers slow in and out of Tim, trying to find whatever spot he can that’ll make Tim gasp, and he does suck one of Tim’s balls into his mouth just to see what it’s like. Tim clenches around him a little, and then Raylan must find it because Tim drags in a huge breath.
“Oh fuck, Raylan—” Raylan keeps on fucking Tim with his fingers, real slowly, but now he knows where to hit, and every time he does Tim arches up into it a little. He does take Tim’s cock in his mouth then, slow too, just a little more every time he bobs his head, until Tim’s just sort of saying his name in this broken voice, and then Tim probably tries to warn him but Raylan’s too caught up in what he’s doing to realize it before Tim’s coming in his mouth. He swallows reflexively and Tim’s gasping, “Sorry—sorry—not to blame you or anything but Jesus Christ—”
Raylan swallows again around the strange taste in his mouth and pulls his fingers out. “I’ll survive it somehow,” he says, and when he slides his cock into Tim, he does it real slow, almost eye-wateringly, until he can tell Tim’s trying hard not to thrust his hips up and Raylan’s got no reason to go so slow except he can tell it’s driving Tim wild. When he starts fucking Tim for real, he pins Tim’s wrists up above his head, and for all Raylan knows Tim could get out of it in a second, he still likes the sight of Tim spread out beneath him. Tim crosses his ankles behind Raylan’s back like he’s trying to pull him deeper and Raylan lets him, dips his head down to kiss Tim’s mouth. Tim clenches tighter around him and opens his mouth to Raylan, and fuck, whatever control Raylan had, he’s losing it, hands tightening on Tim’s wrists and hips snapping forward again and again, until he groans loud into Tim’s mouth and comes. He stays like that for a long minute, buried deep in Tim, and he’s pretty sensitive when Tim clenches around him again but fuck—
“What if we skipped the run tomorrow,” Raylan says when he’s lying next to Tim. “What if we just—”
Tim rolls onto his side and props himself up on his elbow. “I went running after I got blackout drunk and woke up in a field,” he tells Raylan. “Now you started with me, there’s no gettin’ out of it. You want out, you gotta break a bone, and it only counts if it’s a bone in the bottom half of your body. And don’t break a fuckin’ bone. That’d be—lots of red stars.”
“Downright unpatriotic.”
“Damn right.”
The next morning, when they get back from running—Raylan’s gasping for air, this better get fucking easier soon—apparently it’s Sunday again. Loretta and Henry and Jimmy and Skylar are all half-arguing about who’s doing what in the kitchen and how burnt the bacon oughta be. Once there’s pancakes and bacon and eggs on everybody’s plate, there’s this moment where Raylan almost expects somebody to say grace. Instead, Jimmy and Tim make a whole lot of faces at each other that ends with them both lookin’ pretty happy, and then Tim and Loretta do the same thing, and eventually Raylan says, “Jesus Christ, people, you want some kind of printed announcement or something?”
“I’ve always been a letterpress kind of guy,” Tim says. “Jimmy’s vote’s for vellum—” Raylan raises an eyebrow at Jimmy, and he shrugs “—and Loretta wants gold foil—”
“Spare no expense,” Raylan mutters. “Tell you what,” he says, “we’ll keep it simple,” and he leans over and kisses Tim full on the mouth in front of everybody.
“Yeah,” Tim says with a grin, “that works too.”