A/N: Ok guys - let's play pretend. (What else is there to do?). Remember waaay back on the Rayna/ Juliette tour, when Rayna drafted in Liam to play guitar? Let's say she didn't.
He has never missed a year. Not in more than two decades.
Not when he was in rehab, or when they were "giving each other space," or when the practical implications of delivery to another man's house might understandably have provided pause for thought. May 12th would roll around - coming faster every year, it seemed to Rayna - and there they'd be: wildflowers, no note, just some college kid telling her to sign here and disappearing as soon as he'd arrived.
So, anyway, perhaps it should be no surprise, when she gets that knock on her hotel room door. And it isn't, really.
But still. Her breath hitches in her throat a little.
She sets the flowers on the dresser, and looks at them, and she bursts right into tears.
—
She hadn't asked Deacon to play with her on Red Lips White Lies. Given the circumstances surrounding their recently aborted tour à deux, she doesn't really think he would have expected her to.
He was with her for twenty-five years, though. Every dive bar and county fair, every awards show and sold-out arena, he was there. Even if only on the level of professional courtesy (which, as has been all too well established, is not quite exactly the only level on which the two of them operate) she should probably have involved him in the process of finding someone new. She should probably have told him, in the first place, that she was embarking on a national tour with Juliette Barnes. Despite everything, he had, after all, come to her about the Revel Kings offer and, if not quite asked for her permission, certainly done something that felt pretty close to that.
She must have called him a dozen times since she's been on the road. And is that consistent with "letting him go," with "not wanting to hold him back," with all those phrases she's uttered a million times now to herself and to him? No, perhaps, strictly speaking, it is not, but still she has called, from Cincinnati and Cleveland and St. Louis and Omaha. He hasn't answered once.
Rayna has been left with little option but to conclude that not only is Deacon elsewhere - a pretty significant problem in itself, as she's discovering - he appears to be elsewhere and pissed.
And it's a funny thing, really. She might have imagined that distance, discord, would feel like emptiness. Like the lack of something.
It doesn't, though. It's weighty.
It's crushing her.
After the flowers come, she lasts eight more days. Or, put another way, three more guitar players.
—
She knows it's stupid when she's instructing Bucky to make her excuses, to make discreet arrangements. (Sweet, worth-his-weight-in-gold Bucky, who has long since learned that in this particular domain at least, his is not to question why.)
She knows it's stupid when she's on the plane, and when she's picking up the hire car, and when she's sitting in gridlock in a city she doesn't know.
But, Rayna remembers her twenties (and, yes, beyond) well enough to know that it's still so, so far from the stupidest thing she has ever done because of this man.
So, there's that.
There's pretty much always that.
—
"…Hi."
He is, for obvious reasons, shocked to see her, and either lacks the time or lacks the inclination to stop his face from showing it.
"Hi," she replies simply, taking in everything about his appearance in the space of three seconds. She'd gotten good at that, back in the day. "Thank you for the flowers."
Deacon blinks. "You're welcome."
Then, a little frown, his eyes narrowing, because he's a seasoned detective too by now, when it comes to her. "You alright? I know the anniversary... can be rough on you."
"Yeah, I just…I don't know. We don't have another show 'til Friday and I...I guess I thought it'd be nice to see you."
There is a second's quiet, during which the inadequacy, the vague ridiculousness, of her explanation hangs between them, obvious and excruciating. Rayna wonders whether he's going to call bullshit now or later.
She'd probably guess the former - but (not for the first time) he surprises her.
"Sure," Deacon says, wary but going-with-it. "Come on in."
He pulls the door open and stands aside, and Rayna walks into a fancy hotel suite that looks, in all essential respects, pretty much exactly like the one she left this morning.
"Nice room."
She's scanning the surroundings restlessly and looks, he thinks, somehow not quite sure what to do with herself.
"Thanks."
She turns back around to face him as he closes the door.
"So, I saw the show," she says, some attempt at injecting some brightness into her voice.
"You did?"
She nods. "Well, missed the first twenty minutes or so. The traffic in this town is something else."
"You a secret Revel Kings fan, Rayna?" Deacon asks, a little impatiently. He is already frankly pretty perplexed by her mere presence in Austin. That she seems to want to talk to him about the traffic just feels like a bridge too far.
She swallows, gives a little shrug.
"I'm a Deacon Claybourne fan," she says quietly.
And there's something so tentative about her voice, so vulnerable about the look on her face, that he can't help but see this for what it is: an olive branch, a plea for his forgiveness.
It's one thing - among several, actually - that Deacon has just never felt in much of a position to deny her.
He offers her a tiny half-smile in response, and it's not much - but it's enough.
Enough for her to edge a little towards him, and for him to edge a little towards her, and for them to fall into each other inelegantly. Their limbs seem to know this choreography, though, seem to have it committed to muscle memory, and he slides his arms around her waist, his hands splayed across her lower back and shoulder blade. Her arms curl tightly around his neck, until they're flush against one another, surrounded by one another, and she sighs deeply against the soft flannel of his shirt. She can't help it. It's just such a relief, such a comfort, to have the distance gone.
That's always been the kicker, really, hasn't it? Even the fighting she can take - they both can, they can go toe-to-toe for twelve rounds and still not be ready to give up on each other - but Rayna finally knows herself well enough to know that she seems to need, just as a sort of baseline requirement, to be able to see him, speak to him.
She didn't ask for it to be that way, but that's the way it is.
—
They order room service. Burgers, fries, onion rings - the type of stuff Rayna tries not to eat at any time, but particularly not at 11:45pm, and particularly not when she's in the middle of a tour.
Sitting on at opposite ends of a couch, though, trying not to get grease on either the furniture or themselves as the radio plays on low in the background, she's inclined to think the calories are worth it.
They talk, sort of carefully at first - the way it always is when things between them are recently repaired - but then more normally, about this and that, nothing in particular.
An old song comes on - Shania Twain - and it takes a while for either of them to notice it.
"What?" Rayna asks, when Deacon smirks in the general direction of the radio. "Oh."
She rolls her eyes a little goofily, singing along as the chorus kicks in. "You're still the one I run toooo, the one that I belong toooo, you're still the one I want for life…"
He's smiling at her, and she shrugs, good-natured in defeat after all these years. "It's a good song."
"I don't think we were saying that when the charts came out that week."
"I think we definitely weren't," she agrees wryly.
Then, a moment later. "Hey Deacon?"
"Yeah?"
"Have I changed? From how I was back then?"
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know." Rayna purses her lips. "It's like... I look back, and I feel like I still recognize that girl, but sometimes I... I don't know if she would recognize me."
Deacon sighs, pausing a moment for thought.
"Everybody changes, Ray," he says then. "But, for what it's worth, I don't think you've changed that much."
"Really?"
He shrugs. "I think you're different with other people, a little, but I don't think you're different with me."
A beat.
"Obviously some parts are different."
Rayna swallows.
Obviously.
"How about me?" he's asking her now, and she's glad of the distraction.
"Mmmmm," she makes a show of considering it. "I guess you're a little bit more zen these days," she says, flashing him a quick smile. Her eyes soften when they meet his, though, her voice fading to a murmur. "But, mostly you're the same too."
They go back to their food after that, picking at french fries intently, reaching across each other for coleslaw and ketchup, listening to the song on the radio.
"...They were beautiful this year, you know," Rayna says at some point, a propos of nothing much, in that same soft voice. "Bluebells, daisies…mama woulda loved 'em."
Then, barely more than a whisper, "She woulda loved you."
"You think?"
"Yeah."
Deacon smiles a little. "Sure woulda been nice to have one parent rootin' for me."
Rayna just quirks an eyebrow in return. "For you and me both."
TBC? ;)