Disclaimer: I don't own Justified.
A/N: Time for my true OTP with this two parter. Maybe next I'll do Alpha/Beta/Omega for this fandom because I haven't seen it yet. What do you guys think?
Title: The Nights Run Long in Harlan
Summary: Ashes to ashes, dust to dust—something stronger than words and blood binds them together.
Pairing(s): Raylan Givens/Boyd Crowder
Warning(s): slash, kind of dark stuff, AU, criminal Boyd, protective-accepting Raylan . . . yeah, it's going to be different but that's what I live for.
Xxx
Part 1:
In the Golden Summer of Youth
They turn nineteen and go to the mines to start digging coal.
Raylan doesn't believe in love at first sight, but the summer he started working at the mines, he watched Boyd Crowder come out of the darkness on a rattling cart, he thinks he may have fallen in love.
Raylan knows Boyd only through name. Everyone in Harlan knows Bo, Bowman and Boyd. Mama Crowder is a thing of mystery. One minute she wasn't there, the next she was and three months pregnant with the first Crowder son. She's got Boyd's dark hair, his dark eyes, his smile that's a little too wide and a little unsettling to look at; but she's beautiful and wears the darkness of her frame like a silk dress.
Boyd isn't beautiful like his mama—whipcord thin with wild hair and even wilder eyes. When he comes out of the blackness, soot blackening his sweaty skin, his teeth gleam like polished stones. He's an animal kind of feral that Raylan's always associated with the Crowders. He's attractive in that deadly way—like wild wolves and rabid coyotes. He never raises his hackles, but the promise to bite is in the curve of his lips blackened by coal.
Boyd smiles at Raylan as he rolls off the cart—the feral grin of someone who's known what it feels like to be on the other end of a barrage of fists. It makes Raylan shudder and think about opened necks and split veins.
It shouldn't make Raylan want the way he does.
They're at Audrey's together after a shift. Girls float around—detached, wide-eyed and loose-limbed. They're attractive in that strung-out kind of way, offering kisses and touches for anyone who's got the means to pay for them. A pretty blonde with bad teeth presses herself against Raylan, and he gives her a five just to kiss her. She moves to Boyd and he offers her the same. When she walks away, he wipes his lips with a dirty hand. His mouth is smeared with soft blackness.
Boyd's lips are thin and chapped, red from his teeth. Boyd catches Raylan looking and those lips fall apart to reveal pearly whites made whiter by the coal.
"What're you staring at, Raylan?" Boyd asks and there's no malice in his voice. He talks with the warm, coal-stained drawl that makes girls wet.
Raylan hides his smile behind the rim of his glass. "You need a bath."
Boyd's smile stretches up the flesh of his cheeks. He runs an idle finger around the rim of his dripping glass. It shouldn't be as obscene as it is. Boyd licks his lips and doesn't grimace at the taste of coal.
"You are an interesting character, Raylan Gives," Boyd says and takes a drink.
Raylan lifts his eyebrow at him. "How so?"
"You're a good liar," Boyd says, "so good you think you can lie even to yourself." Boyd drops a few bills on the table, and Raylan memorizes the way the coal creases in his long fingers. "But I'll tell you this," he says as he walks past Raylan's table, "you're not that good of a liar."
Raylan smirks a little and breathes in the scent of coal dust, sweat and Boyd Crowder. It makes him hungry so he orders greasy wings.
Arlo's fists are losing their heat. Raylan goes upstairs and doesn't limp. It feels like an accomplishment.
The mine sucked up all his energy. He wants to do nothing more than sleep for a thousand years. He doesn't bother with a shower that's probably lukewarm. He strips and falls into bed, a tangle of limbs and exhaustion.
He dreams of Boyd Crowder's smile.
They don't talk as much as communicate with grins and looks. Old men with rocks in their lungs say that it's the language of the miners.
Raylan remembers his mother's arms around him, the scent of her hair, the sweetness of her breath on his neck as she told him only lovers could do something like what him and Boyd were doing—talking without talking.
He remembers Winona—a pretty girl with pretty hair and a pretty figure—and he remembers her telling him she can't stand silence, said there's been too much quiet in her life, too many whispers.
In the wet quiet of the mine, Raylan can hear Boyd's breath; hear his heart thudding through chest like an agitated drum. Boyd's fingers are slick as they clasp at Raylan's neck, and Raylan can feel the coal leave marks on his skin, thick and black. Each digit feels like a promise.
"Raylan," Boyd murmurs—soft and hesitant, "listen. Listen."
Raylan listens and the mine hums around them. It breathes and pulsates—promises life or death but doesn't specify which it will give to Raylan. The earth seems to tremble; it's slick like wet skin. It cakes beneath Raylan's fingernails, sticks to him like it's trying to hold him there in the dark with Boyd.
Boyd breaths onto Raylan's neck, "Listen, Raylan."
"I can hear it," Raylan says and his voice sounds high-pitched and breathless. "I can hear it."
"What do you hear?"
Raylan swallows so he doesn't have to answer.
Arlo's sleeping when Raylan gets home. Raylan goes upstairs and makes all the noise he wants because he can smell the Jim Bean on Arlo's breath. His father snores like he talks—rough and deep, the sound broken by the occasional slurred word that means nothing to Raylan.
I can hear it, he'd told Boyd.
He'd heard the mine, and he knew the threat that rumbled in its throat.
Raylan dreams of nothing but suffocating dark.
The mine collapses. It sounds like God letting out some kind of monstrous roar. The darkness is heavy, hot and studded with jagged rocks.
"Run," Boyd is saying. "Goddamn it Raylan! You need to run!"
But Raylan's legs refuse to move; his brain refuses to send the correct signals to his muscles. All Raylan can do is stand there and tremble while the mine falls apart around him. He's aware of Boyd shaking him, of Boyd's hands on his shoulders. Boyd is jerking him, pulling on him so hard Raylan can feel his shoulders threatening to pop out with each tug. Boyd's eyes are big and dark, swimming in the whites of his eyes; his mouth is open, and his teeth are white like daggers, like falling pointed diamonds. He's pulling and pulling, his legs tangling with Raylan's heavy feet.
"Run," Boyd is saying—shouting. "Run, dammit. Run, run, run!"
Raylan isn't sure he's running, but he's moving. He's moving forward through the dark until there's nothing but light—white-hot, bright and unrelenting. He's on the ground, hot dirt concrete splattered with dirt beneath his hands, knees hitting the solid earth with a hard thud, head, bowed, blinded and heaving until he can do nothing but choke on the cries he refuses to let out. His chest hurts, his throat hurts, his stomach hurts; he hurts and hurts.
"Raylan," Boyd's voice bleeds through the thunder in his ears. "Raylan, I need you to breathe. Come on, now, breathe. Like me," Boyd is lifting one of his hands, pressing it to his chest smeared with dirt. "Come on, breathe with me, Raylan. Breathe."
Boyd's insistent so Raylan breathes until the world comes back into focus. They're in a circle, surrounded by grim-faced, white-haired men and fresh-faced, thick-haired boys. All of them are dark with white teeth and white eyes, their expressions identical mixtures of fear, ancient wisdom and relief.
Boyd is saying to someone, "He'll be fine. No, he doesn't need a medic. He just needs a shower." And then he's picking Raylan up under his arms and holding him close. Raylan leans on him because there's a deep exhaustion that comes from nowhere and turns his muscles to concrete and his limbs to sludge.
He manages a raspy, "No, not the house; not Arlo."
"Come on," Boyd murmurs, his breath warm like shower fog against Raylan's clammy temple. "We're almost to my truck. I'll take you to your aunt's okay? I won't take you back to Arlo."
Raylan nods and moans because if he talks he'll vomit; he can feel it rolling around in his stomach like mushy marbles riding on a sea of sweet tea and something sour. His world is spinning and a nebula of darkness and light that's somehow bleeding into something that spells like powder, coal and Boyd Crowder's sweat.
Raylan is unaware of the moment Boyd puts him in his truck, but he's aware of Boyd's fingers in his hair, his voice lilting and rising and almost familiar.
"Go to sleep, Raylan," Boyd says as he cards his fingers through Raylan's hair. "Go to sleep."
So Raylan closes his eyes, but he doesn't go to sleep. He's content to rest in the feeling of Boyd's fingers carding through his hair.
Helen's at Boyd's truck before either Raylan or Boyd can get out of it. She jerks the passenger door open and gathers Raylan to her chest. He smells so much like his mother it makes him tear up, and he doesn't know he's crying until her hands are on his face and she's wiping them away with gentle but hurried movements.
"Oh, Raylan," Helen says and her breath is ripe with tobacco and whiskey. "Oh, honey, come on. Let's go inside. You, too, Crowder; I'm not sending you home looking like that. Don't even argue; get your ass in here."
Helen's afraid of Bo like everyone else, but she'll never turn anyone away—not even Boyd Crowder. Boyd is wearing the same expression Raylan had when they were on their knees beneath the sun—lost and confused, a little helpless and a little scared. He's following Raylan and Helen at a distance most Harlan residents deem respectable. Black flakes off him like burnt skin, and the thought makes Raylan heave.
"It's alright, Raylan," Helen says as she drags him up the front steps, the muscles in her arms flexing beneath her unbuttoned plaid shirt. "It's alright. Crowder, help me with him. Get his feet."
Boyd gathers Raylan's ankles up like he's nothing at all. Helen carries him to a couch where he lies down and presses his face into the pillow. It smells like home, like comfort. The tassels feel like little anchors that he wraps around his fingers to keep himself weighted to the earth. He fingers each one with careful reverence.
Helen kneels by him, cards her fingers through his hair. They feel nothing like Boyd's—dainty, long and smooth but twitching with hidden reserves of strength. "What the hell happened?" Helen asks but the question isn't directed at Boyd.
Boyd answers when Raylan chokes on guttural noises and pathetic whimpers. "Mine collapse; we were caught up in, barely got out, but we did."
Helen stiffens and sucks in a breath like Boyd had uttered some kind of ancient but powerful curse. Her fingers never cease in their movement. "Give him a shower while I pick out some clothes for him," she says and pauses. Raylan listens to Boyd shift beneath her stare. "I'll be watching you, Crowder."
Boyd hooks his arms under Raylan's armpits and hauls him up with an impressive strength. Through the thick uniform, Raylan can feel Boyd's corded muscles moving and shifting. Raylan's brain refuses to fire the correct signals to his limbs, and Boyd ends up dragging him into the bathroom.
"Sit here for a minute," Boyd says and lets out a hot whoosh of air as Raylan falls onto the toilet.
Boyd strips Raylan with calloused hands. He's careful and gentle; it seeps into his eyes, and he tilts his head in a way that would normally make Raylan smile but instead makes his eyes water. He takes off Raylan's boots, and Raylan thinks of his mother, kneeling at the feet of Arlo, smoothing out each knot and spasm with a careful, smooth hand. He's going to cry again; he can feel it bubbling in his chest like something acidic in an overheated beaker. He looks up at the fluorescent lights to burn the water out of his eyes.
"Hey," Boyd murmurs and runs his hands over Raylan's arms—slow but with enough pressure to warm Raylan's clammy skin. Raylan looks down at him, and Boyd's face is nothing but relief, exhaustion and the blissed out with the kind of high that only comes after experiencing something life changing. "Hey, we're alive, Raylan. We're alive."
Raylan starts laughing to keep from crying, but the laughter turns to sobs that explode from some dark place within; and he's doubling over, clutching at his belly. His forehead touches Boyd's chest, and Boyd surrounds him, still covered in coal but warm and real and alive.
Boyd says, "Every man needs a good cry some time. Don't let your daddy tell you otherwise."
He says nothing else and lets Raylan cry black tears into his black uniform.
Helen lets Boyd stay over. He sleeps on the couch because he claims he won't steal Raylan's bed from him, and he figures Raylan needs his space. The house is quiet, but Raylan can hear Helen smoking—her steady inhales and exhales counting out even spaces in time like a metronome. Raylan gets all the way to one-hundred and twenty inhales and exhales before the quiet of his room and the dark shapes of his sparse furniture (which have become misshapen, blank tombstones) is too much to bear. He gets out of bed and lets his feet do the work because his brain is a mess of thoughts and noise when it should be as empty as he feels.
The floor is cold underneath his feet, and he walks into the living room to find Boyd staring up at the ceiling, hands cradling his head, eyes wide and dark. Helen gave him a spare shirt that's too tight across the chest and sweatpants that ride low on his hips. He keeps licking his lips, and he breaths wet sighs that tremble as they escape his lips. Boyd once told Raylan that Crowder men don't cry, Bo would never have allowed it.
"So," Boyd had said while his finger traced a wet circle around the rim of his cup, "you learn to hold it in, even when you feel like letting go. Bo trained us to be hard like that."
Arlo never "trained" Raylan to be anything; he taught him how to be angry, how to hide bruises, how to take every nasty name anyone could ever think of as a compliment. Arlo never taught him to be hard. Raylan had to learn that all on his own.
It's strange seeing Boyd come undone in a way that's so controlled it makes Raylan feel foolish for his "episode" in the bathroom. It makes Raylan stop and linger in the doorway like a child waiting for his parent to acknowledge him because he's had a nightmare and wants to sleep in their bed.
Boyd doesn't look at him when he asks, "Bad dreams, Raylan?" His tone isn't patronizing or humiliating. It's genuinely curious in a way that makes Raylan's heart clench a little his chest.
"Can't have bad dreams if you don't sleep," Raylan answers and shifts his weight back and forth.
Boyd props himself up on his elbows and the expression on his face is one of gratitude, like he's thankful he's not alone in the insomnia. "You, too?"
Raylan nods and rests the urge to wrap his arms around himself. The house feels colder, and every moan and creak seems to be amplified by the house's age.
"Raylan, are you cold?"
Raylan nods because he doesn't want to say anything stupid. Boyd gets up and goes to him, stands in front of him with a straight back and eyes that are like liquid earth. He touches Raylan's bicep with careful fingers, not squeezing but just holding. His fingers twitch against Raylan's skin, like they want to do more.
"It's cold," Boyd says and his voice is soft but still husky and deep. "Come lay with me for a little bit. Don't want you freezing to death."
Raylan goes because Boyd feels like a furnace, because he's tired enough to say yes, because it sounds like a good idea and Boyd smells clean yet earthy with a soft aftershave that smells like spices. Boyd pulls Raylan to his chest, and they stumble until they collapse on the couch—the old frame moaning beneath them, sounding so much like Arlo it makes Raylan's teeth clench.
Boyd shushes him and cradles Raylan's neck with his hand. It's warm and thin but not in a way that makes Raylan think of delicate. He thinks of tree branches, seemingly frail but impressively strong when you're crouched high in the emerald leaves, breathing in the scent of sunshine and clean air.
"Try to sleep," Boyd says and his chest expands with each breath, the words vibrating beneath the skin of his corded neck.
Raylan plunges his face into the darkness between Boyd's shoulder and neck. He breathes in the scent of a clean human being and then falls asleep. He dreams of nothing and, for the first time in what feels like weeks, no longer chokes as the darkness takes him.
Raylan listens as Helen comes into the room. She stops at the couch but doesn't say anything. Instead, she sighs like Raylan's done something foolish and ruffles his hair before moving into the kitchen and starting a pot of coffee.
Raylan can tell Boyd's awake by the way his breathing. But he doesn't talk or take his hand off Raylan's neck.
They pretend to sleep for another half hour before Helen tells them to get off their asses because breakfast is ready.
After the mine collapse, Raylan is more than ready to leave Harlan, the mine and Arlo. He tells Boyd this as they share a jar of shine sweetened to taste like apple pie with caramel in the bed of Boyd's truck after Raylan finishes his last shift in the mine. The flavor makes Raylan lick his lips and savor the burn as it settles low in his belly.
Boyd takes a long drink out of the jaw and swallows. "I can't stop you if you want to leave," he says and there's something in his eyes that Raylan thinks could be hurt. "I'd ask you to reconsider."
Raylan can't stop himself from asking, "Why?"
Boyd stares at him long but not hard, and he looks like a dog that's been kicked one too many times. "You're my only friend, Raylan," he says and reaches out to place his hand on Raylan's shoulder.
Raylan laughs a little, takes a drink and says, "I can't be your only friend. I can't be."
"Why is that?"
Another laugh, a little louder and a little more unhinged, "You're Bo Crowder's son."
Boyd's face collapses into an expression that's grim and heavy. "Fear does not equate popularity, Raylan."
Raylan can't look at him and chooses to stare out at the spread of dark-green and blue because the nights are never really black in Kentucky. It's like something out of a fantasy: everything sparkles and the air smells good, perfumed with flowers and onions. There's dirt beneath Raylan's fingernails, dirt in his hair, but he can't bring himself to complain too much. His uniform lays withered and empty next to Boyd's, and the wind has become lukewarm ever since the sun set. It feels good on his damp skin.
Boyd's fingertips are rough against Raylan's shoulders like the each fingerprint is the sole of a worn boot. Raylan's aware of how close Boyd is, of how tired he looks, of how tired he feels, of he looks like he wants Raylan to change his mind and say he'll stay. It makes Raylan's belly clench and he takes another drink.
"I can't, Boyd," Raylan says and the words taste sour in his mouth. "I can't stay here."
Boyd sighs and it sounds defeated. It makes Raylan angry, and he can feel his jaw ticking with it like a bomb has been set to go off in his mouth. Boyd says, "It's whatever you want, Raylan."
He doesn't say I'll miss you, and he doesn't try to change Raylan's mind. Instead, he sits there with his hand on Raylan's shoulder, watching nothing happen in the world. It makes Raylan feel guilty so he says, "I'll come back, someday. Maybe; I'll come back and see you."
Boyd laughs a little and says, "Now that would be something."
Raylan doesn't know who moves first, but he winds up kissing Boyd; or Boyd kisses him. It's nothing like the girls claim it will be. The carefulness of their lips coming together, the hesitance of Boyd opening his mouth to accept Raylan's tongue, the way Boyd's hand skitters up Raylan's neck to curve around his hand and card through the short strands of his hair—it feels like a goodbye.
Raylan leaves when Arlo is sleeping. He slams the front door, starts the car with an angry rotation of his wrist and pulls out of the dirt driveway with an agitated grind of his tires. He stops by Helen and kisses her on the cheek. She gives him money and tells him not to stay away for too long. He debates about stopping by at the Crowders', saying goodbye to Boyd; but the way he figures, they said their goodbyes the night before and drives past the house with something that feels a lot like betrayal sinking like a stone in his belly.
He drives and until Harlan feels like a memory; and when he hits the Lexington line he starts laughing until his belly hurts and his vision burns with tears.
He images Boyd in the seat next to him saying, "We did it, Raylan. We did it."
It makes his heart hurt a little less.