Right Here

Gentleness from Luke is intention found dwelling in the crevices between solid rock pushes and cold steel shoves. Somewhere, almost lost in the roughness of the execution, is the desire to make Bo more comfortable, to create peace through near-violence.

It's almost worse when the pushing stops, the sleeping bags are zipped together, and Luke's wrapped around him. His big cousin taking care of the fragile, hurt kid inside of him, when really, Bo's the one that's caused the damage, the one who shoved at the glass bubble that surrounds Luke until it shattered. I said all right, Bo… I'll go and tell Rico. Luke folding when he's got four aces, just so his baby cousin doesn't have to lose.

"Go to sleep, Bo," and Luke's strength surrounding him. You're a selfish jerk, but I still love you in that gesture, even if the man has never quite copped to loving him in the first place. As disquieted as his mind is, his body recognizes this as the warm milk of his childhood, and within a few more ticks of the clock he settles. Sleep.

He's known all his life the curves of that body next to his. Where it gives, surrounded by those parts hard enough to cause damage if they get crashed into at high speed, going the wrong way. Over the years he's figured out where to hit Luke if he wants to take the man down, and where to settle against the skin, muscle and bone of that body to stay safe from harm. Luke, and he's never really thought about this before, must know his body equally well, though he's had fewer opportunities to test the extremes. In all their lives, his cousin's never hit Bo first, and not once with the totality of his strength. Nor has he ever had to figure out how to let Bo soothe or comfort him in any real way; he's always been too busy stepping away, putting distance between himself and what has hurt him.

They know each other well enough to shift in their sleep, within the confines of a pup tent, to find new ways of laying together without the assistance of consciousness. And somewhere in the night they go from Luke holding him, to him holding on against a struggle that grew out of nowhere he knows, and left his cousin twitching and kicking, rasping like a scream stuck in his chest that's looking for exit out his clutching fingers or sweating brow. Waves of it, and Bo just maintains his grip against the violence, holding his breath against the larger swells that crash over his head, bobbing along through the less turbulent eddies. Occasionally calling Luke's name, wanting to bring him back out of the current that's trying to carry him away.

"Bo!" the rasp becomes, sound of a drowning man, grabbing for flotsam.

"I'm right here," he says, but he can't be heard over the crash and roar of the battle between them, fighting each other with the shared goal of rescuing Luke. "Cousin," he says again, a little more firmly, a lot closer to Luke's ear. "Come on now, Luke." Takes a blow to his nose, painful little crack of it, side effect of being too close when a shoulder tries to swim out of his grip.

"Bo," comes again, about the time he figures out that the only safe place to be is on top of Luke, wrestling him down. Takes some effort to get there, but it's not wasted. Closer to consciousness now, or maybe just tired, some of the fight's coming out of him. Gives Bo a chance to get closer, lips near enough to Luke's ear that they wind up with a sweaty lock of hair between them.

"I'm right here," he says again, a puff of a whisper this time; he's winded, but he's close, and Luke hears him. Muscles, one by one, start to relax under him, and Bo lets go of the wrists he's managed to get pinned. Uses his legs to make some sense of the sleeping bags that have become twisted around their lower bodies, making room to stretch back out. He settles there, bearing some of his own weight on elbows there tight against Luke's shoulders, the rest of his body holding his cousin down against aftershocks that never come. "I'm right here," he says one more time, just to make sure Luke knows, and I ain't going anywhere is implied by the way his closeness locks their two bodies together.

Arms around him then, taut like rubber bands stretched tight and cutting into his skin, kind of thing that leaves a mark even after it's gone. But that's fine, it pulls him down close enough that there's no point in trying to keep any weight on his elbows, freeing up his hands to find skin and hair to stroke.

"What do you dream about?" is a fool's question, murmured into the stifling air between them before he can think better of it. It'll never get answered; he'll be lucky if he doesn't get shoved off and take a hit to his chin over it, and he's already got a pretty good idea that his nose may have been bloodied somewhere back there.

"Smoke," the answer comes, distant, tired voice. "Fires, people lost in fires." He's smart enough to keep quiet, to figure that this is probably the kind of thing he'll never mention again. "It always smells," Luke adds, "awful." That last word grates out of him.

Fire, when he thinks about it, has been their friend most days. Ash log fire under a copper pot for the distillation of their family business, another in their old stone fireplace to keep the farmhouse habitable back when the wind used to whistle right through the gaps between boards, and campfires that they sat up around half the night. But they've always known the danger behind flames, even before they knew much of anything else. Fully aware that fire gives heat, but always takes something away in the process. It wasn't the impact of car into the grill of a truck that killed their parents, it was the fireball that followed.

People lost in fires.

Bo!

"I'm right here," he dares to say again, feels the nod of Luke's head against the side of his face. Waits where he is, until those arms around him loosen. He rolls off then, leaving Luke to his own side of their shared sleeping bag. He hears the zipper pull, feels the chilled air enter this space with them. Nothing he wants, but he reckons he can put up with it for a few hours, if need be. Wipes his sleeve across his nose; too dark to see whether the moisture there is blood or mucous, decides it doesn't matter. More important to let his knuckles find Luke's arm, stroke there. And when they don't get slapped off or rolled away from, he lets his palm wander until it finds the beat of Luke's heart, then rests it there.

I'm right here.