Absaroka, Longmire Residence
Present Day:
It was cold as a grave in the woods. Walt didn't know why he was out in the middle of the woods during a winter storm. Maybe he'd caught a case of stupid? Must have to keep tracking an outline in the dark that always stayed too far to properly catch up with. Grunting like an irritated grizzly Walt ploughed onwards. It was coming down heavy, the wet sting of sleet cutting into his exposed face as the bitter cold rapidly stole his warmth and froze his breath into crystals. It was a never-ending nightmare of white so damn bright he felt he would have a permanent squint like Clint Eastwood in any of his old Western flicks.
Walt pushed on, wading through snow that reached up to his waist as he tried to outpace the bulky figure ahead as it lumbered along. He was connected, he and it, and he didn't know how but there was a pale silver thread wrapped around his thumb and the farther away it got the more he felt this tug that seemed to cut right down to his heart. He stopped, once, and felt the line pull taunt. It felt like ghost cords had wrapped around his limbs tugging until he could see blood rising to the surface of his skin, before flesh split open he started walking and he hadn't stopped again. Deep in his gut Walt knew if he took his eyes off the figure it would be gone forever. He didn't want that.
He couldn't figure out why it mattered, he just knew it did. He could feel the steady thump-thump of his heart jackhammering in his chest and his throat was too full of cotton for speech. Lot of good shouting would do, he didn't even know if what he was following was a man. He could swear there was something of the familiar about the dark outline, it was important. Kind of like a sturdy life-line to keep from getting lost in this labyrinth of blinding whiteness.
It stopped abruptly and so did Walt. The dark, shadowy outline began to morph into something recognizable now that they had reached a standstill. Snow was pelting his cheeks leaving his skin chapped raw and Santa-red as Walt blinked, staring into the gray-dark of the coming twilight.
It occurred to him what he was seeing was a very bear-shaped form and his adrenaline spiked, his heart giving a might kick as though to say 'you stupid man, look what you've done now.' He decided his heart sounded oddly like his Aunt Meredith, she'd been mad as a march-hare so he gave it no account. Walt stood there a moment before he held up his thumb and gave the silver thread a hard tug.
Blood welled up and he sucked away the red copper - last thing he needed was a wild animal scenting fresh blood.
He paused to glance down, taking the thread in his hands, examining the solid feel of it sliding against his hand. It was beautiful, really. How had he come to possess something that fucking gorgeous? It was slim, but the whole length of it sparked with pale white lights, held in the palm of his hand it felt warm. It felt damn near unbreakable, too.
Walt let it slip from his hands, deciding he didn't mind it so much after all. It felt important, like Ariadne's famous ball of yarn, except it didn't feel like there was a minotaur waiting on the other side.
It felt like home.
Walt looked up at the bear, it had stopped to stare back at the stupid human whose been chasing it for half a mile and wondered if he'd get the chance to go home. Maybe it thought he was a hunter? Walt doesn't know why, but he hoped not. It was to fucking magnificent to be a stuffed head on someone's fireplace. Maybe it was thinking about eating him, instead. Maybe he'd deserve it, too. It was a damn fool thing to do, chasing a shadow into a snow storm.
The bear did not eat him or show any indications of wanting to as they observe one another in a moment of perfect stillness. It looked back at him with deep, obsidian dark eyes and Walt felt a different emotion rise; an abiding sadness that settled over his bones like an extra coating of ice. Bear's ought to be asleep in their dens spared the winter-hunger other predators faced when prey grew scarce on the ground - that was the natural order of things but something had gone wrong, disturbing the natural order. He raised his hand palm bared in an empty gesture of apology and he didn't know why he'd done it, raised his hand with that translucent silver cord still attached to his thumb. The bear couldn't understand him and trying to bridge the gap was like shouting into a windstorm; his mouth was moving and he knew what he meant to say but no one else could hear worth a damn. Walt figured poachers must have disturbed the bear's hibernation and there was no fixing that. An action once done could not be undone. Like Pandora and her little box of horrors once opened there was no stuffing the demons of woe back inside; out came Misery, Death, and Sadness to whisper in the ears of mankind. A little voice in the back of Walt's mind that sounded suspiciously like Henry spoke. It is what it is.
Walt hated being wrong and he hated the deterministic ideology that bordered on fatalism Henry occasionally fell into.
People were responsible for their own actions, dammit. Remove that responsibility and he'd either be out of a job or a whole lot busier in a bad way. Henry, if he was here, would be correct but no one said Walt had to like it.
The bear would just have to forage like the rest of the forest wildlife until its fortune changed. Starlight hit the thread just right catching his eye again. He watched the silver thread shift, shining faintly as it disappeared from his sight near the bears paws. Walt frowned, giving his thread another, gentle tug. In response the bear stood up on its back legs and Walt felt his breath quicken, eyes widening. What?
Walt got caught up staring into obsidian dark eyes where he found an uncanny familiarity he couldn't place. Before he could try, the bear faded like a ghost into the blizzard. Where once there was standing a creature strong and powerful, walking against the wind now was nothing but white wisps and gray mist.
"Come back!" Walt called out knowing there was something he should have said - words that were worth shouting into the storm even if they weren't fully heard, or understood. Something. It was a futile effort, snow had swallowed up his words and the bear was gone.
Walt knelt, inspecting tracks that led off into the distance but they were already disappearing and all he could do was watch, staring in complete silence as the frigid cold of winter chilled him down to the bone. Inch by inch the silver thread was fading, dissolving like ash even as he tried to protect it from the elements. He was too late.
At home in his bed Walt Longmire sat up breathing hard as a strange feeling of loss pricked at his chest. That vacant spot a few inches above his ribs which no amount of alcohol could ever fill.
"Jesus Christ, what did I eat?" Walt muttered to himself rubbing the bristles on his chin with the heel of his hand as he untangled the sheets from his legs. It was so quiet he could hear the wordless murmur of strong winds rattling through the trees. Walt paused to listen as somewhere far off a wolf howled. It's sonorous wail faded into silence and no others joined in with it's nighttime singing. It was alone. You and me both, pal, Walt thought as he stared at the ceiling. He could feel the rough stubble tickle across the pads of his fingers and figured he could do with a shave. Later, later will be soon enough. He rubbed his hands together, the friction generating enough warmth to take the edge off the chill that had the joints in his fingers aching. He watched as his breath trailed up in a fog, realizing that the heater must have quit on him some time during the night.
Well, that had been one hell of a dream. His first knee-jerk reaction to it was normal, he wanted to talk about it with Henry. Not that they often sat around talking about dreams and feelings or anything but this one had a differentness to it that left him foot wrong footed, it had felt important. It was strange to realize that he couldn't.
What would I even say, Walter wondered to himself. 'Look, I made a mess of things and I know that now. But can we put that on the backburner for a second - I want to talk to you about something different that's bugging me.' Walt chuckled darkly, not because it was particularly funny, but because it might actually work. If he just picked up the phone and tried it. He blew out a breath, dismissing his first instinct. Besides a ringing phone in the small hours of the night wasn't a good way to begin any kind of apology. He shelved that thought to revisit at a more appropriate hour. It went without being said that if Walt didn't fix what was unresolved between him and Henry he might be forced to develop new instincts. He wanted that about as much as a cell phone of his own so everyone and their brother could badger him 24 hours at any time they pleased. It felt unnatural, this desire people had to carry around something that was used to find people, criminals, all the time.
The gears in his head kept spinning, round and round like a Merry-Go-Round complete with the haunting echo of circus tunes - it was making him re-evaluate what it was he wanted. The little voice in the back of his head, calling it his better angels, or his conscience, wanted him to face why he needed to fix this.
If he left well enough alone, they would find a new pattern, new ways of being friends. Sex had come into the equation later. It could leave now, slink out the back door like a troublesome third wheel - no questions asked. It was an option, it just wasn't palatable to Walt. The very notion made his insides pucker as though he'd taken a bite out of a raw lemon with a bloody lip. Sex wasn't all they were, but it was a part of it and being a hot-blooded man he would miss it if it were to stop. It'd be like going Cold Turkey, stopping a habit he'd been enthusiastically engaging in since his teens. No, sex wasn't the be all, end of of what they were but Walt was quite fond of it all the same.
Walt stared at the ceiling imagining the sky outside, black with endless lines. His life wasn't like that, it wouldn't go on forever. It was short and very finite in comparison to the wide expanse that existed in the upper atmosphere. He had to ask himself, why, why hadn't he decided what to do yet, didn't he already know, or was he just afraid of being alone?
He didn't know. Or, he did, but he didn't know what to do with the knowledge. He and Henry had been sparking at each other since they were young bucks, true. But it was more than that, too. There was a rightness in it when he had Henry in his arms, wrapped so close he didn't know where he ended and Henry began. His heart gave a flutter, the wings of a bird beating against the cage of his rib bones, his breath becoming heavy in the hazy recollection of sweet, slick friction as desire pooled low in his gut.
He thought about touching himself, wanted to a bit, his dick twitching with interest already on board with the idea as he lay in a bed full of memories. Nights spent lost in a daze of sweat, sex, and kissing, loosing himself in the sensations; the feel of warm, tanned skin, rough hands, and dark eyes...Fuck, he remembered.
Walt considered getting dressed, going out, hitting a bar. There must be at least one open even at this hour.
But it'd been so long and he had never been that smooth with the ladies. Martha had been an exception, a whirlwind of golden sunshine that blew in his door one day and never left. "Until death do we part," Walt murmured, his words swallowed up into the unrelenting blackness of the room.
Right or wrong he'd rather fall down the rabbit hole of what-was than have some meaningless screw in the dark with someone whose name Walt knew he wouldn't bother to learn. They would be a poor substitute for what he wanted but didn't know how to let himself have.
Walt laid back a little, lazily stroking himself as he closed his eyes and pretended.
It was him and Henry in the little bed above the bar, it would squeak when he wrestled Henry onto it. Henry would land on top, he usually did, bracing himself with a hand pressed flat against the broad expanse of Walt's chest, 'stay down' his look would say.
He'd consider flipping them over but would resist the urge for the moment. He liked the solid weight pressing him into the mattress as Henry straddled his hips. He'd obey. Enjoying the view as Henry leaned forward, reaching for the slick kept in the nightstand.
Walt never asked if there had been others. He didn't want to know.
Walt would snag the container from his hands, grinning, as he popped the cap smearing the stuff on his own fingers.
As he worked him open, slow and careful, Walt would become enraptured by Henry's closed eyes, the sweep of dark lashes on high cheekbones, and quiet breathy sounds as the other man rocked to press against his finger which, in turn, rubbed their flesh together with the most delectable friction.
It was in this moment that Walt could pretend that this was their newly discovered normal, that he had found the right words...
Walt furrowed his brow, grabbing himself a little tighter, moving his hand much slower as he rewound the visuals playing out in his head trying to find the sweet spot of want and need and have. "Henry" he said, breathing the name aloud, breaking the silence of the room with a name spoke like a sacred invocation.
As though summoned by the speaking of his name he could picture Henry now. Shameless and nakedly sprawled atop Walt's chest, his dark eyes soft and fond. Walt didn't need speech to know what they were saying. 'Well, now what, cowboy?'
Don't rush, Walt thought. He slowed down the stroke of his hand on his dick. Immersing himself in the image he had built up. No, this time, he'd take his time - emblaze the moment into memory, stockpiled for nights when his bed was cold and full of too many ghosts.
He loved the intimacy of sex, the close, warm wetness of being allowed inside another person; the self disappearing into the abyss of joie de vivre…
But this wasn't just anyone he was thinking of.
It was Henry.
Walt wanted to touch, kiss, hold, he wanted everything. Overwhelmed with so many wants that picking one became hard. Thinking wasn't easy, either, as all his blood rushed south leaving him lightheaded and aching.
He was drowning in his head, a boat adrift at sea, and Henry was the ocean he could lose himself in. The ocean that drowned him in sensory bliss, shutting down his brain, as their fantasy bodies moved in tandem.
Deciding he'd had enough prep, wanting more than fingers Henry would take the container from Walt and get him slick. His hand was deft and thorough, careful not to tip Walt over the edge he was riding. To steady himself he'd count backward. In Latin.
He didn't want to go off too soon. Tredecim, duodecim, undecim, decem -
Walt gasped, his head knocking into the headboard with a solid thump. He didn't feel it, all he felt was the hot, tightness surrounding him. His hands would scrabble, blind, before finding purchase at Henry's trim waist.
He didn't let himself forget that moment, pressed so close it almost seemed they breathed in the same air. Body and spirit melded into one being…
It stayed with him, imprinting on his soul, the feel of Henry tight and slick around Walt's length until his eyes fell shut, head tipping back in pleasure. Walt would chase the exposed line of throat with his tongue, teeth gently nipping at the hollow.
He'd taste the sweat at Henry's collarbone as he buried himself deep inside. Henry would card his hand through his hair, his mouth parting in a small gasp as Walt grabbed his hips and thrust hard enough to rock them both over the edge.
To see him like that? Limed in the pale half-light Walt would fall, all over again. He always did.
How the fuck had he gotten to have someone this fucking gorgeous? Walt must have done something right in another life because it sure wasn't this one. "Oh fuck" he'd groan, the muscles in his neck corded tight, his eyes half-lidded as he looked up at Henry.
Henry wouldn't say anything, but a lazy grin would curl the corner of his mouth as he moved his hips in ways Walt would be remembering for months.
Wanting to make sure his friend found his end first, Walt would stroke the other man in time with his thrusts until he too fell over the cliff's edge of white-bliss.
Walt would soften and slip out of him while Henry lay on top keeping them pressed close, they would pause taking a moment to catch their breath before separating. Here in this dream world neither would speak. What was there to say that was not crass?
Thanks.
That was good.
I….
It was all true, but even here Walt did not speak.
Even in the dream, Walt missed his heat.
Walt groaned into the silence of the room, coming into his hand. He grabbed a tissue and wiped himself off. His bodily needs were sated but he felt twice as empty. He grumbled, rolling onto his side wondering if he should consider prescription pills for a few nights of turn-out-the-light's no-one's home sleep. Has it come to that? Just sleep, you idiot, Walt thought to himself and closed his eyes. He opened them twenty minutes later. He didn't feel better after chasing his own solitary desire, if anything he felt worse. Like he'd taken something sacred and sullied it for a few moments gratification.
Dream Henry had only been that, a vivid conjuration of his brain. He didn't want imaginary fever dreams, he wanted the flesh and blood man. Wanting Henry was like wanting to breathe air in his lungs and fire in his blood. It just is - more than want, but not quite a need. I could live without. But I don't want to. Same as I didn't want to live without Martha. But I have too, Walt thought to himself. He supposed the difference was that he got a choice in the matter. Henry was still here.
He wanted, he needed, Walt just hadn't decided how to make it known. After Martha died he'd pushed everyone away - some that might have needed a shoulder to lean against to maybe. He'd done the best he could, but his best hadn't been enough. It was another regret tallied to the board he kept track of in his head. Longmire's list of Wrong's done.
Walt glared into the dark, stubbornly letting the desire to reach out to Henry ebb away like grains of sand ground to dust between his fingers. It'd earn me a ribbing anyhow, Walt thought. It didn't take much to imagine the unimpressed look Henry would shoot at him, judging eyebrows raised in question as though to say, 'Really, Walt?'
Nope. Let it be for tonight, Walt thought, resolved to keep this night-time vision private. He turned over on his other side, trying to settle in for the night but his brain wasn't read to let him escape.
"Chasing a bear into a snow storm?" he muttered to himself, irritated with himself, his latent bouts of insomnia, and the ghostly remnants of a midnight revere. It had all been a little bit too on the nose to stomach.
And what was the meaning of that silver thread? Walt felt compelled to look down at his thumb, barely visible in the thin threads of light piercing the dark of his bedroom. His brows pinched together in irritation at the thin line of broken skin encircling his thumb in a perfect band. Or a small noose.
What the hell? He examined his thumb, holding it up to his face for a moment. He felt ten kinds of a fool scowling at the clean, crisp bed sheets that didn't have a single red stain to show on or under the pillow's where his hands had been resting. Not knowing what to make of it Walt shrugged it off and went back to ruminating his strange dream.
He wanted to dismiss it as the uncanny mechanisms of his sleeping mind spinning their wheels as he slept; but he suspected it had more to do with a few things he'd left unspoken. Words he'd buried deep down in his subconscious that needed saying. Stuff he kept shoving off. Let it be tomorrow's problem, he thought. Let sleeping bears lie, they said and for good reason. Henry had sufficient grounds to be cross with him, too. He'd been a bit of a bastard.
It didn't matter, not really, because it was far too late for that kind of conversation - and something like what needed to be said was done face to face. Using the phone would be the cowards way out. Walt may have been a bastard in his handling of the situation but he wasn't yellow. Henry was probably sleeping on the too small bed above the Red Pony. Walt paused his nostrils flaring as he considered the odds that he wasn't sleeping alone. Within the space of a heart-beat a seedling of jealousy grew and bloomed into a vibrant sprig of green.
His imagination running wild, Walt hated them already. This nameless, faceless person that got to lie beside Henry soaking up the furnace-like heat of his body. Did they know his worth? How to touch him in ways that made his calm façade crack right open - all his emotions laid bare when they had him in their arms?
Did they know how to kiss him, deep and filthy...God, his mouth had been so warm, the caress of his lips softer than a mans' lips had any right being. He'd tasted like the first winter-rain, clean, cold, and everything Walt had ever wanted. Did they know that? Walt doubted it.
It was his own choice, this persisting absence of what he wanted, which was the hell of it. Walt could be that person. He knew from his toes to the crown of his head that if he went to Henry right now, that person would be him. But he was here instead. Alone in a bed too big for one freezing his ass off thinking about a strange dream.
He consoled himself with the knowledge that he knew where to find Henry when he was ready to dig up those words he'd been burying, then the 'I'm sorry' that was overdue. And he was, sorry. It was cold comfort when he knew that even if Henry was sleeping alone tonight he might not be tomorrow. Henry had a way about him, drawing people into his inner circle and setting them at ease with his calm nature. People either loved him or they hated him with very little in the way of middle ground.
And those that fell in the first camp tended to fall into his bed sooner or later, Walt should know, he'd been one of them.
As he lay there in the dark surrounded by memories that wouldn't leave him in peace and goosebumps rising on his skin the remnants of sleep dwindled. Walt's brain switched from mostly-asleep to awake and melancholic.
Braving the winter air Walt got up and wandered into the kitchen, flicking the knob on the stove, groggy from sleep he slopped five spoons full of coffee grounds before he filled the pot with water and reclined against the sink as he waited for it to boil. He scratched his bare chest, anticipating that a hot mug of coffee would see him the rest of the way into wakefulness.
The little digital clock at his bedside read 4:06 PM. He grins, it was a good thing he hadn't called Henry.
He would have gotten an earful for calling the man at this hour on a Saturday. It was his usual day off for one thing and it followed the 'Friday Night Madness' at the bar. It got busier on Friday nights and didn't let up till closing hour. Henry had the habit of looking a bit harried and frazzled at the edges on those nights.
Not that the customers could tell, mind. It was all in the faint lines of tension bracketing the corner of his mouth. It was the 'smile, for the customers' expression that all people who worked in public services learned to wear, which became a touch more strained. No, it wasn't obvious but Walt could see those things.
Forty hours a week it was his job to notice small details - after a while he stopped turning it off when he clocked out. So, he noticed things, sometimes, that others didn't. And he'd always noticed them about Henry in particular.
Walt flicked his eyes to the pot still quietly bubbling, but not quite boiling.
Maybe it was true - a watched pot really didn't boil.
Walt looked at the clock, one of the few things he had in the spartanly decorated cabin, and shook his head despairingly. Another night's sleep wasted as his brain turned itself inside out with decisions made and unmade. It wasn't much to look at but It had been a gift so he had held on to it over the years and he was glad of it now. It was a comfort to have a tangible link to the past, something he could look back at and know, it had been real once upon a time. Not some dream fever. He looked over at the clock and his blood rushed south, his mouth went dry, and he couldn't help but grin as he remembered the parts that were him and Henry, tearing off clothes, and crashing together with the force of a burgeoning storm.
His blood warmed as the memory wrapped itself around himself in technicolor detail in the way of an old lover's return.
It was funny, how objects could encapsulate moments. Little nick-knacks that became dream-catchers stuffed full of forgotten moments. He'd honestly forgotten about that night until that second. Walt had only been late that one time, not really but Walt refused to accept those other incidents, and Henry never let him forget it. Hence, the clock he still had sitting on a bedside table. It was equipped with a radio and alarm he never used.
Walt smiled, a small private thing that softened the hard line of his face, as he willingly fell backward in time.
Cady had turned twenty one and decided to celebrate by having a party and her first alcoholic drink at the Red Pony. Walt knew Henry had secretly been pleased with her decision even if he'd tried to convince her to go out to some swanky, high end bar the next county over but Cady would have none of that.
Henry had shook his head, folding his arms across his chest. Walt might have been staring, a little, but he'd been wearing something blue. Henry looked good in blue. And black. "Come on, you cannot really want to have it here? Would you not prefer somewhere with more kids your age to party with? You know Walt will try to make it, but he might not be able to Cady."
She had smiled wider, shrugging her shoulder. "I know that Henry! But this is your bar, the Red Pony! C'mon, please, please, please?"
Henry had relented, of course he had, he always did for Walt's daughter. "It is up to you, birthday girl. If you want to have it here then here it will be."
Cady had squealed with enough pitch to make both men wince. Her green eyes sparkling she lunged forward, latching onto Henry who caught hold of her with a oo-mph of surprise. "Alright, alright," Henry said, once she had released him, "I will have to see if I can make this place respectable enough for the Sheriff's daughter."
Walt had laughed, a deep rumble that rolled up from his belly. "That might be a tall order. This place of yours is many things Henry, but I'm not sure 'respectable' can be one of 'em."
Henry's look had been positively waspish. "Why is it that I get the feeling you are not talking about my bar?"
Walt had grinned, threw back his drink and tugged a still beaming Cady under his shoulder. "Because you're a smart man, Henry"
Henry had been right, however, about Walt not being able to make it. Walt would hear about it the next weekend when he caught a break from work, he and Cady having decided on breakfast at the Busy Bee.
Walt didn't recall what she'd said, exactly, but her hair had been pulled back in a no-nonsense pony-tail. It was apt, her flame-red hair swishing as she talked, fast and excited even in the re-telling. No, he couldn't place what all she'd said, only that it had been a lot and she had glowed with quiet happiness. It had pleased him more than she'd ever know, just sitting there quietly listening to her babble of words.
His daughter was happy, what more could a father hope for? A career, a family someday, maybe. But Cady had time to figure those things out. Right then she had been living her life to its fullest and he couldn't be prouder.
Walt figured some part of him should have been upset Cady hadn't even missed him all that much on her twenty-first birthday but he wasn't. Henry, who was so much better than him at these things, made sure his daughter had a good - clean - night out on the town.
He was a lucky man, in that moment he'd known it more than ever.
He had tried to make it to her shindig but a shoot out, a nicked shoulder, and sudden downpour had conspired against him. Walt didn't make it to the bar until all the guests including the birthday girl had shuffled home. Instead of a group of rowdy college students looking to get drunk and dance with any willing body in their immediate vicinity Walt had gotten a private party of his own, upstairs in a too small bed. It had squeaked, a lot, that night.
And later the pointed gift of a watch.
Cady, who was so often her Godfather's co-conspirator, had bought the little time-keeper for him as a Christmas present, that, and an antique silver money-clip he couldn't bring himself to use. It went without saying, he knew who had really suggested the clock.
His line of work, Walt figured he'd either lose the clip, or it would end up with a perp. No, that he kept home. Safely displayed on a bookshelf holding onto a few folds of notes he'd collected over the years, a few from Martha, Henry, and a sentimental 'I love you, Daddy!' from twelve-year old Cady. Things that only had value to him and on one else ever needed to know he cherished as much as his Dickinson, Donne, or Whitman books.
It had been a hell of a night, Walt thought stuck in a daze of memory. The passage of time had dimmed the raw edges of it but he can still feel the heady rush of adrenaline shooting through his system when he and then-Sheriff Lucien had been boxed in at the Two Creek Ranch. Not exactly the OK Corral, but close enough to it back then.
He'd enjoyed the thrill a lot more those days.
Being young and stupid was a curse only time cured.
Lucien had known about Cady's shindig and sent him home to make apologies but Cady hadn't been there to greet him. His blood still singing from action he'd blown into the bar looking every inch the cowboy tumbling off the streets, dirt on his knees and a thin line of blood running from ear to cheek - he'd known it, too.
Henry had looked him up and down, grinning. "Everyone else has gone home."
Walt hadn't needed a clearer invitation than that. Hands on his body lead to kisses that stole his breath and the white-out rapture of really good sex. Floating in a blissed out cloud of satisfaction Walt had looked over at Henry stretched out asleep beside him, warm, because Henry was always so damn warm, and been so punch-drunk in love that it hurt. He hadn't said it, but he had stayed the whole night, and received one hell of a pleasant wake-up call...
Staring into the dark, waiting for the coffee to percolate, Walt scrubbed a hand over his face missing the memory as it drew farther and farther away. He also remembered what he thought later. Staring up at the ceiling that night, still trying to catch his breath, feeling sad that Sheriff Lucien had nothing waiting for him at home but his writing and his bourbon.
On a bright Sunday afternoon, while Walt and them were still new and freshly blooming, Lucien would turn to him as they walked down the street to the Busy Bee for lunch. His eyes twinkling with mischief he'd turned to Walt and said, "Son, some men get it all, and some don't. Don't you waste it, you lucky son of a bitch."
Walt doesn't know what he'd thought at the time, besides the hearty "Oh, fuck" that he kept circling back to. It had probably shown as clear as a black printed newspaper headline on his face in those days but Lucien had said nothing more on the topic. All Walt remembered was that he'd been scared shitless, still trying to believe that the family he'd cobbled together was really his for keeps.
Time had given him clarity. Walt suspects he understood what the old man was getting at now, what neither one of them would have said because a man's love life was a private affair.
He knew why Lucien's words had left him treading shaky ground. He'd be staring at Martha and Henry who were leaning into one another, arm in arm, as they walked down the street across from Walt. There was nothing significant about the moment, this was not unusual. They had become fast friends - taken to one another like the sun to the moon, it had been more than Walt had ever dared to hope.
Henry and Martha would often - privately- commiserate over being tied to a workaholic lawman, loudly at the cabin where only Walt could hear and blush and stammer only for them to turn to one another and shush him with touching, kissing, and….well...He didn't mind their complaints terribly when that was the welcome back he received.
Walt remembered stopping on the sidewalk for a second, just to admire them, the light catching off raven's-wing black and cornflower-gold strands as they talked, the bright animation on their faces as they spoke.
Conspiring from the furtive looks they would shoot in Walt's direction. They had looked up at him as one unit and waved.
Walt had shuffled his feet, his face turning beet red as he waved back. He didn't understand at the time why he'd been so thrown off.
Lucien had slapped him on the back laughing at some private joke he didn't feel like letting him in on. "You're being summoned. Go on, get! I don't want to see your ugly mug until Monday, you hear?"
Yeah. I'd been summoned alright. But no man had gone more willingly than Deputy Walt Longmire. Those had been some good times, Walt thought side eyeing the coffee pot as it began to boil.
The phone rang in the living room sounding like a Dark-Eyed Junco trilling at him for encroaching on his nest.
Walt huffed, blinking the sleep-crust from his eyes, feeling sufficiently indolent from lack of sleep. It was no good living in memory, but sometimes it helped ease the ache in the absence of warmth pressed to his side, or gold hair haloed on his pillow. He missed the makeup in his cabinet, the fancy lavender smelling soap, and foreign tea's stacked in sparse cabinets. He missed the sweaty tangle of limbs, breathless from lovemaking. Walt missed when it was him and them.
Sleep came hard some nights, he tossed and turned for hours before his unquiet mind allowed him to slip into the sweet nothingness of dreams. Over time he'd found that good dreams hurt worse than nightmares of blood, guts and entrails. When he dreamed of them his insides felt ripped to shreds, bleeding from unseen wounds. If there was no rest for the wicked and no peace for the good, what was the Goddamn point? Good, bad, they were all of them stuck howling at the same moon on restless nights. It didn't help that he had the power to change part of it, all he had to do was pick up the phone, that's it.
Can I come over? He'd lost track of how many times he wanted to pick up the phone and ask. That's all he would have to say. No hello, how are you, what's new friend, just Walt quietly begging for a place to get out of the cold. To be less alone when the world got to feeling too big for a small town sheriff. That's it. All he needed to say and Henry would unlock the door, give him the key, and keep him warm for the night.
Henry was good like that, good to Walt like that. He would let him in. And then, in the morning his face still soft in the afterglow of making love he'd quietly let Walt go when the morning sun crested the sky. If that's what he needed, Henry would give it.
Henry would not shut that door, not to his bed and not to his home. He hadn't done so in 37 years, Walt could stake his life on that door being open. Even if he thought, maybe, he didn't deserve it.
Walt stalked over to the phone, shivering as he left the relative heat put off by the stove. He had not needed light to make his coffee instead leaving the kitchen in shadowy darkness. His choice came back to bite him on the ass when his big toe met the table with a slap. Walt cringed, cursing animatedly. He hopped the rest of the way to the light-switch feeling six different kinds of a fool and prayed nothing was broken. He could see the headline now 'Sheriff of Absaroka County Walter Longmire admitted to Good Samaritan Hospital. Injury: Broken big-toe.' Local news rags would eat that shit up and destroy his hard-ass reputation in the process.
In Walt's opinion they were dangerous things in the morning, corners. He was convinced it was a worldwide phenomenon, a morning ritual epidemic he'd once said. He cannot remember who he'd shared his thoughts with, Martha or Henry? He didn't know. It was equally likely he'd bitched to them both and they would have laughed at him for it.
Martha would have softened the sting by brushing his hair back behind his ear and kissing him on the mouth. God, he'd loved that woman.
Henry would have laughed and maybe, if he was lucky, made up for it in other ways when they were alone together in the dark. Maybe it would be kissing, or fucking, or both. But Walt'd never known until it happened and he was pulled along in the undertow that was Henry Standing Bear.
Walt was always willing to get tossed about in the face of his twin passions, Henry and Martha. The fixed points around which he had spent the better part of his life happily orbiting once upon a time. Walt fiercely missed those halcyon days with a strength that left half-healed wounds aching for want of more. Martha, bless her, was gone but he and Henry were still here, still picking up the pieces of one another with their bare hands. Cutting themselves down to bone on sharp edges, ragged hurts that left them bloodied. But still trying.
Once upon a time, two had been three.
Walt indulged himself for a half-second in the warm, wanted, and welcome, feeling that he had been the epicenter of what felt like a lifetime ago. He shook it loose. It hurt too much to grasp what had long since crumbled to ash. Nothing in this world was meant to last forever. All that could be promised was the moment that existed between hello and goodbye.
Walt paused, thinking of Maugham and wondered. Was he being foolish for not taking happiness where he could find it, in what he still had left?
Walt froze with his hand on the phone.
After Martha died it had felt wrong to let himself feel anything good. Because of what they had, him and them, that had included Henry. It hadn't been either right or wrong. It had just been what he'd had to do, floundering in an ocean of black grief.
Henry had tried. Lord, he'd done more than anyone could have expected. Walt knew he had. It had been Walt who refused to take the rope he was being thrown - he'd almost drowned but that was on him not Henry. No, Henry had worn his sadness like armor, a badge of honor in memory of the woman they had both loved.
Walt had needed space then and Henry had given it without ever letting Walt get so far adrift that he couldn't find his way back.
She would have been proud, Walt thought to himself. Henry had been the steady rock that remained planted in the middle of the wild river that Walt's grief had made of him. The river could run past, through, and over the rock but it could not uproot it.
Henry gave him time, but he had not been left alone in the dark, either.
Take out arrived unasked for, empty beer cans vanished, and on occasion they ate dinner together. Henry had not needed an invitation to do this, he had just done it in silent, unspoken understanding.
Martha would have boxed Walt's ears for this. It startled a chuckle out of him, imagining her face, stern and unimpressed, her beautiful heart-shaped face flush with anger as she pulled herself up to her full height of five feet and two inches. She never let Walt forget those two inches, either. She'd be kind, too. She would touch his face as she whispered in his ear 'Don't forget, he's hurting too, dear.' But he had, because no one else had reminded him. No one else had known. Martha had loved Henry, too.
"This is Walt," he said, grabbing the phone on the fifth ring.
"I should hope so, it is your phone," Vic snapped from the other end.
Walt imagined her with her athletic curves slouched in his chair with her boots up on his mahogany desk as she spoke. He was going to have to talk to her about that someday, she was leaving boot-scuffs on the mahogany wood that will be hard to fix.
"Anyways, Hugh Moore called in a prowler and since he lives in your neck of the woods it would be faster sending you than for me to haul ass over there to see what shadow he's jumping at tonight. It was trash-pandas last time you know," she explained as though the last eight words out of her mouth made perfect and logical sense.
Walt hummed absently and made a mental note to ask Henry what 'trash-pandas' was supposed to mean. Henry knew all that millennial, new-age talk, it came with the territory of running a bar.
The last time the English language had taken an ineffable turn had been with internet 'memes', back in '06. Sixteen year old Janet O'Malley had chased Donny Gilman, age seventeen, down front street with her little-league bat for posting a picture of her with a rude message on the internet that had gone viral.
He missed the days when viral meant someone had caught a nasty STD, or the claps.
It had been the talk of the town alright, but when the dust settled all anyone remembered was five-foot-nothing Janet in her pretty yellow sundress, scaring the hell out of the Gilman boy. Folk still laughed about that incident at the Half-Moon Café.
"Okay," Walt said. "I'll head over now."
"Okay."
The line went dead. Walt looked at the phone, his lip ticked-up in a faint smile as he made his coffee and threw on some clean clothes. Burrowing into his coat more than usual he started up the Bronco and headed out to Old Moore's cabin.
Walt's bear dream and the words itching at his throat became a distant afterthought, less and less vivid with each mile he drove. Walt hummed tapping his fingers on the wheel to a bluesy country tune. It was time to get to work and Vic was only half right. Old Moore's cabin wasn't near anyone's neck of the woods but it was a hell of a view - open plains a few miles from the Buffalo Horn mountain range which would be capped with white snow. He had the heat on cranked up all the way, the proof was fogging the windshield, making him squint to see the rain-slick roadway and black ice but it still wasn't enough. Walt couldn't get warm; perpetual chill had set up shop and it wouldn't budge.
Spotting the Moore's driveway Walt turned off the main road bracketed by rows and rows of winter-bare Elm trees. His high beams lit up the front porch and huge bay windows of the cabin but there was nothing exciting to see so he turned off the lights and got out to inspect the residence while Mr. Moore hunched against the wind on his floral decorated welcome mat. Walt took his time with a slow and methodical examination of the grounds same as he would for any other prowler call checking for footprints or tire-tracks that didn't belong to Moore's blue Ford and walked the perimeter of the house, just to be thorough.
Lots of things happened out in the woods at night and some of them were bad. A good man might fear the dark, but a bad man? He was always bravest when he was cloaked in absolute darkness - removed from light, removed from societal inhibition. No, Walt thought. He would do this right.
His flashlight caught reflected eye-shine from a family of racoons peering at him from the forest line and he sighed. Vic was right. Again. Sometimes the usual suspects really were the guilty party and shadows in the yard were just shadows, not that he'd be telling that to Mr. Moore who was watching from his porch bundled up in a wool parka and a red-checkered scarf as he waited to hear what Walt had to say.
Walt joined him, stepping up on the porch which provided some cover from the drizzle. His exhaled breath turned into a plume of fog-mist in the pre-dawn hours and he wished he had something hot to warm the chill creeping into his bones.
"Well, what was it?" Moore asked.
"Racoons," Walt explained. "You can tell Madeline there's nothing to be concerned about."
Moore was a nervously dispositioned man and it showed in the way his jaw ticked, hands fidgeting in his buckskin gloves. He was also predisposed to watching horror flicks before going to bed and that combined with his racoon visitors resulted in frequent calls to the station. Walt figured it was better that he called, even when it was nothing, rather than not call when someday it might be something. Even if it was a pain in the ass.
Mrs. Moore was quite unlike her husband in that respect and they both knew it. Madeline was more likely to blow a hole in an intruder and then call the station to report it but Walt let the man keep his pride as it was something of a sore subject between the couple. It would cost Walt nothing to soften the sting but it also served to keep a citizen happy and loyal for when voting season came calling.
Madeline studied them from the open door - as though invocation of her name made her appear.
She was a refined woman and wore her age well with laugh-lines crinkling at the corner of her Irish green eyes and her mouth turned up in a cupids-bow half-smile. Walt had always thought it gave her a secretive Mona Lisa air. Nearing sixty-three she had chosen to retain her natural grey, the ghost glow of moonlight catching at her silver plaited hair falling down her shoulder turned it to quicksilver.
"Walter? Did Mr. Moore drag you out of your bed again? Poor dear, I bet a cup of coffee would do you good," Madeline said already motioning for him to follow her inside. "It's no trouble to put on a pot."
"I'll have to take a rain-check, Madeline. You take care now," he said and tipped the brim of his Stetson politely.
"Thanks for coming out, Walt, we've had more travers down this way than usual and it makes me jumpy. But, I suppose you know that already," Moore said and if he was shuffling further back into his doorway like an awkward schoolboy who knew he'd get a paddling when the door closes Walt was wise enough not to comment.
People only nagged if they cared. It was when that stopped that a person knew they had either messed up beyond forgiving or else there wasn't anyone around to fuss over the mundane. In Wat's books Mr. Moore was a lucky man.
"Just doing my job," Walt replied, stepping off the porch and shuffling back to the Bronco. Sitting in the cab he cranked up the heat to thaw out the deep-freeze gnawing at his bones. This cold clinging to him felt unnatural; he hasn't been able to shake it or feel proper warmth since that strange dream.
Maybe he would swing by the Red Pony before work. He'd order up his morning favorite a Breakfast Special of hash and hot-cakes and see if some friendly palavering couldn't stop Jack Frost nipping at his heels. Just imagining the hot coffee and cozy warmth of his favorite Bar & Café was enough to suffuse Walt with warm glowy feelings of contentment.
It had been three weeks. Walt figures that was how long it'd been since he'd done more than see the bar, or Henry, in passing. He's not avoiding his friend, he's just been busy of late. It has nothing to do with the fact that he fell back into a familiar, old habit. Nothing. Didn't matter that it had been the best night he'd had in a long while. Best sex, too.
Crime didn't stop just because the sheriff was, maybe, having himself a bit of an existential crisis over falling into bed with his best friend. Again.
Crime never slept. There had already been two robberies and one attempted kidnapping of a local waitress, Mandy Hall. She'd had mace and a pair of pipes that could wake the dead. She screamed so loudly Half-Deaf Joe the barber came running out of Beards and Shears armed with his .38 Smith & Wesson and ready to be Mandy Halls' white knight in plainclothes. The would-be abductor had fled and the trail went cold fast without witnesses or identifying marks beyond the grey Wolverines, West Yellowstone High sweater the suspect had been wearing and that he'd been Caucasian with brown hair. Walt figured that placed the suspect in the early to late twenties range and he either attended West Yellowstone High or he'd picked up the clothes somewhere else but Walt would place bets that the sweater belonged to the suspect.
The attack on Mandy Hall had been sloppy, unplanned and he'd escaped by running behind the shop where he'd stowed his vehicle. Only way to secure her compliance without a weapon would have been a fire-man hold.
Impractical in such an open space as main street.
Walt had looked at grainy low quality footage at lousy angles until his eyes itched and his ass was numb in his chair trying to find his suspect but he hadn't been able to close the distance - he hated it. He kept waiting for the call to come in, the one that said someone else's daughter, sister, mother had disappeared and he could have stopped it. He was doing everything he could but there were some cases where it just wasn't enough no matter what.
Walt had learned a long time ago to take the win's and the losses as they came. Not everybody was going to come home alive. That was just the job.
Still, guilt hung around his neck like the Ancient Mariner's albatross.
Walt pulled into his destination and sat in the cab for a moment, glaring at the neon 'closed' sign disrupting his plans for a little conversation and good food. His glowy sentiments from earlier faded into a moody, dark spiral. Should he have called ahead? He could have. But then, he'd never felt the need to do so before. Deciding not to jump the gun Walt got out slamming the cab door with a thwack, fishing out his spare key with hands that had gone numb he opened the door and let himself into the Red Pony.
He passed chairs neatly stacked on top of tables and took the stairs in twos fully prepared to be faced with a very irate bear of the real and not-a-dream sort when he threw open the door to Henry's private room above the bar. The apology on his lips remained unspoken as he took in the empty space: an unmade bed, and thin layering of dust.
Henry had not been here for some time. He is not entirely sure if he's relieved or upset about that. What was he going to say? Did he need to say anything at all? Walt sighed, rubbing at his temples in frustration. Yeah, at least a 'sorry for being a dick', would be alright, Walt thought as he frowned taking in the room, the new book on the desk that hadn't been there before, the sprig of dried sage on the small table Henry used for eating. He hated that there had been changes, small details, that were unfamiliar. When had Henry started reading Ian Hacking's The Social Construct of What? Walt didn't know and it bothered him more than he wanted to admit that he didn't have an answer. Had he been gone that long? He didn't think he had, but he'd been wrong before.
"Hey, is the boss back?" a woman asked. Walt swung around to face her, the surprise must have been clear on his face because she laughed, a light airy sound that was meant to set him at ease. It did. Now that he was looking properly he recognized her face from his frequent visits.
She had been the pretty, dark eyed, and dark haired woman in the background waiting tables and stacking chairs at closing.
"Sorry. I did not mean to startle you Sheriff. I'm Amy White Feather. On the rare occasion that Henry leaves town I am in charge. It's a pain, but the money is good," Amy said leaning around his bulky frame to glance into the empty room.
Walt could see there was something more she wanted to say. Concern dimmed the corners of her thin-lipped smile and frown lines beaded between the black arch of her brows.
"I didn't even know he was gone" Walt replied, trying not to sound upset.
It wasn't his right.
He had been the one to distance himself in the first place.
Another regret he could add to the tally. Fuck, he'd gone about this all halfcocked and stupid thinking with his dick when he knew there were feelings on the line.
Amy White Feather crossed her arms defensively. "I called the Rez after the first couple days, you know? But he was not there either."
Henry was a grown man who could come and go as he pleased.
He didn't need Walt's say-so.
Walt tapped his foot to mask his irritation, his eyes wandering around the empty room. He might have expected plans to have at least been mentioned. But that was before, and he hadn't been around had he? This was one, it was on him.
Shutting the door to Henry's room Walt backtracked down the stairs aware of Amy White Feather's dainty, light steps close at his back.
Walt crossed his arms and surveyed the building but nothing jumped out at him, no new scuff marks, bullet holes, or signs of any struggles that would indicate a problem that required a sheriff's attention. There was nothing tangible to explain this feeling he had. It was like being dumped in tar with ants crawling all over his body, something was wrong and he knew it in his gut. But there wasn't a single rational explanation he could thumb his finger at, either.
He didn't like this second roadblock. If Henry wasn't here and he wasn't at the Rez then where was he?
Unease sat like a stone in Walt's gullet because now he felt the world might as well be hanging a sign post that read: 'Talk To Henry Standing Bear.'
And karma, the conniving bitch, was laughing at him now for all shit he hadn't said and done. 'To late, now' she was cackling as the storm brewed on the horizon. Oh fuck you, Walt thought mulishly. This wasn't over, not by a long shot.