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The ground shakes like a bitch bitten by a flea, little men with their little diggers trying to get under her skin, suck out her blood to sustain them.
Boyd feels her rumble under his feet, try to shake them off again. Pebbles on the floor quake then jump, fleas on fleas and he realizes this is a bad one. One where you got to run to get out with your life.
Raylan is frozen, his tiny life flashing before his eyes. His mother with a black eye, one every month for as long as he can remember, his father with a snarling face, a hard sneer, a mocking tone. Helen and her money in his bag and her soft hands and easy embrace he hasn’t let himself feel for too long. His mother’s food and her trembling hands on his shoulders and Arlo, like a shadow, in front of the tv in the next room.
The rumbling, faded and distant compared to the echoes of his miserable life, roars in his ears when he feels a rough hand grab at his arm, jerk him away from the slowly crumbling wall.
Boyd’s got his hand on Raylan and he’s not letting him go, “Run,” he urges and Raylan’s eyes are nothing but terrified, blank and dark, like he’s dead already.
The bitch is pissed as hell. Boyd wasn’t on powder duty that day and someone fucked up and now they might die under a pile of rocks, squashed by an angry paw, flicked away on a dull claw, crushed--
He almost stumbles, but Raylan’s running now too, pushing up at his back, terror real and stark in the whites of his dark, dark, eyes.
The dust overtakes them, coming up fast behind and they can’t see each other any longer, but their hands still hold on, Boyd to Raylan’s arm, Raylan to Boyd’s dust covered sleeve.
There are few ahead of them, as they crawl up the low grade shaft, past the rails of the cart that carries them down every single day. They scramble up, clawing through the dirt, the hard Harlan clay, and they have to let go to go faster, to get there before the bitch comes up after them--
And they’re out in a flash of sun and a fit of coughing and Boyd turns as he pulls Raylan up because his legs only know how to crawl now. “Fuck,” he wheezes and coughs and clutches at Boyd’s arms. His fingers digging in hard, almost painful.
The dust in the air is black and brown and his vision is fuzzy. There are tears in his eyes, they’re stinging something fierce and the only thing he’s sure of around him is Boyd, who’s coughing too. Boyd bends and pulls a hand away, shoving off his helmet, letting it fall to the ground with a thud, letting it roll away in the dust.
He wants to take his off too, but when he lets go of Boyd’s arms his hands are shaking so much he can’t move them right, like there’s a quake in each tiny bone, a chain of islands ready to erupt. His blood is pumping so hard he thinks it might gush out his pores, leaving him dry and brittle and shaking and--
Boyd takes his helmet off for him, with a slow motion and a grave expression.
“We’re not dead,” he says, voice breaking on the dust and his heart pounding, breath still not caught in lungs that are far too black. There’s half a question in his words, like he doesn’t understand.
Boyd’s voice is steadier, but not by much. “No, Raylan, we’re not.”
Boyd says Raylan’s name like he might forget what it is from one minute to the next if Boyd didn’t remind him. He thinks of today, just now, as the first time there might have been a chance of that happening.
“You,” Raylan starts to say and then doesn’t know how to keep going, “you--you--y-you--”
Boyd watches him fearfully, his hands still shaking, his voice a trembling broken record. They’ve fallen to the ground. Men are all around them, coughing and choking and cursing and none of it is quite as loud as Raylan’s inability to form more than a single word. Someone calls out their names and Boyd answers for them both. Raylan’s eyes are wild and he hasn’t stopped trying to speak. He’s looking panicky and white, even under all that coal dust and grime. They’ll bring in doctors, but the coughing and cursing is a dull roar under Boyd’s ears and he needs to talk to Raylan, not wait for a man in a pristine coat to proclaim them fine because the company won’t pay for physical comp, let alone mental trauma.
Boyd’s shakes are an aftershock to Raylan’s eight points on the Richter scale. He pulls him to his feet and guides him to his truck, pulls the keys from his pocket while Raylan is still trying to speak, shaking his head like he’s going to knock something loose and the words will flow.
Boyd leans him up against the truck and looks into his wide eyes, panicked still and blinking fast. He puts his hands on Raylan’s shoulders, sliding up soothingly to cup his face in sooty palms. “Raylan,” he says softly and the boy’s mouth snaps shut. “I’m gonna drive you somewhere. Take a breath and tell me where you want to go.”
Raylan blinks at Boyd some more and makes himself enunciate the only safe place he has ever known. “Helen’s.”
Raylan walks by himself from the truck to Helen’s door. Boyd only barely remembers where the place is, he’s only been there once when Raylan needed to get a change of clothes and couldn’t go home for reasons he wouldn’t speak to.
Helen pushes open the screen door, fear stark in her face as she cries, “What happened?”
He shakes his head, like he did before. He can’t try to speak, he’ll freak her out. He feels everything vibrate like the walls are still coming down. He knows they’re not, but his voice will break and he’ll never get that fear out of her eyes.
“Raylan, what happened?”
He blinks again, hard. She did it that time too, like Boyd, like he’s gonna forget his own name. He licks his lips.
“Collapse,” Boyd says, voice rough. He should have coughed more. He puts his hand on Raylan when he sways to the left because they’re not walking fast enough. “We just got out in time.”
“How many didn’t?”
“Couldn’t say. I took him out before they finished calling the names.”
Took him. Raylan shakes his head, shrugs him off, strides forward, and has to cling to the doorframe. Helen’s hands are at his shoulders now and he wants to shrug them off too, but now they’re shaking and he’s about to--
“Get him inside, Boyd,” Helen says and lets him go. “Bathroom’s down the hall, first to the left. Both of you need to clean up.”
Raylan sets his teeth in the inside of his cheek. “I know,” he grinds out.
“So show him,” she shoots back, like he’s not losing his shit right in front of her. The room’s spinning wildly and he just wants to sit down and Boyd’s hands are on him again and maybe he’s going to throw up, until Boyd pushes him into the shower and turns on the cold water.
“Take off the coveralls,” Boyd says when Raylan just stares at him, stunned and sad as a wet cat. He doesn’t comply until Boyd starts to take off his own clothes with still trembling hands. “It’s the adrenaline, Raylan,” Boyd says softly.
Raylan leans his head under the spray, letting it run down his face, washing off only the first layer of grime. “I know my name,” he tells Boyd hoarsely.
“Of course you do.” Boyd frowns.
“I know it,” Raylan insists.
“I know, Raylan.”
Raylan reaches for him, pitching forward dangerously, so Boyd steps up too, letting the boy grasp him hard at the collar of his undershirt. “Quit saying it like I fuckin’ forgot.”
Raylan hates it, he thinks.
It makes his neck hot, his skin feel too tight across his chest, and through his fingers when they aren’t shaking so bad, and when they’re tight like this in Boyd’s shirt and Boyd is warm and still filthy and his hands are shaking too. It makes him feel like he’ll never catch his breath again. Like even though there’s air in his lungs and there’s words on his tongue, he can’t get at them unless Boyd Crowder is there to tell him who he is first.
Boyd doesn’t know why his eyes fall to Raylan’s lips, but he thinks this sense of falling might be caused by the adrenaline too. Raylan’s mouth looks like it wants to say something else, but Boyd doesn’t want that and he’s shaking his head like Raylan did before. Boyd’s never thought Raylan might forget his goddamn name, he just wants so badly to say it to him, as much as he can, before he can’t anymore.
Boyd never thought he wanted this, until the want is too much for him to take.
Raylan doesn’t know what Boyd is doing, thinking, until he does because Boyd’s lips are on his fast and hard and he’s being pushed up against the white walls of Helen’s shower with the water spraying down on them, trying to rinse as much of Harlan’s shit off them as it can.
Boyd’s mouth moves against Raylan’s, licking and sucking and pulling at him and he feels Boyd’s breath hot into his mouth, like he’s nothing but fire deep in his belly and Raylan’s stoking the flame. The heat is catching. Raylan is warm under the cold spray now, growing warmer fast and hard. He pulls his hands up, sure now, and strong, into the short hairs at the back of Boyd’s neck, keeping him close, not wanting to let go.
Boyd moans. Raylan whispers to his lips, “Helen will hear,” and Boyd feels it double because it’s locked inside him so she won’t come in and stop them. Raylan knows what she’ll say, that their blood is too high, they aren’t thinking straight, they need to calm down. She’d give them a drink and pretend like it was nothing. But Boyd is like whiskey on Raylan’s tongue and Boyd doesn’t want a drink, he only wants Raylan to kiss him back harder, to press on.
“Come on,” he murmurs and it’s Raylan who has to hold it back now.
“How long you want this?” Raylan mumbles into Boyd’s shoulder while Boyd’s lips are on his neck.
“Just now,” he can’t catch his breath. “Always and never, and forever and ever, Raylan, shut up.”
“But, I--”
“Stop talking,” Boyd growls, “and touch me.”
They’re both hard now, and hot, and ready. They come fast and fumbling, because it’s weird jerking off backwards and neither has a shred of control left in them. They lean together afterwards and neither of them are shaking.
They smile big grins and don’t know what to say until Helen yells through the door, “You two idiots drown yourselves in there, or what?”
As Boyd answers her with something clever and light, accompanied by half a laugh, Raylan thinks of the money in his bag and how he can’t go back down the mine again. He thinks he might ask Boyd if he wants to go someplace else.