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For the second day in a row, Boyd was awoken by the sun in his eyes.
Raylan stirred next to him, groaning and pulling his shoulder away from the spot where Boyd had wedged his face between him and one of the pillows. “Get off me,” Raylan mumbled, still exhausted from a late night hunting some fugitive or other. “Hot as hell in here.”
Boyd had stayed up, studying off and on as the hours went by, to wait for him. “Bright as fuck, too,” he grumbled back, throwing the pillow over his head.
Raylan didn’t respond. Boyd gave up on sleeping a few minutes later and went out for coffee.
When he got back he set an open cup of joe on the side table next to Raylan’s face and waited for him to rouse himself. Once he did, squinting blearily in Boyd’s direction, Boyd smirked at him fondly and said, “Wake up, asshole. Today, we’re going shoppin’ for curtains.”
Raylan was frowning as he drank his coffee and pulled the towncar out of the bar’s back lot.
Boyd was riding shotgun. As Raylan took a left turn, Boyd’s head whipped around and he asked, “Where are you going?” Clearly thinking it was not in the right direction.
“Walmart,” Raylan said, like it was obvious. “I figured the one on Richmond, ‘stead of Nicholasville. Maybe less traffic.”
Boyd looked at him like he was crazy. “Raylan, we are not buying curtains from Walmart. Christ Almighty. They’ll fall apart, soon as we hang ‘em.”
“You really wanna spring for department store prices? This ain’t the house we’re buyin’ for, darlin’.”
Raylan wasn’t even sure why he was involved in this decision at all if Boyd had such particularly emphatic opinions on the matter. He’d decorated the house, or most of it, while Raylan was living elsewhere or staying in Lexington. Raylan thought it looked nice, too. He didn’t really care. Boyd wanted curtains, Boyd had a truck, he could go get them. But from the moment they’d started talking about this little adventure they’d embarked upon, it had been “we” the whole time, coming out of Boyd’s mouth. Raylan hadn’t felt like he could gainsay it, now that they were already in the car.
“Target, at least,” Boyd replied with a huff, at least granting the practicality of Raylan’s point. “There’s one on West Reynolds, just off Nicholasville.”
“Fine,” Raylan said, just before he pulled the u-turn.
When they reached the “Windows” aisle at Target Boyd looked expectantly over at Raylan’s impassive expression and said, “Well?”
Raylan’s eyebrows rose. “Well, what?”
Boyd was fairly sure his annoyance was clear and he was absolutely sure Raylan had no real opinion whatsoever on the issue of the curtains, but it was his damn apartment, he should be the one to pick them. “Which ones do you like, Raylan?”
Raylan gave him a look for a second like he was crazy, then shrugged and said, in his typical fashion, “They’re all fine. Whatever, Boyd.”
Boyd’s lips tightened and his eyes flashed, but he didn’t want to fight in the store and he could tell Raylan didn’t want to either. They were both pushing something aside, but Boyd didn’t for the life of him know just what had put Raylan’s hands on his hips like that. “Well,” he said carefully, “You could go with these darker blue ones, since the sheets you got now are that light blue. Or you could do brown, the long ones or the short ones. I think you might want the blackout kind though, so the sun don’t keep peeking in on us.”
Raylan was looking at him funny and his hands were off his hips now. “What do you mean, I could to all that, darlin’?”
Boyd frowned. “Well, it’s your place, baby. You should decide.”
He didn’t even generally care too much about this kind of thing either, in all honesty. When he decorated the house, he’d just bought what looked like quality for cheap and seemed to go nice enough with everything else in his mind. He didn’t want to put his mark on Raylan’s place in Lexington like that. He’d only ever done it for the house in Harlan because Raylan seemed to like it so much that he had, that it was different, but still home-like.
Boyd frowned even deeper when Raylan laughed, laughed at him like he was doing something adorable, and asked in a low tone, “You don’t think it’s yours, too?” Raylan took a step closer to him as he spoke.
Boyd’s eyebrows rose. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again to say, “Truth be told, Raylan, I actually hadn’t.”
Raylan looked at him then, and there was a hesitation in his eyes as he said slowly, “You were always real careful, darlin’, to keep to Harlan, and I know you did that for me. Because that’s what I needed. But we don’t have to do that anymore. We’re not doing it anymore. You already made that choice and I’m real happy about it. So, don’t you think it’s a little silly to go on thinking you don’t have a say about what goes in or what goes on in any place I’m living? Boyd, you’re living there too.”
Boyd felt a wide grin about split his face open.
Sometimes, he just did not give Raylan enough credit. He was right. Boyd had kept himself away from Lexington after Raylan moved back to Kentucky, unless he was specifically invited up. But things were changing now, and he had been the one to finally make the decision to stop doing that, by enrolling in school there. It was just that the decision itself was so brand knew, his attitude about the place hadn’t had a chance to catch up.
“I do,” Boyd said simply and reached out to take one of the packages off the shelf. It contained the deep brown curtains, the blackout ones, the kind long enough to brush the floor and keep out the chill in the winter. “You like these?”
Raylan’s lips quirked in continued amusement. “You don’t believe me that I really don’t care?”
Boyd huffed again and hit Raylan with the damn box, “Oh, I do, baby, but if it is our place we’re buyin’ shit for, I’m gonna ask you for your opinion, all right?”
Raylan gave him this smile, like he both couldn’t believe this entire conversation was happening, but also like he completely loved the hell out of it and didn’t want it to stop, nor acknowledge his feelings in the least, and Boyd about jumped him right there. “I like them,” he said softly. “They’re fine.”
Boyd thrust the box into Raylan’s hands and said, “Then we need another one, since we got two windows in the bedroom. You want to get something for that smaller one in the kitchen?”
“Why not?” he asked, seemingly to the air, while reaching for another box, hand going to an altogether different shelf.
“It’s that one, baby,” Boyd corrected, pointing, while looking down the row for the shorter kind they needed. “The brown ones. Look at the box, huh?”
“Jesus Christ,” Raylan grumbled, finally bending down and pulling the right one off the shelf.
When he came up, his eye was caught by something and Boyd turned to see a small old woman in a tracksuit, maybe sixty-five or seventy, staring at them from down the aisle, slack-jawed, undoubtedly processing not only the casual endearments they’d just been throwing around, but also the badge and weapon currently clipped to Raylan’s belt. Her eyes flicked from Raylan to Boyd then back to Raylan, slowly rising up to his hat. That damn hat. Raylan tipped it, like a goddamn cowboy and smiled graciously, murmuring, “Ma’am.”
Boyd pulled the first short curtain his eye came upon off the shelf , ironically close to where the woman was standing, and turned on his heel, tugging Raylan by his shirt sleeve until he followed. He looked down and saw the curtain in his hand was a bright white with tiny blue polka-dots. “You okay with this?” he asked Raylan.
“You really don’t want to go back there, do you?” he challenged.
Boyd’s mouth twisted uncomfortably as they continued to walk towards the checkout area. “You know, I think at least twenty-five percent of the reason I was fairly glad to get out of Harlan for a bit was so I didn’t have to encounter quite so many little old ladies lookin’ at me like that.”
“This is still Kentucky, Boyd,” Raylan laughed.
“Shut up, Raylan.”
Raylan put his hand on Boyd’s shoulder, not suggestively, but firm and warm. “The polka-dots are just fine, darlin’,” he said.
The bar was just opening up for Sunday brunch when they got back from their curtain purchase and breakthrough session, as Raylan had decided to think of it on the drive back. Boyd had asked him just what he was smiling about like that, but he’d kept it to himself. Boyd had a thick skin, but sometimes, lately, not about things like that, and Raylan didn’t want to push his buttons on it just yet.
Raylan looked over the Sunday menu on their way inside and he glances at Boyd as they walked through the door. “You wanna try this? I heard they have a good Bloody Mary. Granted, it was the bartender told me so.”
Boyd met his eyes quickly and then looked away, still walking. “No,” he said simply. There was something tugging at his lips, not quite a smile, and Raylan knew just what he was thinking.
“Just can’t wait to hang these up, can you?” he joked and Boyd rolled his eyes.
“Hurry the fuck up, Raylan.”
When they got upstairs Boyd was on him, dropping the bag of curtains and pushing him fast down the hallway. Boyd’s fingers were pulling at Raylan’s belt, fast and sure, as Raylan asked, lips brushing past his ear and neck, “Can we do brunch after? We didn’t get no breakfast, Boyd. I’m real hungry.”
Boyd looked at him funny then, for what felt like a long moment, and his eyes were real dark as he asked, “Would you think it strange if I asked you to keep talking about brunch, Raylan?”
Raylan’s brows rose, but he kept his voice light and judgement-free when he replied, “Not as such.” They were standing at the foot of the bed now and Raylan let himself fall on it, pulling Boyd with him. Boyd climbed up and straddled him, working on his own fly with Raylan’s help as Raylan added, “Though I ain’t too sure how much more I got to say about that.”
“Use your imagination,” Boyd murmured, his hands soft in Raylan’s hair, his kiss fevered, but tender.
Raylan took a moment to figure just what it was about brunch that was getting Boyd going this morning. They were both more than usual fans of breakfast food, but it had to be something else today, since this had all come to a head in sort of a rush.
“Maybe,” Raylan said, “maybe after this we’ll go down and we’ll get those gravy and biscuits I saw they have?” Boyd grunted assent, but his mouth was busy on Raylan’s chest, moving down to his stomach, so Raylan just kept going, “That’ll go good with the bloody marys. You think--” Boyd’s hand was on Raylan’s cock now, hot and strong, and he was rubbing them together. Raylan put his hands on Boyd’s hips, pulling him closer.
“What, baby?” Boyd asked, breathless.
“You think we can share a plate, though? That shit’s so heavy in the morning--”
“Yes,” Boyd groaned, hissing out the ‘s’ and pulling Raylan’s legs up around his hips. “What else,” he gasped, “what--what are we gonna do later?”
“Later?” Raylan was having a hard time now thinking past the next few moments. He was hot and tight and Boyd was moving faster. “We’ll just come up here. You got your book to read, right?”
Boyd nodded, eyes screwed tight, breath heavy.
“I got some shit to look over. And after, you wanna go get ice cream? I know a place, just down the road. We--we can walk there.”
Raylan took Boyd’s orgasm as a “yes”.
Boyd kept his hand on Raylan, moving slow again, excruciating, and met his eyes. He said, “I love you, Raylan,” right before he bent and swallowed him down.
Raylan didn’t even last thirty seconds.
When Boyd pulled off and climbed back up on top of him, Raylan took his boy’s hands in fingers sticky with come, and tugged on them lightly. “You gonna be hungry after that?”
Boyd gave him a thoroughly satisfied smile. “I think I’ll manage, baby.”
They were sitting downstairs in a booth in the corner by the window, splitting their biscuits and gravy as Raylan had suggested, when he decided enough time had passed that he could crack a joke. “Next time we screw, you want me to break out the TV Guide so we can decide what we’re gonna watch?”
Boyd gave him a hard look, made practically cuddly by his suppressed smile as he replied, “Raylan, you gotta buy a TV first. And who the hell reads TV Guide anyway?”
Later, they fell asleep in the sun, as the windows were still curtainless, books and papers stuck between them on the bed. And despite the fact no work or reading got done, they did still get ice cream.