Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

November. Expanded Archery Deer Hunting Season.

Mid morning sun cut in through naked tree branches and glittered across frosted bark. Oak leaves, brown, dry, and crisp underfoot, made moving slow for a careful tracker. The temperature was going to rise a few degrees in the next hour and moisten the woods with melted frost, but at the moment it stayed cool. The bite of night time cold hadn’t yet evaporated from the blue shadows of granite boulders and the broad dark sides of maple trunks. 

The fallen foliage left twisting limbs grey against the clear blue Autumn sky, entwining like lace overhead, a net to contain the life of the forest inside. Only the aviate tenants could truly pierce through it. Hemlock, white pine, and the occasional mat of stubborn moss broke the brown and grey woods with forms of green. Younger hemlock stood at waist height, sparse and gangly. Gloved fingers, soft and worn brown deer hide, gently pushed aside one flexible stem to make passage through the undergrowth. As he let go it returned to it’s usual twisted upright form as if he’d never passed by, leaving only the mark of his smell on the spray of green needles and scaly bark.

Emerald eyes flicked in patterns across the leaf litter ground, then up at the surroundings, then down again. Roy listened to the creaking of trees, the morning birdsong, and the rustle of the forest understory as small creatures picked through it. Squirrels and chipmunks were the chattiest, always squeaking and barking at each other, tussling for the last morsels to add to their winter stashes. 

The fallen foliage made tracking harder than in the snowy months, but Roy wasn’t deterred. With patience, he had followed the northwestward trail of a single adult white tail deer ever since an hour after sunrise. It left disturbances in the litter, droppings, and the occasional print in a lucky patch of bare dirt. If he lost this thread then he’d bag a few squirrels. A day in the woods was a good day in Roy’s book. It was challenging and rewarding work for both mind and body.

The sun climbed higher and temperatures went with it. His breath no longer puffed thin and cloudy into the forest ahead of him. He turned his cap forward so that the bill shaded his eyes, and kept his nose from turning red in the direct sunlight. Roy was beginning to think it was time for a break to eat something more than the power snack bars he kept in his pockets, when 100 yards through the trees he spotted the unnatural horizontal line of a stone wall. He followed the deer trail right up to the two foot high wall and along it to a crumpled section. It was obvious where his mark had gone next. 

Though it wasn’t always true that a stone wall marked a property line out in the woods, it was reasonable enough to assume that Roy’s free range fun was ending if he intended to follow his deer. Breaking out of his careful and thoughtful pace, Roy backed away a few yards from the wall and looked left and right along the length he could see. He crossed his fingers, hoping he could move on without any trouble. 

The bright yellow square of a posted sign dashed the archers hopes and he trudged up to where it kept guard over private property, nailed to the trunk of an old maple tree two feet above head height. The clear words ‘No Trespassing’ ‘No Hunting’ left no room for ambiguity. Roy was not allowed to pass the old stone wall and his implied right of access was revoked. He folded his arms over his chest and dug his tongue into his cheek unhappily. Beneath the rain stained warning, faded by the elements, was a handwritten addendum to this posting. It looked like black Sharpie written on the yellow plastic sign. 

Roy stepped up to the stone wall and climbed it, careful of loose rocks, and placed his hands against the tree for stability. From here he could better read the note, pretending he were on an archeological dig transcribing runes weathered by millenia. 

“Call for access…” There was a number written beside the note. Roy hopped off the wall, startling a junco into flight from the nearest bush with his quick movement. He hiked his backpack off with practiced ease and carefully rested it on the ground, mindful of his expensive compound bow and the arrows in his quiver. He pulled off one glove and tucked it inside the orange high visibility vest he wore over his brown flannel. From the side zip pocket of the bag he pulled out his phone.

There was enough reception here to make a call, perhaps it was meant to be. Roy didn’t want to hope too hard that the property owner would give Roy permission to hunt on his land, but there had to be something said for the door left open by the number. It was certainly better than no door at all, and the owner had to be a pragmatist and understand folks might be coming off the open land and into their woods. 

“Their” woods. Roy rolled his eyes as he climbed back up the wall and leaned his shoulder into the maple. “Woods don’t belong to anyone. At least no one like you,” Roy grumbled as he entered the number into his cell phone, glancing between it and the yellow sign as he decoded the faded handwriting. 

With the number deciphered and Roy’s phone ringing, he collected his thoughts. He hadn’t talked with anyone since he said goodbye to Lian before dawn that morning and he hoped to make a good enough impression over the phone with this stranger. Roy thought about the deer he was after, the good size of it’s prints for viable age, the possibility that it was a buck and perfect to bag this season. 

The line was answered but no one spoke on the other side. Folk here were mighty private and it was an answered prayer someone had picked up a call from his unknown number at all.

“Hello?” Roy cleared his throat. “Listen, I’m out here hunting and I just came up on your property line from the south.”

“Huh. Did ya’ now?” The sound of a rough male voice came across the phone. “And you actually called instead of barging right in.”

“Yes sir,” he said, aiming to sound respectful. Blame his cordiality on the man’s deep growl that made Roy imagine an older backcountry man who might not like someone crossing him or his property line. 

“A little courtesy can go a long way,” Roy added, making it clear he was going to be asking for the man’s good favor. “I’m a bow hunter. Do you mind if I keep on this trail over your wall? Been following a deer since this morning and I have a feeling it’s a buck. The prints dig in the dirt well enough when I can find ‘em and I think it could be 200 pounds or more.” Roy tried to paint a picture of the animal he’s been after and that he’s not an amateur that will go bumbling around the guys property after the ghost of anything that moves.

It was quiet for a few long seconds and Roy glanced at the screen of his phone to be sure he hadn’t lost the signal and hung up on accident. 

“What’s your name?” the man asked eventually.

“Roy Harper, sir.”

“I’m Jason. And you can quit with that ‘sir’ thing. What’s your address?”

Roy grinned and relayed the address of his new home in the trailer park on the west side of the little town, the one across from the aged and lichen covered cemetery. Jason must have been writing it down, planning to confront him if Roy misbehaved on his property. Roy climbed off of the wall and sat down with his gear, digging out the lunch he packed and ate bites while they talked.

“What’s your hunting license number? You got your tags with you? Are you wearing something orange?” Roy answered Jason’s questions, three, and the sphinx eventually granted him permission to access. “I’ll call the dogs in so that they won’t scare the buck off. I’ve got twenty acres for you to run around in, and there’s no need for you to come up in the northeast corner where the house is, understood?”

“Understood.”

“There’s more open forest on my west side. East is the road. North is my neighbor and they won’t mind you coming through their lot. Call me when you leave.” Then Jason sounded a little lighter and a little younger than Roy had originally pegged him for. “It’s a beautiful day out there today. Happy hunting.”

A smile spread on Roy’s chapped lips. “Thank you.” The line went dead and Roy dropped his phone back into the side pocket. Excited by his success, Roy made quick work of his lunch then pulled on his bag. He marched back to the crumpled section of wall where he’d left the trail and paused. 

It was good to have his morale so high, but it was important to be focused, too. The smile seemed stuck to his face and Roy let it be. He took a long slow breath and turned his eyes to the ground and the last indication of the deer he’d marked, a freshly scraped patch of moss on the tumbled stones. Onward he went. 

Afternoon brought with it a change of activity in the forest. The black shapes of turkey vultures circled overhead on thermals using broad outstretched wings. Small gnats, having somehow avoided freezing overnight, hovered around a warm slimy mushroom that sat in the sunshine under an Oak. A pair of sparrows boldly dove past Roy’s shoulder then flickered up and disappeared into the canopy. The detritus underfoot warmed and the aroma tickled Roy’s nose.

After forty five minutes of walking northwest, Roy spotted more droppings as he walked up a slight incline. The dark pellets looked glossy. Roy looked carefully through the naked trees and saw no sign of the deer in the direction he was tracking. He crouched and tugged his glove off and tested the heat of the leavings with his knuckles. Fresh. Roy kept calm, despite biting his lip to contain a grin. Just because he didn’t see the deer, didn’t mean it wasn’t close by and waiting for him over the gentle slope.

On a half buried log nearby, Roy sat and unstrapped his bow and quiver from his backpack. After checking his gear and slinging the quiver comfortably onto his back he paused for several long moments to mentally prepare for the coming moments. He paid attention to the gentle breeze coming from the east and listened to his heartbeat, willing it to calm. Confidence, humble and well-earned, replaced Roy’s excitement. 

He left his backpack and gloves at the log and stalked slow and quiet up the slope towards the north and crouched beside a young bushy white pine at the top to hide his silhouette. The ground crested and gently declined on the other side into a trickling creek bed, with a raised ridge across from him, just like this one. The deer stood some odd 30 yards away sniffing at the water-smooth stones, facing away from Roy. The light breeze carried his smell away and to the side, and the heat of the afternoon and rising air meant, if anything, he was downwind of the deer by staying up on the ridge. 

Roy couldn’t have asked for a better position. He knelt and sat back on his heels at a 90 degree angle to his target, quickly making himself comfortable. From a paracord string around his neck Roy lifted his rangefinder and sighted the deer, playing his usual game at guessing the distance then double checking with the tool. Roy guessed 30 yards, the finder said 33, and he pinched his tongue between his teeth. He altered his yardage reference on the bow. One hand lifted and reached back to select a single arrow and brought it down to nock on the string, slow and easy, red fletching sliding between his fingers. From within his sleeve Roy let out the string release tool wrapped around his wrist. 

The deer moved its head to the side and Roy finally saw what kind of rack it was carrying. Six point. And the buck itself was a good size and well worth the day of tracking. Roy had seen a few other sets of tracks during the day but this fellow had seemed to be the largest and most recent, therefore the best choice to follow.

With the adjustments made to his sight, and his release tool attached to the D-loop, Roy lifted the bow and knew, already, that this was going to be a perfect shot. 

The buck shifted and took a step two steps to the left, canting it’s body at a 45 degree angle to Roy. It wasn’t the broadside that Roy wanted to see, but it was getting close. There was no need to shoot early and make the animal suffer by missing the heart, or at least a double lung shot. So he pulled back and aligned his body and mind in preparation. He marked the right corner of his mouth with the cool metal of the release, an inch behind the switch that his first finger hovered against. The string tickled beneath the point of Roy’s nose, and scratched the edge of his hat brim. 

Behind the foreleg elbow, a little lower than the midline, Roy fixed his sight and yard pin. His shoulders stayed strong and reliable at full draw while he waited for the buck to show him the broadside. The right hoof lifted and the buck stepped in the wrong direction, showing Roy it’s fluffy white tail and the back of it’s head again. It stepped over the trickling water and climbed the other side of the creek bed at a leisurely pace. Roy’s abdomen was starting to strain and shiver and distract him, along with a burning in his thighs. 

It would be easy to relax and let the moment pass, but Roy refused to miss the shot. If the deer turned again he knew he could make it. He drew a slow breath in through his nose and calmed his body, tired from a day scrambling over logs and rocks. The sight went steady again and followed the furry brown shoulder blades.

At the top of the rise, now level and opposite Roy, the buck swayed it’s head back and forth and decided to turn right and walk the line of the ridge. Seeing the heart come into view again, Roy exhaled fully. The last thing he did was account for the slow pace of the walking gait, then he himself went completely still.

And rested his finger on the release trigger and felt the ghost of the string under the tip of his nose.

And didn’t move until he saw the razor sharp iron broad head pierce the ribcage and cut straight through to the other side. The animal jumped and darted down the ridge, becoming increasingly clumsy, until it collapsed 20 yards from the impact. It’s head bobbed back and forth for a few moments, then the whole deer fell onto its side.

Roy rested the bow down in his lap and heaved a sigh. He shook the nerves out of his normally steady hands.

Turning immediately to the pine beside him, Roy produced his bush knife from his thigh pocket and cut an arm full of the branches away, careful to take only as much as he needed. He left his bow resting on the leaves nearby and took the branches down into the creek bed and up the other side to the deer. After glancing at the sky and orienting himself, Roy made a bed of boughs beside the buck with the green ends pointing South towards town and subsequently toward his home. When he stepped up beside his kill he inspected the face of the creature and found it dead, with pupils wide and no breath. There was blood flowing from both sides of its ribcage. Roy carefully avoided getting a handful of blood and grabbed the deer by its forelegs. He grunted and huffed as he dragged it into position over the branches, pointing it’s antlers South as well. With the animal laying correctly in its bed, Roy left to go gather his backpack and bow.

The field dressing was messy, but it was always that way. Roy, stripped down to his white tank top and wearing latex gloves, hat backwards and pinning his red hair out of his face, wrestled the creature apart in the afternoon light. He talked to it when he had the breath for it, couldn't stop himself. “Come on, stay up. Like that. Now don’t move while I-” It was hard work, but he didn’t feel completely alone. The deer was here with him after all. After half a day on it’s trail Roy felt like they were acquainted by now. 

He was nearly finished when a sound disturbed the woods. A man’s voice, strong and clear, 100 yards off. Distracted by his work, Roy hadn’t made out the words. He paused and caught his breath, scratching his beard on his shoulder. 

“Harper!” Roy heard it clearly this time, coming from the east. “You out here?” That had to be Jason. Roy wondered what the hell he’d done to piss the guy off.

It was best to be honest and friendly until Roy knew what was wrong. He was slowly settling back into Dove, the town he grew up in until winds of life scattered him elsewhere. It wouldn't do to piss off one of the land owners.

“Over here!” Roy shouted, his voice cracking. It felt so strange after a day of quiet focus, to call out with such abandon. He sat back on one heel, the other knee bent up at an angle, and rested his bloody hands on the pine boughs, waiting with his knife. Jason didn’t call back to him so he figured the man had heard him well enough and was on his way. The anticipation was killing him. Roy was losing light on these short Autumnal afternoons. He needed to wrap up the dressing and start dragging this thing back to his truck at the dirt parking lot he started from that morning.

Across the creek bed by the same white pine Roy had taken his shot from earlier, the shape of a man trudged into view. It felt, for a moment, like time and space were twisting and Roy was the deer, and there was his hunter on the opposite ridge, waiting for Roy to show his broadside.

Chapter Text

Roy shivered.

Then Jason stepped down into the creek bed and climbed up the other side to join him around the deer. Roy looked up at the stranger from where he knelt and did his damnedest not to worry too much about the rifle relaxing against Jason’s shoulder. Roy wasn’t scared of guns. He liked guns. He didn't like being caught tired and unarmed on a stranger's property. 

“Six point buck. And a heart shot? Well done,” Jason said, looking at the deer and not at Roy. He had the same deep timbered voice from the phone that could spell fathoms of kindness or displeasure, yet walked the knifes edge between the two. He couldn’t have been older than Roy was, thirty eight.

Jason reminded Roy of a black bear. He was big, taller than Roy, and larger in every way. Where Roy’s shoulders tapered down to a trim waist and straight, long legs, Jason started broad in the shoulders and never slimmed. His chest was wide, hip curved when he jut one out to the side, and his thighs were big enough to draw the denim of his jeans taught around them. The hood of a black sweatshirt stuck out of the back of Jason’s red and black plaid wool button down. A dark red knit hat was pulled down over the tips of the man’s ears and forced his black hair to protrude from under it, curly and unruly. 

Roy had to look twice before registering the scars on the man's face. A pale one cut diagonally on Jason’s chin through his black stubble. Another on the left side of Jason’s upper lip curled into a permanent snarl and showed the glimmer of a pearly tooth beneath. It continued up the high cheek bone, skipped the narrow grey eye, and ended in a missing chunk from one heavy black brow like a punctuation.

Jason inspected the animal from beneath a smudge of black lashes. When he lifted his gaze to turn it on Roy they tickled the thick low brows. 

“You’re running out of daylight,” Jason told him, accurately predicting that Roy wouldn’t be packed up and on his way by the time the orange light of afternoon turned blue and cold. Then Roy would have to drag the buck back to his starting point as night fell.

Fuck, Roy thought. So Jason had come here to flush him out. Did Jason bring the rifle along to intimidate the little bow hunter? Was he going to force Roy to leave the deer now that he’d done all the work of tracking and killing?

Then Jason announced the reason for seeking him out. “I thought I’d give you a hand dragging this out of the woods. The house is closer than wherever it is you came from. We can toss it in my truck and I’ll give you a ride.”

Roy let out a sigh of relief and looked down at the creature. “Shit. Thanks, that’s really nice of you.”

A man like Jason could drag the deer and Roy out of the woods, both dead, if he wanted. Roy’s not sure why he jumped straight to Murderer in the Woods, but he’s damn happy that’s not the case.

Jason ambled away and propped his rifle against a nearby boulder then returned, hiking his sleeves up over his wrists. “What do you need?”

Roy wiped his nose along his forearm and got up so he could stand with a foot on either side of the deer. “Can you just grab his forelegs and stretch him a little so I can get the rest of these organs out?” Jason stood by the head and grabbed the legs, moving them until the slack was pulled out of the limp body.

They didn’t talk much while Roy worked, needing all of his concentration to finish the job while the light was good. He dumped the organs aside to the earth for coyotes and turkey vultures to feast on. Together they flipped the deer from its back to its front to drain excess blood from the cavity. Then Roy stepped away to clean himself up the best that he could, which consisted of disposing the gloves and wiping his tattooed arms down with a handful of baby wipes from his pack. 

He stuffed the soiled gloves and wipes in a little trash bag. He plucked up his grey cotton long sleeve and tugged it over his head, but packed his brown flannel away, expecting to work up a little sweat while they dragged the deer through the forest. “How did you know where to find me?”

Jason jerked his chin to indicate the area of the creek. “I’ve got game cameras out here.”

It prickled the back of Roy’s neck to know he had been watched without realizing it. “And you didn’t call to let me know where my buck was headed? You could have hurried my day along if you had,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, I could have called. But you seem like someone who enjoys the work,” Jason said, the snarl of his lip increasing in the shape of a good natured smile. Was that a compliment? Roy wanted it to be. 

From his pack Roy took out a coiled twelve foot cord, then stashed his tools and secured his bow and quiver. He put the bag on his back and went to the deer. Jason stepped close again without a word and they rolled the animal onto one side. Roy doubled the rope over itself and secured one end around the base of the antlers. He started to look up and around for a good stick to tie on the other end and found Jason already holding one out to him, three foot long and perfect thickness to use as a handle.

“Thanks.” Roy tied the rope around the middle of the stick and got to his feet, holding it with his left hand on one side of the rope. “Shall we?”

Jason retrieved his rifle and slung it across his back by the strap. “Home’s that way,” he said, indicating east with one hand. Then Jason took the other side of the stick in his right hand. Standing beside each other, Roy could smell the smoky perfume of wood fire and cigarettes around Jason. It reminded him of sitting shoulder to shoulder with Raymond, watching a campfire burn to coals on a blue desert night between pockets of whispering sagebrush.

They pulled at the same time, rocked forward, and walked the line of the ridge toward the east. They kept a steady pull on the rope and their makeshift handle, sharing the load of a 200 pound buck. After a few minutes of dragging, listening to the rustle of dry leaves and grass tufts, their steps became synched. They glanced at the ground to ensure steady footing, and then ahead to look for obstacles.

“Did you move into Dove recently?” Jason asked. In a small town of 1,000 souls, Roy’s new face stuck out like a sore thumb.

“We moved here in August, me and my daughter, Lian.” The sun slipped below the tree line causing the woods to begin cooling. The exertion of the drag kept Roy warm and sweat prickled his spine. “She’s fifteen and smart as a whip. I’m worried she’ll outpace me soon. If she hasn’t already,” he said with a chuckle.

“It’s for the best. That’s what kids are for, right? To do better than us?” 

Roy smiled, nodding in wholehearted agreement. He chanced a glance away from their path to look at Jason who had a pleasant calm look about him. The scars on the left side of his face was hidden from Roy. “You must have kids.”

“Not me.” Jason ducked under a low branch, never breaking his stride. Roy looked forward again. “Where’d you come from?” Jason's voice gave away his every thought. He sounded perfectly curious about the stranger.

“Georgia. But I grew up here. Moved away when I was fourteen."

The light blue sky of afternoon was deepening into a vivid sapphire as evening marched in. A glance over his shoulder revealed a golden glow to the west, a sunset they couldn’t see through the trees. Bird song faded with the light and sometimes the strong croaking of a crow cut through the woods. Roy continued on.

"I've come back, now and then. I hiked the Appalachian twice. When I got to Katahdin, both times, I just didn't want to stop. I wanted to keep on walking into the woods."

"So you finally came back to the woods?" Jason asked, a little amused, a little kindred, at least that's what Roy heard in his voice.

“It's where I need to be. Have you always lived in Dove?”

“Born and raised here.”

They paused in the conversation when the ground began to incline. They breathed a little harder as they tugged on the rope, stepping carefully and slowly. At the top Jason suggested that they take a break. Roy sat down on a rock and took his water bottle out, drinking the last gulps left.

“How are you settling in?” Jason asked once he caught his breath. 

Roy gasped as he lowered his water bottle and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Pretty good. You know, a few of my old friends never moved away. Lian though, she misses Georgia and her old friends there. She's doing okay I think, making friends in that little school and all that. But we talked about this move for a long time."

"Missed it that much, huh?"

"I did. It's also good for her and our friend, Grant. He'll be moving up from Georgia in the spring."

"How old is she? Lian?"

"Fifteen." Roy pulled his pack on while he sat, then pushed himself to his feet. His energy was waning. “Damn, I am not getting any younger,” he said, plucking up their dragging stick once more. Jason took his place beside him.

“Yeah, but you tracked this thing all day. I wouldn’t go beating yourself up about being a little tired,” Jason reminded him, paying Roy credit that he’d earned. It felt good to hear.

They heaved against the rope together to get their momentum started and set off. The buck lurched and settled as it slid, it’s body lax and pliant over rocks and sticks on the ground. It’s brown and white fur was stained red on the belly, a splash of vibrant color in the dimming woods. The air was beginning to taste wet and cold.

“So, you like hunting?” Jason started up their conversation again. Roy simply followed Jason’s lead through the trees, his sense of eastward direction lost as they walked over wooded knolls, down into creek beds, and around massive boulders.

“I always have, since I was a kid. I'll bag a couple squirrels now and then but this is my first deer harvest since I moved up here.” Roy looked back at the heavy brown body dragging behind them, then up at the deep navy sky overhead. “This morning, just after dawn, I found the place he had been sleeping. The grass was all pressed down into the shape of his body. It was a nice bed sheltered by a big bank of brush on the side.” Roy had reached down, into the large kidney shaped impression, and touched the flattened grass. “Everything except his bed had been frosted over. He’d kept that spot warm all night.” It was tempting to lay down in that bed. Roy could have tucked himself behind the brush and into the grass. “I could see his tracks pretty well where it disturbed the frost. Then when the frost melted I had to go a lot slower. I saw where he’d found a patch of grass he liked and ate for a while.” Roy had squatted there and taken a water break. “And from there I tracked him to your stone wall.”

“And then you called me.”

“And then I called you.”

It was becoming increasingly difficult to pick out steady footing in the dark and Roy was about to suggest that he pull out his head lamp from his bag when a small orange square appeared in the distance. The tree trunks were only dark silhouettes now, illuminated by the glow of a half moon. Night was here.

“Is that your place?” Roy wondered. The shape of a building began to form out of the watery darkness. The orange square was a window, and there were more of them now. 

“Yupp, nearly there.” They broke out of the tree line and into the clearing around the house. It was easier to drag the deer now without the obstacles of the forest. The scrub grass of the lawn brushed around Roy’s pants and he dreaded the intense tick check he’d need to do before bed. 

The shadow of the log house was two stories high with an intensely sloped roof. On one side was a single story addition, a garage, Roy learned, when they came up alongside it. A motion sensing light over the doors clicked on and lit a circle of the dirt driveway. They dragged the deer up to the edge of the dirt then Jason let go and walked up to the garage and grabbed the handle, giving out a solid grunt as he lifted. His fingers caught the bottom lip once it was high enough and he pushed the door into its raised position over his head. Roy dropped the stick handle and squatted down to rest while Jason disappeared into the garage. Another motion sensing light clicked on inside and Roy leaned forward a little, interested in what Jason might have in there. He saw a few metal racks against the far wall with storage bins. Roy identified the makings of a camping kit, a tent and a cooking stove. 

A car door slammed shut and the sound of an engine started up. A black Dodge Ram 2500 nosed out of the garage, slow and easy, until the end of the truck bed was drawn up beside Roy. Jason got out and walked around to the back and flipped the tailgate down then climbed up and opened the tool box behind the cab. He withdrew a tarp and spread it out. Jason jumped down again, agile as a big cat, boots crunching the dirt beneath him. Together they heaved the buck into the bed and Jason climbed up once more to tuck the tarp around it while Roy leaned his elbow on the side. 

“Sweet ride.”

“You like it?” Jason grinned. Roy watched the broad planes of the man’s jaw highlighted by the overhead floodlight, and the shiny scars. He didn’t mean to stare, and made sure not to gawk rudely. Besides some curiosity about the scars origin, it didn’t even bother Roy. It didn’t ruin Jason’s looks. “I love this thing. The truck really keeps up with me, y’know?” Satisfied with the tarp, Jason returned to the tailgate, planted one hand on the edge, and jumped down once more. He flicked the tailgate up with a solid thunk then went to the garage and tugged the carport door down and closed. “You need something from the house before we head out? Water, bathroom?” he asked with hospitality that warmed Roy’s heart.

“I’m good. As curious as I am to see inside this cabin of yours, I really should move on. Lian will stay up watching TV all night if I don’t come home.” As if he would stay the night? Here, at Jason’s? That was a weird way of wording it. But Jason only shrugged and headed to the cab. Roy shook his head as he did the same, figuring he was just tired. 

When he opened the passenger door he paused, waiting while Jason pulled a blanket off of the passenger seat from across the console. It had dog hair all over it. “Alright,” Jason grunted, tossing the blanket into the back seat, and Roy chucked his bag on the floor and climbed in and shut the door. He buckled up but Jason never did the same, just flicked the car into drive. He filled the whole seat on the drivers side, shoulders wide and thighs thick.

The headlights lit the way down the dirt driveway. “You know the Blue Creek parking lot?” Roy asked.

“Sure do. Is that where you started from this morning?”

Roy nodded. The truck bounced a little on the uneven driveway for half a mile then they reached the paved road and Jason turned left. 

Roy pawed at his bag in the dark and pulled his phone out. It was 7pm and his battery was nearly dead. There was one text from Lian but he couldn’t reply. “No signal,” he mumbled. 

“It’s hit or miss out here. Usually miss."

“I must have had some earlier while we were dragging because I got a text from Lian. It’s just a skull emoji with a question mark. It means she wants to know if I’m dead in the woods or not,” he explained with a light laugh. 

“Does she ever hunt with you?”

“Now and then I can convince her. But she’s a good shot regardless,” he said proudly and tucked his phone away. “Alright, enough about me. What’s your story, stranger?” Roy asked lightly.

“Me?” Jason sounded good natured about being put on the spot. “Well there’s not much to say. I grew up here, in Dove.”

“Well, what about your place? Did you build that cabin?” Roy prompted him, still curious about getting a look inside beyond the walls of oak logs.

Jason smiled in the dark of the cab, one hand on the wheel and the other resting on his own thigh. “I did. It's ongoing. But much more comfortable than the little shed I made to live in while I got the walls up. Drying and treating the logs alone ate up a good two years. Not to mention it’s slow work in the winter time.”

“And that’s what you do? You build log cabins?”

“No, just mine. I’m a writer.”

“No kidding?” Roy’s interest piqued. “What kind? Please tell me you write sappy romance novels,” he begged, causing Jason to laugh. The thought of this rough and strong woodsman writing romance, complete with wanton sighs and chance meetings was exciting to Roy.

Jason waved his hand a little to settle them down so he could talk through his own laughter. “I'm writer and creator of NorthEast Outlaw magazine, an outdoors journal,” he explained. “Been going strong for four years now.” The man paused, biting his bottom lip against a smile. “And...I write fiction,” Jason admitted.

“I knew it,” Roy crowed. “Tell me, is there a happy ending?”

“You don’t even know what kind of stories I write," Jason protested. “I could write horror, or thriller!”

“C’mon, Jay,” Roy encouraged him. “Tell me about the requited love, the tender moments between star crossed lovers fighting against the odds!”

“You’re making me blush,” Jason complained about all the teasing. Damn, Roy suddenly wished he could see more than Jason’s shadow in the dark cab, barely lit by the reflection of the high beams. Jason palmed the wheel, turning them onto a new road. “Yes,” he finally said. “There’s a happy ending.”

Roy sat back in his seat, satisfied and smiling. “That’s good.”

They lapsed into a comfortable quiet and Roy wondered if he was the only one with a giddy feeling in his chest.

The Blue Creek parking lot was less of a lot and more of a simple dirt turn off beside the road with a worn path to the nearby creek it was named for. Roy’s white Ford Ranger was the only thing parked there. It’s paint was chipped and peeling and a bungee cord held one side of the tailgate closed.

Jason parked beside it, headlights pouring out into the trees. “Now I understand why you like my truck, because yours is a shit box," Jason said, amused. "No offense, I've had my fair share of those."

Roy only shrugged. “I know what I’ve got. It’s good enough.” He climbed out of Jason’s cab with his bag and unlocked the driver's side of his own. He set the bag with his bow on the bench seat and stuck the key in the ignition, switching it on but the engine didn’t start. Jason got out and went to his own tailgate while Roy popped the hood. 

“Something wrong with it?” Jason asked from the back.

“Nothing a little knock on the starter won’t fix.” Roy located the familiar metal cylinder in the dim light and gave it a few wraps with the meat of his fist. He slammed the hood closed and returned to the cab. When he turned the key it started right up. Then he went to join Jason.

“Do you have to do that every time?” Jason asked.

“Nearly,” Roy said. “The brushes are worn out. It’s not a big deal.” They each grabbed one side of the tarp wrapped around the deer. 

“Well, you’ll want to fix that before the snow starts coming because if you get stranded without cell service you’ll be pretty miserable. Ready? Okay, pull-” The two men grunted as they hauled the deer out of Jason’s truck and loaded it into Roy’s. 

“I keep forgetting to order the part,” Roy lamented. With the deer loaded and truck warming up, it seemed like the right time to say goodbye and get home to Lian.

He stalled.

Roy pulled his hat off and set it on the wall of his truck bed so he could slide the tie out from his messy hair. He tilted his head back and ran his fingers through the long red strands in order to smooth it out. Looking up, the sight of a star filled sky made him smile. “Isn’t that nice? The stars are out tonight.” 

Jason shifted beside him and pulled something from his pocket. Roy finished tying his hair into a bun and stuck his cap on backwards, smooshing the bun lower on his head. The flick of a lighter illuminated Jason’s face in the dark as he lit a cigarette. His sharp eyes glittered beneath the black of his lashes and brows. The light extinguished and Jason dropped his hand to stuff the Bic back in his pocket. The red cherry glowed and floated near Jason’s face, now barely visible except for a bluish glow from above. 

Roy watched while the other man tipped his head back and exhaled toward the sky, long and slow, joining Roy in a bit of impromptu stargazing. It was cold now and Roy shoved his hands in his back pockets to warm them.

“You want one?” Jason drawled after another drag. 

“I’m good.”

“Are there stars like this in Georgia?”

Roy thought about it as he examined the bright and nebulous streak of stars forming the Milky Way, clear and bright despite the half moon. “Not this bright. But in the desert? Oh yeah.”

“There’s no desert in Georgia, Roy,” Jason pointed out.

“Nope. But there is out West. I’ll tell you about it next time.”

“I look forward to it,” Jason said, steady and without revealing excitement. Natural, as if Next Time would come when it was meant to. 

Roy looked to his new friend in the dark again. Now it was time to say goodbye.

“Thanks for the help, Jason.” He patted the tailgate to indicate his cargo. “If I can repay the favor just call me up. I usually have a little time on my hands, I work from home and all, these days.” He extended his hand toward Jason who tucked his cigarette into the corner of his mouth and reached out.

Jason’s hand was warm and dry with just the bite of cold at the tips of his fingers. He gave Roy’s hand one strong shake before letting go. “I’ve got your number. I’ll see you around town. Welcome home, Roy.”

It went straight to the heart and made Roy blink.

Roy stepped back between the two trucks while wishing, again, that he could see Jason’s face. He wanted to know if he was watching Roy go with a friendly smile. But Roy had to turn and get in his truck and close the door. He slowly backed onto the road, paused to glance at Jason’s black Ram and the headlights pouring into the trees, then pushed the gear into drive and rolled away.

The roads were still a little unfamiliar, but Roy had been scoping out this hunting spot for a week and returning to town in the dark wasn’t a problem. His mind drifted across the events of the day, from dawn until dusk. He touched each moment only enough to turn it and look at it from another side. The smell of the forest was clinging to his clothes and hair; dry leaves and pine, musty deer fur and the iron of blood. The sound of his bowstring vibrated close to his ear, along with the soft sound of Jason sighing smoke toward the night sky. Bark rasped against his fingers and the grass in the deer’s bed brushed soft and dreamy. Roy recalled labyrinthine tree branches and the Mobius curve of antlers. 

Dove, Maine, named by its colonial settlers for the abundance of common wood-pigeons in the forest, had one main road and no traffic lights. Roy drove in beneath the sparse street lamps, past the sleepy library that had been converted from the old church, past the tiny police station and the only diner in town, and turned into the trailer park. One street lamp illuminated the center, shaped like a cul-de-sac. Roy pulled alongside his home, a faded blue single wide with two bedrooms, and parked. He grunted as he climbed out of the cab, tired and hungry. He’d been riding so high while talking with Jason that he’d hardly realized he had missed eating.

Roy shuffled up the steps and pushed open the door, leading right into the living room. The place was a mix of browns, walls of 1970s wood paneling and a dark yellow carpet, the pile of it worn in the center of the room while the edges along the wall resembled the original shag. 

Lian was laying on the second hand maroon corduroy couch, her head propped on the arm rest, and a bag of microwave popcorn in her lap. She glanced away from the television set to look her Dad over. “You survived the woods. Did you get my text?” He smirked at her, walking over, and sat on the middle cushion which lightly trapped Lian against the back.

“I did, but I had no signal.” Roy shoved his hand into the popcorn bag, it’s paper sides crinkling from his hungry treatment. 

“That’s my popcorn!” Lian protested in mock offense, pushing Roy with her knee while he shoved a handful in his mouth, hurried like she might steal it back. “You got my text but you had no signal to text back? Sounds suspect, Dad,” she warned him. “I think you were just ignoring me.”

“Never.” Roy took another handful of popcorn before Lian tucked up her knees and put her socked feet in his side and pushed him off of the couch. Roy got to his feet, wiping his popcorn butter fingers on the thigh of his pants. “Come help me hang this buck.”

“I would hope you shot something, what with how long you were gone,” Lian teased, getting to her feet. She shoved her sandals over her socks and followed him outside, hugging her arms around her torso. “Don’t let me touch any blood, I just had a shower,” she said.

“Here.” Roy held up part of the tarp for her to take, knowing it was clean, then walked around to the other side and grabbed the other end. They heaved together and hobbled over to the pole at the back of the house and put the animal below it.

“He’s heavy! No wonder it took you so long to drag him.”

Roy unfolded the tarp and had just enough light from the window of the house to relocate the rope from the antlers to the neck. He passed the rope over the rack and heaved, grunting at the effort to haul the weight upright and off the ground. "Lian," he said and she jumped to his side, taking the slack end of the rope and tying it off. Roy let go and lazily rolled up the tarp and dropped it in the truck bed as they passed it. 

“I had some help,” Roy explained as they walked up the wood steps. “Met a nice guy, Jason.” Saying his name felt fresh and new, like a sound he’d never spoken before but was trying to learn. He pulled the door shut behind them and knelt down to untie his boots. Lian kicked her sandals off and returned to the couch. “We had a great conversation.”

“About what?”

“Oh, all kinds of stuff. Just getting to know each other sort of thing.”

“Mhm. Well, it's good you made a friend, Dad."

Chapter Text

Late November - Nor’Easter season

“This is a prepaid collect call from an inmate at a Georgia State Penitentiary. This call is subject to recording and monitoring. To accept: press 1.”

Roy thumbed the screen and accepted the call. He pushed his laptop aside on the blanket. The bedroom was big enough to fit his full sized bed on it’s iron platform frame, his small black dresser, and a wobbly side table that collected his hair ties and water glasses. The top of the dresser was a landing zone for all of the usual contents of his pockets and other items of frequent use. 

A small picture frame sat among the chaos with a horizontal photo from ten years ago. Lian, with her straight black bangs tickling her eyelashes, smiled big and wide. With her arms around Roy’s neck and his cheek in her hair and the content and truly happy look in his eyes, it was a precious keepsake for him to admire.

The bedroom was just as brown as the rest of the house. The mustard yellow shag carpet wasn’t nearly as worn here as it was in the living room. It was cozy, except for the slight chill at night that crept in through the single pane window that looked out at the forest behind the trailer park. The curtain kept out the worst of the cold when it was closed. 

“Your call has been connected. You may begin speaking now.”

“Grant, it’s been raining for three days straight and it’s colder than hell frozen over.”

“Wow Roy, you’re really selling me on moving up north with you. Any snow yet?”

Roy crossed his free arm over his chest, tucked his fingers under the opposite upper arm, and idly watched the dreary scene out of his window. The trunks of young trees whipped about in the wind, drenched and dark. “Not yet,” he said. 

Any drab yellow leaves still clinging to the birch trees, oval and saw-toothed, were pelted off of their branches by fat rain droplets. The dirt cul-de-sac in the Dove trailer park was filled with a half inch of water, running off from the raised ground around it. Besides folk going to work, or the kids going to school, no one in town went out for leisure, especially not into the woods. Roy remained indoors, keeping himself busy with casework.

“Some spitting at night, I guess. Lian’s getting impatient. She said I promised her that there would be snow by now.”

“Well then you better deliver some snow, Roy! Don’t leave her hanging like that,” Grant teased. 

Over the clattering of rain on the tin roof Roy heard the sound of hissing air brakes; the school bus arriving in the trailer park. 

“I think that’s her now,” he said. Roy swung his feet over the side of the bed and planted them on the carpet. As he walked out of the bedroom he passed the bathroom door on his left, and went through the galley style kitchen. The laminate countertops on either side were cream yellow and curling under the lip from years of water absorption. A fluorescent light ran the length of the ceiling overhead. The bathroom and kitchen shared the same laminate tile floor, cream and brown and blue squares stained a little darker in the places most frequently walked on. A wide window over the sink on the right faced the road and Roy saw the flash of yellow as he passed it, indicating the school bus really had arrived.

The other end of the kitchen let out into the living room. A small square table, big enough for a chair at each side, floated in the space between the two rooms. The couch sat across from the television and a shelf of games and books. Blankets were rumbled and spread over the couch. The hall continued past the living room to Lian’s small bedroom at the other end of the single wide home. 

"She's just coming back from school."

“Perfect timing,” Grant said casually, as if he hadn’t been waiting in line to use the phone in his cell block and hoping to catch both Roy and Lian.

Through the living room window Roy watched the bus wheels send ripples through the inch deep puddles in the dirt. The doors hissed and parted and the kids that lived in the trailer park filed out. They were faceless with their hoods pulled up against the rain, or their arms over their heads. They all took off running for home. Lian’s shape, tall and long limbed among them, descended the stairs, her hand on the railing. 

Roy nudged aside a sneaker that had strayed from the shoe mat and into the way of the door. He opened the door and held it aside against with his free hand. Cold rain spit sideways at his face. Taking the phone away from his ear, he called out to Lian who was already jogging toward the house, splashing up water with her boots.

“Hurry up kiddo, Grant’s on the phone!”

“Grant!” Lian doubled down and ran. Her feet pounded up the wooden steps of the house. Roy held the phone out and she grabbed it like a passed baton as she barreled by him and into the warm dry living room. Roy shut the door against the storm.

Leaving dampness on everything she touched, Lian dropped her backpack on a kitchen chair and stripped off her jacket, throwing it over the back. Then she took one big breath and lifted the phone to her cheek. “I finally finished that book and you will not believe what Susan did to…” Lian pulled her loose braid out of the back of her purple fleece sweater where it had been caught in the collar and walked off to her bedroom with Roy’s phone, talking the whole way. 

Roy shuffled to the table that floated between the kitchen proper and the living room. He picked up the wet rain jacket and walked it back to the door and hung it among their other clothes on the wall beside it. As he wandered back toward the kitchen he heard the giddy sound of his daughter’s laughter coming from her bedroom and gave in to a soft chuckle himself. Roy put two frozen waffles into the toaster and went back to his room to collect his laptop. 

Roy had only just sat down at the table with his computer when Lian returned. She had changed out of her jeans and into leggings, and came to stand beside her Dad’s chair. 

“Call again tomorrow?” Lian asked, holding the phone to her ear with both hands. “Okay, but...if the lines for the phones aren’t long then you should call,” she pressed. “Promise, Grant?” Roy doubted that it took Grant any amount of convincing to call them. 

Roy rocked his chair back and held out his hand, watching the way his daughter bent at the waist and her cheek followed the phone the whole way down to his hand, listening to Grant’s promise of calling the next day. The loose hair of her braid tickled his arm when it slithered over her shoulder. Lian uttered a final “bye Grant,” before she released the cellphone back into her father’s possession and stood upright. As Roy brought the phone to his ear she turned and braced her hands behind her on the table and lifted herself up to sit on it. Lian’s foot planted itself on Roy’s knee and he picked at the hem of her sock absently.

“How are you doing today?” Roy asked. The heavy sigh from the other side of the line was as much of an answer as any spoken word. In the background Roy could hear the usual clamor of the prison block and the distant murmur of other inmates. “One day at a time, Grant. Just take it one day at a time,” Roy said. His voice was soothing and easy. 

“I’m-” Grant paused to clear his throat. Roy imagined him tucking close to the aluminum dial box bolted to the wall, shielding himself from the other inmates with his back. His voice was quiet and quick. “I’m- fuck, this can’t go fast enough.”

“The closer you get to the finish line, the more anxious you’re going to be. That’s totally normal, buddy.”

“I just want to be there already, with you and Lian.” Roy glanced up at his daughter who was watching him talk with Grant, her hands tucked in her lap and the sleeves of her sweater pulled down to her knuckles. “I don’t know what else to say. I just want to be there.”

“We’re anxious to see you, too,” Roy promised, getting a flicker of a smile from Lian. He tucked his hand behind the crook of her knee to warm his cold fingers. Something needed to be done about the chill seeping through the crack under the door. “But we’re not going anywhere. We want you.”

“There is one minute remaining in your prepaid call.”

The frustrated grunt was clear across the line. 

“Write down some of the things you want to do when you get here,” Roy suggested, easy as ever.

“He needs to watch The Mummy with me,” Lian insisted, loud enough to be heard by Grant.

“Like watching The Mummy with Lian.”

Though he didn’t sound convinced, Grant conceded to writing a list. “I’ll try it…”

“We’re here, bud.”

“Bye Roy.”

The line cut out and Roy and set the phone on the table. Gathering himself with a deep breath, he looked up at Lian and her sulky pout.

“Your waffles are done in the toaster.”

“Yes !” Roy’s knee deflected inward when she pushed off of it with her foot and hopped down from the table. Lian slid in her socks across the dated linoleum and plucked her snack out of the toaster. 

Grant called the next day like he had promised and talked with Lian for the whole fifteen minutes he was allotted. He called nearly every day since they moved from Georgia where Grant’s penitentiary was and sent letters just as often to supplement the lack of visitation.

With his release date mere months away, it was natural for Grant to get anxious. He’d soon be leaving the world he knew to finally come live with Roy and Lian. They had agreed Roy needed to move to Maine ahead of time and get situated, appease the parole officer, and generally prepare for Grant’s release and parole transfer across states. 

Just because it was the logical thing to do didn’t make the distance any easier. Roy patiently reminded Grant every day that he was expected, that Grant was wanted, and that, before he knew it, Grant would be settled into a quiet five years of parole. Even though it was Grant reaching desperately for some kind of reassurance in the outside world, it was Roy who did most of the talking. Grant needed encouragement to keep to his routine, to keep working out, keep reading his books, and to keep his head low. Getting into trouble now would be enough cause to lose his parole and the anxiety made Grant more likely to act out. 

The rain tapered off into intermittent sprinkles over the weekend as the fingers of the cold hearted storm on the coast brushed away and southward to lash at the Cape. Fishermen on the news channel lamented the thrashing of their seaside towns and the streets were being swept of sand and seaweed. The dark days of rain relented to grey ones and the wildlife, having bedded down out of the wind, shook itself of dampness and emerged to look hungrily for something to eat. 

Lian’s school friend, Colin Wilkes, braved the puddles of the trailer park to come knock on their door on Saturday morning after breakfast. Roy answered, barefoot with a coffee mug in hand.

“Morning,” Colin greeted. His rain jacket had been traded out for something made of fleece, worn at the elbows and collar, and especially in the armpits. It was half unzipped to the clammy morning air.

“Mornin’ kiddo.” Roy stepped aside to allow the teen in and onto the entry rug, where he stayed in order to politely avoid dripping any water he’d collected on his way across the park. “You have breakfast yet?” he offered as he shut the door but was softly declined.

Colin had copper hair and the long limbs of a boy shooting through a growth spurt. His voice cracked at the heart of every sentence, and his freckles disguised the pimples of puberty. Roy had watched the kids playing in the cul-de-sac with Lian and knew Colin was a fast runner and had a solid right hook he deployed when the other boys tackled him during their games. He was utterly unphased by the friendship and attention of girls, unlike many of his high school cohorts. If pressed, Roy would name Colin as Lian’s first friend in Maine. 

Roy had been distracted with the moving van and the two men he’d hired to haul their belongings and when he had turned around to look for Lian at lunchtime he saw his daughter picking through the slippery August grass for crickets with a ginger headed boy. They were laughing and shrieking at the way the insects would ricochet inside the cage of their cupped and closed hands. 

“Lian honey, Colin’s here,” Roy called toward the girl’s bedroom, then turned away to clear the table of breakfast plates. Her door snapped open and she skipped out to greet her friend. “What are you two doing today?” he wondered. Lian shoved her feet into her boots and pulled her jacket off of it’s hook beside the door.

“Colin said he’d show me how much water collected in the pond from the rain,” Lian explained.

“Please don’t get soaked and cold, okay?” Roy asked of her, putting the dishes in the sink. Lian flung the front door open and he leaned back to catch sight of her stepping through it. “Okay? Hey, have fun!” he called after them. 

Colin paused on the top step, made out of water rotten wood planks, and poked his head in. “Bye!” he said and pulled the door closed behind them. Roy turned on the hot water from the tap and watched through the window over the sink as the pair shuffled through puddles and towards the tree line and the overgrown trail that led to the pond nearest this side of town, a place frequented by the kids, Roy was learning. 

Water still dripped from the roof, and despite the storm having passed, the world outside was still wet and sodden. Evergreens shuddered and shook at the slightest breeze and unloaded a thousand droplets with one flick of a branch. The world seemed a little dim from the overcast clouds. Fog insulated the landscape with a tricky warmth, but it was too cold for any worms to collect in the puddles so birds had to look elsewhere for their meals. As he washed the dishes Roy watched the activity on the neighbor’s bird feeder and wondered, not for the first time, if he might get his own. Nuthatch and finch and tufted titmouse all rotated for a morning feeding, starved silly after huddling in the trees and out of the wind. 

Roy himself was aching to be outside and out of his proverbial nest. He was plenty good at staying occupied in the house with work and his engineering magazines and games with Lian and unpacking the final moving box he had shoved into the corner of his closet. But it was the woods that called to him and handed him a certain kind of peace that he was still trying to parse out.

After cleaning up, Roy dressed and was pulling on his jacket to follow Lian’s lead and make his way out into the world when his phone began ringing. It was a little early for Grant to be calling, his cell block didn’t have phone privileges until mid afternoon. His next thought was that it could be a call from work, or maybe the parole officer wanted to pay a visit. He shoved his arm through the second sleeve and palmed his cellphone from his pocket. 

Seeing the simple name ‘Jason’ across the screen made Roy pause. The ‘ ssnick ’ of a lighter hitched in his chest and he blinked at the memory of the man’s face, a little flame making it glow in an orange halo while lighting his cigarette beneath a starry sky. He heard Jason’s raspy laugh in the truck, driven to blushing by Roy’s teasing.

Roy sucked his cheeks between his teeth and took in a breath as he swiped the screen and lifted the phone to his ear. “Roy Harper,” he exhaled and pretended, to himself, that he hadn’t just been reminded of the giddy feeling that night had left in him a week ago. To distract himself, Roy tucked the phone between his shoulder and cheek and knelt on one knee to tie his boot. 

“Harper, it’s Jason. How are ya’?” the man rattled off politely. 

“I’m good. And you can call me Roy.” 

“Roy.” 

The laces of the boot pulled tight with a flick of Roy’s wrist and he waited, listening to the sound of his own name sustained in the quiet pause between them, rasped and rolled and rumbled in Jason’s mouth. 

“How are you ?” Roy said suddenly, worried he had waited too long to return the courtesy. He rocked himself to the side and switched his kneeling leg in order to tie the other boot. “That was quite a bit of rain we had, wasn’t it?”

“Quit a bit, yeah. Windy, too. You know how to use a chainsaw?” 

Roy’s brows shot up. “Um. Yeah. Why?” He finished tying off his boot and took the phone into his hand again as he got to his feet.

“You said something about returning a favor and I was thinking I could use some help this weekend. Two trees came down in the storm at my place and I want to put the logs up in the shed to start drying. If that sounds like something you’re up for…” 

“Yes!” Roy answered right away. “Today?”

“That’s ideal, the wood will just get wetter laying on the ground.” 

“I can come over, I’m not busy. Do I need to bring anything?” he asked, glancing around at his house as if he would magically spot the perfect item to bring on this venture with Jason. That was silly, Jason likely had everything he needed and was simply requesting another body for the work. “How about I grab us some coffee on the way over? What do you like?” Never mind that he already had coffee that morning. Roy shut off the lights and snagged up his keys from the hook by the door. They clinked against the brass door handle as he opened it with that same hand. 

It was quiet for a moment while Roy locked up the house. At the bottom step he toed a rock onto its side and confirmed the spare key was still hidden there for Lian to use when she returned from the pond with Colin. “Jason?” he prompted, pausing. 

“Coffee sounds...nice. Just a large cup from the corner store, black.” He was quieter as he said it.

“Okay. Large. And I think I remember where you live. But if I’m not there in an hour would you mind sending up a flare?” Roy walked up to his truck, getting his knuckles wet on the door handle while he unlocked it.

The snort on the other side of the call was immensely satisfying and Roy grinned into it. “It’s not that hard to find my place,” Jason insisted, and reminded Roy where his driveway was located in relation to the Blue Creek parking lot they had parted from last time. “See you soon.”

“Yeah.” When the call ended, Roy stabbed his key into the ignition of the truck and turned it. “God- come on,” he groaned when the engine didn’t even try to start. He slid back out of the door and around to prop the hood and wrap on the starter a few times with his fist. Roy simply left the truck running when he stopped at the corner store and gathered up two coffees. He tucked Jason’s coffee into the cup holder and held his own while he drove away from the main strip of town. 

The houses quickly disappeared after a minute of driving and then Roy was left to wind his way through the tree lined back roads. The ditches beside the road were flowing quickly with grey water after the storm and in many places it puddled out into the road and foamed white when he drove through them. There were no cars at the Blue Creek turn off when Roy passed it, only a few crows scraping at the dirt.

Chapter Text

If Roy were searching for the driveway at night, he would surely have inched along the road looking for any sign of it, leaning over his steering wheel and questioning every break in the trees. It was easy enough to miss in the daytime, Roy learned, when he drove right past the darn thing before realizing what had happened. He slowed to a stop and put the truck into reverse and backed up twenty feet on the empty road to peer down the driveway that was crowded in by tree branches overhead, with barely any room for the utility cable. The cabin wasn't visible from the road and a familiar yellow Posted sign was nailed up on a trunk at the entrance of the driveway. Roy spun the wheel and eased off of the pavement and onto the dirt packed road and rolled past the sign. 

"Somebody likes his privacy," Roy noted and was caught between feeling nervous to intrude, and the knowledge that Roy might be special . Which was utterly wishful thinking, he reminded himself. Jason didn’t know him well enough to think Roy was special. Regardless, Roy couldn’t recount a time he’d stayed special to someone. 

“That’s not true,” he said out loud, interrupting the thought. 

One of the tires rolled through a puddle that was deeper than Roy originally thought it to be and it jostled him inside the cab, causing coffee to slosh inside the cup in his hand. A little spat out of the hole in the lid and stained the thigh of his jeans with tiny brown specks, no longer hot enough to burn. He glanced down at his leg, figuring his pants would be worlds dirtier by the end of the day. 

“You’re special to Lian and Kori and Grant.” Roy carefully avoided the next puddle, picking his way down the driveway. “And Ollie and the kids like you. There, see?” 

Roy blew out a long dramatic breath once he finished his affirmation speech, melting off the tight anxious feeling in his chest, and put on a smile when he remembered how excited he had been to get to Jason’s a half hour ago.

After a quarter mile and a slight curve in the road, the trees opened up and Roy got the lay of the land in the daylight. The cabin was in front of him, made of horizontal stripped oak logs, all of them dark from the drenching of the storm, built in a simple rectangle. The tin roof was tall and acutely sloped with a neat coat of dark green paint. The long side of the cabin had three square windows on the first floor. A single storied addition on the short side of the house was the one car garage with the overhead door raised fully on its track. It let out into the widened dirt driveway, a space big enough that Roy would be able to turn his truck completely around without riding up onto the grass. Jason’s black dodge was parked aside on a slightly worn set of tire tracks leading away from the cabin.

Roy was just starting to wonder where he should park when a small grey streak came bounding out from the garage. Though his truck wasn’t moving fast, a steady roll into the circle of dirt, Roy stepped quickly on the brakes. He threw the gear into park and eased the door of the cab open. 

A dog’s head shoved it’s way quickly into the opening, looking pleased to see him and insistent on pushing further inside. Obligingly, Roy fully opened the door and hung one leg out of the cab. The front paws braced on the floor, putting the dog close enough to smell and inspect Roy.

“Hi! Aren’t you a good dog?” Roy said. It was mottled grey, brown, and white with a large black patch around its hind quarters and another on one shoulder. Roy lifted his hand, letting it snuffle at his knuckles. “Aren’t you all handsome with your bandana, too,” he said, endearing himself to the dog with his tone of voice. The dog had ghostly blue eyes, short pointed ears, short fur, and a red bandana looped around its neck with the knot at it’s chest and the triangle of red across the back of its neck.

A sharp whistle from outside made the dog hop immediately down to the ground. Roy watched it trot back to the garage where Jason was emerging in his boots and jeans and the same black hoodie peeking out of a red flannel he’d worn the last time they met. The dog circled Jason and walked beside the man as he approached Roy’s truck, this time staying at her owner’s side instead of jumping into the cab with Roy.

“You can park there, or anywhere,” Jason said and Roy twisted the key and picked up the second coffee. 

Jason pulled the door open fully as Roy climbed out with both of his hands full. “Thanks. This one’s yours.” With a smile, he handed over the second hot coffee. “I made sure to get extra cream and sugar like you asked,” Roy said with a straight face as Jason brought the cup to his mouth.

A confused scowl flashed over Jason’s face just as he took a sip, careful of being scalded if the coffee was still hot. Realizing Roy was joking, and had indeed gotten the black coffee Jason requested, he rolled his eyes. There was a little amused smile curving on his mouth, hidden on the white plastic coffee cup lid. Roy grabbed his work gloves off the dashboard and stepped out of the way of the door and Jason closed it for him.

The dog at Jason’s calf circled around to greet Roy a second time, nosing the knee of his jeans and dropping its head to sniff his boots. 

“So who’s this?” Roy asked, bending a little to give the dog a few pats on the shoulder. Despite the grey in it’s coat it was a young thing. “What’s your name?”

“She’s Dog,” Jason said.

“Yeah...but what’s her name?” Roy asked, misinterpreting what Jason had said.

“Her name is Dog.”

“Huh.” Roy stood upright again, head tilted to the side and understanding dawning on him. “Like Mad Max?”

Jason nodded once, looking pretty satisfied with himself. “Yupp. Mad Max.”

Roy grinned and since Jason was close enough, slung a friendly arm around the man’s shoulders and turned them away from his truck and toward the cabin. “Oh, we’re going to get along just fine.”

They walked to Jason’s truck and Roy looked in the bed. The promised chainsaw was inside along with a red gas can. It was well used and grey on one side with dried mud. Jason opened the back door of the cab and Dog jumped inside by using the running board. 

“So where are we going?” Roy asked, walking around the truck to the passenger side. Roy got in the front seat and tucked his gloves under one of his thighs. When he glanced back he saw Dog laying down on a blanket in the back seat.

“The woods, I guess. That’s where trees usually are.” Jason turned the key and settled in.

“You don’t say?”

Jason shifted the gear and the truck eased forward on the worn tracks that lead to the back of the house. An acre had been cleared behind the house and the land sloped gently down to the tree line. The browning grass was still knee height, like Roy remembered it being the night they walked through it. Now  he noticed a bit of mowed area at the opposite end of the house and a small shed there. He saw the glimpse of a porch and then Jason turned away from the house completely and Roy lost sight and had to sit forward. The tire tracks led into the trees and entered the woods. Jason didn’t seem in any kind of rush and went thoughtfully over the terrain.

“So you like hunting,” Jason said, not so subtly latching on to the first thing they had in common in order to make a little conversation.

“Dad gave me a bow when I was little. And I kept doing archery with my guardian after I moved away.” Roy said. “I like it, it’s something to do outside. Or I just go for a walk in the woods and take my camera. That’s a different kind of shooting though, I guess.”

“Photography?”

“Mhm, yeah. Nature photography, it’s what I like most. Birds mostly, that’s what the magazines like from me lately.”

“Hm.” 

“And you? You go hunting?”

Jason nodded. “Yepp. Never learned archery. You only bow-hunt?”

“It’s what I prefer, but I’ll shoot guns, sure. I taught Lian so she can be safe with them. But there’s barely room for an archery target at the trailer park.”

“You can come shoot here if you want,” Jason offered quietly, still looking through the windshield at the brown damp woods and the way the tree trunks disappeared into the foggy distance. “Plenty of room.”

Roy glanced at him with a little smile. “Thanks.” It was probably just courtesy that made Jason offer that. Roy looked out the windshield again and sipped his coffee, still warm. He sighed out. “I don’t have my guns anymore, though. My friend is coming home on parole this winter; I can’t have firearms in the house.”

The silence was to be expected. Jason rolled the truck through a grove of birch trees before he spoke up.

“Coming to Dove?” 

“Yepp. Grant’s going to live with me and Lian.”

“And he’s your friend? Not family?”

“He may as well be family by now,” Roy said with a shrug. “I’ve known him for...eight years. He doesn’t have anyone else.”

Jason nodded slowly. When Roy glanced at him he could see the other man chewing his lip beneath the short black beard. 

“You can ask what he did.”

Jason’s eyebrows flew up and he snorted. Roy put his own smile into the mouth of his coffee cup.

“What did he do?”

“You’ll have to ask Grant when he gets here.”

Jason took his hand off the wheel and shoved Roy in shoulder making them both laugh.

“Shit head,” Jason grumbled while shaking his head but Roy was still snickering to himself as he blotted spilled coffee off of his knuckles onto his jacket.

When they settled down Roy took his hat off and slid it back on in an easy nod, scooping stray red hairs back out of his face. 

Jason stopped the truck on the trail and shut off the engine. Both of them set the coffees into the center console and got out of the truck. Jason went around to the back and flicked the tailgate down.

“Hey, Dog,” Roy said to the hound in the back seat. She was stretching and getting up from her blanket. He opened the door for her and Dog slithered out to the ground then she bolted off into the trees and over a small hill. “Sorry,” Roy shouted as he closed the doors.

“That’s okay,” Jason grunted. Roy walked to the back of the truck and took the heavy brown canvas tool bag the man handed him. “She comes and goes.” Roy looked over his shoulder and watched as Dog came bounding back and circled them and the truck twice then flitted off in another direction. Jason took the chainsaw and the gas can. “This way.”

Roy followed Jason away from the trail of tire tracks and into the trees. Birds sang drearily in the misty naked branches. The wet leaves underfoot were quiet. Not far away was the first fallen tree. The white ash lay 40 feet long. It must have already been dead, Roy thought, pausing to look at the remnants of the standing trunk, a short and saw tooth monument left behind when the rest of the tree ripped away from it in the storm.

After walking around the tree and it’s bare branches they divided the labor. They each put on a pair of earmuffs then Jason started the chainsaw, startling the quiet woods out of its fatigue. While he started at the base of the tree patiently cutting logs, Roy took an axe to the other end. He put on his work gloves and started cutting away branches. The noise of the machine settled into a steady buzz buzz chug and Roy worked his way into a rhythm with it. When he had armfuls of branches Roy dragged them out of the way in the direction of the trail. This scraped up the wet plastered leaves on the ground into spiky tousled tracks. 

There wasn’t much talking, just a steady unfolding flow of work. Roy scrambled over the tree and around the branches and felt the rapping of the axe against his palm and up his arm and slipped into an easy pace. Once in a while he watched Jason, checking that the other man wasn’t doing anything outright foolish with the chainsaw. Roy would linger, fingers curled around the butt of his axe, sitting at the other end of the tree.

Catching his breath. That’s what Roy was doing; catching his breath.

Jason noticed him watching and paused with his boot against the thick trunk and the chainsaw humming in the air. The man tipped his chin upward at Roy.

Roy looked away and buried the axe into a thick branch nearby and left it there.

The chainsaw sputtered and quieted and Roy looked at his own boots while he pulled the earmuffs off.

“Let’s take a break,” Jason said. He walked away to the truck and Roy rubbed his own chest with the palm of his glove, then rubbed his shoulder and rolled it around in the socket to feel the work he’d been doing.

Jason returned with Dog at his heels and the man sat beside Roy on the log. 

“Here.” Jason handed him a bottle of water and drank from his own. Roy pulled one of his gloves off to unscrew the cap. Dog snuffled around their tree.

Looking up at the sky didn’t tell Roy much about what time it was; the clouds were still a low grey mist with some light lingering behind them. Roy pulled his phone out of his jeans. Three hours of work; pretty damn good. At that, Roy smiled and put his phone away.

“So that’s your job? You’re a photographer?” Jason asked, picking up somewhere they had left off; somewhere before Grant.

“Yeah. Now and then I have to work part time to make up for a slow year. It lets me be with Lian, it lets me be outside.” Roy wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve. It smelled like rain and wood. “When she was little I’d carry her and our camping gear and the camera on our hikes. My legs never looked better.” He extended his leg and pointed his toe and modeled like he’d watched Kori do so many times. Roy snickered when Jason shook his head and snorted. Sighing and leaning to the side on his hand, Roy scuffed his heel into the leaves again. “I’ve taught archery, been camp counselor, rock climbing instructor, hunting guide...” Roy used his other hand to pretend he was holding a camera and aiming at the nearest boulder. “But I’ve always been good at lining up the shot.”

“Hm. I’ll have to see some of your photos.”

“And I’ll have to read some of your writing.”

Jason paused to drink his water. “I guess you can borrow a copy from the house. I have all the Outlaw magazine issues stashed somewhere.”

“If I’m borrowing it then I guess I’ll have to come back and return it, won’t I?”

“And when you come back you can help me with the second tree,” Jason said.

“Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to get to that one today,” Roy said with a little chuckle of agreement. 

“Want to switch jobs?” Jason offered. “You did all of those branches so I’ll chop at the big ones while you cut the logs.”

“Sounds good.”

Back to work they went. Roy was sweating when he started cutting logs with the chainsaw so he took his jacket off. The air was cool and damp and permeated both his grey long sleeve shirt and the blue short sleeve he wore over that. The humming of the chainsaw made his hands feel full of bees and the pull and give of the wood required his constant attention. Dog came and went as she pleased; chasing squirrels and then returning to check that the two men hadn’t left without her. Jason took his jacket off too and chopped away at the thickest branches at the middle of the tree.

When the logs were all cut Roy went down the tree again and cut them in half the long way. With four logs left, the chainsaw sputtered and quieted.

“That was the last of the gas,” Roy said when both of them had removed their earmuffs. “That’s just not fair, I was almost done.”

Jason dropped the branches he had been dragging and stood with his hands on his hips, panting softly. “Well. Shit.” He shrugged and went to the tool bag and Roy set the chainsaw safely aside with the empty gas can.

Roy paused to watch Jason return with a second, serious looking axe and a steel wedge.

“I guess we have to do it the old way, huh?” Jason took off his black sweatshirt and tossed it over the rock where he had previously discarded his flannel next to Roy’s jacket. The man was no less big and broad in his plain grey t-shirt, ambling over to Roy and the logs.

“Oh, I have to see this.” Roy came closer and stood aside with his hands in his pockets and took a welcome rest.

“Watch and learn.” Jason stood up on a three foot long log with the axe.

“Mhm. Are you just going to keep talking or are you going to use that thing? Or do you just have a giant axe for show?”

Jason shook his head and smiled a little.

Then he showed Roy exactly how such a large axe should be used.

Jason split a notch in the end of the log and placed the wedge into it. With the flat side of the axe he drove the wedge deeper until a check split the rings and the bark. Jason nudged the wedge along down the length of the log, striking it each time, until the entire thing was half split. Then he discarded the wedge and used the axe to split the log through to the side on the ground, all while standing on top of it. He stepped off only to make the last chop. The two halves of the log fell apart to either side of the midline.

Roy stood stunned and impressed and Jason took off his hat to wipe his forehead. His black curls were sticking to his head.

“Hate to tell you this, but there’s three more logs waiting for you,” Roy said, choosing to heckle Jason instead of commenting on the way his shirt was sticking to his chest with sweat.

“You could give it a try,” Jason pointed out, bringing the wedge to the next log.

“I’ll try on the next tree. Right now I’m just watching the master.”

“Then watch.” Jason got up on the second log. “And learn.”

Jason was much faster this time and his rhythm was swift; wedge, nudge, wedge, nudge, wedge, chop, chop, chop and chop.

The man was breathing hard enough that he didn’t gloat at Roy when he finished with that log. He moved onto the third. The axe came down hard on every drive and cut. 

Roy had watched earlier while Jason was concentrated on the chainsaw or the branches, but the noise of the machine had covered the panting and the grunting sounds Jason made as he cracked the wood open. It was all Roy could pay attention to in the otherwise quiet woods.

Jason was like a glacier carving his way down from the north to slide into the sea. His breath puffed out in huffs of steam, his teeth flashed from the shadow of his face when he tucked his chin and brought the axe down in a shattering arc. His arms coiled in, and shot out, like a rower plowing across the surface of a blackwater lake. 

And Roy stood there and watched with his hands in his pockets.

Upon realizing this, Roy turned abruptly away and started to pick up the split logs. He distracted himself by carrying them to the truck one by one as Jason finished. 

When Roy returned from his third trip, Jason had cut the last log through and was resting against the rock with their clothes.

“I’ll help you in a second,” Jason said between sips of water, crinkling the plastic water bottle in his hand.

“I’ll do it. It’s the least I can do,” Roy said. He should have accepted the help but instead Roy carried half-log after half-log to the truck until the bed was full and he’d worked off the giddiness Jason had sparked in him.

Jason slipped into his sweatshirt and flannel when Roy put his jacket on and the two of them gathered up the tools and went back to the truck a final time. Jason merely whistled and Dog came back to them from the trees. She jumped into the truck where Jason held the door open for her.

“You want to drop this load off and come back for the rest?” Roy wondered. 

“No, I’ll go get it this week,” Jason said. “That’s enough for today.”

“What, are you tired or something?” Roy joked, settling into the passenger seat. Jason got in and they closed the doors. Roy’s nose was running from the cold and the exercise and he kept dabbing at it with the back of his sleeve. 

“Tired? After all that? ...only in the best way.” Jason turned the key and with the engine humming, he flicked on the heat in the cabin. “But tell you what; I’m gonna sleep good tonight.”

“Same here.”

Roy was already thinking about how good a hot shower was going to feel after spending hours with cooling sweat under his clothes. He took off his hat and rested it on his knee and scrubbed his scalp with his short nails while Jason carefully turned the truck around and eased them back down the trail towards the cabin. 

They came into the clearing around the house and rolled up to the woodshed Roy had seen earlier. They unloaded the logs from the truck bed into a neat stack inside the shelter. 

“Come on in,” Jason told him when they finished. Roy followed him up the steps of the back porch. “The cabin isn’t finished in here, it still needs some work,” Jason warned him.

“It needs a door , Jason,” Roy pointed out. The back door was just a frame with a tarp hanging in it. Jason pushed it aside when they walked through.

The inside of the cabin was a skeleton of bare wall studs. The floor frames of a second level hovered over their heads and they walked across a plywood subfloor. Against the left exterior wall was a bare bones kitchen; a stove, a refrigerator, and a bookcase for a pantry. A wood stove stood in the center against the ghost of an unfinished wall. At the base of it was an old wiry grey dog extracting itself from its bed to come greet them. The furniture was sparse enough that Roy was about to consider the ladder leaning against the second floor as a place to sit. In the middle of the space was a beaten wooden square table big enough to seat four. On it was a mix of tools and cups of nails and screws between various journals and papers and a closed laptop.

“Hey Sparky,” Jason said nicely and crouched to pet the senior dog that greeted them. 

“This is…” Roy started to say, stepping between the ribs of an invisible wall and turning slowly around. 

“It’s pretty bad, huh?” Jason rumbled, not looking up from the dog.

“Bad? Jason, it’s fucking awesome .” Roy brushed his palm across a wooden saw horse as he walked by it. “Bedroom here?” he said, wrapping himself into Jason’s vision. “And that goes to the garage.” He pointed to another open door frame. “So you could put up a bench there and have a mudroom. Damn, that’s nice.” Roy weaved between the walls and imagined the bare kitchen fleshed out with a counter and cabinets. He stepped over to the ladder and placed his hand on one of the rungs. “What’s going upstairs?”

Jason got up and shuffled over, peering upwards with a little smile. “An office, where I can write. Right now I just do it there.” He waved at the table that seemingly served a hundred purposes.

“How the fuck do you find time to write?”

Jason shoved his hands in his pockets and nodded at the wall behind Roy. “I wait to install the doors, that’s how I find time.” Roy turned and saw the two missing doors leaning against the wall.

“Dude, it’s cold at night.”

“That’s why I sleep there.”

Roy looked to the other side at a cot set up next to the wood stove and cringed. 

“Alright. Fuck the trees. Next time I come over we’re working in here.” 

"You just don't want to split the log by hand."

"No, I want to install your fucking doors."

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

Jason rubbed the back of his neck and glanced away. “Well you let me know if I can help you with anything, too.”

“But I’m returning the favor.”

“One tree was definitely enough payback for the deer. And you can bring your bow and shoot in the yard all you want, y’know, since there’s no room at the trailer park.”

That again. Roy wet his lips.

“Okay, okay. Well, you just let me know when you’re free.”

Jason shrugged. “Okay.”

“Okay.” Roy fidgeted and pulled his phone out of his pocket. Dinner time. “I should get going.”

Jason walked him out to the driveway. “Thanks again for the help.”

“You helped me first so I should be thanking you ,” Roy said. He was surprised when Jason rolled his eyes.

Roy had to pop the hood of his truck to encourage the starter to turn over.

"If you're installing doors on my cabin when will you find time to change that damn part?" Jason pointed out in good nature.

"You'll just have to come over and help me," Roy said, dropping the hood into place. "See you around?"

"See you, Harper."

Dog came snuffling around the grass nearby and Jason stayed outside to watch Roy get in his truck and turn around. Something compelled him to honk the horn as he drove down the dirt driveway and Roy saw in his rearview mirror that Jason replied by tossing his hand up into a wave. Then the tunnel of trees closed behind him and Roy drove home. 

While he made dinner for himself and Lian, Roy couldn’t stop thinking about that stupid missing door on Jason’s cabin.

Chapter Text

On Sunday Jason knocked on the door of the trailer.

A teenage girl with the sleeves of her sweater pulled down around her knuckles opened the door a crack and peered through at him. Her dark hair fell in curtains around her face. The spray of freckles across her nose was all Roy. Jason ignored the fact that he could recognize Roy’s mouth in hers as well. 

This could only be Lian. Jason lowered his shoulders and carefully smiled. It was a practiced thing, something that softened the snarled scar on his lip for kids.

“Hi.” Jason could feel her scrutinizing him from his boots to his knit beanie. “I’m Jason. Your dad called me-”

“Dad!” Lian called into the house, turning away and opening the door wider for Jason. “Your friend’s here!” 

Lian left the door open and walked away. Jason stood awkwardly on the wooden step feeling far too much like a vampire that needed to be explicitly welcomed inside. This wouldn’t do; the heat was escaping the house the longer Jason stood there. He stepped in and closed the door behind him and stayed on the drip rug in the entryway, broadly taking up the entire entrance.

It was comfortable inside, with blankets rumpled on the couch, a fleece sweater draped across the back of a chair at the table, and dishes in the sink. A pair of discarded socks were on the carpet between the couch and the television. Lian went to the couch and sat down with another teenager to watch a comedy special.

“Hi Mr.Todd,” the other teen greeted him. It was a red headed boy who sat up when Jason stepped inside. Seeing another red head in Roy’s house made Jason do a double take.

“Hi...Colin,” Jason said after a moment of thought and recollection. Jason might live in the woods, but this was still his town and there weren’t so many faces here that he couldn’t put a name to the majority of them. Colin's proper attitude was memorable enough as it was. “How’s school?” he asked, settling on a polite topic for small talk.

“Good. How’s your magazine?”

“Good.”

Jason nodded once and scuffed his boots a little on the entry rug. Roy made him wait just long enough to feel awkward, then he appeared from a door past the galley kitchen.

“Hey!” 

“Hi,” Jason replied, nodding at him. Roy’s hands were busy tying his red hair back into a low bun.

“Thanks for coming!” 

When Roy came to meet him at the door, looking like he was about to give Jason a one armed hug, Jason held something out between them and stopped him.

Roy paused and looked down at it. “What’s this?”

“Magazine. You forgot to take it last time.”

“Oh!” Roy slipped the hair tie off of his wrist and snapped it into place around his hair. His hands came down and took the magazine from Jason.

“That’s the winter issue from last year,” Jason explained, motioning at the cover which was a photo of a snowy field glittering at sunrise. At the top in red scrawling font was the magazine name ‘NorthEast Outlaw’.

“Very cool.” Roy flipped through the pages, pausing to look at a few photos. “Can I return it later so I can read it?” 

“That’s why I brought it,” Jason said, rolling his eyes to cover the nerves he felt. He wanted Roy to like what he’d written. Waiting to hear what Roy thought about his articles and short stories was going to be very hard. 

Roy turned away and shuffled to the table, still flipping through the pages. He set the magazine on the table and looked at Lian.

“Lian, did you introduce yourself?” he asked. “That’s Lian and Colin. Pumpkin, this is Jason.”

Lian glanced around Colin at Jason. “Hi Jason.” 

“Nice to meet you,” Jason replied, relaxing again into a shape that felt soft. Then he looked at Roy again to see the man watching him with the trace of a smile that confused Jason endlessly.

“We’ll be outside.” Roy went to the door again and pushed his feet into his boots. He knelt in front of Jason to tie them.

“Goodbye forever,” Lian said blandly and sat back into the couch.

“Not forever, just an hour,” Roy replied by rote with the same menial tone.

The two men went out the door and down the stairs and stepped up to Roy’s truck. The hood was already propped open. Roy opened the door and took a small delivery box off of the bench seat.

Roy flicked open his utility knife from his belt and sliced the box open. “So here’s the part, let’s see what else we need.”

The job of replacing Roy’s starter was perfect work for two people. They spent the whole time pressed shoulder to shoulder, making things harder for one another by getting in the way, and snickering about bumping each other and dropping washers and screws because their fingers were too cold to keep the little things pinched just right. Roy didn't seem to wear any cologne but this close, Jason could smell the man's shampoo, a faint cinnamon breeze every time Roy adjusted his hat with an easy scoop.

Afterwards they walked the trail to the pond, hands in their pockets. Their boots crunched over stray patches of snow and frost. The water in the pond was low and the edges were embellished with a filigree of ice that grew an inch at night and thawed a half inch during the day.

“Do you like winter?” Jason asked, tapping at the ice with the toe of his boot and idly smoking a cigarette from the pack in his sweatshirt.

“Oh yeah. Lian takes it very personally that there hasn’t been a proper snow storm yet.”

“She’ll get plenty of those, I wouldn’t rush it,” Jason said. Roy crouched nearby and picked at the ice with his fingerless gloves. “Speaking of snow storms, you should come over and help me with the snow plow.”

“Snow plow?”

“Yeah. I plow in the winter for the town. You’re not the only one with part time jobs.”

“Hm.” Roy chewed his bottom lip. “I’m trying to think up an innuendo for plowing,” he admitted, giving Jason a mischievous eyebrow. Jason rolled his eyes.

“But you’re not clever enough?”

“Nah. Just too many to choose from.”

Jason leaned over and shoved Roy’s shoulder while the red head laughed.

“Whao!” Roy teetered forward over the water, windmilling his arm. Jason grabbed him by the collar and hauled him back from a chilly fate. 

“Shit- sorry,” Jason said as Roy stood upright. Roy just laughed.

Jason let Roy push him lightly in the chest as penance, then Roy slung an arm over Jason’s shoulders. It was a fight to decide whether he should stay upright or stoop two inches to make the height difference easier on Roy. Caught between the two choices, Jason merely leaned into him.

“Tell me about the desert,” Jason heard himself say.

Roy dropped his arm away and stepped up to the edge of the pond again. “Desert?”

“Yeah...that first night you said there were stars in the desert. You said you would tell me about it.” Jason kept his voice light, as if he hadn’t reflected on that evening a hundred times already. Jason took his last sip of smoke and stripped the cigarette, rolling it out between his fingers until the cherry drifted off. He stepped on the ashes and pocketed the filter. 

Roy cleared his throat. “Uh yeah. I spent a few years out West before I had Lian. I remember the stars being bright. It made me think about the way they look here. Always missed it here.”

“What’s it like?” Jason wondered. “I haven’t been out there.”

“You’re a small town guy, huh? Never moved away?”

“And?”

“It’s okay. Maybe I would have been the same way if I hadn’t been picked up and moved.” Roy sighed through his nose. “I don’t know what you want to hear; it wasn’t a pretty time in my life. I had a falling out with my guardian and I made some bad habits.”

Jason watched Roy’s back. “Say whatever you want. Or nothing.”

“It’s a little hard to explain,” Roy said. “It wasn’t a good time for me, exactly. I’m sober now. But if I were to change any of that, any of the things I did or the things that happened to me, I wouldn't be the same person I am now. I don’t know if I’d have the same things that make me happy now.”

Jason held his breath. Bare tree branches clicked and whispered when they rubbed together in the breeze.

“And I can’t change it either way,” Roy said. “But that doesn’t make me feel helpless. I mean, for a long time I did feel that way. But in other ways that makes me feel like I have more freedom.”

Jason felt dizzy from the way Roy could talk around the subject, like holding something without cracking it open. All Jason ever felt was cracked open.

“Does that make any sense?” Roy asked as he turned around, looking far more peaceful than Jason felt. Jason blew out a slow breath. It was his turn to look away, feeling a little numb, but not from the cold.

“I don’t know.” Roy didn’t say anything else until Jason had cleared his mind enough to ask a question while looking past Roy at the dark shallow water. “How long have you been sober?”

“Sixteen years.”

Lian was in her midteens.

Jason just nodded. He looked down and scuffed his boot in the dead grass then glanced at the trailhead that parted the trees. “Ready to go back?”

They walked together, one of them taking the lead whenever the trail got too narrow to walk side by side.

“In the salt flats you can drive toward a mountain ridge for an hour and the mountains don’t get any taller,” Roy said.

Jason smiled to himself. 

“And there’s awesome rock climbing in Utah.”

Jason listened while Roy regaled a story of his camping and climbing adventures, of near misses and peaceful evenings by himself, laying back on a sleeping mat with a tired body.

“You wanna come in for coffee? I can show you some pictures of my climbing trips,” Roy said when they stepped out of the woods and into the trailer park.

Jason nodded and followed Roy into the trailer. This time Jason took off his boots and his jacket at the door and sat down at the table when Roy motioned to it. Down the hall Jason could hear Colin and Lian in another room, only distant conversation and occasional laughter. 

Roy prepared a small coffee pot and walked into a room at the opposite end of the kitchen, leaving Jason alone to listen to the coffee machine sputter and brew. He swiped his thumb across the cover of his own magazine that Roy had put on the table, again feeling anticipation for Roy to read it. Generally, Jason had gotten used to people reading his writing- at least as far as the magazine was concerned. When Roy returned with a stuffed envelope of photos, Jason distracted himself from the odd giddiness by listening intently to Roy’s continued stories.

"I took these way before I ever got gear promotions or ad revenue, so the photos are a little amateur," Roy warned.

Jason liked the roughness.

While they shuffled through the photos, Colin walked out from the hallway and into the kitchen. He helped himself to the cupboards and took down two glasses. The fridge grunted open and closed when Colin took out the water filter. As he passed them to return to Lian's room, the teen paused beside Roy. Wordlessly, like Roy barely knew he was doing it, he tilted the photo in his hand towards Colin so that he could see it too. Colin looked at the photo of a camouflaged lizard with naked fascination. Roy flipped to a photo of his campsite, his well loved tent and campfire of coals at blazing midday on a rocky bluff and Jason saw Colin flicker his eyes between the photo and Roy sitting at the table.

Colin seemed to remember himself and suddenly backed a step away and silently departed.

The two men were finished with their coffees and still browsing the photos when Roy’s cell phone rang. 

Roy glanced at the number then looked at Jason with an apologetic squint. “Do you mind? Grant’s calling. This won’t be long,” he explained.

Jason nodded and sipped at his coffee and made himself look politely occupied with the pictures.

“Thanks.” Roy answered but didn’t speak right away, and when he did his voice dropped lower and slower. “Hey buddy.” Roy’s heel bounced on the laminate; his knee jittered distractingly against Jason’s. “Yeah I’m having a good day. I fixed up that starter on the truck this morning. How are you doing?”

It was impossible not to eavesdrop.

“That’s good, I’m really glad you did that.” Jason saw Roy smile softly out of the corner of his eye. Roy eased his chair back and walked to the kitchen counter. He used a pen and a pad of paper to take notes. Happy with what he’d written down, Roy walked away and down the hall, taking his easy conversation with him. Jason heard Roy knock on a door in the hallway.

“Pumpkin, Grant’s on the phone.”

The door opened and closed.

Jason stared at a picture of Roy sitting cross legged at the base of a deep red cliff face. Roy looked dusty and tired and skinny and he was smiling, his bare elbows on his knees. In this envelope of photos there weren’t many of Roy; he’d been alone. The other photos were of stunning sunsets and textured landscapes and animals different from the ones Jason knew here. A handful were of Roy always wearing the same faded green tank top and loose khaki climbing pants, his bare arms exposed and sun burnt beneath his tattoos. Jason imagined that, if he licked his thumb and dragged it in the dust of Roy's cheek, he'd wipe it away to find a tan made of freckles.

“Alright. I have to run some errands,” Roy sighed, patting Jason on the shoulder. Jason twitched and sat upright.

“I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Quite the contrary, it’s really nice hanging out with you. But I doubt you want to drive an hour to the nearest outlet store to go clothing shopping for the kids.” 

“For Colin too?” Jason asked in confusion as he stood up from the table. Colin might look like Roy in hair and complexion, but Jason knew for certain the Wilkes kid didn’t belong to Roy. 

“Lian and Grant. And Colin, I guess, if he wants to come,” Roy said with a shrug.

Jason picked up the empty coffee mugs and took them to the sink.

“Oh, thanks,” Roy said from the door where he put his shoes on, not bothering to tie the laces. “I’ll walk you out.”

They slipped on their jackets and stepped out into the cold. 

“So Grant needs clothes,” Jason awkwardly concluded. He was still wrapping his mind around the situation. Soon, a man would be coming to live with Roy and Lian. The fact that Grant was an ex-con made Jason doubly dubious. He wondered if Roy was unwittingly bringing trouble to Dove.

“He doesn’t have any and it will make the parole officer happy to see the clothes when she checks up next time.” Roy clicked his tongue and shook his head. “The pair of clothes he went in with are useless now anyway.”

At his truck Jason paused with his palm on the door handle. It was subtle, but he could tell Roy was bitter and angry about something. Jason waited, watching while Roy scuffed his boot in the dirt and twisted his mouth into something unhappy. Eventually the thing that was bothering him came boiling out. 

“He was a fucking kid. Grant was fifteen when he was convicted and tried as an adult. His last pair of clothes don’t fit him anymore because he outgrew them.” Roy didn’t quiet the anger for Jason, just let it roll out in his voice. 

The hair on the back of Jason’s neck bristled and he yanked the door open and slammed it closed after he sat down. He took a slow breath while he twisted his key in the ignition and rolled the window down. Roy was standing outside with his hands in his pockets, looking off at the tree line with a tightly closed mouth. Jason didn’t quite understand the entire context of Roy’s words, but he felt inclined to agree with the sentiment Roy was making. Something about Roy’s simmering fury felt justified.

Jason sat for a minute, making an excuse to himself that he was letting the engine warm up. When he felt settled again he propped his elbow on the windowsill and looked at Roy’s profile.

“Come over and help me with the snow plow. Bring your bow and shoot in the yard after.”

Roy tilted his head to look at him and a slow smile relaxed his face. 

“Tuesday?”

“Yeah. Come over Tuesday.”

Jason rapped his knuckles on the windowsill to signal his departure and he eased off of the brake and rolled away. 

+

The job of attaching the plow onto the front of Jason’s truck went quickly on Tuesday; Jason could have done it alone. Roy stood out in front and signaled with a thumbs up to Jason who sat in the cab while they tested the floodlights and blinkers. Afterwards, Roy took his bow bag and foam target out of his own truck and set up a simple archery range in the yard by the back porch and the woodshed.

Jason watched the first few rounds of arrows from the porch. 

Roy was wearing those dark brown fingerless gloves that left his fingertips free to spin his arrow until the odd colored fletching was upright. The fingers had definitely been cut off by scissors, obvious by the subtle unraveling of the material. It dawned on Jason that Roy had likely done it with this exact activity in mind. 

Roy’s target had three bullseyes; and Roy could hit them all in a single round. He had to collect his arrows often because there simply weren’t any targets left to hit.

“You never told me you were that good,” Jason said. “This is going to sound corny, but can you split an arrow?”

“As if that isn’t my favorite party trick.” Roy spoke between shots. “The only caveat is that you have to pay me back for the broken arrow. These aren’t my cheap ones.” 

“Sure. Just one, though. I don’t need to see your little trick twice.”

Roy shot an arrow solidly into the top bullseye. “You watching?” he asked when he drew the next arrow back. Jason hummed from the porch behind him where Roy couldn’t see.

The target was far enough away that Jason couldn’t see where the second arrow hit. He stepped off of the porch and walked with Roy down the range to retrieve the arrows. Sure enough, Roy had done it.

“Huh, you weren’t kidding,” Jason said. He wasn’t sure if he had believed Roy when he said he could do it. They both stopped and admired the top bullseye and the carbon fiber arrow Roy had split. “Well, shit. I guess I better pay up.” 

“You can just owe me a coffee,” Roy said, rolling his eyes.

“Have you been to Brown’s?” Jason asked.

“You mean the only diner in town? Of course.” Roy stood to the side and wrapped his hand around the piercing arrow and pulled it out of the target. Then he pried the shattered arrow out of the foam. 

“Can I owe you coffee and breakfast at Brown’s?” Jason negotiated.

“That isn’t how this works,” Roy said and Jason raised his eyebrows. Roy pulled the third and fourth arrow out of the target. “You’re supposed to get me a cheap coffee from the gas station and call it good, not negotiate for a higher price when I’ve already let you off the hook.” Roy pointed the tip of one arrow at Jason accusingly.

Jason brushed the arrow away with the back of his hand and started walking back to the firing line. Roy followed a step behind. 

“No, you’re just confused, Roy.”

“No, you’re confused,” Roy insisted, playfully bumping their shoulders together like a cat rubbing past.

Jason shook his head. Roy reset himself at the firing line and Jason lingered behind him until Roy took his first shot. 

“I’m going to go in and work a little,” Jason said as Roy nocked the next arrow. 

“Okay.” Roy drew back and Jason turned away and walked up the porch and in through the doorless back doorway.

At the table Jason sat and pawed through the mess of his countless projects. He leafed through the scattered papers and found his most recent printed draft. Taking a pen from the table, Jason started revising an article he’d written earlier that month by making notes in the margins and drawing lines under questionable passages. The dogs laid quietly next to the wood stove. He could hear the soft noise outside of Roy’s bow releasing each arrow and the sound of the impact into the target soon after.

When Jason had slipped into a flow, he was vaguely aware of Roy coming inside. Jason heard the tap over the sink running and assumed the man was getting water to drink. He didn’t look up. 

Jason rubbed his eyes an hour later when he finished the article. 

Roy startled Jason when he looked up. The other man was standing across from him and was so peacefully sorting the chaos on the table that Jason hadn’t even noticed Roy there.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“It was driving me crazy,” Roy said with a shrug. He moved a straightened pile of paper towards Jason and he recognized a letter from Eddie in it’s envelope on top of the stack. Jason had been looking for that letter the night before but couldn’t find it. “I think that’s your writing stuff. And this is cabin stuff.” Roy put his palm on another pile of diagrams, notes, and scrap paper with scribbled math problems.

Jason stared at him. He couldn’t even be annoyed that the man had been touching his things; Roy had just fixed something that had been bothering Jason all week.

“Anyway. I gotta head out. See you at Brown’s?”

“Yeah…” Jason got up from his chair, still a little stunned. He knew that he was capable of getting wholly absorbed into his writing, but he hadn’t even noticed Roy sorting his tools and notes.

Jason walked Roy to his truck.

“How does Friday sound?” Roy said, putting his archery gear into the truck. 

“Friday’s good for me.”

“Okay, see you then.” 

Roy hugged him easily and Jason returned it with a pat on the other man’s back, feeling a little bit like a boulder with a wave of Roy crashing against him. Roy was smiling when he got into the truck; a little more than he usually did.

“What is it?” Jason asked when Roy rolled down his window. “Why are you making that face? And why don’t I like it?” 

“What face?” Roy asked innocently, clearly grinning. “I just had a good day with my friend, can’t I smile about that?”

Jason rolled his eyes and spun on his heel, unable to guess the game Roy was playing with him. He waved his hand toward the driveway. “Get out of here, Harper.”

“See you Friday!” Roy shouted as he drove away.

Jason shuffled around to the porch and looked at the yard, imagining Roy still there shooting in the grass. Jason lingered at the woodshed and collected an arm full of oak firewood to bring in. The ash they had cut together needed longer to season. He walked up the porch and closed the door behind him as he stepped inside the cabin.

Jason paused and blinked. He looked down at his hand curled around the doorknob. 

There was a goddamn door where there hadn’t been one that morning.

Jason glanced at the other end of the cabin and saw that the door to the garage had also been installed.

Roy had been grinning like a fool when he left, so proud of himself. 

“That shit head,” Jason said without any malice. He snorted, completely astounded by these events and feeling a little touched.

On Wednesday it snowed two inches. On Thursday it snowed four inches and Jason plowed the four driveways, the school parking lot, and the ten miles of road to the state route and back again. 

+

On Friday morning Jason picked Roy up and drove them to Brown’s on Main street. The diner was a squat rain stained brick and sheet metal building with wide windows that wrapped around the front side and faced the road. The pavement of the side parking lot was cracked and pot holed like most of the town (a pain to plow). A bell on the single door jingled when Jason opened it for Roy. 

“Welcome in,” the elderly waitress said from behind the breakfast bar. 

“Thank you,” the two men replied in near unison and Roy elbowed Jason with a little smile. He was always doing that, celebrating any little moment he found serendipitous.

The booths were alternating red and blue cracked vinyl benches, the tables were white speckled laminate, and the tiled floor was clean but clearly worn by decades of service. Steam constantly puffed out of the stainless steel kitchen window behind the bar along with a clattering sound of plates, pans, and the talk of distracted but persistent kitchen staff. There were a few vacant tables to choose from.

“Get whatever you want,” Jason said when they sat down across from each other in a red booth. They shrugged out of their jackets and flannels and set them aside on the bench seats. They picked up the laminated folding menus that stood upright beside the napkin dispenser and the salt and pepper shakers.

The elderly waitress came by with two mugs and a coffee pot without being asked. She was slightly stooped and was considered by the community to be an establishment at the diner.

“Jason, I almost didn’t recognize you with that beard,” she said.

“I grow it every winter, Maggie, it’s hardly new.” Jason scratched his chin and then felt compelled to take his beanie off. He set it on top of his flannel beside him and shook his dark curls out. 

“I’ll always remember you with that baby face.”

“You’ll embarrass me, Maggie.”

“No, please, go on,” Roy chimed in. Jason glared at him.

Maggie glanced at Roy, seeming to realize the other man was there, and studied him for a prolonged moment. She stepped back when she finished pouring the coffee.

“Cream?” Maggie asked Roy shortly and he nodded politely. She didn’t have to ask Jason if he wanted any. “You boys know what you want to eat?” She set the coffee pot on the table. From the pocket of her blue apron Maggie took out a small spiral bound notepad and a pen to take note of their order. Maggie had an iron memory when Jason had been little and he watched her flitting between tables, never pausing or forgetting an order. Jason wondered when she had started using the notepad.

“Did I say something wrong?” Roy wondered after Maggie left with the coffee pot.

Jason shook his head and sat back, folding his arms over his chest. He wasn’t sure how to explain the steady protectiveness of the waitress. “When I was a kid Maggie brought me crayons to draw with,” he said. One of his hands slipped out to trace his finger along the edge of the table. Early on, Catherine would sit beside him on the bench and guide his little hand wrapped around the waxy crayon into coloring the printed pages from a children's coloring book. 

“Me too.” Jason looked up from his memory and saw Roy watching him with his chin propped up in his palm. It was easy to forget that the man across from him had also grown up in this town since his face had been absent from the community for at least twenty years. “Think she’ll bring us some crayons again if we ask?”

Jason snorted.

Maggie returned with a cup of cream for Roy’s coffee. He thanked her politely.

Roy turned his hat backwards and doctored his coffee with the cream and sugar from the dispenser at the inside end of the table. 

“Why did you leave Dove?” Jason asked, picturing a red headed boy scribbling on coloring pages in Brown’s diner just like Jason had done.

“I don’t know if you would remember.” Roy stared into his coffee as he talked and stirred the sugar with his spoon. “When I was in high school there was a wildfire north of town. It was summertime. The woods there are owned by the paper mill. Some of the logging equipment caught fire. The brush was so overgrown in those woods that the fire spread too fast for the loggers to put it out. My dad was a forest ranger and he got called to help dig trenches and scout the perimeters. They say his crew got overwhelmed and surrounded. Dad and a few men got out but he couldn’t leave the others behind; you see they were suffocating in the smoke. Dad turned around and he went back in to get them.” Roy put his chin in his palm again and looked out the window at the early winter picture of Main street. The trees swished erratically in the wind. “But he didn’t come out. And we lost Mom before I could remember. And Ollie, well, he was an out-of-towner and felt really horrible about it all; it was all over the news. He took me to live with him in Washington.”

“I’m sorry,” Jason said, meaning it. 

“Thanks.” 

Roy sat back and looked at Jason again, his head tilted a little to the side with an inhibited smile. A few strands of red hair had escaped both Roy’s hat and his bun and they floated around Roy’s cheek and jawline. The sky was blue outside and the sunlight came in pretty and clean through the window to make the chrome and tin accents in the diner glitter. The light made Roy’s face look pretty. Jason blinked, confused about the color of Roy's eyes. Were they blue like the sky or copper like the color of Roy's hair?

“Washington’s a nice state, a little like here. You can disappear into the woods if you want to.” Roy picked up the subject and easily rolled it into a new topic. 

Jason was still stuck on Roy’s story.

I don’t know if you would remember, Roy had said.

Jason had been too young to be aware of the news; he’d been far too busy spending his summers on the lake shore fishing and swimming with Eddie Bloomberg. It was strange how an event could be so inconsequential to one person and utterly unforgettable to another; even here in this supposedly tight knit town.

Maggie delivered their steaming breakfast plates and the mood lightened.

Jason was nearly finished with his plate of omelet and hash browns when the bell on the door jingled behind him. It wasn’t anything new; patrons came and went all while the two men sat and ate. But a familiar voice cut brightly over the sounds of the diner, making Jason pause with his fork half way to his mouth.

“Roy Harper, is that you?”

Jason put his fork down in annoyance, folded his arms, and waited for Dick to walk over to them.

Roy got up from the table with a grin and Jason sank further into the booth. It dawned on him that his foster brother and Roy were easily the same age and were schoolmates long before Jason and Roy were friends. The two men hugged.

“Sit down, you're blocking the aisle,” Jason grumbled from his seat when they started to pat each other on the back excessively. They both slid onto the bench opposite Jason and he pointedly ignored the grin Dick was giving him.

“Hey buddy,” Dick greeted him. He was dressed in his dark blue officer’s uniform. The starched stiff collar of his shirt peeked out above his jacket. There was a yellow and black star shaped patch on the breast and shoulder of the jacket that read “DPD” and his badge number.

“I guess you two know each other,” Jason sighed.

“Dick and I went to school together,” Roy explained and Jason merely nodded. The two of them looked disgustingly friendly and Jason was becoming increasingly annoyed that Dick had interrupted their breakfast.

“Weird seeing you here,” Dick said, eyeing Jason like he’d caught him in the middle of a secret activity. “And without all your little journals and papers, too. Roy, did you know my little bro turned into a writer?” 

“Little bro?” Roy repeated.

Jason cringed. He spoke before Dick could in an attempt to steer the conversation. “We’re foster brothers,” he clarified. “Bruce Wayne adopted me in high school when my mom passed away. Ever since then Dick has been as annoying as you can imagine.” He looked pointedly at Dick.

“My condolences,” Roy said with enough charm that it was clear he was apologizing for Dick’s charisma and not for Jason’s mother. With that explanation, Roy changed the subject. “So what the hell is this about?” Roy asked, tugging the officer’s patch on Dick’s shoulder.

“I’m deputy Grayson now,” Dick said proudly.

“I’m going to pay the bill,” Jason grumbled and caught his hip on the table when he hauled himself out of the relatively too small booth.

Jason’s annoyance faded as he approached Maggie at the cash register on the breakfast bar.

“Remind me what you had to eat,” she said. Jason patiently repeated the meal to her. 

While he leaned on the counter, signing the receipt, Jason could hear Dick’s bright laughter at the table. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Roy grinning. While he watched them catching up, Roy flickered his gaze past Dick to look at Jason, melting his smile into something softer than the sparkling one he was sharing with Dick.

Jason looked away and stared down at the receipt. 

“Everything alright, dear?” Maggie had returned to the register after clearing plates off of the counter. 

“Yeah.” Jason scratched his beard. “Actually, I wanted to ask you something.” He talked quietly with the elderly woman for a few minutes before returning to the table. Jason didn’t sit down and reached into the booth for his wool knit beanie and his flannel. 

“Oh, are you done, Jason?” Dick asked, pointing to Jason’s plate that still had a few bites of omelet on it. 

“Have at it,” Jason said. Dick slid the plate closer and ate up the scraps. “Aren’t you going to order your own?” he sighed, pulling his beanie onto his head. Roy wiggled his way to the end of his bench seat, also finished with his meal.

“Yeah, in a minute,” Dick said between bites. “Where are you guys going?”

“Dunno,” Roy said as he stood. He glanced at Jason. “We didn’t plan on anything else. Text me, Dick. Let’s get the crew together again.”

“Will do.”

With their jackets on, Roy and Jason walked towards the door. Before Roy could turn outside, Jason caught him by the elbow. 

“Come here,” he said, a small smile escaping him. Roy glanced between Jason and the door. “Just for a minute.”

“Okay…”

Roy went where Jason led him, up to the break in the counter where the wait staff could come and go from the kitchen window and the dining floor. 

“Maggie, here he is,” Jason called gently, still with his hand tucked into Roy’s elbow. He felt jittery and couldn’t let go.

The waitress set down the bulk package of 12cup coffee filters in her hands and walked over to them. She wiped her palms once on her apron and came to stand in front of Roy where Jason was presenting him. Maggie, stooped as she was with age, straightened up to look into Roy’s face with an innocent smile.

“It is you,” she said. Maggie tugged Roy’s jacket zipper a little higher on his chest like he was a preschooler about to wade out into the snow at recess. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you, Roy. You look so grown up now.”

Roy opened his mouth and Jason learned what Roy looked like when he was lost for words. Jason squeezed his arm. 

“Jason said you moved into town.”

“I did, into the trailer park with my daughter, Lian,” Roy said in a warm and sheepish voice. 

“A girl! Well, good for you, Roy. Bring her for lunch sometime.”

“I will. She’s a little old for crayons, but I will.”

“Good. Welcome home. You boys stay warm.” Maggie pat Roy’s shoulder in dismissal. “Okay. Such good boys.”

Jason and Roy backed away from the counter and towards the door, bidding her a good day. The bell jingled as they stepped out into the sun. Jason let go of Roy’s arm as they shuffled to the parking lot, but Roy simply moved his arm around Jason’s shoulders.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Roy said quietly.

Roy wasn’t going to say anything, he was going to be content with being forgotten. Jason curled his hand into the back of Roy’s jacket. 

In the truck with the heater coming on, Jason chewed his lip. “Want me to take you home?”

Roy shrugged. “We can go back to your place if you want.”

Jason nodded. “Yeah. But if you try that thing with the doors again…”

“So you did notice.”

Jason rolled his eyes and drove them onto Main street. “I was concentrating on my draft.”

"You like having little critters just walking right into your house, huh?"

"It was a hot summer!" Jason protested. "I was always moving the lumber for the walls in and out, and my tools...it didn't matter if the doors were there or not."

“You know, if you gotta write you can just point me in a direction and I’ll do a little work for you.”

“I don’t get it,” Jason said.

“You don’t get what?”

Jason squeezed the steering wheel. Sometimes, around Roy, he said things he would normally keep to himself. “You, why you would do that.” He was honestly bewildered. “I pay one of the local kids to come help now and then. You don’t want me to pay you or anything?”

Roy paused before speaking. “If you don’t want me to touch your stuff that’s cool. My bad.”

“No, I want you to,” Jason said before he could stop himself. When he glanced at Roy he saw the man looking away and out the side window at the passing town. “You still want to come over?” Jason hoped he hadn't thoroughly blundered the conversation.

“Hm.” Roy looked forward. “Yeah.”

They drove out of the town proper and onto the back roads to Jason’s place and sat in the quiet for several minutes. 

“I’m sorry about your mom,” Roy said, unexpectedly.

All week Roy had been laying things bare to Jason. Now that it was Jason’s turn, he couldn’t summon the calm truth that Roy somehow weaved into his words. Jason couldn’t articulate himself in the moment with spoken words like Roy; it was so much easier to write it down. With paper Jason could labor over every passage, he could take his time and meticulously choose each word until the sentiment was exactly right. Speaking was too fleeting and easily misunderstood. Once words were spoken they could never be erased, crossed out, or taken back; they dissolved into the air where no one could change them. It made Jason nervous that Roy could inspire unbidden words out of his mouth. 

“Thank you,” was all Jason said about it.

Chapter Text

On the first Wednesday of December, Roy held the TV control aloft while Lian pulled on the sleeve of his shirt.

“ X-Files , Dad! I’m going to miss it-”

“The alien loves the sport of baseball and a bounty hunter comes to track him down!” Roy said, holding the remote as high as he could while staying seated.

Lian got onto her knees to reach the remote but Roy passed it to his other hand and held it out in the opposite direction. 

“Spoilers, Dad!” She ducked under Roy’s arm that was holding her at bay and crawled over his lap with sharp elbows and knees. 

“What are you talking about? You've already seen this episode. Ha!” Roy scooped his arm around Lian’s waist. She sprawled across Roy’s chest, reaching for the remote with one hand and pushing at him with the other. “The alien- ow- has been impersonating baseball players ever since- oof- ever since the Roswell incident,” Roy grunted as Lian leveraged her palm into his face.

Lian gave a desperate lurch and her fingers grazed the remote, knocking it from Roy’s hand. The remote tumbled over the armrest and onto the floor and they dissolved into a desperate scramble. Lian kicked Roy in the side and Roy grabbed her around the waist and rolled her off of the couch and out of the way. 

“No!” Lian squeaked.

The armrest pushed into Roy’s chest as he folded over it. He grinned as he grabbed the remote then howled dramatically when Lian launched herself at his arm. 

It felt like Roy had stuck his arm into a catfish hole and was in trouble of losing his fingers. Lian twisted herself around on the floor as she desperately tried to pry the remote from her dad’s iron grip. 

“I just- Lian, honey , I just want to watch the weather ,” he pleaded between fits of laughter

“No! You have a phone for that, Dad!”

“But it’s going to snow!”

“X-Files!”

“There might be a snow day tomorrow.”

Lian paused and flicked her eyes up at him from the wrestled mess of her black hair. “Keep talking.”

“If you let me watch the weather then you can have the TV for the rest of the night when I go to my meeting,” Roy negotiated. Then he furrowed his brow. “Wait, is your homework done?”

“Yes,” Lian answered too quickly and Roy looked down at her pointedly, still hanging off the side of the couch and gripping the remote. Lian huffed and made a concerted effort to pry his thumb off of it, to no avail. Thankfully those years of rock climbing had some practical uses in the home, he thought in amusement.

“Do you want any help?”

“No,” she groaned. “It’s due on Friday and if there’s a snow day tomorrow then that means I have a whole day to do it.”

“I’m not sure that’s how it works,” Roy said, doubting that homework would take priority on a snow day. “If you asked for my advice I would say do half of it tonight and half of it tomorrow.” 

“If you asked for my advice I would say: X-Files .”

“Weather .” Lian made a teenaged sigh and released Roy’s hand. “Thank you.”

Roy sat back on the couch and Lian got off of the floor and joined him, slumping into his side. Roy looped his arm around her shoulders and changed the channel. They sat through the forecast predicting heavy snowfall beginning at midnight and the list of school closures. The segment rolled back to the beginning and Lian huffed.

“They didn’t say Dove is closed,” she complained. 

“Maybe they’ll announce it in the morning,” Roy said. “Hey, you gonna do a little homework while I’m out?” He squeezed her against him.

Lian buried her face into Roy’s chest and wiggled around to curl against him. 

“My poor baby girl.”

“Homework is cruel and unusual,” Lian said, muffled by Roy’s brown plaid button up shirt. 

“It sure is,” Roy said, rolling his eyes at her dramatics. He thumbed the remote and when the X-Files theme began to play Lian perked up and looked at the screen. “If it is a snow day tomorrow, you probably won’t want to do homework. Just saying.” Roy put the remote in her hand and brushed Lian’s hair over her shoulder. He added a kiss to her head and shifted.

“Yeah, I guess.” Lian slid off of her dad as he got up from the couch. 

Roy put on his boots and slipped into his jacket, a well loved golden brown shearling with white wool on the collar, cuffs, and waist. There was a permanent oil stain on the right elbow he was never able to leach out and the wool cuffs had long ago lost their fluffiness, but stayed soft.

“Bye kiddo,” he said. Roy pulled his gloves out of the pocket of the jacket and slipped them on.

“Have a good meeting,” Lian said, laying across the maroon couch cushions.

“Yes, ma’am.” Roy saluted her with two fingers. When he opened the door he smiled. “Hey, Li. Come look.”

“What is it?”

Roy went out onto the top step and held his palm out to the sky. “It’s already snowing.”

Lian sprang from the couch and joined Roy at the door, clinging to the door frame and leaning out behind him. Night had already settled in and the gently falling snow glittered in the orange light of the only street lamp in the dirt cul-de-sac.

“Come on,” Roy said and held both of his hands behind himself and bent over slightly. Lian slapped her palms onto Roy’s shoulders and jumped up onto his back with a little “hup!” sound. Roy teetered on the step, cupped the backs of Lian’s knees, and hiked her up comfortably on his back. Her arms wrapped loosely around his neck.

Roy carried Lian down the steps and out into the quiet cul-de-sac. The warm lights of the other homes in the trailer park glowed faintly behind their curtains, but the world was otherwise dark. Roy shuffled them to the circle of light under the streetlamp and stopped at the edge, watching the fat flakes of snow drift down from the darkness and suddenly glow in the light. There was no wind and very little sound.

Lian’s bare toes curled against Roy’s thigh. Her weight shifted and she leaned back.

“Catchin’ em?” Roy asked, smiling.

“Uh huh,” Lian grunted, mouth open to catch snowflakes. 

“Any good?”

“Meh, pretty plain.” Lian put her chin on Roy’s shoulder.

With a small grunt, Roy hiked Lian up his back again. “How come you got so big, huh?” he said, mostly to himself. 

“Afraid I’ll beat you at wrasslin’ one of these days?” Lian asked coyly. “Now take me back inside! I’m going to miss my episode!” she said, purposefully sounding spoiled. Roy spun them away from the light and walked toward the trailer. “Hurry!”

“In your dreams,” Roy grunted, shuffling along and grinning. Lian kicked his thighs like spurring a horse. “Do you want to walk, young lady? Because if you kick me I’m going to put you down.”

Lian squealed and buried her cold nose into the wool collar of Roy’s jacket. The wooden steps groaned as Roy carefully walked up them. Lian scrambled off of her father and skipped barefoot into the house. Roy leaned inside and plucked his keys off of the hook on the wall.

“Bye, honey,” he said with his hand on the door.

“Bye, Daddy!”

“The alien is actually a real human!” Roy called inside. He heard Lian’s antagonized screech right before he closed the door and laughed to himself. 

The truck was cold when Roy slid inside and turned the key. He waited a gracious minute for the engine to warm up but didn’t bother with the heater since the drive would be too short to appreciate it. The whole town seemed well hunkered down for the first proper snowfall of the season. Main street was still clear of snow. 

Being such a small town, Narcotics Anonymous had no established meetings in Dove. Every Tuesday night, as conditions suited, Roy made the drive south to Bangor, or north to Millinocket, for NA. Along with those drives, Roy attended AA three times a week in Dove at the Methodist Church situated on the north end of Main street. 

Leslie Thompkins, the elderly doctor at the local clinic, facilitated the AA meetings. Like many folk in attendance, and as was common in the state, Doc Thompkins had dipped into opioid abuse early into her career. As a doctor, excuses for her addiction had been plentiful and the drugs had been frighteningly accessible. Now she anchored the meetings with a simple fairness. There was always coffee, morning or evening, it didn’t matter. The coffee was always either too weak or too strong, and was poured into mismatched donated ceramic mugs. During the daily readings the coffee was far too hot to drink, then it turned cold in the blink of an eye while Roy wasn’t paying attention. It was all very dependable in that way.

Despite the cold, the usual group of smokers mingled in the parking lot. Roy parked, loitered with them amicably, and they entered together through the side door of the church. The hallway inside was clean and beige. Children’s artwork was pinned to wide cork boards on the walls. There was a neat row of printed reading material next to the door, namely a brochure for the church that hadn’t been reprinted for ten years since the community got a new pastor. The offices were closed and dark. The light in the stairwell buzzed and Roy went peaceably down to the basement recreation room where the ceiling was so low, Roy could brush his fingers on it if he reached straight up.

Roy knew everybody and everybody knew Roy. The faces around him in the circle were ones he saw at the gas station every week, at the hardware store, the diner, and at the local school. The woes and triumphs of the small town distilled under the fluorescent lights of the church rec room on Mondays and Wednesdays from 8pm to 9pm, and Fridays at 5:30am, for that was early enough that the men doing their shift work at the mill were either coming or going from home.

It was Roy’s routine to linger after the meeting and fold the chairs, mingling with anyone not hurrying home for the night. He liked that sticky feeling after meetings, the way there was always a little more to say or hear, keeping company with anyone who wasn’t ready to leave while they shuffled oh so slowly to the stairs, pausing with every step to say just one more thing, to percolate just one more sentiment. Leslie corralled them from behind, the key to the church swinging from her fingers.

The smokers paused to huddle up for a final drag outside then shuffled off to their cars.

Roy stepped outside and puffed a frosty breath out into the night, standing by himself.

A prolonged scraping sound made Roy look to the left.

“Hi Mr. Harper,” Colin said. He stood to the side with a slightly warped red plastic shovel held in both hands. The teen wore a blue ski jacket too large for him. His wool knit scarf was wrapped so high around his neck that Colin had to lift his chin to free his mouth from it in order to speak clearly. There were two inches of snow all over the parking lot and Colin had shoveled the doorway clear. 

“Oh, hi Colin,” Roy said, turning to face the other red head with a smile. “What are you doing out this late?”

“Sister Agnes sent me out to shovel. I don’t think she knows that it’s barely snowed at all.” 

“Shovel? For us?” Colin nodded and Roy exhaled an endeared chuckle. He looked at the three story white colonial style house on the other side of the parking lot and smiled. There were only a few rooms with lights on in the orphanage windows. The siding was rain stained and the paint peeled under the eaves.

Roy looked at Colin again in his oversized jacket. Colin and Lian were still at the age of narrow shoulders and too big ears. Lian’s growth spurts were marching along though, she knocked over her glass at dinner dozens of times while getting used to the new length of her arms. Roy suspected Colin was dealing with much of the same. Roy remembered that age, remembered the way his skin felt too thin and how he could see his ribs all the way around no matter how much chili Ollie fed him. Every day felt like walking around in a mismatched set of limbs, gawky and  just about to bloom.

Behind him, the church door closed. Both Colin and Roy glanced back to see Leslie locking the door with a light jingle of her keychain.

“Night, Doc,” Roy bid her. “You all ready for the snow?”

“It comes whether I’m ready or not,” Leslie said in good nature. “Colin, you stay warm.”

“Thank you Dr. Thompkins,” Colin said. Leslie waved to them and shuffled to her car. The headlights swept across them as she drove out.

“Think there will be a snow day tomorrow?” Roy asked Colin when it was just the two of them again.

“Oh, for certain, sir.” Colin said. 

When Lian made friends with Colin in late August, Roy was quickly forced to give up his insistence about being called anything other than sir or Mr. There was no changing Colin’s mind about it. It was the way Colin called everyone in town and Roy was not about to be the exception. Funny enough, it felt like a little bit of that southern charm had come with them up north. Then again, folk in the north had their own ideas about staying proper to one another and Colin wasn't out of place.

“How do you know? The school didn’t announce it yet.”

“We always get the first snow day off. It’s just a matter of pretending it isn’t a ritual, I guess.”

“Huh.” Roy took his gloves from his pocket and pulled them on. They were his fingerless pair. “I guess I have to get out my real gloves, huh? Too cold for these,” Roy said, holding his hand up to show his bare fingers.

Colin let go of his shovel and held his hand out. His gloves were cut and fraying at the knuckles the same way and Roy laughed, rocking his head back. 

“Or maybe it’s just in fashion.” 

“Sister Agnes’ tires needed air. If I wear regular gloves I always drop the little valve caps.” Colin returned his hand to the shovel.

Roy nodded in agreement. “Oh yeah, I’m always fumbling around on my projects if I don’t wear these.”

Standing here together felt like that companionable stickiness, the contented impulse to linger and find more to say if it meant waiting around a little longer. But it was cold and late and the boy was collecting snow on his hair and shoulders so Roy waved him in the direction of the orphanage.

“Go warm up. I’m sure Sister Agnes will have more shoveling for you in the morning.”

“The older kids always have to shovel,” Colin said without any indignation. Roy wondered if he even heard some pride in the teen’s voice. Colin held up the shovel and walked with Roy to the truck. “Goodnight Mr. Harper,” he said and walked up the small grassy hill between the church and the house. 

“Night, Colin.” Roy got into his truck and ran the wipers until the snow cleared off of his windshield. He caught the sight of Colin pausing in the front door way of the orphanage to stomp the snow off of his boots and onto the porch. “Good kid,” Roy mumbled to himself. He slung his arm over the backrest and looked in the rear window as he backed up the truck.

When Roy got home he lingered on the steps, giving a long look at the scene and the beginnings of a wintery moment. Then he went inside.

Lian’s backpack was on the table and spilling open, her notebooks sprawled out in a hasty gesture. The girl was on the couch and laying under the afghan blanket, eyes half lidded and sleepy. One of her hands lay outside of the blanket and limply clutched her phone. The TV played another episode of X-Files. 

Roy took off his boots and coat and went to the couch.

“Hi babygirl,” he greeted, squeezing her foot over the blanket. Lian grunted and glanced at him from her comfy spot. “Turn off your alarm for tomorrow.” Roy knelt beside the couch and folded one arm over Lian’s side. She lifted her phone and thumbed the screen. 

“Snow day?” she mumbled with hope.

“Yepp. Snow day.” 

Lian finished with her phone and pulled her hand under the blanket. She stretched and yawned. 

“So that means I can stay up and watch TV?” she said with tired mischief. 

“Hm. I guess so.”

Roy leaned his cheek onto his folded arm and watched her snuggled further into the couch. He got up after a minute and went to his bedroom and changed into his sweatpants. He pulled his hair out of the usual bun and combed his fingers through it. He idled in his room, putting away a few loose ends. On the dresser was the magazine Jason lent him. Roy took it with him when he walked out.

Roy sat at the other end of the couch and pulled Lian’s feet into his lap. He watched the show for a few minutes then flipped open the glossy pages of the magazine. Between the winter gear advertisements and the vacation promotions that brought in revenue for the magazine, Jason had written articles on all manner of winter topics. Roy thumbed through them, scanning over interviews with ice fishermen and cross country skiers, but soon turned back to the beginning and properly read Jason’s winter sentiments. Roy settled into the couch and into the words and into the long awaited snowy night.

Lian stretched occasionally and Roy would squeeze her ankle and tuck the blanket in around her feet. At midnight when Lian was well and truly asleep, Roy scooped her up in his arms and walked her to bed. The girl was getting big, but Roy wasn't ready to let go of old traditions.

‘Winters in the town of Dove and in all our Eastern country lie hard and burdensome on idle folk. There are heavy skies and spittings of rain and snow in November and a weighty fall or two in December. Through January, February, and March there is enough snow and ice and bitter wind to make the devil himself press close up to the flames of hell, and still feel a chill on the side removed from the fire. The birches are bent out of shape by the weight of snow. Ancient pines, with roots clinging to rocky soil, sag low and burdened under the ice clumped in the corners of their branches. The running of a squirrel on one of these branches is often enough to shake the snow loose from the evergreen needles. A fall such as this tends to land on an unsuspecting woodsman below while he walks the forest trails. 

Our Winters are not seasons of silence and stagnation. There are splitting sounds that come from the woods, as though a giant is testing trunks across his knee. The eaves of old cabins dip and creak. At night the mournful plaint of horned owls emerges endlessly from the pines across the creek, punctuated occasionally by the howls of coyotes or the distressing scream of a wildcat. When there is ice in the river, it complains after those random and deceptive day-long thaws that sometimes fool folk into comfort. Chickadees cling upside down to trees and bushes and sometimes alight on one’s rifle barrel in their trusting blindness, forever uttering their dreary, weary song. There is always the quaking of ducks and geese; the abrupt tapping of woodpeckers; the squeaking and clattering of mice in the shed; the moan of the wind slithering around the windward corner of the cabin. 

I have long held that if a person plans chores to keep him busy, he will find our Eastern winters a time of relief from the blinding sweat and the countless small tasks of summer, instead of a stagnant period during which each man comes to hate his neighbors, his family, and at last himself.’

- Jason Todd, NorthEast Outlaw

Chapter Text

The world had transformed overnight. The brown of leaf litter and dirt was hidden beneath a pristine blanket of snow that covered the trailer park, eight inches deep. The dirt road and cul-de-sac were snowed in, but Roy could see that Main street was already plowed. His truck had not escaped the snowfall and rested beneath the weighty white blanket. The naked branches of ghost grey beech trees looked translucent against the whiteness. Even though it was a half hour past dawn and the sky was clear, the usual morning chatter of birds and squirrels was significantly delayed. Drawing in a deep breath, Roy sipped in the taste of water in the air, dulling all other aromas of the woodsy town. 

Jason’s words seemed to bleed from the glossy magazine page and out into the white world that glittered like the inside of a geode, technicolor and prismatic under columns of slanted sun rays that shifted with the advancing morning.

Roy was awake because of the automated call he’d gotten on his cell phone from the school pronouncing it a snow day. School was canceled and Lian was properly sleeping in. He shoveled the front steps, pushed the snow off of his truck, and returned inside to get some work done. 

An hour later, while Roy edited photos on his laptop at the table, a low rumbling and scraping sound outside broke him from his peaceful work. Roy picked up his empty plate from breakfast and shuffled to the window over the sink. The plate clinked into the sink and he curled his socked toes into the cool laminate kitchen floor as he leaned forward to peer outside. 

Jason’s black dodge was plowing the cul-de-sac. 

Roy didn’t think and ran to the door and flung it open. He clutched the door frame and waved erratically until the truck stopped and the window rolled down. 

“Hey!” Jason shouted at him. 

“Just a second! Wait- just wait!” Roy yelled back, grinning foolishly. 

Roy shoved his feet into his boots and grabbed his jacket off of the hook. It was a miracle that he remembered to grab his phone in his excitement; he didn’t even take his hat. The front steps shuddered as he jumped down them and into the snow. Roy forged a path through the snow to the plowed dirt cul-de-sac. 

Jason grinned in the driver's seat when Roy got to the truck and pulled the door open. Dog was in the passenger seat. 

“Oh, hey Dog!” Roy cooed. The hound sat up to snuffle at Roy excitedly. He rubbed her sides and she panted at him happily. “You’re such a good girl, aren’t you? Helping Jason plow? Yes, a good girl, that’s you.”

“What’s up?” Jason asked, looking over Dog at Roy.

“Nothing really,” Roy said with a shrug. He stepped up onto the running board and peered inside the cab. Sparky was laying in the back seat and looking back at him with cloudy eyes. “You’ve got the whole gang, huh? Dog, go on.” Roy pointed her towards the back seat and gave her rump a nudge. “Go on. That’s a good girl.” 

Jason leaned his broadness aside as Dog stepped on the center console to climb into the back seat. She laid down with Sparky on the dog blanket.

“What are you doing?” Jason asked through his laughter. With the passenger seat freed up, Roy pulled himself into the cab and sat down and shut the door. “Well, hi. How are you? I guess you’re coming with me?” Jason palmed the gear shift and the truck shuddered into movement again. 

“Of course I am.” Roy sat there, feeling happily like a pirate who had completed a boarding party. Jason didn’t look bothered in the slightest and went on with his work. 

The shins of Roy’s grey sweatpants were damp from jogging through the snow, his hair fell in curtains around his shoulders because he hadn’t put it up yet that morning; his boots weren’t even tied. 

Jason on the other hand was dressed appropriately in his dark brown Carhartt jacket and his jeans. His knit beanie was ever present, squeezing his curls out into a pretty frame around his face. Jason’s beard was getting thick and scratched against the collar of his jacket. Sometimes, when they hugged, Roy could feel it rub against his neck.

“You want some coffee?” Jason asked. Roy realized he’d been staring. “I only have this one, no cream or anything.” Jason held up his paper coffee cup from the gas station that had been sitting in the center console.

“Oh, thanks.” Roy took it and put his mouth on the plastic lid where Jason’s had been sipping all morning. 

They spent a cozy morning in Jason’s truck with the heat on, methodically plowing out the town and occasionally passing another plow truck, the drivers waving with a two fingered salute. They rambled away at their usual conversations. Roy talked about sending his photos to Boston for publishing in a nature journal and Jason talked about his plans to get an actual bed for the cabin. Roy said that the parole officer had been happy with Grant’s clothing and Jason said he had picked up the rest of the ash logs in the woods before the snow covered them.

At noon Roy’s cell phone rang in the pocket of his coat. Roy pulled it out and checked the caller.

“I totally forgot to tell Lian where I went,” Roy groaned. He swiped on the screen and palmed the phone up to his cheek. “Hi baby girl, I’m with Jason.”

“Oh yeah, I guessed that,” Lian said casually. “Can I take your truck?”

“What? No.” Roy pushed his hair out of his face. “You don’t know how to drive in the snow yet, Li. I’ll show you soon, it’s just not safe if you take it right now.” 

Lian sighed dramatically on the other side of the line. “But I want to go with Colin to sled on the hill at the fairgrounds. Damian’s been bragging at school all week about how fast his sled is.”

“It’s not safe for you to drive in the snow yet,” Roy repeated. “It’s not that far of a walk, y’know.”

“It’s all the way across town, Dad. Can’t you, like, come back and drive us?”

“Who’s this Damian guy anyway?” Roy asked, changing the subject a little.

“Damian Wayne, Dad,” Lian said with emphasis.

Roy blinked and looked to the side at Jason who was biting his lip. 

“How many damn kids does Wayne have?” Roy asked him incredulously.

Lian answered at the same time as Jason.

“I don’t know,” she said, clearly rolling her eyes.

“Depends,” Jason said. 

Roy gave him a pointed look.

“Damian’s his only biological kid,” Jason explained. “There’s Dick and me. Cass is away on competition. Tim and Duke are in college, and Damian’s here in Dove.”

Roy stared at his friend with his mouth open, wrapping his brain around this information. “Well, I guess Ollie’s not the only one collecting vagabonds,” he said in helpless good humor. Roy sighed and put his head back against the seat. “That reminds me I need to call Connor.”

“Dad,” Lian said from where the phone had drifted into Roy’s lap. Roy put the call on speaker.

“Yeah pumpkin?”

“So. Sledding?”

Roy sagged a little but opened his mouth to say he was returning home. He just didn’t want to cut his time with Jason short-

“Where’s the sledding happening? The fairgrounds?” Jason chimed in before Roy could speak. He finished pushing the last pile of snow into the snow bank in the library parking lot. 

“Yeah,” Lian said shortly, realizing she was now on speaker phone with both her dad and Jason.

“I’m almost done in town. Why don’t I give you and Colin a ride?” Jason said evenly, with the slightest hint of charismatic negotiation in his voice. Roy raised his eyebrow at him. “I guess your dad can come too,” Jason added. Roy wanted to hug him.

“Dad?”

“Sounds good to me,” Roy said with a happy shrug.

“I’ll come pick you up in a little. Is that okay?” Jason asked.

“Yeah, Colin’s not even on his way yet.”

“Okay, see you kiddo,” Roy said.

“Bye!” Lian hung up.

“Can you really do that?” Roy wondered when it was just the two of them again.

“Yeah, I started so early this morning so I’m almost done…”

“How early?” Roy wondered.

“3am,” Jason said. Roy winced and Jason only shrugged. They drove out of the library parking lot and on to the next one.

Ten minutes later, as they drove back to the trailer park, Roy pointed to someone walking on the side of Main street. He recognized the oversized blue ski jacket.

“It’s Colin.” 

Jason slowed down to a crawl beside the teenager and Roy rolled his window down and leaned out. 

“Fancy meeting you here,” Roy said with a smile. 

Colin was in his large jacket and his jeans. He lifted his chin out of the scarf to talk just like the night before. Colin’s nose was already red and his cheeks were flushed. His wool hat was pulled down as far as it would go and the multicolored pom pom on top stood straight up.

“Hello Mr. Harper, Mr. Todd.”

“Hop in, buddy. We’re headed home to pick up Lian.” Roy pointed his thumb at the back door of the cab and Colin pulled it open.

“Sorry it’s a little crowded back there,” Jason said, wedging himself around so that he could reach back and encourage the dogs to make room.

“That’s okay, I don’t mind.” Colin fit himself into the puppy pile.

They didn’t have to cuddle for too long. Jason drove them to the trailer park and when he parked, Colin and Dog both slipped out of the truck and into the snow. Dog went bounding around the back and into the tree line, antsy to run free after a morning cooped up in the truck. Roy stretched his arms out to the sides when he stepped out of the cab and groaned happily. Colin stepped in Roy’s morning footprints in the snow to get to the steps of the trailer and he let himself inside.

“You hungry?” Roy asked Jason, looking back.

Jason helped Sparky out of the cab. The old dog walked slowly, tail wagging off beat.

“Guess so,” Jason said with a shrug. He paused at the edge of the snow that separated the plowed cul-de-sac and the steps and gave Roy a very pointed look. 

“What?”

Jason walked through the snow to the steps and took up the shovel Roy had left leaning against the railing. 

“You don’t have to,” Roy said, chuckling. 

Jason grunted that he did, actually, have to, and proceeded to shovel a quick path from the steps to the road. It took no more than a minute and Roy waited by the truck with a smile, feeling a little like a lady standing by while a gentleman laid down his coat across a puddle.

“Why, thank you, kind sir,” Roy said, batting his eyes.

Jason rolled his eyes. “It’s for the dog. C’mon Sparky.” Jason whistled softly and the old dog that had been standing beside Roy went toddling after Jason to the house.

“Of course.” Roy followed behind them, still just as endeared to Jason as before.

“Can he come inside?” Jason paused to ask on the top step.

“Yeah, bring the old man in and warm him up.”

Jason opened the door and Sparky walked inside first.

“A dog!” Lian cheered from inside.

Jason froze at the sudden burst of energy and Roy coaxed him through the doorway with a hand on his back, laughing the whole time. 

“You never said he had a dog,” Lian said accusingly when she saw her dad come in behind Jason. She and Colin were kneeling in the living room petting Sparky.

“Slipped my mind, sorry,” Roy said, shrugging and toeing off his boots. 

“What’s his name?” Lian asked.

“Sparky.” Jason moved aside and Roy closed the door.

“He’s perfect,” Lian said about the wiry grey mutt who laid down with arthritic joints and an overly wet nose.

Roy hung up his jacket and tugged the sleeve of Jason’s to indicate he should take his off as well. The man did so wordlessly and hung his Carhartt over Roy’s. He stuffed his beanie into the pocket and shook out his curls.

“Who’s hungry?” Roy asked them all.

They made sandwiches. Roy laid out a miscellaneous assembly line of ingredients onto the kitchen counter and declared a free-for-all. With Lian’s help, they herded the other two forward, insisting against formalities of waiting politely aside. They all bumped and braided together in the narrow kitchen then ate at the table. Roy was very happy to notice that all four of the chairs were filled for the first time in this house.

Soon Grant would come and join them, Roy reminded himself with a secret smile.

Lian finished eating first and scampered to her room to get properly dressed for the snow. Roy cleaned up the kitchen and Colin lingered in the living room, fiddling with the pom pom of his hat between his hands.

“Colin, come with me. I think I have some pants you can wear,” Roy said, motioning to the boy.

“I’m wearing pants, Mr. Harper,” Colin said.

“Snow pants. You can wear mine.” Roy started to walk toward his bedroom. He felt Colin come up behind him. “They might be a little big but this way your jeans won’t get soaked.” 

“I don’t mind. I can’t take your pants, sir,” Colin said as they stepped into Roy’s bedroom. 

“I’m not using them right now,” Roy pointed out. He went to the closet and shoved his hand into a plastic box of winter clothes and gear and found his snowboarding pants by feel. Colin was still standing politely in the doorway to his bedroom when Roy turned around. “Come in and try these on,” Roy said, and sat on the edge of the bed as the teen carefully stepped inside. The boy did his best to look at nothing but the pants, but his eyes betrayed him and flickered across the little bookshelf, the top of the dresser, and the clothes and hobby toys cluttering the open closet.

Colin took the snowboarding pants Roy held out to him and he pulled them up over his jeans and fastened the front. 

“Here…” Roy turned Colin by the elbow and pulled the velcro straps on the sides tighter than he wore them himself. With the velcro synched at the waist, the pants sagged minimally. “Fits perfect!” Roy said, nevermind that Colin’s heels were stepping on the hems.

Colin put his hovering hands into the pockets and looked down at the pants and his socked toes. “Hm.” He nodded once. “Thank you.”

Colin walked out wearing the pants. Roy could hear him shuffling across the kitchen. Roy tied his hair back with a hair tie from the dresser, put his hat on, and dressed in a pair of jeans. He picked up his camera case from the closet and went out.

Jason was sitting sideways in his chair at the table and leaned over, petting Sparky across the shoulders where the dog sat by his foot.

“How old is he anyway?” Roy wondered, putting the case on the table.

Jason looked up at Roy, visibly doing math in his head. “Older than ten.” He sighed and looked at Sparky again. “You’re an old boy. A good old boy. I remember when you were a puppy.”

Roy watched the top of Jason’s head and his scarred cheek.

“You were just a little guy.”

Sparky’s watery eyes closed with contentment as Jason scrubbed the magic spot behind his half drooping ear.

Roy’s hand left the handle of the camera case. Smooth like the grain of a well worn wooden handle, he tucked one of Jason’s curls behind the man’s ear and away from the scarred eyebrow. Jason didn’t look up nor did he shift away.

“Dad, we’re ready.” Lian came down the hall with Colin. She was wearing a pair of black snow pants shaped like overalls. Her hair was in a braid down her back. 

Roy put his hands on his hips. “Go and get your boots on, kiddo.” 

They all dressed in the final layers of boots, jackets, and hats and bundled out the door and into the sunny afternoon. As they came up to Jason’s truck, Dog came snuffling around. Her red bandana was soaked from the snow but her tail was wagging. 

“You have two dogs?” Lian said, crouching down and opening her arms to greet the newcomer. Jason nodded with a little smile as he went around the truck. “Dad,” she said when Jason was out of sight.

“Lian?” Roy grinned as he opened the back door of the cab.

“He has two dogs,” she hissed at him. Lian looked conspiratorial.

“We’re not stealing one,” Roy told her.

“That’s not what I mean. Dad.” Lian got up and walked to Roy. She pulled on his sleeve in ill contained excitement. “Jason has two dogs.”

“Why are we whispering?” Roy whispered with equal dramatics.

Lian rolled her eyes so hard that her head swiveled. She offered him a teenaged sigh for an explanation.

“Get in, silly girl,” Roy told her, nudging her as she climbed into the back seat of the cab. Kids got all kinds of ideas and Roy wasn’t following this particular one.

After Lian, Dog jumped into the cab, and after Dog, Colin squeezed himself in. The back seat was full and Roy closed the door. On the ground nearby, Sparky wandered aimlessly. Roy picked up the medium sized mutt without trouble and sat himself in the passenger seat with the dog on his lap and his camera case on the floor by his feet. 

The whole truck sank slightly when Jason got in. All accounted for, Jason started the engine. He looked over at Sparky in Roy’s lap and smiled behind his beard. He reached out and pet the mutt once then brushed his fingers over Roy’s wrist on his way back to palm the steering wheel.

“Alright,” Jason grunted as they started off.

The fairgrounds were ten acres of fields on the north end of town. In the summer there were sweaty flea markets and little parades of prize cows and wood splitting contests. In harvest months there were quick stalls for a Saturday farmer’s market, and in September there was a proper fair on Labor Day weekend. A few rented fair rides would unfold from trucks and their metal joints would groan all weekend with the sideways melodies of carnival music. In the winter the town maintained ski trails through the fields and trees.

There were several tire tracks in the snow leading to the sledding hill. Jason dropped the plow and cleared the dirt road as they drove along it into the fairgrounds. He parked among the handful of cars that had waded out into the snow for sledding. 

“There’s Damian!” Lian pointed over Roy’s shoulder at the hill. “Come on Colin, I’m going to shove snow down his shirt,” she said with intense glee. She pushed open the door and spilled out of the cab with Dog and her friend.

“Play nice!” Roy called before the door slammed shut. 

Jason and Roy sat laughing together. 

They watched the two teenagers shuffle-run through the snow toward the hill. There were several other kids there, some throwing themselves down the steep hill, others hiking up it again to take another plunge. There was general merriment among the parents looking on, some had brought folding chairs and a hot thermos to drink from. A few played with their small children on the side of the hill where the slope was much gentler.

Lian and Colin waddled to the foot of the hill and waved down one of the teenagers. The boy came over, towing a plastic sled by the string. There was some arm waving as they talked, and then Lian bent over and gathered up handfuls of snow in her gloves and hurled them at the boy. A chase commenced and it was unclear which side Colin was on. Soon the three of them hiked up the hill and began to take turns on the sled. 

“Is that Damian?” Roy guessed as they watched the scene from the warm cab. 

“Yepp. That’s him. Good kid.” Jason nodded to himself. “He gets a little bored. His mom dropped him off with Bruce a few years ago.”

“Bored?”

“Small town,” Jason shrugged and Roy nodded.

Roy leaned around the dog in his lap and picked up his camera case from the floor. Jason coaxed Sparky into the back seat and Roy opened the case and pulled the camera out.

“That looks nice,” Jason commented.

“Thanks, it does the job.” 

Roy locked the lens into place, turned on the camera, aimed out the windshield and snapped a picture of the hill.

“Look any good?” Jason asked and Roy smiled down at the screen display and adjusted his exposure for the bright afternoon sun reflecting on the white snow.

“Once I get this all dialed in...” Roy said.

“That’s some fancy equipment.” Jason watched Roy flipping through the settings and dials with well worn ease.

“A man's fancy equipment is only good if he knows how to use it,” Roy clucked without a second thought and Jason pressed his head back against the headrest as he laughed at the poor joke.

Roy glanced over and saw Jason backlit by the warm light coming through his window, eyes nearly shut with his mirth. Roy turned the camera on him and put his eye into the viewfinder.

“Jason,” Roy said.

Jason, mouth smiling around his chuckling, looked at him fondly, bringing his scarred cheek into view.

The shutter clattered softly inside the camera. 

Roy watched through the viewfinder as Jason’s smile paused, then caught and faded itself into a smaller one. He looked away, but only with his eyes, as if following a thread. Roy was terribly tempted to press the shutter again, to capture the way a sensitive thought dawned across Jason’s face. Roy was starting to recognize the look.

Roy rested his camera down in his lap instead and looked out of the windshield. He’d pin down that expression some other time.

Returning to himself with an inhale, Jason opened his door and stepped out. The man looped his fingers into his belt loops and tugged his jeans up his hips and Roy didn’t miss the way Jason wiggled into them. Jason took the cigarette pack from the pocket of his jacket and tapped it against his palm.

“I’m gonna go say hi to my pop,” Jason said. “You gonna stay here?”

“Nah, I’ll get out in a sec,” Roy said.

“Okay. You can leave Sparky. He’ll keep warm in here for a while.” Jason reached inside and pulled the keys out of the ignition and dropped them on the dash. He closed the door and walked off among the other cars, head ducking down to light a cigarette as he went. Some folk greeted him and Roy watched Jason nod at them each as he passed.

Roy waited until Jason stepped out of sight in the row of cars then looked down at the screen of his camera and thumbed the menu to display the picture of Jason. The light behind Jason was diffusing through his curls and the reflections of the sunny snow lit the rest of the scene appropriately. Technically speaking, it was an excellent portrait.

Technically speaking, Roy’s heart was bright in his chest and his cheeks were warm and he was already endeared to Jason and his naked thoughtfulness and his quietude and his awkward sort of gentleness and his occasional rural crassness but now Roy could not deny that he was attracted to Jason. Roy was giddy with it, like a boy with his first crush; he was terrified. 

Before Roy could be swallowed by the tide of his affection, knowing what hurt and fears lay waiting in those waters, he quickly got out of the truck and set himself wading through the snow. Roy went towards the hill and towards Lian and smiled widely at her shrieks and laughter which tumbled down the hill with the rest of the children. 

At the base of the hill, along the sledding track, Roy knelt in the snow, careless for the cold wet spots on his knees. He exhaled his cloud of breath into the cold sunshine.

Lian waved to him from the crest of the hill. Colin sat down in the plastic sled and Lian gave him a running push which sent Colin careening down the slope. Roy raised the camera and the shutter clattered and Colin’s gleeful, snow chilled expression saved itself away in a memory. Colin was a little camera shy in the way most boys are, but he had been obliging the few times Roy had photographed Lian while Colin was with her. Now, with the rush of the cold and the activity of the sledding, Colin was an open, cheerful picture. 

Colin hiked up the hill with the sled. He and Damian pushed Lian down next and, playing to her father's camera, Lian stuck her tongue out and shrieked as she passed him in a whirl. It left a glorious, snarling after image. When Lian passed again, hiking up the hill with the sled, she kicked snow at Roy who laughed. 

Then Colin and Damian got in the sled. Lian had to lean hard against Colin’s shoulders to push the boys over the precipice. Roy couldn’t make out her words but he heard her complaints from the bottom of the hill. Around him other children cheered and ran and splashed snow at each other.

Damian and Colin sailed by in the sled but Roy did not take a picture this time, politely avoiding photographing somebody else’s kid. Nevermind that Colin wasn’t truly Roy’s; he had permission from the nuns to have Colin over his house and in his car and under his supervision.

The boys paused by Roy on their way up the hill. Both of them were flushed and breathing hard from the activity.

“Damian, this is Lian’s dad, Mr. Harper,” Colin said, motioning to him. His fingerless gloves were soaked and it did not escape Roy’s notice. He wished he'd leant Colin a pair of his own gloves along with the pants. “This is my friend, Damian,” Colin said, motioning in the other direction. 

“Hi Damian, nice to meet you.”

“Hello,” Damian said, then he pushed Colin’s hand away from him and restarted his trek up the hill. As an adult on a snow day, Roy was utterly inconsequential to Damian. “Come on Wilkes!"

“Coming!” Colin followed.

After many rounds of sledding, and a handful of photos that hadn’t turned out overly blurry, the kids wandered away to try their hands at building a snow fort. The novelty of the snow had not even begun to wane for Lian and she excitedly set to work packing snow into walls with renewed energy. Roy walked off of the hill and to the parked cars, smiling to himself.

A few of the adults sat in their cars with the heaters running. Jason stood by one of these, a gleaming black Jeep, expensive and overbuilt. The shape of the hood and the attention to luxury reminded Roy of an old Ford model T, in a roundabout way. 

It occurred to Roy that Jason would be visiting with the illustrious Mr. Wayne, Jason’s adoptive father. Roy let his camera hang by the strap around his neck and put his hands in his pockets, suddenly and confusingly nervous. 

As a kid, Roy had played at the manor with Dick. What Roy remembered of the Wayne acres were ancient oaks and green leather chairs and halls of dark wood panels. He remembered sneaking into Bruce’s office and the way he and Dick had blinked at and admired the crystal decanter of whiskey in the cabinet (and drank some and added water to the decanter to keep the liquid level where it had been). Roy remembered dusty rooms with the furniture covered by white cloth and shiny horses snuffling at a paddock gate. Roy remembered the trail to the lake and the manicured lawns that looked like wooded parks. 

Wayne himself was reduced in Roy’s memory to the general shape of a tall, moneyed, handsome man. Roy recalled Wayne’s English style riding boots, having been enamored by the leather and shiny buttons on the calves.

Roy stepped up beside Jason, smiling first at his friend who noticed him, and then into the open driver's window.

Wayne was far older than Roy expected. 

“Al, this is Roy Haper,” Jason said, fading out of the previous conversation.

A black leather driving glove extended out of the window and Roy placed his hand in the old man’s, shaking politely. 

“Alfred Pennyworth,” the old man said and Roy squinted, recalling a distant memory. “You look familiar, young man.”

“You do too,” Roy said, smiling and happily surprised. His earlier, childlike, nerves evaporated. The british accent renewed more memories from a childhood friendship. “I was one of Dick’s friends. I moved away, and now I’m back,” he said simply. 

“Welcome back. Lovely country here, isn’t it?” Alfred said conversationally. “I wasn’t sure about Master Wayne's decision to quit the city as a young man, but I’m glad he did. Gotham was dreadful compared to Dove.” He looked like he could go on but Alfred stopped and motioned with a small twitch of his hand. “I’ve told Jason this many times.”

“You have,” Jason said with all the patience in the world. No, there was no patience there. Jason was perfectly content to listen again to whatever Alfred might repeat. Idly, Jason put a cigarette between his lips but didn’t light it while they stood by the older gentleman’s window.

Inside the Jeep, Alfred was a picture of warmth. The white collar of his button up shirt was folded neatly beneath the collar of his black wool coat. Between the shirt and the coat Roy spied a dark green plaid vest. A matching green scarf was discarded on the passenger seat of the car. 

“I’ve been hanging out with Roy,” Jason announced plainly, looking past Roy’s right ear. “Those are his kids playing with Damian.”

“As you said.” Alfred nodded. 

They had been talking about him, Roy realized. If not today, then at some point in time, Jason had deemed him worthy of mentioning to his older friend.

“Well, Colin’s not mine,” Roy heard himself say. He turned slightly so that he could look off in the same direction as Jason, letting his cheeks feel pink in the sunlight.

“Hm,” was all Jason said about that.

“Did you say hi to Damian?” Roy asked, even though he knew Jason hadn’t.

“No, I’ll say it when he comes over,” Jason said. 

“What is that camera around your neck, Mr. Harper?” Alfred asked and Roy turned himself back into the conversation. 

“He’s good,” Jason said before Roy could say anything about his photography. “Real good.”

Roy didn’t look at Jason and launched himself into an explanation about his career which waxed and waned and was supplemented by odds and ends. It was funny how, though he meant to explain only his photography, Roy found himself rambling into other parts of his life and had to circle back to the subject. Just as Jason was content to listen to Alfred, he was the same pleasant audience while listening again to the facts of Roy's life that he already knew.

“May I see some photos?” Alfred asked after lending his ear to Roy's winding monologue.

Roy took Jason’s place beside the window and lifted his camera. He thumbed through the photos he’d taken of Lian and Colin on the hill.

“Oh, I like these,” Alfred said and Roy saw in him an old gentleman who only wanted happiness for the young people in his life. “There are none of Damian though.”

“As a principle, it’s not good to photograph a stranger's child,” Roy explained by way of apology. He’d heard the slight disappointment.

“Well, should those three continue to be friends, I give you permission to photograph Damian. And to share them with me,” Alfred added and Roy chuckled, in on the warm hearted scheme. Everyone wanted pictures of their loved ones.

“This one of Jason is very flattering.”

Roy looked down again. He’d thumbed through all of the sledding photos and had returned to the picture of Jason in the truck. Roy felt like blushing, like he’d been caught.

“Alfred,” Jason sighed. He had stepped away so that Roy could stand at the window, but now he stepped close again, his chest against Roy’s shoulder and looking at the camera. Jason was quiet for a long moment. 

“...ugly bastard,” Jason finally grumbled.

Roy turned to gape at him, lit up and ready to defend Jason from himself. But Jason just laughed and slapped Roy on the back like he’d played a good joke on him.

“Kidding,” Jason coughed. 

“We didn’t laugh,” Alfred said and sighed. 

Jason was out of reach again, not-smoking his cigarette and not looking at Roy. 

Alfred lifted his hand and, bending his wrist to reveal a watch hidden within his sleeve, checked the time. 

“Jason, do you mind getting Damian? He’ll be needing dinner soon.”

The sun was getting low and brushing the treetops. Wherever they looked it seemed like the sun was always shining in their eyes, making them squint.

“Yepp.” Jason shuffled off.

“Send me the picture of Jason, if you would. He’s camera shy, as you can imagine, but handsome nonetheless,” Alfred said plainly to Roy. 

Yes, Roy could imagine. What they weren't mentioning out loud were the irregular and conspicuous scars on the left side of Jason's face. Yet it had been so easy for Roy to catch Jason relaxed and natural on camera that he almost couldn’t believe Alfred.

Roy didn’t argue that Jason was handsome.

Alfred gave Roy his phone so that they could exchange contacts. When Jason returned with Damian, he had snow around the collar of his Carhartt and he held his brother by the sleeve. It looked like Damian had put up a fight over being herded home, a fight that included a well aimed snowball at Jason’s neck.

“-little punk,” Jason was saying. He released Damian within sight of the Jeep. The boy turned around and shoved Jason in the stomach, which barely budged the man, then sprinted to Alfred’s window.

“I don’t want to go home, I want to keep sledding,” Damian announced through the window, clinging to the sill and standing on the running board of the Jeep.

Colin and Lian were shuffling in after Jason, dragging the plastic sled with them. Dog trotted ahead of them and came to stand in the group, like another person coming to say goodbye.

“We’re going home too,” Roy said when all of the kids were within earshot. “It’s a school night.”

Lian whined but when she got to Roy she put her face into the arm of his shearling. He could tell by her slumping that the girl was properly tuckered out from playing. Roy shifted his camera aside so that Lian could lean into his chest and he half hugged her. 

“Colin?” Damian asked hopefully, looking to the other boy.

Colin stood aside, looking as worn as Lian. “Um,” he said. 

Roy rolled his eyes softly. “Colin, come eat dinner with us.” The boy nodded. 

“There you have it,” Alfred said to Damian who tried very hard not to look like he was pouting. “You’ll see them tomorrow at school.”

Colin stepped up and put his hand on Damian’s arm but was not hugged goodbye the way Colin and Lian would. He smiled at the other boy anyway. “Bye Dami.”

“Wilkes,” Damian said, still not-pouting. 

Lian peeled herself from her father and swiveled, only to wrap her arms around Damian instead. Damian wasn’t necessarily displeased about being hugged, but rather, it was clear to Roy that Damian didn’t know much about the shape of a hug. Not wanting to perform it incorrectly, Damian simply didn’t hug back. 

“Harper.” Damian shrugged away and ran around the Jeep and got in the back seat, immediately sulking and tired. 

“A pleasure,” Alfred said to Roy.

“Likewise. Have a good night,” Roy said. 

“See you soon,” Jason said, absently fingering clumps of snow from the neck of his jacket. 

“Good night, dear boy,” Alfred said and Roy knew Alfred loved Jason.

The lights of the Jeep flipped on and it rolled away into the snowy field, got onto the plowed path Jason had made, and drove off. Other cars had filtered away as the afternoon lengthened and only three remained. 

In the truck, with the kids and Dog snuggled sleepily in the back seat, Roy ordered pizza on his cell phone. They stopped at the shop on main street, a narrow place with a black and white checkered floor and brick walls. Jason parked and Roy began to open his door but a tap on his forearm stopped him. Jason got out instead, leaving the truck running and the heat on. 

Roy watched through the wide street side windows as Jason went to the counter and paid for the order. He returned carrying two pizza boxes which he handed to Roy. He had to balance them on the dashboard since Sparky was in his lap. 

“Thanks,” Roy said.

“No problem.” Jason drove them home.

The sun set quickly and it seemed especially dark as the group marched drowsily into the house. Lian and Colin stripped off their snow gear and parked themselves on the couch with their food and watched TV. Jason and Roy watched from the table. Night had come on strongly for all of them and Roy blinked heavily when he’d eaten his fill. 

“Hm?” Roy shifted his eyes from Jason’s neck, where he’d been idly gazing, to Jason’s eyes. Roy had his cheek in his palm and realized he had been spoken to.

“You falling asleep?” Jason asked again, a little smile on his mouth, like Roy had made it funnier by not hearing him the first time and confirming his drowsiness. 

Roy smiled back. Then he inhaled and sighed and sat back in his chair. He stretched his arms out then he slipped his hair tie off and combed his fingers through his hair. 

“No,” he said. “Not yet.” Roy noticed Jason’s hand resting palm down on a pen on the table. Roy wondered where Jason had gotten it, it wasn’t any pen that Roy owned, too nice. The crumpled receipt from the pizza shop had been flattened and something was written on the blank side, but Roy was too bleary eyed to read it. 

“‘s that?” Roy asked, nodding at the receipt with his chin. He thought, for a moment, that Jason was doing math, dividing up what Roy owed him now that they’d eaten. 

“Nothing... Just writing,” Jason said. He picked up the receipt and, pretending to read and putting on a voice, said “‘pizza: good.’” 

“Oh, how poetic,” Roy said, pushing his voice to meet Jason in the dramatic play. “You wouldn’t happen to be a writer, would you? You’re so eloquent with your words.”

“Me: writer,” Jason affirmed, touching his own chest. Then they both bent over with laughter, silly and loose from the evening. 

“Oh,” Roy sighed when he recovered, rubbing his eye with his knuckle. He felt warm.

Roy glanced and saw the kids on the couch. Colin was asleep sitting up and Lian was laying sideways with her feet in Colin’s lap, her eyes mere slivers, and watching the TV. Roy sighed. As much as he hated to wake the boy, Colin had to go home. 

“Lian wants Colin to stay overnight for New Years Eve,” Roy said, keeping his voice low at the table, just talking to Jason and thinking out loud. “I gotta talk to the sisters at the orphanage. They’ll want to do a home inspection. He can’t stay overnight until they do.”

“He’s here all the time,” Jason pointed out.

“Overnights are different. But I’ve had supervision privileges for months now so I hope they like me enough to up the ante.”

“They’ll like you,” Jason said simply. 

Roy drummed his fingers on the table and glanced at his hand. Across from him, the receipt had disappeared.

“Me; writer,” Roy repeated quietly, with a little laugh.

Jason’s hand was flat on the table again and nearby and Roy reached over and put his hand over it.

Jason turned his hand over so that they rested palm to palm, both of them looking at their hands. 

Nothing necessarily swelled up in Roy then, but a general feeling of contentment laid over him like a blanket. Somewhere in his mind Roy remembered that most straight men didn’t sit quietly, happily, holding the hands of their male friends. Roy wasn’t straight and he wondered, for the first time in plain words, if Jason wasn’t either.

Roy didn’t trust himself to tell, and didn’t want to assume. It was important, he had long ago decided, that getting his hopes up about romance was unwise. 

Still, here he was, properly holding Jason’s hand. Jason was holding his hand back.

And no matter what non-assumptions or non-hopes Roy had, it felt right.

When Roy looked at Jason, the other man was resting his chin on his fist and blinking slowly, looking relaxed. 

“Falling asleep?” Roy asked coyly.

Jason’s scarred mouth twitched in a smile. “No,” he said. “Not yet.”

Then Jason sat back and their hands slid apart and Roy pushed himself up from the table. No matter that he wanted Colin to stay the night, it would harm Roy with the nuns if he let the boy do so at this stage. With remorse, Roy went to the couch, knelt, and pet Lian’s hair. Then he put his palm on Colin’s knee. 

Colin opened his eyes with a slowness Roy hated to interrupt. 

“Hey buddy. Let’s get you back,” Roy said quietly.

Colin sank further into the couch before he fully woke from his napping. Lian moved her legs off of his lap and Colin came around. He staggered to his feet and adjusted his jeans, his head hanging heavy with his chin to his chest.

“Bye Col,” Lian said from the couch. It looked like she might stay there but then she sat up, looking just as droopy as the boy did. She got to her feet and wrapped her arms around Colin’s shoulders and tucked her cheek into his neck. Colin’s arms were a loose circle around her waist, a boy vaguely aware that the girl’s father was close by. Roy didn’t watch closely anyway.

“Are you going home?” Roy asked Jason, walking to the door. Jason slipped out of his seat at the table.

“I guess. Dogs need dinner and all that,” he mumbled. 

“You can sleep on the couch,” Roy offered. “You can sleep here whenever.”

“You too, at my place,” Jason said, bending over and tying his boots.

“You don’t even have a couch,” Roy pointed out.

“Yeah but I’ll have a bed by this weekend,” Jason said. They were quiet for a moment. Jason glanced up, looking a little sheepish. “I’ll get a couch,” he said, not offering further commentary about the bed.

Colin came up to the door and slipped into his shoes, put on his jacket, wrapped his scarf, and tugged his hat over his ears. When all were ready to depart, they opened the door.

“I’ll be back in a minute, Li,” Roy said. Lian stood in the living room with her bare feet and nodded. 

“Um. Bye, Lian,” Jason said.

“Bye. Thanks for. Yeah,” she said. Roy smiled to himself and closed the door behind them all. 

Roy put Colin in the truck with the heater warming up while Jason put his dogs into his own. 

The cul-de-sac was quiet and, truthfully, it wasn’t nearly as late in the evening as it felt.

By some agreement, when all passengers were secured away, Jason and Roy met on the ice speckled dirt between the trucks. Roy opened his arms and Jason stood up straight to receive Roy’s customary goodbye hug. This one was longer than most. Jason, though sleepy, was sturdy and tall and a wall that Roy draped himself against. 

At Roy’s neck, he felt Jason’s beard scratch him. 

Roy closed his eyes and felt the hug returned.

It came easily to the mind of Roy. The words rested inside his mouth.

I love you.

At that moment it had little to do with potentials of romance, or the realization that Roy was attracted to Jason- and had so much more to do with the excellent company Jason made.

It had everything to do with everything and it was based on fact; not hope. 

When the hug broke, both of them sinking away, Roy’s hand slid down Jason’s arm from shoulder to wrist and he caught Jason’s hand with his own.

Jason was looking at him from behind a placid expression. But he squeezed Roy’s hand. 

Roy didn’t speak first, worried that if he opened his mouth that all he would say was I love you and that that would be too strange. It had been too strange for others. 

Jason cracked a smile in the light of the far away street lamp and took mercy on Roy. 

“Bye. That was a fun day.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” Roy sighed, smiling back. The words faded away, the same way Roy’s breath puffed out into the cold air. “Drive safe.”

“You too. See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. See you.”

They had nothing planned. It was simply that they were going to see each other.

Jason let go and turned around and got in his truck. Roy let him drive out to the street before following in his own, and then they rolled away in opposite directions on Main street.

At the orphanage, Roy walked Colin into the building. The sister in the office seemed just as sleepy as they did and Roy wondered if the whole town had gone into some kind of stupor as soon as the sun set. Roy squeezed Colin’s shoulder in lieu of a hug, thinking it would be more appropriate for the nun at the desk if Roy didn’t touch the boy too much.

Colin simply folded into Roy and they hugged anyway. Roy pat his back and could feel Colin almost asleep against his chest.

“Go on,” he coaxed. “Hot shower, off to bed. Have a good day at school tomorrow,” Roy instructed him. Colin looked up and nodded seriously, looking incredibly young in the eyes.

Roy smiled and ruffled Colin’s hair. Again he was overcome with the words, his heart too big for his chest. It felt like saying it to Lian. All he’d have to do is open his mouth and he’d say,

I love you.

Instead Roy turned Colin by the shoulders towards the hall and nudged him along. Colin shuffled away.

Roy inhaled through his teeth, held it, then turned to the sister at the desk. 

“Can I set up an appointment? Colin and my girl, Lian, they get along really well. Can you come inspect my house so I can get approved for sleepovers?”

Chapter Text

In summer, at the age of twelve, Jason ran down the potholed driveway to Eddie’s house. The days were long and hot and humid. July stuck his shirt under his arms and his bangs to his forehead. The sky was blue and clouds drifted, sparse and cheerfully plump. 

Jason ritually slapped the aluminum mailbox as he skipped past it. The house was visible from the road, a single story painted a gentle yellow. It had all the narrow windows of a ranch style house built in the seventies. The lawn was emerald with the fresh growth of the season, long and unmowed. 

Jason skid to a stop twenty feet from the house and cupped his hands around his mouth.

“Eddie!” he called, dragging out the syllables, sounding a bugle to rouse his friend for the day. 

Jason wasn’t a stranger to the house, and Eddie’s Aunt Marla was perfectly nice to Jason. But it was summer. Adults were tiresome at best during the years of youth, and summer made them outright extraneous. The boys had business to conduct in the long days; forest forts needed maintenance, fish needed baiting on the lake shore, the junkyard needed sifting for treasures, and on and on. The lives of adults were tangential to this important work. Aunt Marla didn’t need to say hello to Jason, she simply needed to free her nephew for the day.

“Eddie!”

Jason kicked a rock and shuffled impatiently, lingering in the friendless moment of the morning. He itched his ankles together. There was a bug bite on the bone of his right ankle that bothered him greatly and it rubbed against the edge of his shoe in a persistent tickle. At night he smeared toothpaste on it to cool it off enough to sleep.

The front door of the house exploded open and Jason hopped in place. Eddie barreled out and spun. He shoved the door shut against the summer swollen wooden frame. 

“Come on!” Jason yelled, feeling like a cricket in the grass, jumpy in his shoes.

Eddie tumble-ran down the stairs like he might go face first into the crumbling driveway. He found his balance when his feet hit the pavement and he charged toward Jason. They ran together to the road and followed it to the trailhead they’d marked with a weaving of branches.

Eddie Bloomberg was a small, strawberry blonde boy with freckles made thick by summer sun. He was excitable and chubby cheeked and smart and honest; he was Jason’s best friend.

January. Saturday.

Eddie drove from Augusta once a month to visit Jason and the town that raised them. He was Jason’s unfailing pen pal and sole confidante. 

After a day of working in the cabin together with the music turned up and beers on hand, they went into Dove to continue their companionable merriment as the early sun set. 

Dove had two bars. 

Hawk & Dove was the creaking, historical tavern house nestled beside the equally aged grange hall. On the walls were framed black and white 1800s pictures of main street paved with dirt. Patrons tucked themselves into the privacy of the thickly padded booths. There were dusty mementos pinned among the wooden rafters; an ancient looking beaver trap spread wide and hung on nails, a pair of loggers’ leather gloves so dry they flaked when touched, and of course, the stuffed and posed heads and bodies of hunter’s pride. Above the bartender, pinned to the wall, was a six foot antique ice saw. Hawk & Dove was as much a museum and landmark as it was a bar. Summer tourists drank strong bitter coffee in the morning or whiskey in the evenings and imagined themselves in the industry days of trapping and logging - perhaps unaware that they were drinking beside modern loggers and that the industry continued mere miles away.

The other bar was young by comparison, but had no less character. Set in a squarish, rain stained, wood sided building, Warriors was a cheery, youthful place. It boasted a lineup of craft beers. There had been a party when the bar got a television to hang in the corner. Regulars had unspoken rights to the bar seats and an audience with the bartenders. The rest of the rabble could stand, or else sit on the stools lining the walls of the main room under a shallow shelf for drinks. The centerpiece of the cramped bar were two pool tables beneath low hanging lamps. The bar glowed green from reflected light of the tables. The audience socialized against the walls, and Guy Gardner, big in body and spirit, conducted from the the bar. Behind him climbed shelves of liquor and glassware. The wood plank ceiling above Guy dripped with dollar bills taped to the ceiling; each one had a little cheeky message or drawing in pen (usually a doodled dick in George Washington’s mouth). Where Hawk & Dove was tired, Warriors was playful and made for mingling.

The sounds of carousing and rock music poured after Jason and Eddie as they stepped out of Warriors and into the dark parking lot. The door swung shut behind them and they laughed, tipsy, about the game of pool they had just played.

“That was stupid! How did you do that corner pocket, dude?” Jason demanded. “I was like: no, no way is he going to- well, shit, there he goes.” Jason waved his hand through the air then slapped his own forehead in astonishment.

Eddie crowed triumphantly. He wobbled on the slippery pavement but kept his feet under him. Jason edged to the side of the door and stood where the snow was still crunchy and stable under his boots. 

“It’s a secret trick,” Eddie said, spinning on the ball of his foot and tracing his finger through the air to point at Jason.

“It’s dumb luck.” Jason pulled his pack of cigarettes from his Carhartt. The zipper was still undone and the cold night air felt good on his overheated chest. The crowding and heat of the bar had him sweating. 

They smoked together. The night was clear and the air crisp. A few folk came and went from the bar, or smoked in the lot which was cast in a watery light from the moon and a green wash from the windows of the bar.

A red truck pulled into the parking lot and crept along the line of cars, searching for an empty space. The headlights swept across Jason and Eddie and they both looked down at the icy pavement around their feet, squinting into the rising smoke of their cigarettes. When the light had passed on, Jason lifted his head again. He blinked as he realized that Roy had just driven past them.

Eddie was still talking, something idle and light. Jason shook his head against the mix of thoughts rising in him. He hadn’t been expecting to see Roy here, at a bar. 

The sound of a car door slamming drew Jason back. He watched Roy step into view, putting his hands in his pockets as he started walking toward the door and, therefore, towards the two of them.

“Hey,” Jason called over the sounds of talk and music seeping from the building.

Eddie paused his talking and turned his head to look at the approaching man. Roy likewise paused at the sound of recognition and seemed to see them for the first time, standing aside of the door. Roy ambled casually toward them, wearing his shearling and his hat backwards.

“Who’s he?” Eddie asked.

“Roy,” Jason said, both in explanation and in greeting to Roy when he came up and stood with them.

“Hey.” Roy cupped Jason’s elbow as a greeting. 

It wasn't a hug, which was the way Roy usually said hello . It wasn’t a handshake or a fist-bump either, which, weirdly, would have felt too formal. The touch was the same brand of earnest familiarity that Jason was beginning to associate only with Roy. Jason was caught between embarrassment and relief.

It had been a calm night before Roy appeared; now Jason’s damned heart wouldn’t quit its anxious rabbiting. He wasn’t ready to tell Eddie about Roy. Jason didn’t know what to say about Roy- there was too much to say about Roy.

Roy looked at Eddie, perhaps oblivious to the fact that Jason was spiraling beside him. “Hey man, what’s up? I’m Roy Harper.” He extended a friendly hand.

Eddie slipped his own from where he’d been warming it in his pocket and shook once.  “Eddie Bloomberg.”

Jason looked straight between the two men and announced, “Roy’s been helping me at the cabin.”

“That so?” Eddie said with a snort, as if it were a joke. Not much happened around the cabin that Jason didn’t tell Eddie about. Until now.

“I think Jason would still be without doors if I hadn’t put them in myself,” Roy said wryly. 

Jason blanched internally at the inside joke. He wanted desperately to share the context with Eddie, but Jason wasn’t sure yet- wasn’t sure about the context . Jason felt his cheeks going warm and he hoped the cold night air was a good enough excuse if he was blushing.

“No shit! I thought Jas just had a stroke of motivation,” Eddie teased. Jason made eye contact with him briefly then lit another cigarette. Eddie was still looking at him when Jason glanced up again. 

“He has those,” Roy said.

“Does he?” Eddie said, unwavering in his eye contact. 

Jason glared. There was a slight pout on his friend's mouth; Jason knew it meant that Eddie was holding back questions. It wouldn’t be so easy to sweep this thing past his best friend.

And as for friends, Jason only had Eddie. If he was feeling particularly extroverted, Jason could tune in to the dramas of the other Waynes, or visit with Alfred. Otherwise, Jason’s social needs were met by being kindly yet distant with the townsfolk.

The people of Dove knew Jason too well, as was the nature of a small town. The memory of the community was long lasting and Jason had spent years doing his best to forget . He couldn't bear too much attention, couldn't bear them knowing his hurt, more so than they already did.

Eddie, Jason’s oldest friend, knew these long standing truths. 

And Roy was… 

Jason glanced at Roy, at the way the cold made his mouth pinker than usual, the way the neon light of the OPEN sign illuminated him- 

“I’m meeting Dick and some friends,” Roy explained. Jason looked away, frowning around his cigarette. “What’ve you guys been up to?”

“Hanging out. I’m visiting.” Eddie explained, unpinning Jason from his dark blue gaze and turning it on Roy. Then, with meaning, he added, “helping Jason at the cabin.” 

Jason refused to be provoked and looked at neither of them.

A beat passed. Roy glanced around. “See you inside?” 

“Mhm,” Jason grunted and let Roy go. 

The door closed and the two friends were alone again.

“You bitch,” Jason said.

“ You bitch,” Eddie snarked back. He brightened up quickly. “Who is he? Never seen him before.”

“He’s new. Or. He grew up here but had to move away as a kid. He’s back now.”

“Oh. So you guys’ve been hanging out?” Eddie’s tone implied that he was pretending not to pry. “Weird, because you haven’t mentioned him in any of your letters.”

Jason scowled, caught. He scuffed snow at Eddie with his boot.

“We hang out, yeah,’’ Jason said shortly. “And what about it? Jealous?”

“ So jealous; you replaced me with another redhead, dude!” Eddie cried, clutching the heart of his denim jacket as if he were wounded.

“You’re an idiot.”

“You wish I was.”

“I really do.”

Eddie glanced through the window of the bar. Jason wanted to turn and look too. Maybe he’d see Roy, breathless from the sudden warmth inside. Instead, he shook his head. If he said something more about Roy, maybe Eddie's curiosity would be satisfied and he'd quit prying.

“Roy has a kid. And he’s a photographer. And he hunts.”

“Sounds well adjusted. Maybe that’ll rub off on you.”

“I’m well adjusted,” Jason griped. He pointed the stub of his cigarette at Eddie who grinned at him. “In fact, I’m so well adjusted that I managed to make a new friend. Huh?”

“First one in your life, I’d say,” Eddie estimated and scratched under the collar of his jacket, where the red ink of his neck tattoo licked flames beneath his jaw.

“Shut up.”

“I’m happy for you!” Eddie tossed his hands up. “Really. I am, okay? You guys hang out often?”

Every chance we have.

Jason shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Okay. Well. Some new guy is hanging out with my best friend and you didn’t think to mention it to me,” Eddie explained, finally easing off. He shoved his hands in his pockets and watched the scarred side of Jason’s face with blue eyes so dark they looked black. 

Jason looked off past the cars to the dark silhouette of the pines against the navy sky. 

Why hadn’t he told Eddie about Roy? Jason told Eddie everything, to the point of exhaustion. Eddie knew Jason’s fears. When Jason was full of words, he knew they were safe on a page with Eddie Bloomberg. 

Jason shrugged, not sure what to say. Again he felt the urge to turn and look through the window to find Roy. The words were still forming, but the feeling was definitely there. And strong.

“Okay,” Eddie said when Jason stopped looking into the middle distance. “Let’s go inside. My balls are freezing.” Then he perked up. “And I want to ask Roy what kind of photos he takes; I bet they’re nudies.”

“Don't-” Jason started, slapping Eddie on the arm. He shooed his friend inside and followed him. 

The noise of the bar crashed over them as they walked in. Jason spotted Roy standing at the bar. After nudging Eddie toward the pool tables, he shouldered gently through the bodies at the bar to get beside Roy. 

“Hey,” Jason said, loud enough to be heard by Roy but not so loud that he was shouting. 

Roy turned his head and smiled up at Jason, pleasant as spring time. 

“Hey yourself.” Roy bumped the center of Jason’s chest with his shoulder. 

Guy slapped a coaster on the thickly varnished bar top in front of Roy and turned away to fetch a drink.

“What’re you…?” Jason asked, glancing at the cash Roy was pinching, ready to trade it with Guy. Confusion wriggled inside Jason’s chest, trepidation. Roy was sober, or so he thought; so Roy had told him. Was it Jason’s place to say something if Roy ordered a drink? Jason could say something if he wanted to, couldn't he? 

Jason’s skin itched beneath the collar of his t-shirt. The bar felt cramped.

A glass bottle of coke settled on the coaster. Roy pushed the cash across the bar top to Guy and smiled an inaudible “thanks” beneath the sounds of carousing.

Jason blinked.

Roy scooped up the bottle and rocked back on his heel to face Jason. “You want another drink? On me?” he offered genially, looking up the few inches at Jason who was still grappling with his own misunderstanding. Jason was tipsy and slow. 

“Uh. No. Thanks,” he managed. Jason added a quick smile to punctuate his awkward hovering. He stepped backwards and Roy followed him, still looking up into his face with his usual companionable smile. 

Why does he smile at me like that, Jason wondered. He stepped back again and glanced around for Eddie, wondering if his friend was watching and presuming . For the first time, Jason looked at himself and Roy as if through someone else’s eyes. He wasn't sure what he saw, friends or...

Eddie had joined the audience of a pool game and was ignoring them. Jason looked at Roy and found that Roy had, again, matched his step.

After a pause, Jason asked, “want to watch the round?” and nodded sideways at the pool tables. They needed something to do, some third party to get Jason out of Roy’s full attention.

Roy nodded. Jason surprised himself by simply knowing the meaning of the expression on Roy’s face: a little shy (a new place), but happily moored to Jason. Trusting.

Jason turned away at the realization, hiding his pleased and confused reaction under the guise of molding a spot in the crowd for the two of them. Roy followed in Jason’s broad wake and stood within his orbit when Jason posted up near the wall. 

“You like playing?” Roy asked, craning closer to Jason to speak without shouting. Jason nodded. “We should play sometime.”

“You’re going to shark me, I already know it.”

“What? I would never. Promise.” Roy drank his soda. Then he asked, “Is Eddie any good?”

“He can be lucky,” Jason grumbled.

“Oh, are you a sore loser?” Roy teased.

“Never.”

“No, of course not.” 

There was a hiss of disappointment from one of the players when they scratched.

“What’re you and Eddie doing at the cabin?”

“Since when has ‘ working at the cabin ’ become a euphemism?” Jason snapped before he could stop himself, raising his voice over the music.

Jason wanted to swallow the words as soon as they left him; Roy hadn’t emphasized his question and wasn’t teasing him like Eddie.

In an attempt to soothe what Jason perceived as an outburst, he continued talking and made it worse.

“We were just moving the bed in.”

Jason frowned intensely at the game of pool, feeling hot in the face. 

It was a herculean effort to keep himself from saying more, from spewing the heterosexual excuses he was certain he was supposed to be making. This was all Eddie’s fault for putting it into Jason’s head that having a friend was somehow scandalous. Apparently, in his honest search for peace, Jason had stumbled into a machismo trap that branded him a lone wolf; all outside contact was taboo.

Finally, Jason landed on the excellent, drink inspired sentiment that ‘people were generally horrible and it was best to be alone forever.’

Absorbed in his self-made humiliation, Jason didn’t notice that Roy had gone very still beside him. Jason counted the striped balls on the pool table over and over until there were none left. The game finished and Jason grunted something about getting another beer. He didn’t look at Roy as he slipped past him and Roy didn’t follow him to the bar. 

While angling himself between the seated patrons at the bar, asking Guy for another pint, the cold night air rushed into the overheated room with a new group of bodies. Jason hunkered himself lower when he saw (and heard) Dick leading the charge. He didn’t watch while they absorbed Roy and Jason tried not to listen to the shouted greetings and laughter. 

A hand on Jason’s shoulder made him jump. He looked aside and saw Eddie chewing on the inside of his cheek. 

“You wanna leave?” Eddie asked.

Jason rolled his eyes. He wasn’t that annoyed by his brother. Guy returned with a fresh pint in his thickly knuckled hand and set it before Jason, never breaking his conversation with regular seated beside Jason.

“No.” 

Jason stood up and finally turned, looking at the corner where Roy’s friends had posted up. There was Donna, pushing her thick black hair behind her ear. She dropped her hand and tapped it on Roy’s forearm while she rocked her head back in a laugh. Dick was motioning between himself and Roy while talking with her. The group surrounded Roy, crowding him, smiling, all of them caught up in the jumble of a reunion. There were a handful of them, more friends than Jason had ever had.

Near them, lurking in a bored lean against the wall, was a young woman. Her hair was so blonde it could have been white. She wore a cropped leather jacket, and picked at her nails: Rose. Jason could see her older brother, Joey, among Roy and Dick’s friends. 

Jason glanced at Eddie who was also watching her, pouting slightly. Rose had been a school mate of theirs, and Eddie’s oldest crush. His latest attempts at wooing had crashed and burned during his last visit to Dove.

“Do you want to leave?” Jason asked, quirking a brow and raising the rim of his glass to his mouth.

Eddie shook his head. “No, nah. It’s cool. I’m not going to be weird,” he promised, still pouting. Jason felt bad for him.

“Right…”

“I’m gonna go say hi,” Eddie said, clearly mustering his confidence. He straightened and tugged the hip of his jeans higher. “You think she’s still…?”

“Annoyed?” Jason twisted his mouth in thought. “Nah.” Eddie didn’t see his vengeful smirk, hidden in a sip of lager. “Rose doesn’t hold a grudge, you know that.”

“Shut up. She absolutely does, you bitch,” Eddie rambled weakly. Despite his assessment of her character, Eddie leaned forward and started walking towards Rose anyway, letting momentum supplement his confidence. 

Jason shook his head and swigged his beer. “Nice knowing you, Bloomberg.”

The night became shifting and forgettable as Jason drank his beer. He was far from a lightweight, but he leaned into the choppy feeling. He watched Eddie’s advances fail spectacularly from a safe distance and when Eddie returned, emotionally wilted, Jason beckoned him to the opposite side of the room and they sat on a pair of stools together.

The duo pitied themselves heavily for the rest of the night, watching their objects of affection from across the bar. Jason settled into the notion that he had swiftly and successfully made an ass of himself in one way or another. More than that, the idea of Roy that Jason had formed in his head had somehow gone slippery and flux and Jason didn’t like it when he couldn’t put words to something. He watched Roy laughing among his friends, talking fast and expressively, bright with charisma. Jason burned with jealousy for Roy’s attention which he had shirked earlier.

At the end of his beer, with his chin in his hand, Jason sulked and watched Roy over Donna’s shoulder. Roy was listening to Donna- they all listened to Donna- with attention and smiles. Roy’s eyes drifted away from her and he glanced around the group of friends. He looked further out, squinting at the lamps hanging low over the pool tables.

And then his gaze landed on Jason.

Roy tilted his head and his smile softened. One of his eyes squinted into the tentative expression.

By the time Jason realized that he was being acknowledged, he fumbled into a nod. Jason ducked his head and rubbed his hand over his mouth and tugged at the hairs of his beard nervously. Jason felt confused. 

Jason turned to Eddie and nodded towards the door, longing to leave.

In the truck, winding their way back to the cabin on dark roads, Eddie mourned the lost wind from his sails.

“Next time,” he said, for the third time. “If I ask her out next time, she’ll go on a date with me.” Eddie kept nodding to himself and tugging on the wrists of his jacket. “She'll come around, right?” 

Jason wasn’t listening to the latest tensions between Eddie and Rose. Jason was replaying each of Roy’s expressions, and all of Jason’s stupid words . The night felt unfinished. Jason hadn’t even said goodbye . 

The cabin seemed darker than usual when they walked in.

It was strange to sleep on a real bed after so long on a cot next to the woodstove.

That was definitely why Jason had trouble sleeping.

Chapter Text

The next morning.

Roy was slow to get up. The bed was warm and welcoming. It was a beautiful winter morning, one with blue sky and sunshine. The day glowed around the edges of the bedroom blinds.

At the distant sound of Lian in the kitchen- the thwump of the freezer door slamming- he coaxed himself up and into a pair of sweatpants. Quietly, Roy exited the bedroom and shut the door behind him as he stepped out into the galley kitchen.

Lian had her finger on the slide of the toaster and 2 frozen waffles primed in the slots. Her hair was already braided back and she was dressed in leggings and a yellow hoodie. They regarded each other for a beat.

Lian looked placidly from Roy’s face to the place where he still held the door shut in a bid for privacy and then back to his face again. Snapping the toaster slide down, Lian gave her father a smug look.

“ Morning ,” she greeted.

Roy gave her a cordial nod and a soft roll of his eyes. He left Lian to her waffles and side stepped into the bathroom where the tile felt overly cold on his bare feet. 

When he emerged again into the kitchen, Roy began preparing the coffee machine.

“I’m going to the library today,” Lian said, stacking her waffles on a plate.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Roy said with sleep in his voice. He cleared his throat and turned around to lean back against the counter. 

Shirtless, he hugged his arms across his chest. Lian turned away and looked as if she were about to take her breakfast to her room. 

“Wait. It’s Sunday. Library’s closed?” he said.

“There’s an ice rink in the empty lot beside it,” Lian explained, pausing by the table. “Colin and Damian will be there.”

“Oh, cool. You want a ride? I can come too.” Roy rubbed the side of his stubbled face with his palm. 

“I can walk,” she said. “You’re doing your own thing.” 

“Fair enough. Text me?”

Lian nodded and Roy accepted that and let her go to her own room and close her door.

Belatedly, Roy remembered that Lian didn’t have any ice skates.

Roy left the coffee machine to gurgle and hiss and returned to the bedroom. In the bed, Donna was waking, pulling the blankets closer to her chin. Seeing Roy, she gave him a brief sleepy smile.

“Hi,” she said quietly. 

“Hey.” Roy happily climbed onto the bed. The little giddy sound Donna made when he hauled the blankets over himself, subsequently flushing cool air into the bed, made Roy laugh. “Sorry, sorry.”

Roy searched her out in the bed and Donna tucked her nose into Roy’s chest. 

It was incredibly familiar to be with Donna.

In the years since he’d gotten sober, Roy had reconnected with her multiple times. 

Donna had revealed Roy's gift for photography. Afterall, Donna was a photographer. He’d discovered it in a studio in San Francisco- Donna was shooting models and Roy was rock climbing on the coast- and she passed her Canon to Roy. 

Roy put his eye to the viewfinder and it made sense.

Time didn’t seem to matter when it came to Donna. Whether as kids secreting away from their friends, or years and a country apart, they were steady.

“I put coffee on,” Roy mumbled after a bit of snuggling.

“That sounds amazing.” Donna yawned and rolled onto her back. Her black hair whorled across the pillow. “Is Lian home?”

“She’s going out today with friends.”

Donna nodded.

“Dad!”

Both of them startled out of their lounging by the sound of Lian calling from the kitchen. Roy rested his hand on Donna’s shoulder to steady her as he sat up. 

“Yeah!” Roy called back, listening for Lian’s reply as he eased out of bed again.

“Jason’s here!”

Roy paused on his feet. Had he missed a call from Jason? He didn’t recall making any plans the night before. 

“I’ll be back,” Roy said, suddenly looking around for something to wear against the cold. His flannel shirt from the night before would have to do, tossed to the floor as it was when he and Donna had been undressing. She was sitting up. “It’s just my friend,” he explained. 

“Okay,” Donna said. “Jason? Like Dick’s brother, Jason?”

Roy slipped his arms into the shirt and brushed his hair over his shoulder. “Yeah. I still kind of forget that Dick has siblings now. Um. I just gotta see what’s up,” he said and excused himself to the kitchen.

Lian stood in the open front door, elaborating on her ice rink plans to Jason, who politely remained on the steps outside.

“Honestly, I’m just going to make Damian pull me around on the ice,” she said. Roy walked through the kitchen. The coffee smelled heavenly.

“As much as I support that plan, I’m sure Cass would love it if you used them next time.”

Roy approached and Lian gave a big shrug. She spun aside and busied herself with her boots and Roy took her place at the door.

"Jason said I can borrow his sister's ice skates next time," Lian explained by Roy's knee. Roy smiled.

"Well, isn't that nice of him?" Lian hummed back at Roy in agreement.

The cool air outside hit the skin of Roy’s chest where his shirt hung open. Roy blinked against the brightness of the outside and hugged himself.

Jason stood a step down from the door, looking up at Roy from under curling bangs and dark brows. In his hands, Jason worried his beanie. He looked lovely, pink cheeked, breath fogging in the cold blue morning. Parked in the cul-de-sac was Jason’s truck. Roy couldn’t believe he hadn’t heard it- so consumed in his lounging with Donna.

It was embarrassing how speechless Roy felt, so fresh from sleep, with one beautiful person in his bed and another calling on him.

Lian shoved past Roy’s side on her way out, dressed for the day. Roy called after her, “Have fun!”

“Bye!” Lian bustled out, leaping around Jason who turned to look after her. They watched the girl jog toward Main Street.

Roy let out a big sigh. Jason turned to him again.

“So, what’s up?” he asked Jason, starting to formulate an explanation about why he couldn’t spend his child-free day cozied up with Jason in his truck, already being spoken for as he was. Not that Jason and Donna couldn’t get along, but Roy wanted a shower, and maybe another few hours in bed. 

“Do you think-...” Jason visibly gathered himself and stilled his hands, holding his hat tightly. 

Roy forgot all about an excuse and leaned closer, hovering in the doorway, squinting against a face-full of January sunlight. 

“Do you think two men can be in love?”

“Yes,” Roy said straight away. The back of his neck felt hot. “What-”

“Okay. I have to start with that because, well, you know-”

“I know,” Roy assured him. They were cutting each other off, both of them stepping on the heels of the other man’s words. “Jason?”

“It’s just that, last night I think I made an idiot of myself. I was saying-”

“Don’t worry about it, please,” Roy gently insisted, barely remembering what Jason was referring to: something to do with innuendos, something that Roy hadn’t thought twice about.

“I’m not a homophobe,” Jason stated, standing fast and blushing.

“I know.” Roy was vibrating, skin crawling with goosebumps from the cold and hugging himself tightly. 

“I think I like men. I like -” Jason huffed in frustration and glanced away for the first time since the encounter had begun. Jason stuttered through the beginnings of multiple sentences, insistent that he find the right words. “I don’t. When I was. You . I mean; Eddie and I-”

Jason and Eddie.

“Roy?”

The sound of Donna’s voice pricked the delicate film of the sunlit moment. Roy tore his eyes from Jason who stood mid-confession on the doorstep and looked back into the house to see Donna approaching from the kitchen. She wore her jeans and cuddled herself inside Roy’s blue “ Climbing Rocks! ” sweatshirt. 

“Hey.” Donna’s warm palm caressed Roy’s back when she stopped at the doorway. She looked out to see Jason and she smiled so kindly and Roy hated himself to wish that she had stayed in bed. “Jason, it’s been forever. How are you?”

Jason stared at them wide eyed. He looked at Roy’s bare chest where his shirt hung open, at Donna beside him in Roy’s clothing, and shook himself with a blink.

“I’m good. I was just going,” he said placidly. Jason wobbled slightly as he backed down the steps. “Have a good one.”

As Jason spun away and walked quickly to his truck, Roy turned to Donna.

“Just a second,” Roy said as politely as he could, then he launched himself from the crook of Donna’s embrace and bounded down the steps barefoot. “Wait, Jason,” he called, barely feeling the rough ice packed gravel against his feet.

When Roy got to the truck, Jason had just seated himself. He had a hand on the driver's door to pull it shut. Roy braced his hands on the frame and the door to keep Jason from closing it and he looked up at his friend, panting slightly. 

“What were you going to say?” Roy asked. His heart was pounding. So quickly had his world been turned over. Roy swallowed. “You can tell me.”

Jason was frowning softly behind his beard, mouth slightly open. He shook his head. 

“What was I saying,” Jason said softly. He looked away and put the keys in the ignition. The engine rumbled.

“You were- um. You were talking about you and Eddie?” Roy prompted. He wilted when he heard himself speak it. Part of him had thought Jason was going to say- meant to say-

“Yeah.” Jason rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry if I said anything stupid last night. Or if Eddie did. I just didn’t want you to think I was some kind of asshole.”

“No, of course not.” 

Roy waited. 

But when Jason looked down at Roy, soft and a little slumped in his seat, Roy knew he’d missed the window. Jason was shy and he often fled from talking about himself; he was unwilling to confess further now that their privacy had been breached.

With a poorly contained sigh, Roy let go of the door.

“Sorry,” Jason said. Though Jason was looking right at Roy, the apology sounded like it came from a far away sensitive place. Roy shook his head against it.

“No. Look. You-” Roy gestured in frustration and Jason actually laughed at that, sounding more like himself.

“I’m sorry,” Jason said again, yet somehow he apologized for something else entirely. “Go inside,” Jason encouraged him; Roy hadn’t realized that he had started to shiver. Roy made a grumpy face and was relieved when it drew a helpless smile to Jason’s mouth.

Roy stepped back and Jason reached out for the door. 

“You can always talk to me,” Roy said.

“I know,” Jason assured him. “I’ll see you.”

Roy would have stood there and watched Jason drive away if his feet hadn’t become painfully cold. As it was, the truck rumbled off to the road as Roy staggered back to the house. 

“Everything okay?” Donna asked from the kitchen when Roy returned. He shut the door and shook himself in the warmth. 

“Yeah,” Roy said, shaking the chill from his hands. “Yeah, I was just. We’re just messing around.” Roy played off the lie with a mindless laugh.

The lovely day had turned over: a snow globe swirled and flipped upside down and upright again. Roy joined Donna in the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee to busy his hands.

Jason’s stuttering kept swirling in Roy’s mind. 

Do you think two men can be in love?

I think I like men.

You .

But then…

Eddie and I.

Jason and Eddie?

Roy recalled the evening before: the two men, their meaningful looks like they could read each other's minds, Jason's subtle paranoia. Roy had been so focused on meeting his old friends that he hadn't clocked the situation. Jason must have been worried that he had outed himself at the bar.

Himself and Eddie.

The word discreet came to mind.

Roy nodded and rested his mouth on the lip of his coffee mug, purposefully relaxed, and closed the subject for his own sake.

Chapter Text

Letter Jason >> Eddie

January 21

Dear Eddie,

I made a fool of myself after you left. I went to Roy’s place to tell him the truth. And I’ll tell you the truth too.

Being one of my few friends, and the closest of them all, I trust your estimation of my heart. Your surprise that Roy and I had become so close without your knowing made me face the true measure of my feelings. The simple fact that I haven’t even told you Roy’s name explains enough.

I met Roy in November. The leaves had all fallen and the frost was growing thicker every morning. Roy looked like autumn: copper hair and sunset eyes. It was as if he’d been in the soil all this time, in the timbers, and the breeze. Winter was coming in on his heels, yet summer was promised to me the first time I heard him laugh. I didn’t kiss him that first night, but now and then I forget and think that I did; because I’ve wanted to so many times since. I could kiss him out of gratitude for any number of kindnesses he’s done for me, including the simple kindness of his company. I love him.

Resolved in a moment of hungover clarity, I went straight away to Roy’s house after saying goodbye to you. Knowing Roy, my feelings would be safe, even if they weren’t returned. I stood on Roy’s steps, looking up into his sun filled face, and felt myself arriving, finally , to a place of bravery and soundness. 

Only to find out that Donna had spent the night with Roy. She was there, wearing his clothes.

I was transformed from a romantic into a fool, stumbling through a confession I didn’t rehearse on the drive over. I embarrassed myself. To finish me off, Roy was incredibly gentle with me. Not that he turned me down; how could he turn me down when I couldn’t even explain that the last months I’ve spent with him have been frighteningly joyful. 

I retreated at once and I think I’ll stay here at home, hidden, hoping he can forget about it. Hoping that I can forget about it. I’m in love, and I’m sorry for it, because I found another way to make myself miserable.

There is the truth. I’ll try to remember that I always have your confidence, despite my embarrassment. 

Your friend,

Jason

Letter Eddie >> Jason

January 24

Jason,

You poor thing.

I remember the last time you were in love. Rena. Middle school. You wrote pages and pages about Rena. Have you written as many about Roy? Have you taken him to the creek and asked him to play “Ophelia” yet? 

I’m sorry that you saw them the morning after. 

Roy looked like a heartbreaker. 

Bury yourself in some work. You’re almost done with that draft you showed me, so keep at it. And it’s time to finish the flooring in the cabin. You’ll sleep better after a day of flooring, I promise. Get that young guy Terry to work a few hours and the floors will be done in no time, and you’ll have a little company.

Reminds me that the shop got a kid apprentice recently. It’s good to have them around, they have all this energy and style. Talented kid, won’t be long before they do their first tattoo.

You know this, but maybe I could say it more often:

You’re my friend no matter who you love. 

I need you too, idiot, so don’t forget to write to me. 

I know that Dove feels like your whole world, but I’m not so far away that I can’t help.

Yours,

Eddie

Letter Grant >> Roy

January 28

Roy,

Everyday I feel like my skin gets tighter. I hate it. I haven’t told anyone that I’m leaving, but it feels like I might just say it if I try talking too much. I won’t say anything. That’s what some of the guys tell us to do, anyways. Don’t tell anyone that you got parole, or they make sure you won’t get it. 

The last months have been the longest of my life.

Sometimes I wake up and I'm shivering and the room is too small. Fuck this shit.

I keep thinking that he’ll be there when I walk out, like he’s on the other side of the door.

Last night I dreamed that he was in the cell with me, locked in.

I haven’t had dreams about Dad for years.

I know it’s just another 8 weeks. It’s too soon, does that make sense? But I don’t belong here suddenly.

Grant

Letter Roy >> Grant

February 4

Grant,

You’re doing everything right.

Honestly, you’re probably doing better than you think. Your life is about to change. I think you’re allowed to be stressed.

When you walk through the doors, the only person that will be there is me. And probably your parole officer, I’m still getting that coordinated.

Honestly, Grant, it could be the most underwhelming welcoming party in the world. You’re going to get in my rental car and we’ll get some dinner that your stomach probably won’t be able to handle yet, and you’ll be in the hotel bathroom all night! I would lower your expectations a little if I were you! Stress a little more about the post-prison shits and a little less about the torturous eternity of the next 7 weeks, okay?

You won’t feel like this forever. The world isn’t going to end when you leave GSP.

Roy

Letter Jason >> Eddie

February 6

Dear Eddie,

It’s impossible not to see Roy. 

After running into him at the corner store, Brown’s, the hardware store, and the gas station, my embarrassment has faded to a more tolerable wincing. At first I could tell that that January morning was still on his mind, but thankfully he didn’t mention it to me. I admit that I made it impossible for him to bring up the subject.

The draft is done. When I finished that I kept writing: about the snow drift piling up on the woodshed and about Roy. 

I haven’t taken Roy to the creek to play “Ophelia”, you bastard. I’ll never forgive myself after the first time. Mom told me not to bring Rena to our lake fort and I thought I was smart to bring her to the creek instead. Now, when I walk with the dogs there, I can still imagine her crawling out the river onto the clay bank, the dress soaked through, and her horror at the death trap a couple of boys had convinced her to try.

Thank you for saying it. I didn’t doubt you, especially not since the Kyle debacle. But the doubts do come in and it’s good to hear from a friend that I’m alright. I wonder what Mom would say about my liking men. I don’t know. 

Be good,

Jason

Letter Lian >> Grant

February 10

Dear Grant,

In the empty parking lot next to the library there is an ice rink. Every couple of days the guys at the fire station spray it down with water to keep the ice nice enough for skating. I hope it doesn’t melt by the time you come to Maine because I want to go skating with you!

Happy Valentine’s day!

Lian

Valentine’s card Lian >> Colin

February 14

Colin

Happy Valentine’s day!

Lian

Valentine’s card Lian >> Damian

February 14

Damian

Happy Valentine’s day!

Lian

Valentine’s card Colin -> Lian

February 15

Lian,

Thank you for the card. Happy Valentine’s day.

Colin

Letter Jason -> Eddie

February 18

Dear Eddie,

You’ll never believe this. I still feel like I’m imagining it.

When I bumped into him last week, Roy returned a copy of my magazine that I had leant him. Roy showed me that his photo was in the magazine: an outdoor gear advert. I laughed; I still can’t wrap my head around it. I’ve since gone through my collection at home and found that his photos are in almost every edition. If you have the Spring print from last year you can see a photo of him on page 10 in an advertisement for climbing gear. It’s like a joke. I keep opening the magazine to see if the picture will disappear. 

Roy invited me on a photo hike. We wore snowshoes and went into the hills in search of frozen waterfalls upriver. We didn’t talk about my confession and just enjoyed the company. Maybe things are back to the way they were. Already we’ve planned another day together; I promised his daughter, Lian, that she could borrow Cass’s old ice skates. I figure I’ll put on my skates as well. 

I paid Terry to help with the flooring. You were right, work helps the mind.

Your friend,

Jason

Letter Grant >> Roy

Eight years ago

Mr. Harper,

Thank you for the commissary money.

When you came to the prison last week you were giving some kind of talk to everyone about heroin. I’ve never done that. How come you sent me money?

Grant Emerson