Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A food supply truck slows to a stop along an impartial stretch of razor-wire fencing. Its driver adjusts his nutsack and spits sunflower seeds out the open window, chili-lime flavor clinging to his tongue. His bag of seeds wilts under the windshield, on top of a marked map. His eyes scan the horizon for oncoming cars. Nothing. He climbs out, lands hard on the dusty road. No one coming the other way, either. The air is steamy, the sun an unrelenting beam from the wide open sky. All around them is hard, grayish dirt, dry shrubbery, straw. If it isn’t blue or brown, it’s yellow.

The driver raps on the back of his truck, then leans down to unlatch it.

“Right, this where you said.” His words are spicy and acidic.

Black eyes blink in the bright sun. Then a pair of silver aviators slide over a petite, narrow nose, to hide the eyes. A body shuffling to pick itself and its accoutrements up and carry them into the burning light. This man from the back of the truck wears black pinstripes and Oxfords, a crisp white shirt, a thick, velvety tie, a diamond-encrusted watch. In one hand he has a black suitcase. His hair is starkly, frighteningly blond - bottle-blond, chemical-blond, lighter on the tips and already showing its much darker roots. His hair is the only part of his ensemble that does not immediately grow fiery-hot under the sun.

How can this be? It’s winter in London.

“Yeah,” Jim looks around. His expression twists, he shakes his head. And looks back to the driver.

With a clink, Jim undoes the strap of his watch and holds it out on his hand, palm up.

The driver looks at him warily, then reaches out and takes it.

Without another word, the driver closes the back of the truck and goes back to the front. He pulls away with a little shudder, the wheels balancing on the bumpy road, leaving Jim behind. It isn’t long before the vehicle is a distant square. A distant dot. He chucks his case over the razor-wire fence and slips in through the lower gap.

As he walks, bending the grass, he holds out his phone’s GPS in his free hand and hums a little tune.

A lean-to, a shack, a hovel, some miles from Texarkana’s city limits. As Jim walks, the grass becomes shorter, less brittle. The shrubs grow tall, become bony trees. The roads grow into asphalt and back into dirt, then into gravel, then into muddy tire tracks, then into unofficial hiking trails. He consults the GPS repeatedly. His jacket is thrown over his suitcase now, his shirt soaked through the back. Abysses of sweat shine underneath his armpits. The deep creases of his forehead and the pad beneath his nose are dewey, his toes squishing, sunglasses sliding off.

It sits beneath a hill, mercifully shaded, surrounded by a gossamer veil of thin trees. It’s flat, shoebox-shaped, maroon siding with a gray, coyly pointy roof and inscrutable interior. A slate-gray 1999 Toyota Camry sits outside on the dirt. Newspaper is plastered over the windows of the house. He sets down his case by the front door and opens it, revealing a number of pressed, box-folded clothes wrapped in plastic, a laptop, speaker, shot kit, an underarm holster, and a quarter of a million in US dollars. He removes a hefty keyring from an inner pocket and plucks through the bronze and silver teeth. Shoves them against the lock. He tests three before finding the right one. The door swings open.

Of course there’s no air conditioning.

—

Going into town for supplies is a regrettable necessity of Jim’s new status as a dead man. He leaves in the evening, in new clothes meant to disguise him as a nondescript passerby. Dull pants, fresh from their packaging, a linen-cotton blend shirt. Unfortunately, he has only one pair of shoes. The walk here has left a hot pink splash on the tips of his ears, his nose, his neck. It sears a little when he touches it.

The car struggles on the grassy paths, but eventually, the trees open up to an asphalt road.

The actual town, of a population less than 1,000, is fifteen miles from his safehouse. Where the road leads out of town, an army surplus store faces a diner. They have a main street - fishing supplies, general store, two bars - and further away, a gas station, and clusters of boxy houses not unlike the one Jim occupies.

The general store is open until 9:30, giving Jim plenty of time to gather necessities. But the town, what little there is, seems like it’s already asleep. There are no other customers in the store, and two lone attendants exchange perhaps four words throughout his entire visit. They watch with baggy eyelids as this blond, hunted-looking stranger stacks energy bars, caffeinated drinks, sunscreen, soaps, lotion, a nail kit, hair bleach, regular bleach, bottled water, magazines, bubblegum, and a carton of cigarettes in front of them. He pays by handing the cashier four hundreds. They look at it, confused. “… I ain’t got change for this.”

Their accent is a strange sound to Jim’s ears. He shakes his head. “No?” the cashier squints.

“Need help carryin’ that to your car, sir?” The other asks. Again, he shakes his head, taking the bags and leaving. As he loads up the backseat of his car, he murmurs to himself, in a low, Texas accent, “Ah ain’t got change for this. No? Need hilp carryan’ that back to your car, sir?” Sharp ‘r’s, speaking from deep in his chest.

The army surplus store appears to have existed for many, many years. It’s a brick building, tall, sticking out sorely on the city skyline. There, an older man in a floppy khaki hat leans over the counter to give Jim a hard look. Behind him, guns, grenades, and ammunition line the grated wall. “Hi there,” the man grumbles. His name-tag says Isaac. “Help you find somethin’?”

“No,” Jim says in the new affect, “I know what I need.”

Sleeping bag, a few gallons of fuel, a hunting knife, a stack of tarps, a canvas duffel, and - his eyes peer at a shelf of clothing on the other wall. Jim knows he needs a better way to mask, but surely he can find other options than old fatigues and khaki shirts. The store also has a selection of forest-floor camouflage, everything from clogs to cargo shorts to parkas, nothing that comes close to appealing.

When he approaches the counter, he again pays with big bills. Showing his hand, he flashes a few more hundreds and points to the wall of firearms. “How much for one of those? Something light.”

The man narrows his eyes. “You from around here?”

“No.”

“I can tell.” He leans back, thinking. “Fifteen hundred.”

Jim’s eyes glint. He has to resist asking - really? It’s that easy? “Deal.”

The man removes a handgun from the wall and examines it. “Darn, this one’s defective,” he sets it down on the counter, “better toss it out at the end of the night. ‘Scuse me.” He takes the cash and walks away pointedly. Jim takes the gun, and his sundries, and returns to his home.

-

Now, back at the safehouse, Jim lays out his wares and takes stock.

Now, back in town, at one of the bars, old Isaac remarks on the entry of someone new to their little town. Some rich city slicker. Some blond-haired, devil-eyed stranger with money to burn.

The information is absorbed by the townspeople, repeated over the next few days in small talk. Did you hear? Someone new just showed up.

Jim learns that his shower only produces tepid water, not cold or hot.

The story compounds, becomes more exotic. Some insist that the stranger, who was also seen by two teenagers manning the general store, who paid them in hundreds, is a CIA agent, plotting the hostile takeover of their little slice of Texas. Others claim he’s an independently wealthy foreigner seeking investment properties. The ranch, the surplus store, the diner, might be threatened by new management. One, an ancient figure confined to a camping chair on his porch, says he saw the stranger come into town and knew right away he was a manifestation of the devil, brought about by the Democrats, to turn their bars into gay clubs and violently inoculate their children. Jim’s arrival is like a strike of lightning on a clear day that the bored Red Lick citizens seize upon as an omen.

No one sees Jim again after the first night. The myth rises up, compounds, then fades away into recent memory.

He’s busy plugging in. His computer set up, fiber and vitamins and stimulants in him, he doesn’t turn his mind to the town whatsoever. When it wanders, it thinks of other things. Old things. Assertions.

This is good. Things were getting out of hand in London. Hence the detonation, that’s why he’s come here, to this terrible shack where it’s 5 degrees hotter than Hell, even at night.

Things were getting out of hand.

Now, his hands do seem more capable of holding on.

He spent years building what he had; now he’s gone, dead, and it’ll all be destroyed, piece by piece. If he stops them, his death will be disproved. Even the slightest suspicion that he still exists is too much to incur. This is the cost of starting over.

It isn’t all bad. Sherlock will be devastated. Bored. Desperately seeking the spark that Moriarty brought. Where is it, Holmes? Is it hidden somewhere in that bloated cerebrum? Look deeper, claw it open. It’s in Texas. He’d never go to Texas.

See, Jim? This is good. This is a fresh start, an optimal start. An opportunity to create something better, with knowledge and savings. An advantage, like all the other boys get.

This sullen house is no more of an obstacle to his proceedings than the spilling sands of time. And Jim knows how to slow down time. How to make it speed up. How to detach from its flow completely. And the same goes for his austere accommodations.

No more glittering penthouse, or glass-and-steel office buildings, or first class tickets, or chauffeurs.

No more thick, expensive suits.

Fine.

No more CCTV feeds. No more eyes everywhere.

No more restrictions on firearms, they’re practically over the counter.

Nothing going on just yet; no fires to put out.

Here, it might just be easier.

This place falls away from him like a curtain, leaving only the work.

The most extreme negatives of destroying one’s entire empire are losing all physical assets, geographic freedom, trusted contacts, weapons depots, walk-in closets, and expensive hardware.

They are nearly outweighed by the sole positive that everything becomes far simpler.

He has to do everything by hand. There’s something appealing about the idea: a rugged, masculine feeling. It is the exact fantasy of every other person who has ever retreated into the wilderness of the world.

Jim uses a milk crate as a desk and his suitcase as a chair. His shirt unbuttoned, hairy stomach folded between his ribs and waistband, underarm holster strapped to him, he types furiously at his laptop. The music piping into his ears, Cibo Matto, keeps his hindbrain occupied tracking the simple, catchy beat. The lights inside this old house aren’t very good and he only found one functioning outlet, but the lightbulb’s flickering doesn’t distract this hunched, dark figure at work. It adds a charge in the room, as if his manic energy frizzles the air itself.

He seeks out contacts through the regular backchannels: the dark web, private forums, his own little ‘black book’, a rich text file with all his unused people, theories, and prospects.
It’s easy enough to find someone capable of supplying him with a line of narcotics; the South brims with opportunity, with gold, though - this first response insists on a meeting in person.

He hesitates. This has long been a boundary. No face-to-face. Everything digital. These people seem to resist technology.

Here, it might just be simpler.

He’s handled meetings in person before.

Very well.

The Hell's Angels have existed for decades and their practices are well-documented. The tell-all exposes are countless. Jim learns the meeting must involve a degree of respectful conduct: no gloves worn when Jim shakes their hands, no sunglasses in between his eyes and theirs, no touching of their vests, as tempting as it'll be to run his fingers over their hard-earned patches and tease them for putting so much effort into dressing up. Not doing this will convince them that Jim respects them.

It seems the organization was stronger before the new millennium. Now it is partly a franchise. They sell merchandise, have websites, run businesses. Hell's Angels' burgers. This pivot into public commerce keeps their underground activities nicely laundered, but it also gives them something Jim doesn't want: a face.

These will not be his men. They can't be; he might as well try to recruit the Coast Guard, and in fact, would be able to do so far easier than convincing one of these leather-clad bikers to abandon their gang to be his errand boy.

But they are a minor power in the USA. They will suffice as a source.

Chapter Text

Two silhouettes on a grand porch, one leaning forward on the railing, the other leaning back against the siding, watch a family load up their van.

“Bless their hearts, I ain’t mad to see them go.” The younger one. Severin. He’s further back, rolling the ice in his sweet tea around the glass, listening to it clink.

Sebastian. The older one, the one leaning forward, with a cigarette. “Naw, I’m worried. Way their Daddy rode Rosy, I’m seriously doubting he can drive a car.”

“You’re telling me.” A pause. “I’m probably never having kids. Hey, where’re they from, again?”

“Tucson.”

“Helluva drive.”

“Mmhm.”

Their van, ruby-red with a luggage rack on top, pulls away into the evening. Sebastian flicks the butt-end of his cigarette onto the dirt. “They’ll go into the city and stay in a nice hotel for the night,” he wagers, “eat a good meal, then strike out tomorrow.”

“Did they say that?”

“Nah, just guessing. Why else would they leave so late?”

Severin and Sebastian dress identically in crisp blue jeans and brown leather boots, tasseled jackets, sun-bleached linen shirts, huge belt buckles, holsters, spurs, and wide-brimmed cattleman hats.

Severin’s hair is not as luxuriously black and wavy as his brother’s, but they share the same almond-colored skin, the same sugar-spoon-shaped nose bridges and expressive eyebrows. They look, from a distance, like twins. It’s only closer that one notices the scars that cover the eldest, and the stiffness in his features, as though some pain still lingers. Sebastian has thick facial hair that Severin does not. These factors make Severin look cheerful, innocent, and much younger in comparison.

“Maybe so, but the way you say that,” Severin observes, “like here ain’t nice, like it ain’t good. Like they’re going to be happy to be gone.”

Sebastian casts Severin a sidelong look.

They stand side by side, looking at Red Lick Ranch, a dusty and cracked plot of land dotted with wooden structures: five cottages, their patio borders defined by cacti and aloe plants, big rocks, fire pits. There’s the big bonfire and the cooking tent, where red embers smolder under the chef’s watchful eye, heating up the cowhands’ dinner. Out by the corral, one trots a lazy circle on horseback. A Palomino, name of Peanut Brittle. Three other hands stand idly watching. The sun sets out of view. Severin carries on, “this place is gorgeous. Natural springs, our own stable, good clean country air, you did a good job w-“

“Alright, simmer down.” Sebastian straightens up, tips the brim of his hat up an inch. “I agree, it’s nice here, it’s good, I’m happy.
… I just mean, people like that tend to prefer more amenities than we can possibly offer. They’ll be happy to be back in civilization.”

A pensive moment of silence. Laughter rises up from the corral: hot, airy chuckles that carry high and far.

Then Severin says: “I was thinking about something recently.”

“What’s that?”

The younger brother averts his eyes. “You never take any time off. Maybe you could.”

Sebastian barks out a laugh. “Rin, there’s always work to be done.”

“No,” Severin shakes his head, “there really ain’t. Look, our employees are playing around on the horses.”

“Just for a break. You know it takes a lot to maintain-“

“Course, but I can pick up some slack. So can they.”

Sebastian crosses his arms. “How much time off am I supposed to take, exactly?”

The dinner bell rings, shiny and bright, calling the observers from the corral and leaving the rider behind to put up Peanut Brittle in her stall.

Severin watches them, his deep brown eyes bovine with adoration. “However much you want. Just lemme know beforehand.”

Sebastian runs his tongue over his teeth, his gaze falling on the far ridge of the property. “You gonna make me go to church if I ain’t workin’ Sundays?”

“I know where you stand on all that, Bas.” Severin glances up. “It would make Mom and Dad happy, though.”

“I’m thinking about it. Time off, I mean. Not church.”

“What’s to think about?”

Their eyes meet, Severin quizzical. His brother responds plainly, “I’ve got no idea what I’d do with time off.”

Severin shrugs. “Go for a ride. Spend a day in the city.”

On his first night off, Sebastian takes off his riding gear and goes to one of the two bars in town. He walks there, letting the repetitive action fill his mind, replacing his thoughts with the sound of his steps, the smell of sweet evening air. It’s cooler than in the summer, especially as the sun goes down.

Inside the bar, someplace called Johnny’s, or maybe Ronny’s, the storefront has long since been too faded to read and there are no menus on which it’s printed, there’s an okay crowd.

Fifteen people. Sebastian marks the exits in his mind, scans the faces: all of them semi-familiar from when he and Severin first bought the ranch. Those that catch his eye look at him mildly. Recognition, then doubt.

He chooses a seat in the back, alone, and drinks whiskey double after whiskey double, until he no longer needs repetitive actions to dull the onslaught of consciousness. Little penetrates the cloud of his mind, only the jukebox playing Florida Georgia Line and a few snippets of conversation. Multiple people mention someone new in town. A muffled part of Sebastian tries to express paranoia here - it could be law enforcement or worse, the IRS. But then the song changes to Patsy Cline and suddenly all he can think about are tender snapshots of the past.

Swimming in lakes, rodeoing, fourths of July.

He has half a thought to bring someone home, but the prospects here are thin. It hurts too much to judge them for things like frizzy hair and sunburn, for non-model bodies, C-section scars, freckles, pimples, trashy clothes; instead, Sebastian averts his eyes out of respect. None of these innocent people, all of them capable of feeling love and loss, even the old, gnarled, conservative men, deserve a curse quite like Sebastian Moran. Who would want to make the walk back with him? Who could, without realizing partway through, they’ve made a mistake?

When he leaves, there’s a slight stagger in his step. He presses his hat securely back onto his head several times when it’s not about to fall. There are few greater pleasures for the cowboy than a long, drunk walk home, so he takes a scenic route.

Ever since arriving here, he’s enjoyed wandering the acreage, discovering paths and hunting blinds. His favorite path takes him through a lonely field, then back through the trees and up a hill to the ranch. Along the way, there’s an old red house; and as Sebastian draws close to it, he sees that for the first time in his three years in Red Lick, the lights inside are on.

Music plays faintly.

There’s a car parked in the front.

Who the hell would move in?

Is this that stranger he’d heard about?

Sebastian stumbles across the lawn, over to a window and unabashedly peers through a tear in the window-coverings.

He pivots abruptly, turns to leave.

Yes, there’s someone living there now. Someone armed. Interior, sparse, a single occupant. With a gun. The stories that had floated around the bar came back into his head - a CIA agent, they’d been saying. Well, everyone has guns. But could there be significance in that he settled so close to the ranch? Were they in danger? He tries to sober himself up, walking home, and cannot put the dizzy image of the man in the red house out of his mind.

Sebastian falls asleep on his porch after chain-smoking through the night. After seeing the rays of the sun coming up, his eyes slide closed, and he slumps back, tilting the brim of his hat down against the brightness.

-

Sebastian makes his way back to the red house a few days later with a loaf of cornbread wrapped in tin foil, fresh from the oven. As he approaches the door, he catches a glimpse of himself in the Toyota’s windows and a small smile flicks over his lips: the sleek lines of his crisp white shirt, his scarred face shaded by his hat, baked goods in hand. It’s an image that everyone in town knows. When the Morans first bought the ranch, Sebastian knew it would be a curious thing to anyone living nearby. He’d gone out of his way to introduce himself and the business, offered them free rides if they ever came by, and of course, gave them food. This bought him far less scrutiny, a decent reputation. Never mind it was what his father had always told him was the proper thing to do after moving in somewhere new, it was primarily a strategy to help Sebastian maintain his front.

So here he is, going to the red house and focusing his mind solely on introducing himself to the new neighbor, garnering the good reputation that he wants, and leaving.

Inside, Jim plays his music loud enough for Sebastian to hear it thudding through the door. Manic, fast-paced music. He’s bent down over his computer, scanning through nearby city maps in one tab, researching each one in the other, when Sebastian knocks on the door.

Knock, knock. His blond head snaps up from the computer. Quiet, he eases up from his seated position. His clothing has deteriorated down to blue-striped boxers and a white undershirt, but he still wears his piece. He takes it out, aims it at the door. “Who’s there?” Shit, he’s used his ordinary speaking voice. The accent’s slipped away.

Sebastian can barely hear him over the music. He shouts, “Sorry to drop in on you, I live up the road here. Came to bring you some cornbread.”

Jim glances at the floor around him, covered in crumpled wrappers, old cans, and cigarette butts. The sleeping bag still hasn’t been unrolled. His shirt has pit stains on it. But why should he care what a neighbor thinks? Maybe they’ll learn a lesson about minding their business.

The windows all covered in newspaper, the music, give Sebastian pause. Probably just some kook, not a CIA agent. “No worries, I can leave it-“

No sooner has he stooped to leave the food on the step does the door swing open.

Jim stands there in his boxers, gun stuffed into the waistband, his eyes bloodshot and baggy. He tucks himself behind the edge of the door, ready to slam it shut at any moment.

Taken aback, Sebastian straightens up, reaching up to the brim of his hat as if to steady himself. Polite, he reminds himself. “Hi, I’m Sebastian Moran, my brother and I run that ranch over yonder.”

Jim’s eyebrow quirks up and he follows Sebastian’s gesture to where yonder lies. “Okay?”

“Yeah, well, I’d heard someone new came into town, thought I’d come introduce myself. Here,” he offers him the cornbread, and Jim finds himself accepting it. Sebastian smiles, expectant. Jim steps back into the dark of his house and shuts the door, the lock clicking.

Definitely not a CIA agent.

Possibly nothing he’s ever seen before.

Sebastian treads away from the house with his head spinning.

Inside, Jim inspects what he’s been given. What are the odds of being poisoned by someone, this early into his escape? Virtually impossible. And, the golden-brown bread is far more appetizing than another energy bar.

He eats it with his hands, sitting on the floor, thinking. Sebastian Moran. It sounds vaguely familiar, but perhaps it just has that ring to it. Research must be done, obviously, to find out if he’s a threat to the operation. And the way he’d been dressed, he looked like an actor - even though out here, people did wear boots and hats, did wear big belt buckles. Why did it feel so hollow on Sebastian?

Jim intends to go to his laptop and look up the name. He intends to. He crawls to his sleeping bag and falls asleep for the first time in days, his belly full.

Chapter Text

The meeting takes place the next day on Angels’ territory.

Jim introduces himself to them as James Brady, but does not put on his Texan affect. He’s in his element. “Call me Jim,” he tells the big lug in charge. The big lug has his head shaved, but only on top, the rest of his dusty brown hair hanging long in a crown around his tatted bald spot. His real name is Ryan Coleman, Jim knows, but he introduces himself as Handlebar. His left eye is filled with blood, mucus, and crust.

He meets Jim outside of a dive bar halfway between Red Lick and the southwestern town of Maud. Not one parking spot is open, all of them crowded by big, silver and black machines, great engines with leather saddles, some handlebars with red, white, and blue tassels. They are all quite classic-looking bikers: either long-haired or bald or partially shaven, tattooed, wearing lots of leather, sporting mustaches, goatees and mirrored sunglasses, many with their arms crossed. They peer at Jim, attempting x-ray vision.

Handlebar takes Jim inside to meet his ’guys’, called Dan, Cobb, and Bottle. They don’t shake Jim’s hand. The four of them sit out of the sun, away from the eyes of the others, at a booth, at a sticky table. Jim looks misplaced in his formal shirt and tie and pants. Dan sits next to him, reeking of kerosene, pushing him up against the side wall. Cobb and Bottle sit on either side of their leader, three bricks of leather and tattoos squashed together.

“The hell are you comin from, a weddin?” Handlebar laughs. “No, but you came in real professional-like. I can respect it.”

He can, but does he? Jim smiles. “We are going into business, after all.”

“Well, that depends.” Handlebar’s good eye hardens. “You told me you’re interested in more product than I’ve sold to anyone around here in one go. Now, what you didn’t say is, you’re gonna sell it. And that’s fine, just fine, as long as you’re selling it for me.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m only interested in getting it over the border. There are dozens of operations up there who’d love to move it for you.”

“Where’re you from, Jim?”

“Kilkenny.”

“You come to Texas for the trade?”

“I didn’t come here for the weather.”

Handlebar chuckles. Jim leans over the table a few inches. “You’ve got a fine product. If it could just get into Oklahoma, or Louisiana…”

The biker firms up again. “And when you get caught sneaking over the Texas border with a ton of amphetamines, who’re you throwing under the bus?”

“I won’t get caught.”

“You happen to try our fine product, here?” He reaches into the inner pocket of his jacket and takes out a baggie, placing it on the table between them. Jim reaches for it as Handlebar withdraws, exchanging it beneath their fingers. Jim holds it in his palm and examines it. Middling quality. Cut with something.

“I don’t do anything,” he bluffs, “distracts from operations. Besides,” he kisses the tips of his fingers and looks upwards, “I have the dead to consider.”

Cobb sagely nods his head.

“Alright, that’s fine.” Handlebar motions for the baggie back and Jim obliges. He continues, “You’ve gotta do something to prove your worth, understand?”

Blunt. Not like the English. “What’s that?”

Handlebar glances at the guys before taking out his phone to show Jim a picture of a man on a porch. “Michael Rockford,” he taps the face and the photo enlarges. Michael stands outside of his house, taking out the trash. The photo must’ve been taken from a passing car. “He’s in charge of a group over in Delta County, and they’re messing with our business.

“You’re gonna get rid of him and his guys for us. They’re due to ride through Texarkana in a couple of days, stop at Rockford’s uncle’s place. We’ve got the address. I want them all dead before they get off their rides.”

It can’t be done right now. Jim doesn’t have the people, the weapons. The skill.

“It’ll be Friday, day before Valentine’s Day. sometime in the evening.” Handlebar weighs him with his eyes. “You pull this off, I’ll give you what you want for free.”

Something lurches in Jim’s gut. “Fine, doable.”

“Alright, here’s to, uh, business,” Handlebar laughs and slams his drink.

-

Sebastian puts his head back down into the work. It’s dull, but the air is sweet and temperate today. A winter wind’s blowing down from the north.

The man in the red house had looked terrifying.

His image keeps popping up in Sebastian’s head as he tries to focus on his tasks. So much needs fixing around here. He enjoys the act of repair. And yet, nailing new shingles into the stable roof, his eyes wander over to the ridge. Just below there…

The man must be an addict. Or on his way to becoming one. Or perhaps he’s merely addled, an ill mind seeking privacy. An outsider finally driven outside.

He shakes his head as if to shed the thoughts. It should be easier to focus.

But the man did have a certain shine to him.

Sebastian drops his hammer and sits back, exasperated, now looking everywhere but the ridge.

“Christ, Seb, all he did was stand there, disappointed in you.”

But it was the energy buzzing around him, an intentioned mania, a charge. His bleached hair, his thick thighs, his stubble, sticking out like human pieces of a cyborg. What’s driving him? What’s hunting him?

Sebastian wants a better look. Wants more than just acknowledgement. Wants his name. His curiosity burns as the air cools down, and evening arrives.

But when he finishes his chores and has dinner and slyly takes out his horse for an evening ride out to the house, not knowing what he’ll say, he finds he doesn’t have to say anything. The man’s car is gone, the inside of the house dark.

-

It’ll have to be a mercenary. It’ll have to be long-distance. Brute strength comes later.

Jim scopes out Rockford’s uncle’s home, and locates a hill where a sniper could go.

Jim finds a man very close by through his personal database. Someone named Tommy, claiming to be an expert marksman, and quite cheap to hire. He too insists on meeting in person to discuss details. The Flamingo, 9 o’clock, in a blue shirt.

Come to yet another bar, to fence with yet another burly ball of Southwestern muscle. What is with Americans?

It’s a show of strength. A way of sizing up. A moment in their little rebellion when the flesh and blood of the participants is put on the line.

Back in London, they’d happily trust a message on a screen. Here, they want to see your eyes.

It’s a roadside bar with broken neon lighting. Three people inside, including the bartender. The walls are all pine, soaring into rafters, the broken-voiced blues piping in through the speakers made all the more lonely-sounding under the high ceiling. There is a large empty square for dancing in the center, a disco ball with several scales shed off. It could very well have been installed in the seventies. Jim gets a double whiskey, carefully pronouncing his request with a Texas twist. It’s watered down, but he doesn’t say so. If anything, it’ll give him an edge in negotiations to be seen as intoxicated. There has always been strength in being underestimated. He glances around the room, looking for Tommy.

One is a bearded gentleman in a black hat and shirt, who leans over the counter of the bar and speaks with the bartender about an accident that happened on the highway the day before.

In the corner of the room, a man is bent over with his elbows on his knees. His head sways slightly from side to side, and Jim realizes with a touch of horror, he’s dressed in a bright blue shirt. He’s stained. Just looking at him, Jim can smell the liquor.

Over the next several minutes, no one else enters.

So hesitantly, he stands up and walks over to the table. “Tommy?” he asks.

The man’s head raises slowly, his expression one of recent waking. “Yeah?”

Jim scowls. “I’m meeting you here.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah,” Tommy slurs, “Mr. Brady. Come on, sit down.”

“Listen, I don’t think this is going to work out.”

“I’m a real good shot, Mr. Brady. Come on, sit down next to me.” Tommy gestures with his left arm towards the empty space in front of them, before dizzily turning to the chair across from him and correcting, gesturing now with his right arm.

Jim wrinkles his nose. There is something too familiar about this sight.

Then Tommy reaches out to grab Jim’s wrist. “Come on, you want someone killed, right, darlin’?”

“Ew, get off of me!” Jim snaps his arm away and steps back from the table. The bartender and the bearded man, pausing in his speech, both turn towards them. Jim hisses to the other, “be quiet, would you?”

“Fucker, don’t tell me to be quiet,” he growls, those droopy eyes livening up with anger. Another all-too familiar sight. Jim steps back from the table and downs the rest of his drink: “I’m going,” he declares.

“Oh, no, you ain’t.” Before Jim can turn on his heel, Tommy has a pistol out on him. He pulls it from inside his jacket and holds it with a wobbling vice, his Glock 19.

“Hey, hey, fuck’re you doing?!” The bartender’s voice is booming. She’s a muscle-bound woman up in years, her neck wrapped in a brace. “Stay the fuck out of it, Carla!” Tommy snarls. She pulls a shotgun from underneath the counter as Tommy swings his arm around and fires a bullet into the mirror behind the bar.

The glass shatters, catching bottles in its explosion and raining shards down on the bartender.

Jim runs.

Carla pays no mind to the falling glass. Her shotgun cocks and fires, taking out a chunk of the man’s table.

Shocked, Tommy’s hand lolls to the side, still clutching the pistol. His ears ringing, he abruptly straightens up. Adrenaline seizes his legs, brings him to his feet. As Jim darts through the door, there’s another shot, this one piercing.

Pain explodes in the back of Jim’s leg and he cries out, nearly stumbling to the ground. “Drop your fucking gun, asshole!” The bearded man at the bar shrieks. The bullet is lodged in the back of Jim’s thigh, above his knee.

“Hershel, call the goddamn cops!” The bartender shouts.

Jim limps into his car and shuts the door with a whimper, feeling his right leg numbly. He takes off his tie with trembling hands and ties it tightly around his upper thigh, then takes off as fast as he can, using his left leg to work the gas.

He’s always been capable of resisting pain. Torture has no effect on him. But he’s never been shot.

The pain is throbbing, constant, but random. It seems to swell and dance. His hand turns on the radio, makes it as loud as it’ll go. What song, it doesn’t matter. Something to focus on. He can’t just disappear into the comfortable darkness of his mind.

He has to watch the road, even with his head spinning, even with his leg radiating with agony. The road turns into a hypnotic strip of black, flowing under the hood of the car. It widens and narrows. It becomes gravel. Bullets ring in his ears. He smacks the steering wheel, trying to keep himself going. How could he have been so stupid? The trees rush by like the flickering on the edges of a film reel. Jim recognizes the path. He’s nearly home.

He stops the car, his vision blurring. The dense forest surrounding the trail is too hard to navigate in his present state. He’ll walk the rest of the way, and then at home - did he get medical supplies? Had he even considered he’d need them?

Where else is there to go? This great landscape holds a hospital, many miles in the opposite direction; there, they will need him to be a citizen. They will need an ID. There is no special clinic, staffed with people indebted to him, like the one that he maintained back at home.

Jim pulls himself out of the car and limps towards home.

At some point, he falls.

The moon high, the stars out, probably. Jim is face-down in the dirt, he can’t see.

At that same point, Sebastian turns away from the empty, dark house, and starts down the path that he usually takes to town, trying to maintain the pretense that this is merely an evening ride.

A good twenty minutes from the house, he hears music. Light seems to stream through the trees from someplace up ahead, and as he draws closer, he realizes it’s the car. The man’s car. The door is open, radio turned up all the way. Sebastian gets off his horse to investigate. The driver’s seat is covered in blood.

Sebastian takes the liberty of removing the keys and shutting the door, returning serenity to the thicket.

He switches on his phone flashlight and turns it towards the ground. Blood spots. Sebastian follows them.

There, collapsed in the brush, is the man.

Something sinks in Sebastian’s chest. He goes to the little blond’s side and kneels down, wrapping his fingers around his wrist.

Jim is thinking, so is this is how it ends for the great Moriarty? Shot by a drunk outside Texarkana, dying alone in the woods?

He barely feels the touch, so far from consciousness. But when strong arms wrap around his body and he is placed on the back of an animal, he registers it. He registers the solid, warm body behind him, drawing him in, holding him. Is this death? Is death a big, strong man on a horse? It breaks into a gallop below him. A soft ‘mm’ escapes Jim’s lips. Where might death be taking him? Yes, the whole world is falling away. It’s over now.

Jim’s body falls forward. Sebastian’s arms secure around his torso. He holds him close, while urging Buckley to ride as fast as possible up to the ranch. An ambulance will take nearly an hour to arrive, way out here. Besides, Sebastian doubts that this individual is keen on being taken to a hospital - or he would have called them himself, right?

Sebastian carefully removes the body from his horse, feeling the dampness of blood underneath his arm.

“And how’d you get caught, little tiger?” he murmurs.

Jim breathes softly through his nose, his eyelids fluttering.

“You better not make me regret this,” Sebastian carries him inside the front door of his house, bridal-style.

-

Inside, Sebastian goes straight up to his room. He can hear Severin playing video games in his part of the house, listening to their father’s classic rock albums. These days, something called Skyrim demands almost all of his younger brother’s free time. It’s not something Sebastian understands, but it seems to make Severin happy. And tonight, it’ll buy him some extra time to come up with an explanation for why he’s brought a body inside.

He lays the man down on his bed and investigates the wound. A bullet rests in the back of his thigh. Blood seeps into his pants.

Sebastian goes to get the first-aid kit.

He moves purposely, quickly. It’s only after he has removed the man’s makeshift tourniquet, his dress pants and laid him on his stomach, only after rubbing lidocaine on the area, only after he is bent over the wound trying to retrieve the bullet with a pair of plastic tweezers, that it occurs to him he has partially undressed and anesthetized an unconscious stranger in his bed. Guilt fights against guilt. What was he supposed to do? Leave him on the road?

Call the authorities. Call the hospital. This will only draw attention to his ranch, to him. He can’t harbor criminals.

Criminal, as Sebastian knows this wound must be.

And calling the authorities, calling the hospital, could put an end to this criminal.

That’s what law-abiding citizens are supposed to do.

Sebastian plucks the hunk of metal from the back of Jim’s leg and sets it to the side. 9mm. It could be worse. He sanitizes the wound, carefully wiping away the streaks of blood from his skin, and stitches it with fishing line.

“Whole lot easier doing this on someone else,” he remarks under his breath, knotting it off. He wraps up the wound in gauze and bandages, padding it heavily before turning the stranger over onto his back.

The persistent presence of his body becomes impossible to ignore, and Sebastian is suddenly agape, beholding him. He’s adorable. He has small hands and feet, not disproportionate but delicate, giving the impression of a watch-maker, a precision engineer. His skin is luminous in the moonlight. His hair is dirty from the ground, just not enough to deter the image of him gently stroking each strand with a paintbrush of bleach.

Sebastian rests his knuckles on the other’s ankle, before stiffly turning away. He retracts his hand and busies himself cleaning up.

Sebastian takes the stranger’s pants to the washing machine with a little club soda. He searches the pockets, empty besides a pack of gum and a phone, then takes himself to shower. It’s been years since he scrubbed a stranger’s blood off of his skin. The sight of it is a fond one. Of course, he didn’t cause this violence. If he had, the bullet wouldn’t have been lodged harmlessly in the target’s extremities. It would’ve hit his chest.

If he’s still any good, that is.

After he cleans the man’s pants, he stitches up the bullet hole in the fabric as neatly as he can.

Sebastian carefully redresses his patient, before dressing himself. It isn’t hard to clothe him, though it does inspire feelings of guilty indulgence in the bigger man. He tries to avert his eyes.

A sliver of sight shines out from Jim’s eyelids. His sense of awareness suspended somewhat, he feigns further unconsciousness, but peeks. Big, rough hands pull his pants on over his legs, his wound now wrapped up in bandages. The pain has subsided quite a bit. The hands withdraw. The body attached to them seems enormous from this position, from this floaty, weakened state. It puts on clothes.

Sebastian stops with his shirt buttons half-done.

Before he leaves, he wraps the man up in blankets, tucking them under his arms and legs, to keep him from thrashing in his sleep. It has nothing to do with how it feels to press the crease of the fabric into the edges of the other’s body, to outline him, secure him.

And hugged so tight, Jim cannot keep peering beneath his eyelids. His limbs immobile, the ache in his leg still throbbing through his body, he oozes back into sleep.

Sebastian leaves a couple of painkillers and a glass of water by the bed and switches off the light.

Downstairs, he plunks down next to Severin on the couch.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey, sorry, I’m trying to focus.” Severin holds his jaw tight, his hands wrapped around the controller, head and shoulders leaned forward as his character strikes a dragon from afar.

“No worries.” Sebastian moves to light up a cigarette. “Just feel like watchin’.”

Chapter Text

“What in the Sam Hill is wrong with you?!” Severin paces back and forth in their living room, still trying to contort his mind around the situation.
Sebastian sits on the couch in front of him, beneath a mounted longhorn skull, rubbing his eyes. “The fucking sun is coming up right now, Rin. Can we please wind down?”

“Oh, ’scuse me for not following the curfew!”

There have never been lectures in this house: a new place for Sebastian to sit and try to defend himself.

“Look, it’s… if you’d seen the kind of things I’ve seen, you’d understand.”

Severin crosses his arms. “Don’t play that card. You told me you were done acting foolish, and I believed you.”

“I am! I am.” Sebastian punctuates with an exasperated sigh. He hadn’t admitted that he’d tried to make contact with this person before finding him in the woods. Hadn’t even admitted that he knew where he lived. It was just an evening ride, he reminds himself, and a happenstance. “I’m trying to be a good person, I’m just saying, if I called the hospital then it’d become a whole thing. If that’s what he wants, he can call the police when he wakes up.”

Severin goes over to the window. He stands, looking outside, in silk pajamas.

Sebastian doubles down. “It would’ve taken them ages to get out here, anyway. I didn’t want to waste time.”

“So call them now.”

“I’m telling you, no. I don’t think it’s the right thing to do.”

“Because you used to be like him?”

The question, intoned more like an assertion, slaps Sebastian in the face. It’s true, he’s been reckless. He’s been half-dead. He’s been reliant on the kindness of illicitly sympathetic strangers. He wavers, before conceding:

“Yeah. Because I used to be like him.”

Severin shakes his head. “At least you know he’s trouble.” He collapses in an armchair. “But he’s not staying here long-term, y’hear?”

There’s a creak in Sebastian’s bedroom. Both brothers’ eyes go up.

“I’m going to check on him.”

“Shoot, then I am too.”

Jim fights his way out of the blankets to examine the pills left out for him. They look like ibuprofen, but they could be cleverly disguised. Same with the water.

But why would they bother poisoning him, if they fixed him up? Laid him in this comfortable bed?

And God, is it comfortable. It’s only been a few days, but he was on the road for a week beforehand. The feeling of a soft mattress under his hide is a luxury not easily forgone.

Last thing he remembers, he was crawling through sticks and grass. It was dark out. Now, red beams of early morning light cast a rosy hue over the bedroom he’s in. His leg screams as he tries to move out of bed; he forces himself to rest his feet on the wooden floorboards. His slacks feel different. Jim bends his head down and sniffs the fabric. An unknown detergent. And the back has been sewn up.

Strange.

He takes the pills and drinks down the water, surprising himself with the depths of his thirst. The empty glass clunks on the side table.

The bedroom is clean, but lived-in. Hats and jeweled bolo ties adorn the walls. The wardrobe has picture frames on it, difficult to see from here. There’s a diploma from TCU, impossible to make out the name. Plastic bins of keepsakes and old clothes shoved beneath the bed. The furniture all has a handmade look to it, as do the quilted blankets, the embroidered curtains. Jim opens the bedside table drawer. A journal, a bottle of lotion, a few towels. He smirks, shuts it.

In trying to stand, Jim realizes the extent of the injury.

Shards of pain shoot through his leg, the wound stiff under his muscles’ attempts to flex. His knee buckles, and he drops back down on the bed.

Come on. He has things to do. He’s got to get out of here.

Not that ‘here’ is all that bad a place to be, but the Rockford gang must be squashed. Jim feels notes of insecurity, his dirty nails next to the clean, white sheets, his skin musky, and at once has an urge to burn this place to the ground.

How dare anything interrupt him.

He pushes himself back up, putting his weight all on his other leg. The pain rockets through him again, and he holds himself up with the wall. “Fuckin hell,” Jim snarls, letting himself fall back on his ass on the mattress.

Sebastian pushes open the bedroom door, Severin close behind. “Hey,” Sebastian says tentatively, “how’s the leg?”

"Who the fuck are you two?"

They're a pair. The taller, older one dressed in jeans and an embroidered shirt half-open, the shorter, younger one peeking out behind him in dark red pajamas. The taller one - familiar. His dark, mangled figure had stood on his porch and offered him a neighborly gift, not two days ago. Oh, yes. Jim recalls. Had he ever looked into him? He'd meant to. He should've.

Sebastian relaxes. So he didn't make an impression, thank God. "Moran. I'm Seb, that's Severin."

Severin, now seeing the figure in the bed, looks at his brother with pure exasperation. "Seb found you lying on the road and thought it'd be better to bring you home than call a G-D ambulance," Severin pipes up with a tattling cadence. His accent does things to the word 'ambulance' that make Jim's head spin, but the news unwinds his shoulders.

"Thank God," he says, "to be frank with you gentlemen, I would rather skip over the questions they'd ask me." There's an imperiousness in his voice that makes both the brothers pause, waiting to hear more. "I'm... Jim. Brady. And I owe you one."

Severin pushes ahead of his brother. "You an illegal alien?" His face is cynical, his tone forced through a mold to sound intimidating.

Jim raises his eyebrows. "No."

"Well, you got ID, then? Where are you from?"

"Ireland." Jim mimes searching for it, patting his pockets, before he sighs. "Stolen, I suppose. Those are the consequences of being robbed."

"You got mugged?" Severin furrows his brow.

Jim nods. “I barely managed to get away."

"Why didn't you call the police? What were you doing out on the roadside?"

Jim averts his gaze with intention. "Truth be told, I don’t want the police involved.”

Sebastian, having lapsed into an observational silence, now steps forward, placing a hand on his brother's shoulder. "That's enough, Rin."

"I wanna know what-"

"I said, that's enough." Sebastian turns Severin to look him in the eyes.

Severin folds his arms over his chest. "I ain’t pretending like this is all fine."

“Give us a moment.” Sebastian grabs Severin by the arm and pulls him outside the door, shutting it behind them.

Their voices echo easily through the wood, Jim needs only half of his mind to listen in. He whips out his phone and searches the name in his personal database. This is a source only he has, something he would never give up, that compiles everything from old newspaper archives to yesterday’s tweets, in order to find out absolutely everything there is to know about another person. He looks up Sebastian Moran. Narrows it to a man currently living in Red Lick. A ranch - a business, must be incorporated officially somewhere. Must have records. Must pay taxes. And a home receives mail, orders things, is owned through a signed lease. Net worth can be speculated upon; there is a public valuation of the land. Reviews from guests. A website. There’s a lot you can find out from just a name and a place. 1980 Junior Rifle Champion from Texarkana Sebastian Moran. Inactive for a long time after being ejected from the military - unemployed, supposedly - Sebastian Moran.

Outside, this Sebastian finds himself standing between his brother and the door.

“You know, everyone’s been talking about a weird-looking blond flashing a bunch of cash in town.”

“Severin. When I tell you this won’t cause trouble, I need you to believe me.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t. So what if I call the cops?”

Sebastian grimaces. He shakes his head. “You’re not gonna call the cops. Cos if you did, you’d be calling them on me. This is my property.”

Severin looks away. “Know what? I’m not touching this. You do what you want.”

Then a blip. A mention of his name on a website Jim is more than familiar with - a website Jim created. Entitled simply, Security Solutions Inc., it acts as a contracting medium for mercenaries. It maintains a list of everyone who’s used it - unbeknownst to them, this information is funneled directly into Jim’s personal database. Of course, the website will surely be destroyed once its servers are discovered, deep underground in Siberia. The odds of anyone knowing its true value, the list of names of every hitman who ever used it, and every client who ever hired them, is null. But for now, he still has it.

And there he is, active for a year between the military and now. Sebastian Moran.

A long-distance rifleman.

“I’m not wasting any more breath to make sure you’re okay.” Severin storms off down the stairs.

Sebastian snorts. Fine with him. He goes back into the bedroom, threading his fingers through his hair and pushing it back. Jim sits up on the bed, watching him with a tiny smile. He strides over to the end table to pick up the glass.

“You want more water?” he asks.

“You’re terrible at money laundering.”

The glass clunks back down on the end table. Sebastian’s head snaps to look at Jim.

“You’re supposed to break even, not break even exactly. What do you do, tally up your expenses on a calculator and divide it by 52?”

Face blank, Sebastian goes back to the door and shuts it. He looks back at Jim with a controlled, steady gaze. “This place more or less runs itself.” There are crosshairs in his eyes. Jim can feel him scanning, searching for weaknesses. Aiming. His smile sprouts up all the more.

“You misunderstand. I can help.”

“Help?”

Jim rolls his eyes. “With your racket. Look, I know everything. Quit putting it on.”

“Jesus.” Sebastian is looking at him, wondering what on Earth he was thinking, bringing him up here. Surely this is some kind of curse. A nightmare. Here, in his home, is someone who knows everything - he’ll probably have to snap the little thing’s neck and be done with it.

“I owe you one, don’t I?” Jim motions to his leg.

“Yeah, about that.” Sebastian sits down on the bed, leans close to Jim. “How’d that really happen?”

But Jim has tasted blood. “At least let me give you some free advice. In the off-season, less people vacation.”

“Sure, in some cases. Our place is different.”

“Your books are sloppy, Mr. Moran.”

“Sebastian,” he replies curtly.

He sits down on the mattress alongside Jim, waiting.

"I can easily fix them. Easily. It'd take me a night, maybe."

Sebastian wraps his hand around Jim's wound and applies pressure, arresting his voice.

The pain is slight, nothing compared to the sudden fury. How dare he touch Jim! How dare he hurt him? Who does he think he is?

But at the same time, there is a rush of pleasure. Sebastian's hand covers Jim's thigh. He induces the agony of the weak spot but not to the furthest extent possible. He leaves some pain on the table. It's both threatening and thrilling, this control he seems to have over himself.

"Tell me," he says. The intimidation his brother tried is not there. Sebastian's voice is level, calm, and firm, certain of its effect.

The anger washes away, leaving a salacious grin.

"I was shot by a gang from Delta County."

"A rival gang?" Sebastian asks pointedly.

"Ooh, someone's clever," Jim coos, walking two fingers up Sebastian's arm. "If I don't do something about them, they'll probably kill me."

This cowboy is not entirely convinced HE isn't going to kill Jim. It's distracting, his hand on his bicep. Jim's fingers slide down to the man's wrist and unbutton his cuff.

Outside, the day on the ranch begins sluggishly. Severin feeds the horses to a chorus of delighted snorts and whinnies. The chef pours a cup of coffee for Jackal, their most senior cowhand. Ronette and Paul carpool up in her Ford F-150. A golden retriever in the back.

"I can do more than fix up your books, you know."

Sebastian pulls his arm away. "Like what?"

Jim's whole expression seems lopsided, as if he's talking to someone else in his head. "I could hide your revenue streams in a larger shell corporation. I could wipe your records clean. I could," he pauses, licking his lower lip, "I could pay you to take up your rifle again."

The words don't sink in right away. Sebastian says, "That is exactly what my brother's afraid of."

"You miss it, don't you?"

There isn't much to be done. The cottages have been dusted recently, the stable roof repaired. The cowhands have a long day of playing with horses to look forward to, and stand around drinking their coffee, waiting for a breakfast of bacon and beans. When Severin shows up, they are all smiles. They get paid too much and do very little; they work outside, they get plenty of sun. "Hey, Sev! We doing lassoing lessons?"

Severin casts a look back at the house. "Tomorrow. Bastian's busy again today."

Inside, his brother clenches his jaw. "Listen, Jim, I'm not in the market for a new handler. You've gotta have some nerve, getting shot a half-mile from the ranch and then expecting me to make it my problem."

Jim pops, anger and embarrassment mingling in his voice, "I've got nerve?!" He leans forward, too close. "You ABDUCTED me."

Sebastian bounces up from the bed and turns sharply towards Jim. "I did no such thing! You'd be a fucking body on the road if I didn't happen to go that way."

"You took me here against my will."

"That's not-"

"And what if I did tell the authorities I was abducted? Kidnapped by you and your brother and brought to this facade of a ranch?" Jim's eyes are harder than Sebastian has seen them so far, narrow and intent.

"I'd be forced to them about your gang."

"Oh, that's smart. Tell me, what evidence do you have?" The rage eases out of him, replaced by placid serenity. Sebastian glares. It is painfully, clearly true- he has nothing on Jim, and Jim has everything on him. And he knows it.

"I'm not a handler, by the way."

"No? What are you?"

"You hired contractors, I'm assuming, to remodel the house and shape the land."

Sebastian almost bites back that he did it all himself, but it isn't true. All the stagnancy of ranch life couldn't make him learn to repair a foundation.

Jim nods in his silence. "You'd be a contractor. An outside consultant, an expert for hire." He adds a velour to the words.

Sebastian steps over to the window, his head spinning. The life of a contract killer - it isn’t a pleasant one, a comfortable one, or even an especially entertaining one. The only person who cares about him wants desperately for him to stay in the light.

Outside, everyone still lingers around the camping tent, waving off flies.

He turns to Jim.

“How much does it pay?”

Chapter Text

Sebastian strikes out later that day to a cave some miles from the property. It is a gap in the muddy cliffs, boarded off with wood and a sign warning the dangers of imminent collapse. Sebastian, his dark hair tied back, mustache wicking sweat away from his lips, ties his horse to a tree and ducks underneath this warning.

The air temperature drops significantly underground.

Sebastian navigates by the light of his phone, remembering years ago; he’d just bought the ranch, just saved Severin from a lifetime of construction work and choir on Sundays. They reconnected, the gap between them so much smaller with both of their parents buried.

Things had seemed so easy then.

It’s an old mine, abandoned after running dry of precious minerals. Its northern end is now completely barricaded with rocks - a cave-in that probably happened long after the last miner had stepped foot inside. The smell is dirt and age, cool and dewey and touched with grit. Two tunnels still remain, one narrowing down into nothing more than a crack. The other one, Sebastian turns into. It opens into an alcove. More spindle-thin passages branch off, but Sebastian gets down on the knees of his jeans and feels through the dirt.

Under the rocks and dust, there is a piece of plywood. He pries it up, sets it up against the side of the cave wall.

In the hole underneath, a long leather case has been dressed up in straw and brush. He pushes this all aside and flicks the combination on the outside of the case to his numbers. 1130.

Inside, waiting for him, is his M40.

He hesitates. When he hid it here, there was great peace in putting it down. Finally: freedom from the trigger. He would find new meaning in his life, take up hobbies, learn to care about his home and himself.

And he had.

He’d also discovered that his life thus far had saddled him with pain, not so easy to bury as a sniper rifle. He may not have slept last night, but he doesn’t sleep most nights. It’s less haunting to be kept up by this Jim guy than by the nightmares his brain concocts.

He pushes away from brooding and packs up his long-abandoned kit.

Back at the big house, Jim showers.

He strips off his sticky clothes and turns on the cold water, holding himself up with a white birch and gold cane that Sebastian had wordlessly handed off before leaving.

First, he investigates Sebastian’s bathroom. He has a classic straight razor, a shaving brush, and two different kinds of grooming oil for his beard. A blow dryer sits plugged in on the sink and a dry conditioner to take the humid frizz away. There is a prescription in his medicine cabinet for antidepressants, filled over a year ago yet still brimming with little white pills. Colognes, also still full. Gifts, perhaps. Jim sees on the pill bottle his middle name starts with an A. In his trash, blood-dabbed tissues, an old shampoo bottle. No prophylactics, no waste from guests.

So he takes care of himself but only for himself.

The fact inspires approval in Jim and he leaves his snooping for now.

The water in the shower is ice cold. He steps under the spray and moans. The chilly droplets seem to take an entire layer of sweat and grime off wherever they touch, and the shiver up Jim’s spine removes days of being too hot from his sensory memory. Even though he has to hold onto the bar in the shower to keep himself upright, the pleasure does not lessen even one iota.

Finally. Cold.

He twists around to look at his bullet wound. It is badly bruised and swollen, but…

The stitching looks good.

The gun safely loaded into the back of his Chevy Silverado, Sebastian returns home. Severin and the hands are looking busy, walking the grounds and talking energetically, though he can see from afar that his brother passes a joint between the four of them.

Sebastian frowns. Before today Severin was trying to be a little more discreet about it. Of course, things seem to be shifting. There’s a charge in the air, like the changing of seasons but stronger. Sharper.

Sebastian gets back into the house around the time Jim steps out of his shower.

Of course, he’s used to having all the strength in both of his legs. This small injury keeps demanding extra mental attention go to his body, a place Jim does not often think about.

He forgets, for one moment, which foot to remove from the tub first. He picks the wrong one. He slips on the slick porcelain and crashes to the tub floor, his first instinct to shove his hand in his mouth so the resounding cry of pain can’t escape him.

The thud pounds throughout the house. Sebastian runs upstairs, thoughts racing. Was it possible that Jim’d been followed? What if they’d gotten him? No choice but to go after them after that. He’s not going to make the trip out to the cave again.

But when he gets to his bedroom, he sees that the bed is empty, Jim gone. There’s a soft whimper from the bathroom. “Oh.” Sebastian says out loud, feeling suddenly foolish. He raps his knuckles on the door. “You want help?”

“Fuck’s sake.” A bright red Jim pulls himself up using the side of the tub, “No, I-“ his heel slips and he can’t stop himself, he cries out. It isn’t just the wound. It’s how goddamn useless he’s become in just a matter of days. The house, the heat, all the in-person meetings, and also getting fucking shot. He’s hungrier, tireder, and all-around worse off than he’ll admit and now he’s falling down in the shower like an old man. It all builds up; when it comes out, it sounds like a sob.

“You don’t sound okay… Look, can I please come in?” Sebastian’s usually firm tone sounds different pleading.

It’s hardly going to get more pathetic from here. “Fine.”

Sebastian enters. Jim is reclined in the tub, his blond hair damply slicked back, his skin pink from the icy water. He has two long scars underneath his pectoral muscles like thin, beaded chains. Between his fuzzy thighs, there’s a dark, dewey bush. The lips of his cunt poke out from this curly halo. Sebastian points his gaze out the window but steps forward. “Nothin’ to be ashamed of,” he says, getting down on one knee next to the bath. “Just wrap your arms around my neck, I’ll lift y’up.”

There’s a lack of judgment in Sebastian’s voice that compels Jim to follow his instructions. He crosses his arms over the back of Sebastian’s neck, leaving damp prints in the cloth, and the larger man lifts him by his waist. For a second, they press together, but there isn’t anything sexual about it. Sebastian goes ‘hup’ softly, Jim grits his teeth. The water drips out of the faucet behind them, and when Sebastian sets him gingerly on the bathmat, passing him his cane, Jim leaves a wet silhouette pressed into the front of his clothes. Jim snatches his towel up with his other hand and wraps it around his waist.

“We need to come up with a convincing story for your brother.”

Sebastian takes a hand towel and dabs at the water on his shirt. “He said he wasn’t going to bother with this anymore.”

Jim holds his towel up and walks into the bedroom, talking over the other. “A statement bound to expire. We should tell him the truth, with a few subtle alterations.”

Sebastian follows hesitantly. “Alterations,” he echoes.

Jim pauses to notice the twin posters hanging over Sebastian’s bed: Scarface and Geto Boys. “Yes, firstly, I should have a family and a business at stake. Secondly, the danger should be much larger than a rinkadink county gang.”

The brunet thinks as Jim changes into his clothes, glad for the pause to catch up. Jim talks fast. And, Sebastian keeps trying not to notice, he’s much less abashed about his naked body now. Recalling he didn’t wash the man’s shirt, he goes to the closet and tosses him one of his own - a light linen shirt with silver buttons, a bit too small for Sebastian.

“How about the cartel?”

“The cartel. Perfect. And finally, instead of killing them, you’re taking me down to the police station tomorrow to file a proper report with the DEA. It’s all going to be above-board, but I might be in danger, hence why you’ll be coming along - in addition to my inability to drive - and it’s why I’ll be staying here for the foreseeable future.”

“Uh… huh…” Sebastian wonders why he didn’t savor having Jim pressed up against his chest for that brief moment earlier. He has a strong back and arms, a delicious throat, hips made for holding. These traits are emphasized by the clothes he pulls on in full view of his new marksman. The collar accentuates his little Adam’s apple, and the slacks - the slacks shape his plump ass along a curve that makes Sebastian’s mouth go dry.

Sebastian cracks open the window and pulls out a cigarette. It’s time to wrest control back over this situation. “Who said you’re staying here?” Outside, Severin and their employees have gone to recline on the grass.

“I did. And I’ll explain why—“

“You don’t like living in a shithole?”

Jim neatly tucks the shirt into his pants, sitting back down on the bed. “This place is superior based on empirical evidence.”

“You don’t say?” Sebastian snorts, turns his head to the side, the cigarette held up to his lush lips to hide his grin. “Not a problem. I’ll set up the guest room, then.”

“Don’t laugh at me.” Jim’s voice is suddenly firm, and the other man stiffens up.

“Now, hold on. I wasn’t laughing at ya.” A pause. “Well, I guess technically, I was, but I meant no offense. You’re right, it is - empirically better.”

Jim frowns, but doesn’t say anything more, except, “I have to go back to get my things.”

“Well, let me take you.”

“It’s right there.”

“We’ll ride.”

A current flows, whether we instruct it to or not. Beyond power lines, generators, solar farms, wind turbines, nuclear plants, beyond motors and batteries and all other containers, conduits, and creators of energy, a current flows.

As long as we are alive, there is energy in us.

The energies of Sebastian and Jim as they leave the house and come out into the bright, hot, sticky day, are wavy and fluctuating.

Jim is clearly not used to needing support. The cane is a hindrance on the hard dirt, and his body keeps pushing just a few inches too far on each step. Twice, he falters and stiffly returns to a standing position before beginning to walk again. Little winces flutter over his face. But he is dogged, having found the tool he needs to get the job done. The sooner the better, his body seems to say.

Sebastian has the same sort of energy as a crocodile. Lying in perfect serenity, no more out of place than a log, for months, until the opportunity to snap his teeth on something juicy finally arises. Then, he'll move too fast to see. He walks with a slow, purposeful step, one eye on his companion.

He pauses when Jim falters, and in turn, Jim finds himself looking back over his shoulder to reassure him. But he doesn't say anything, mercifully, even as the instinctive 'woah, be careful' bubbles up in his throat. Sebastian has a mind not to lend a voice to commonplace phrases around his new employer. How exactly would one ask this man where he's from? How he likes the weather? What he's doing later?

Best to relish, in silence, that electric feeling that they are about to do something extraordinary. But while Sebastian is wound tight, ready to pounce, Jim is endlessly unspooling from a heavy coil of excitement.

They go to the stable.

It's a block of regular stalls with their six guest horses, and one separate stall for Sebastian's sweet brown-eyed Buckley.

The clack of the cane makes Buckley nervous. The horse trots in place, watching the two men approach. Jim steps around to the animal's side; the horse flattens his ears and huffs.

"You gotta stay where he can see you." Sebastian reaches over the stall door to calm Buckley with a gentle stroke of his knuckles. It's usually a reminder he would give to a tourist, a guest, a customer. His tone is momentarily a little more pleasant: curated to deliver all the charm of the south without the trip to Houston. "He'll get skittish if he don't know his rider. Here, let him get a sense for you."

Jim grudgingly lets Sebastian guide him over to the front of the animal and hold out his hand to his damp nose.

"You wouldn't have to do this with a car," he notes.

"Waste of gas." Sebastian opens the stall and steps inside. His boots, unspurred, noiselessly nudge the hay with steel toes. "Scuse me, 'petrol'."

Jim watches as Sebastian saddles his horse. There is a seriousness and reverence in the heavy leather equipment, the clinking steel. It doesn't suit the briefness of their venture. But it is engrossing to Jim, for reasons he can’t name. “Oh, is oil in short supply?" he asks, laden with sarcasm. "I've been living under a rock for my entire life. But I just heard about horses, they seem the best possible way to get around."

"Would you rather walk?"

Jim doesn't answer, just looks off in the distance. There isn't a city to be seen. There aren't any non-ranch buildings for that matter. Everything is far too big out here.

Jim allows Sebastian to come into the house with him, or at least, he doesn’t tell him not to. The cowboy takes one look at the dirty interior and then looks back at the little man who once stood in the same spot, in his boxers, and slammed the door in his face. “Have you been surviving on Cliff bars?”

Jim starts packing up things: his computer, his clothes. None of it fits in his suitcase like it once did.

“All the nutrients you need.”

Sebastian snorts. “They ain’t, my friend.”

“Mm, we’re not friends.”

“I’ll fix us a big dinner tonight. We’ll need the energy.” Sebastian wanders further into the dingy home. ‘Shithole’ was apt. It’s ancient, the newest smell is cigarettes. “What the fuck were you doing here?”

“Working.” Jim glances around. “Material circumstances can be ignored, for a time.”

“Uh huh. That what you were thinking when you drove home with a gunshot wound?”

“Something like that.”

Sebastian busies himself almost immediately with preparing food when they return home, and so Jim takes up residence on the couch and gets back on his laptop. There is a peacefulness between them, for a while. The clatter of pots and the snap of a knife mingling with the typing Jim does, the odd communique passes between them. "Any dietary restrictions?"

"None. Only, don't make it too spicy."

When Severin finishes his 'work' for the day and returns, toeing off his dusty boots, he glances warily at Jim. "Staying for dinner?" he asks.

"It would seem so," Jim replies lightly, the majority of his attention on his work. Among others is a group of truckers in this area who are eagerly searching for a steady supply of amphetamines. Supply chain and demand all in one. He is engaged in a somewhat flirtatious conversation with one of them, who goes by the handle 'The Cave'.

"Did you see a doctor?"

"Tomorrow. Isn't that right, Seb?" Jim's tone is clear - don't talk to me, I'm busy.

Severin looks into the kitchen doorway. Sebastian is making enchiladas, rice, and beans. The smell of chiles and chicken fills the space.

"Yeah,” he nods. “I’m gonna take him to the city. We'll do things right, talk to the authorities and everything." Sebastian's well-worn hands tear pieces of chicken apart, turning the plump meat into bite-sized chunks. The heat does not seem to bother him, even as steam pours out.

"Really?" Severin goes to stand near him, taking his own piece of meat to work on. He does so automatically, instinctively. His voice dims. "Is it serious?"

Sebastian adjusts to make room for his brother. “He told me everything… It's the cartel," he murmurs, voice dropping an octave. "Man stands to lose his business.” He pauses. “And his family."

“Geez…” Severin puts his head down and pulls chicken in silence. Jim click-clacks furiously in the other room.

As the day goes on, people’s energy becomes squishier, slower-moving. The air cools. The cowhands have left. Feeding the horses in the evening falls to Severin, whose high has dissipated into a sleepy haze. After he does the nighttime chores, the two brothers set the table and the smell of food, impossible to ignore after slow-cooking for hours, coaxes Jim away from his laptop.

The brothers clink their glasses together without looking, a solemn habit.

Sebastian tucks in right away but Severin murmurs grace under his breath and, for a second, Jim’s fork pauses midway to his plate as if to observe the custom. Soon, they are all eating heartily.

“That’s almost as good as Mom’s,” Severin says. “Thanks, Bassy. I’ll do breakfast.”

“Yes, thank you,” the words sound like a joke in Jim’s voice, “for everything.”

“Sure,” Sebastian shrugs. “Everyone’s gotta eat.”

Chapter Text

Bellies full of grits, potatoes, and last night's dinner, Sebastian and Jim take off in his Chevy towards the city around midday.

Sebastian is dressed for work: buttoned down with blue jeans and a field jacket. He drives, smoking a cigarette out one window, while The Diary plays on his tape deck. He can't help but sing along at parts, his low, smooth voice taking on a rougher, impassioned quality. “I come around to this motherfucker and kill his ass just like Jesse James.” Fingers tapping the steering wheel. In intervals, seemingly unable to control himself, he explains to Jim that rap when he was a kid was mostly dance music - but the rise of the Geto Boys, a band from Houston, showed just how profound and expansive the genre could be.

Jim sits alongside him with a hand-drawn map of the area, dressed in a fresh suit, minus the tie and jacket. The hill he plans to put Sebastian on is along the road they currently drive on, but getting from the hill and back to the car will take precious time. Not to mention, it won't do to sit in the car on the side of the road in plain sight of their oncoming targets. He listens, half-distracted but unable to tune it out. Sebastian gets animated talking about his favorite music, explaining references from the lyrics, the solo projects, the samples, the art of it all. His face lights up and his controlled, calm voice starts to jump around. He waves his cigarette while he talks. Even though Jim isn't sure why they're talking about this, he doesn't snap. He works, patient, knowing there are many hours before the Rockford's gang arrives.

Better to have hired a rap geek than have a drunken oaf one rejection away from shooting him.

If anything, the music’s steady, clippy beat helps relax Jim, helps him focus. Occasionally, when he tunes in, he catches a line or two.

“Life has no meaning, meaning

We were all born to die, so no screaming.”

It’s new. Music, Jim had always thought, is a shallow thing. A lot of record labels and dirty tricks, massive productions with a hundred people involved to make a star look like a star. But there is nothing shallow about this.

It feels good.

Sebastian catches himself rambling, and lapses into a meditative silence on the upcoming task.

"When should they go down?"

"Good question. See if you can't get them before their kickstands are down."

Sebastian grins. "I can do that."

"Should you have practiced at all?"

Probably, Sebastian's face says, before he sculpts it back into a confident facade. "I went hunting in fall. Didn't miss a shot."

"Did you fire any?"

"Yeah, shot a buck. Couple of javelinas."

"Javelinas."

"Big pigs. Don't worry about it, Boss, I'm good at what I do."

"So you say. If you miss, we're fucked. But anyways... how fast can you run?"

“Why?”

There are two roads along the hill. One, the road Jim drives down, is called Myrtle Springs. This leads to a scattered neighborhood of squat, fenced houses with long driveways and barren acreage. A full mile up the road, there is a path off to the right that forks back around and becomes an interstate highway.

Jim and Sebastian go to the highway and pull off, switching on the hazards. They discuss the plan in brief, the formation of which continues to flow easily between them. From their current position, Sebastian intends to walk up the hill and lie in wait for his targets to show. It is a long walk, no less than twenty minutes. Perhaps seven at his top speed. That is seven minutes for the shots to be heard and called in. Seven minutes of the bodies lying under the sun just a click away from their murderer. Seven minutes to get from the perch to his getaway vehicle, which he will then have to drive.

In London, setting up a shot like this would’ve depended heavily on access to buildings; and beyond that, exits, entrances, everything caged in with brick alleyways and buildings. Here, all Jim has to do is put Sebastian somewhere high up and calculate the distance from A to B.

Killing time, Sebastian lights up a cigarette. He hesitates before offering one to Jim, who accepts it with equal hesitation.

They smoke in silence. The charge in the air is tenuous today. Shaky.

Michael Rockford is on an all-natural high, tearing down the highway with his two best friends on a motorcycle that a month ago, would've cost him his house. Now, he's rolling in dirty money. He has brand new leather pants and a studded jacket, and after him and his guys talk to Uncle Rockford, they'll have more than enough for everyone involved to get new duds. For now, his friends wear old, faded jean jackets.

The game here feels easy, the day feels free.

One moment, these things are all the case. The next, three bullets zip through the air, one right after the other, and embed themselves in the hearts of all three men.

A lone figure throws his kit back together and books it across the grass, going the opposite direction.

Their motorcycles tip to the side, in the same order as the shots, and they fall to the gravel drive. Licks of blood on the rocks.

Sebastian gets back into the driver’s seat of the car and starts it. Jim, immersed in his phone, barely looks his way.

It isn’t until they’re miles away that he tells him, “It went down just the way you wanted.”

“I can pay you in cash once we’re back.”

“No sirens yet.”

“Mm-hm.”

Sebastian keeps driving, a sinking feeling in his chest. “Jim… be honest, why did they shoot you in the first place?”

The blond sighs and turns off his phone, readjusting in the passenger seat. “What do you mean?”

“You said they’re a rival gang.”

“No, you said that.”

“Fine, I said they’re a rival gang, and you agreed. What are they rivaling?”

Jim looks back at the road, the weight of his options spilling back and forth in his gut. He remembers the road vanishing under the hood of his car as death licked at him from the inside of his leg. Eventually, he gives, “Hell’s Angels.”

A steel-toed boot slams the brakes. Jim jolts forward against the dashboard and barely catches himself. “What the fuck, Seb-“

“Hell’s Angels?!” Sebastian restarts the car, but only to take it to the side of the road. It takes a calming breath for him to do this, his hands trembling. Once there, he turns to Jim with a face full of barely-contained fury. “You’re working for the fucking Aryan Brotherhood?”

“What? No, Hell’s Angels, they’re a biker gang-“

“Yeah, a biker gang that just-so-happens to have an all-white membership.”

“It’s not the Aryan Brotherhood, it’s something different. I’m not-“ Jim’s words catch; looking back, he didn’t see anyone of color at their biker bar. He did see an awful lot of tattoos. Of what?

He can’t recall. “I’m not racist. Obviously.”

“My mistake. You’re just working with racists.”

“I’m an Irish tranny, if anything-“

“Don’t fucking start with that, you’re doing fine. They accepted you.”

Jim crosses his arms, mouth screwed up. “It’s not like it was easy.”

Sebastian shakes his head. “What’d they offer you?”

Jim holds his hands out. “Amphetamines. That’s all. Their trust, I suppose.”

“They know you hired me?”

“No,” Jim reaches across the space, puts his hand on Sebastian’s arm. “And we’ll keep it that way.”

Sebastian shakes him off. “Wouldn’t want them knowing you hired an undesirable, huh? Jesus. Fuck you.”

“No! No, I’m not working with white supremacists. I-“ Jim puts his head in his hand. “I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t know,” Sebastian repeats flatly.

“How would I’ve? I got here last month. But now that I do know,” it sort of pushes itself out of his mouth, “I’m not going to deal with them anymore.” Jim feels like he’s standing outside his body, watching it speak, and this is typical, but less so, his goal appears to be soothing Sebastian. Why?

“Aw, real kind of you to wait ’til after turning me into their gun.” His voice is icy. There does exist in Jim a fear of losing his position. Where would he go without Seb housing and chauffeuring him?

“I’m serious, Sebastian. I’ll find another source.” His words pick up speed as it sinks in just how much he relies on Sebastian. “It’s the American Southwest, I’m sure I can find drugs someplace else. And… when we’ve gained enough strength, we can fight the Hell’s Angels. Completely eliminate their hold on the territory.”

Sebastian scoffs. “We can, huh? Don’t you forget how we got here.”

“Right,” Jim shifts in his seat, straightening up, finally remembering the power he has in the situation, “blackmail. And did you really think this was the full extent of that?”

The dark-haired man in the driver’s seat falls silent, tapping the steering wheel.

“Just drive home,” Jim quips, fastening his seatbelt.

Jaw clenched, Sebastian finds himself obeying, if only to arrive somewhere he can take space away from Jim. He doesn’t play his music on the way back. The car is torturously quiet, but Jim can’t seem to take his phone out to distract himself. He’s pinned to his seat, watching the same road as Sebastian.

They are forced to slow for passing cows. The hulking bovines walk purposefully from one side of the road to the other, but slowly, their bells clinking.

“What is the ‘full extent’ of it?” Sebastian wonders aloud.

“Not having fun anymore?” Jim makes a mock-pitying face.

“Never was.”

Jim’s expression melts off and he turns away from Sebastian. He takes out his phone and, with a huff, starts looking for an alternative drug source.

After they go back to the house, Sebastian gets a towel, a bottle of whisky, and disappears.

Unbeknownst to Jim, he walks the trail to the natural hot springs on their property. There, he strips off his clothes, his boots, but not his hat, baring himself neck-down to the evening air, and climbs down a rickety wooden stair to the entrance of the rocky pool with his bottle, before slipping in.

The water is warm, night quiet apart from an occasional bird call. The summer insects are still sleeping in the dirt.

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day.

Sebastian leans back against the rocks, letting the water soothe his muscles, wash away his concerns, and forget about the little demon who’s sunk his claws into his life.

That little demon isn’t easy to forget.

Especially not while lying naked in a hot spring. Sebastian is reminded of the day before, when he saw Jim in the bath. When their bodies were pressed together. It was only a glance, only a moment, and he had tried hard not to think about it. He’s trying hard not to now. But the flash of Jim’s Tdick poking through his lips still sends an inexplicable flash of heat to his groin.

Trying hard to think about anyone else, he indulges and takes hold of himself under the water, resting his head back and tipping his hat down.

But the memory of their argument in the car comes back up and immediately, he goes soft. He takes a swig of whisky and groans.

No escape.

The house is quiet once Sebastian leaves. Jim recuses himself in the guest room to work, but he isn't in there long before Severin comes to find him.

The clean-shaven twin, his expression a bit downcast, raps on his open door. "Uh, hey, Jim."

"Hello." Jim flicks his eyes up in acknowledgment, but they are quickly drawn back down.

"I just wanted to say, y'know, I think it's brave of you to go to the authorities. I know it can't be easy, and I hope you and your family are alright."

Jim continues to tap away without looking.

"And I'm sorry for my attitude when you first showed up. Seb's real important to me and I get a little defensive, I guess."

Oh yes. The story. Jim raises his head completely to give Severin his best imitation of a weary, but morally tight, victim. "Thanks, Severin." He makes it look like he's trying to smile, but can't.
A pitiful flash of joy. "I owe your brother a lot."

The false face works, putting Severin enough at ease to step one foot closer.

"Heh. Yeah. Doubt he feels that way. I'm sure he just thinks he was doing what's right. He's always been a..." Severin searches for the word, which is 'martyr', "hero-type."

Jim tips his head to the side with a curious look, and Severin indulges: "You should ask him about my prom night. If he hadn't been around... well, I don't know what would've happened. Where is he, by the way?"

"Not sure." A reminder of his previous failure to deal with Sebastian's emotions effectively, it makes Jim look away. "He seemed..." Now Jim searches for a word, and it's hard to imagine what's going through Sebastian's mind behind his dark curls and elaborately trimmed facial hair, "... solitary," he eventually chooses.

"Probably just tired. It'll pass. Again, he's always been like that. He'd barely say a word to anyone when he was a kid. Parents thought he might have problems with speech development, actually, but then he was a big reader too. Turned out to be nothing.”

Both of the Moran brothers like to talk, and not always about things that matter. None of this is important. Jim’s eyes keep wandering back to his screen. Severin, judging from the way they spoke to each other outside the room the other day, is not in control of the property nor Jim’s staying on it. He can afford to be rude. Interrupting his stream of consciousness, “Actually, can you make me coffee? I would, but ah,” he gestures at his leg.

“Uh, sure. You know it’s almost ten PM, right?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, sure. You got it.”

Chapter Text

When he finally emerges from tonight's sleepless tear, Jim has about half of the answers he needs to acquire mass amounts of amphetamines and distributes, but he finds the Moran house empty at midday. A VHS copy of My Bloody Valentine adorns the coffee table, and the smell of that morning's breakfast is still in the air. Did they forget about him? The idea is strangely off-putting, even though Jim didn't want to be disturbed by something as stupid and small as breakfast. But surely Sebastian would have cooled somewhat on the deeply embarrassing fact that Jim had managed to do bigots a favor.

Just as he wonders how he’s going to get around without someone to drive him, a jingle in the doorway of the living room catches his attention and a smile curls across his face.

It’s Sebastian, dressed in a bright red plaid shirt and jeans, a gold belt buckle, and leather chaps: black, red, and tasselled, going from his hips to his ankles. He has a long, thin white loop of rope thrown around his shoulder. A lasso. And a lighter in one hand.

“Howdy,” Jim says pointedly.

“Mornin’. There’s coffee and grits in the kitchen.” Sebastian goes to the hat rack for his cattleman. “I’m showing the hands how to rope.” There’s a beat. “If you’d like to watch.”

“Oh, I think I’d get too excited,” Jim says with a suggestive quirk of his eyebrow. “Could you drive me someplace afterwards?”

Sebastian, clearly trying to minimize the interaction, takes a reluctant pause by the foyer. “Where?”

“I’m meeting someone to fix what we talked about yesterday.”

Sebastian looks back at him. “I need a better explanation than that.”

“You’ll get it. Go on, cowboy.”

“Roping cattle is about the least sexy rope can get,” he adds on his way out the door, “if you ask me.”

"Wait," Jim pokes his toes into his shoes. "Give me a cigarette."

"How'd you know I was about to smoke?" They step, shoulder to shoulder, onto the porch. Jim blinks in the sun, the deep bags under his eyes much clearer. "Oh, I saw the lighter in your hand."

"Rin said he brought you coffee at ten. You sleep?"

"A little."

"Mm."

They share a light, their heads drawn close. Jim can smell his aftershave and grooming oils. Sebastian can smell the sweet and musky scent stuck to Jim's neck and hair. Then it is all erased by smoke.

At the corral, Severin demonstrates a simple hogtie on one of Ronette's calfs. He's dressed up in a white shirt splashed with red hearts, and a red and silver hat to boot.

"I really didn't know. I... I was being sloppy."

The admission comes slowly, tugged from Jim's lips by a force he doesn't know. Remorse? "I just wanted it fast."

Sebastian glances over at him. The hurt that was in his eyes last night is still there. "I wish I'd never met you," he says coolly.

Jim tries not to scowl. "I'm trying to make it better."

"You could have not done it, period. What kinda circumstances call for getting in so good with your drug dealers?"

"It'd be hard to explain."

"Better save your breath, huh?"

They finish their cigarettes in sync, Jim ashing his just a second before Sebastian.

Despite his initial deflection, he lingers on the porch and watches the cowboy at work.

He's good with his employees, or perhaps just good with a crowd, or maybe they just sense the same mysterious magnetism in the man that Jim does. All eyes are on him.

Roping cattle is the least sexy rope can be, hm?

He rolls the words around in his head, reminded of his own liaisons with a professional Dom back in London. Of course, he never used rope - luxe fur-lined leather cuffs, nylon webbing, clinking iron O-rings, but never rope. There's a technical mastery to the stuff that always compelled Jim. An artistry. He'd seen pictures of people in rope bodices, suspended, and bound from head to toe like drying meat. An objectified but revered body, the ornate bondage serving to both beautify and render helpless the subject. Something about it has always appealed to Jim. Watching Sebastian expertly throw the lasso, then loop it around with a simple flick of his wrist, knot it with two, makes the place just below his belly warm - he's doing things to Jim just by roping a wooden post. What if it were his wrists? He imagines being strung up on a pulley in some straw-scented old barn, the rope lashed confidently around Sebastian's palm. One tug of the rope to strain his muscles beyond control. Jim eventually drags himself away. There are still more details to hammer out, and he cannot afford to indulge his fantasies.

In the real world, Sebastian is in a place of comfort and familiarity. He spins stories about his time in the rodeo: school during the day and competitions at night, the one evening he was forced to bull-ride, him and Severin taking home a medal for team-roping. His face catches the sun, eyes and mouth energetic, the way they are when he talks about his music.

Inside, Jim struggles to keep away from the window. Finally, he collapses on his guest bed and shoves his hand down his trousers. He finds his clit and strokes it between his middle fingers. Wet, and imagining himself splayed utterly beneath the other man, it takes very little time for him to cum. He squeezes his features and utters a little gasp as his hips spasm with pleasure. He shucks down his waistbands in the bathroom and wipes himself off, catching a glimpse of his flushed expression in the mirror.

“Happy Valentine's Day, James,” he sings.

The drive is long and exhausted Sebastian's selection of tapes - between The Diary, Mind Playin Tricks on Me, and a copy of Dookie by Green Day that hasn’t seen a play since 1995, they both agree none are worth putting on - and the radio has nothing going for it. When Jim flicks through the channels, the static seems to put Sebastian on edge.

Eventually, he pipes up. "So, that explanation?"

"I'm unclear on what must be explained."

"No, you're not. I asked you why you're so fixated on this, what sort of circumstances demand what you did. Fucking everything ‘must’ be explained." His voice is hard, but there is a pleading to it, the desire to actually understand the situation one not entirely descended from his rationale.

There's something about Jim, about this whole situation, that feels promising.

So Jim, feeling a little like he’s extending a bit too far, starts to explain everything to Sebastian.

He explains the existence of his network: how he forged it out of nothing, maintained it alone, and... how it crumbled. He summarizes it,

"I let myself become enamored with ideas of heroes and villains and satisfying endings. But the sad, boring truth is, no one is really a hero. No one is really a villain. Worst of all, it never fucking ends."

Sebastian snorts derisively, watching Jim prickle like a splashed cat. "What, did you get your heart broken?"

Jim glares at him. "No." And there are no similarities between this tall, dark, handsome man and the tragic detective who'd ruined it all. "It never got that close."

Sebastian's humor is brief-- he trades it for a sympathetic expression. "So you're starting over."

"Mmhm. And I'd rather not start out vying for the loyalty of people who are only loyal to their blood and flesh and the land they were born on."

Sebastian takes a deep breath and, with it, the car slows momentarily, as if it’s an extension of himself. Soon, they're speeding along as they were before.

"Seems like a good idea," is all he says.

They settle on silence.

It's an easy silence. There isn't anything to say -- they each have their agendas.

When they arrive, they both take in the same scene: ten or so of the burliest men, broad and big and hairy, exchanging a bottle over each other's cigarettes. One hangs out the side of his rig, blasting music.

On the ground by the intersection of Highway 30 and I-82, about 150 years ago, someone made a general store. They used big, heavy beams of pecan wood, and a foundation of stone. These things are still there, in addition to a brick shower house, a concrete motel, a convenience store, and a Denny's. By far the largest part of this structure is the parking lot, designed to house twenty sixteen-wheelers and as many family vans as could pass through in late July.

Between the shower house and the trucks is where the party is going on. Two of the burly men drag each other into the shower house giggling like teens. One wears leather pants, his hairy, luminous asscheeks hanging out of windows in the back.

"You plannin' on-" Sebastian starts to make a crack, but Jim is already getting out of the car. "Hey."

"This won't take twenty minutes." The blond practically skips over to the group, whose heads turn towards him with wide, interested eyes. "Which one of you is The Cave?" he asks, planting his hands on his hips. The gazes turn to a man no shorter than 6'5, his coal black beard and hair braided with beads. He wears a torn jean jacket and no shirt, and across his chest is a tattoo of the Montana state flag. The men around him hoot as Jim walks up and extends his hand. "James Brady, it's a pleasure to meet you."

"Likewise," the man chuckles. "I didn't think you'd show."

"Shall we discuss our business somewhere more private?" Jim raises his eyebrows. The Cave leads him behind the shower house to a chorus of lusty hollers from his friends.

Sebastian watches from the car as Jim is led away and doubts, despite himself, that they are going to establish a professional relationship. The way this group looks at Jim's behind, he can imagine an awful lot going on around that brick corner. Maybe Jim just sold him a bill of goods on this whole thing. Maybe the Hell's Angels are still in play. He huffs; is that what he is, a dick appointment chauffeur? Fine, he thinks, and gets out of the car.

He saunters up to the crowd and clears his throat. "Bum a smoke?"

Behind the wall, the tension between Jim and his contact is mild. Their flirtatiousness over text was merely a signal of similar walks of life; Jim gets the sense that the Cave likes them with a little more meat on their bones, and he himself isn't partial to the brand of taurine sweat oozing out of the other man's pores. No, they get straight down to business.

The Cave has people in Oklahoma who can distribute locally. His truck represents one of a multitude who'd be willing to help Jim branch out to the other states. From there, it's a matter of finding groups that aren't affiliated with larger syndicates and who don't struggle with nationalist delusions - he has his work cut out for him on that front. And supply is still dicy. It seems that the truckers get their personal drugs from a variety of local dealers, typically small quantities of varying quality. Nothing stable enough for an operation. But, he tells Jim, he's been offered an endless supply from a third party - an ex-cartel chemist that he met on the road, looking to branch off into her own competing business. Naturally, she's a very private and discerning individual - something Jim can understand. She needs proof of concept before she's willing to deliver: essentially a business proposal, along with - as always - an in-person meeting. The soles of his shoes never got this worn-in back home.

"You made this sound like a done deal." The accusation comes with some bemusement - Jim would've done the same in his position. Better to secure the resources before execution; he doesn't mind being a greased wheel, if it turns a profit.

"It is, it is. She just wants someone around to manage it. Knows me a little too well to put this all in my hands." The Cave's yellow grin harkens to a life of voluntary hardship. Jim can see in his build that despite his sedentary occupation, he is strong, and he too has bloodshot eyes and a high octane energy. Whatever he rolls on, it is effective. "Which, it sounds like is the perfect job for you."

Jim smiles greedily. It is. He wants it.

"Fine. When can I meet her?"

"Sylvia. Gutierrez. I'll send you her information."

"Please," Jim nods, and they shake hands once more.

Emerging from the corner, Jim sees Sebastian with a cigarette in hand, idly talking to the other truckers. He admires what he perceives as initiative from afar.

Among them, the gunman's masculinity seems quaint and performative. He is tall and broad, but angular, his features set like pearls in some ornate silver hand-mirror. His neat mustache looks positively fruity next to excessive, wiry beards, and his voice - firm, but intoned with pleasantry and gentle curiosity - carries half the distance of everyone else's.

"Grandad moved here from India. Grew up in Texarkana," he's saying.

"A real country boy," one of them says, offering him their bottle. He waves it off, spotting Jim. Though there is nothing disheveled about him, Sebastian thinks he detects a conspiratorial nature between Jim and the big, tatted trucker that goes beyond the criminal. His mind fills with the image of the other man on his knees - cane discarded, the pain overruled by need - with his lips racing down erect, glistening flesh.

When they get back into the car, Sebastian is robotic. He methodically starts the car and gets back on the road, ignoring the coy waves from the crowd of men in his rearview mirror.

Jim watches out of the corner of his eye, waiting.

"Well?" he asks after a moment.

"Well, what."

"Do they pass muster, Lieutenant?" Jim prompts, looking at him with undeniable eagerness, "compared to my previous associates?"

"Oh." Sebastian shrugs. "Not really my place to say."

"Don't tell me they're Nazis too."

"No, I mean..." Refocus, Moran. He clears his throat. "One of them asked where I was from, but I think he was just making small talk."

Jim nods, expecting more. Nothing comes. He blows air out of his mouth, letting his lips fly, not unlike a horse. "Alright, well, we'll stay vigilant."

Sebastian chews his lip. "You could've just said, y'know. It is Valentines' Day."

"Said what?"

The brunet huffed. "That you wanted me to drive you to a date." He asserts it confidently, which means he shrinks all the more when Jim doubles over with laughter.

"Oh, no. No, no. I'm not his type, and he's not mine. It's purely business."

"What is your type, then?" Sebastian says it without thinking, combatively, as if the answer would somehow win him this humiliating interaction. Playing it back in his head, he hears how he sounds, but it's too late to take it back. He sneaks a peek at Jim, who is looking away from him now.

"I don't have one." The bottle-blond says sternly.

"Purely business."

"That's right."

Sebastian snorts. "Of course." He puts his window down and hangs his arm outside, letting the whipping wind fill the car to try and eliminate any potential for further conversation.

Jim shouts, "well, what about you?"

"Guess I don't really either," he calls back, "I just dated whoever's around."

"Past tense, I notice."

"Look around. What's out here?"

"Truckers. Probably with poppers."

"Yeah, well, I don't go for truckers. Or loose assholes."

"Implying there is someone you do go for."

Sebastian is quiet for a moment. He remembers all of the brief trysts and prolonged flings from his mercenary days, rarely a night spent in the same bed, and all those abdomens, thighs, hands, and sets of genitals. Many of them, if not all of them, were the same sort of build and look as Jim - but he can't say that. They all had more in common, though. Brats, every one.

"I like difficult people," he says.

"Oh, lucky me." Jim pops in The Diary and turns it up. The soundtrack to their car trips, rapidly becoming familiar.

Chapter Text

Jim flicks a fly off of his pants, leaving only its wing. "She lives in Houston."

Sebastian whistles. "That's a drive. We'll probably have to spend the night."

"Five hours? You can't drive ten in a day?"

"I haven't exactly been an upstanding employee here."

"Like that matters."

They sit on the porch with coffee, watching the sun come up and smoking. Sebastian is dressed in tan and brown, Jim in slacks and a loose olive green shirt from the back of Sebastian's drawer that says Louisiana on it. He's been sweating through all of his dress shirts.

"I need new clothes too," he adds. "I suppose we can wait a day to drive out..."

"New threads, huh? You don't like my pajama shirts no more?"

Jim smiles - there is a secrecy to it. "Dressing well is important for people in my position."

Sebastian casts him a lingering look. He does look soft like this, dressed down, his scrawny arms thinly hairy and poking out of the shirt. "I don't know what you mean, boss. This is how a pro looks."

"You started with that pretty quickly," Jim observes.

"What?"

"Calling me 'boss'."

Sebastian shrugs, tearing his eyes away from the other man's delicious build. "I don't mean it resentfully. It's a term of-" endearment, "respect."

"It wasn't a complaint." The term rang with casual, comical manliness, like it'd been overheard on a construction site. Jim reached over and put his hand on Sebastian's armrest, just grazing his forearm with his knuckles. "You're quite respectful."

They go to a clothing store downtown later that day. First, Jim is choosy - "not that one, look at the state of its windows" - "I want to blend in, not start renting a trailer" - "do any of these stores not have a dedicated leather section?" But they settle on a department store, one that in another city might exclusively sell the sort of clothes Jim normally wears. But in Texarkana, they also sell wide-brim cowboy hats, chaps, boots, and a few embroidered shirts on the ritzy end of things.

Minus Sebastian's pay, Jim is still sitting on a small fortune, and his selections reflect this. Sebastian can't help but feel a little like a boyfriend, trailing behind him from section to section and helping him with the overflow of clothes. Then he has to try things on and, waiting on a pleather bench outside the dressing room, Sebastian has plenty of time to contemplate.

This was never part of his hook-ups. Never did he accompany a partner to the store, select an outfit for them, or exchange polite smiles on their behalf with salespeople. There is something like peace in it. Meditation. But, he has to remind himself, this isn't his cute, eager boyfriend putting on outfits and posing in front of him. This is his boss, of sorts, who even now is all business. He whisks away suggestions and replaces them at the speed of sound, amassing a wardrobe that is as monochromatic as it is expensive.

Light fabrics. Silver embellishments. There is a mind towards comfort, but more so towards looking professional.

Nonetheless, Sebastian finds himself on his feet and looking through the more rugged sections while Jim is occupied. When Jim emerges from the fitting room, almost ready to go, Sebastian is holding things for him - a cheeky look on his face, daring him. Jim takes the dare.

The outfit is black but bedazzled with glass studs and silver embroidery: a padded riding jacket, a set of pants, matching hat and boots, and a frilly - but loose and airy - white shirt.

Jim buys it, and the cashier wraps everything neatly. Sebastian lugs the bags to the car.

"You're getting around pretty easy," he comments, gesturing to the cane. "Might not need me to drive you places."

Jim blanches, ducking into the passenger seat. "I hate driving."

"You hate driving? You shouldn't have come here, then."

"I think the same thing, more or less, about once a day."

"Really?" Sebastian gets in with him on the other side. "It's not that bad, once you get used to it."

When they return, Sebastian has neglected duties to see to. He is far from the sole caretaker of the land, and between his brother and their empty-handed cowhands, the work that has to be done is seen to eagerly. But there are a few matters that, as the owner of the ranch, he tends to personally. Accounting is one of these, but that task falls to Jim today. Even after paying Sebastian for the hit, he takes to the man’s books out of seeming obligation for his leg.

It doesn’t take long, as he suspected, and by evening Jim is out of things to do. The local work is stagnating before the meeting with Gutierrez, the books have been balanced, clothes have been purchased - Severin cooks downstairs while Sebastian finishes up outside.

Jim wavers in the office, dressed in his new cream-colored slacks and linen shirt, checking his nails. Something wiggles at the back of his mind. He takes the stairs up to Sebastian’s room, dark and empty, and returns to the drawer he’d opened when he was lying here, recovering. Inside, Sebastian’s masturbation kit and his journal. Jim reaches in and with his quick fingers, plucks the book from inside and darts back down to the guest room.

The journal is old, faded, the first entry dated over ten years ago - it briefly mentions the attacks of September 11th, though current events are not the focus of the record. Nor are Sebastian’s illicit activities. It’s largely mundane, in fact.

“Nov 12

No sleep in three days.

Mile time 6 minutes. Down 30 s from last week (varying route).

50 mg sertraline, month 3. Suffice to say, ineffective.

Follow-up on the 25th.”

Another entry simply reads, "Couldn’t get up today".

There are no addresses, no names, though he mentions being exhausted and once injured due to attendance at an arena. Street boxing? A few other times, he brings up the term ‘visitor’, ‘guest’, which Jim takes to mean ‘hook-up’. They are sporadic. Sometimes he seems to be entertaining multiple at once, at other times, no one. There are infrequent twice-mentioned visitors - the word ‘visitor’ followed by the word ‘again’. There is nothing in the journal that could be especially incriminating, and Jim admires it - his own personal records are written in a cypher, backwards, and those are the ones he writes by hand. The complexity of the encryption on his digital files surpasses the US Bank’s. Sebastian lies by omission instead, but poring over the book, Jim can start to piece together a comprehensive picture of the man’s life.

Then he wonders, why is he doing this?

There’s a knock at his door. He stuffs the book under his pillow and gets up: there stands a dusty Sebastian.

“Hey. Since your leg’s gettin better, I was thinking we could go to the springs tonight. The three of us.”

Jim cocks his head to the side. “And whose idea was this?”

Sebastian side-eyes. “Severin’s.”

“Nonetheless, I’m game. But I didn’t pack any trunks.”

They walk through a darkened and chirping field with towels in hand. Severin takes up the rear, Sebastian in the front. Jim is reminded of when he first trekked out here from the road, but the air is much more forgiving in his loose clothing. He feels the breeze cooling sweat behind his ears.

"So, Jim," Severin calls up, "any relation to Tom?"

"Who?"

"Brady. Tom Brady. I'm no Pats fan, but he's pretty good."

Pats? Tom Brady? "No relation."

"I coulda guessed," Severin chuckles, "no offense, but I wouldn't put you in as my QB."

QB... quarterback. American Football. "None taken."

The spring insects are already taking root. Flies smack into their bare legs and arms.

"So then, where's your family?"

Sebastian turns his ear to the casual line of questioning. Jim sighs, melancholy. "Back in Ireland. My parents, their parents, cousins. All living together in one big house."

"Oh, that sounds nice."

Sebastian wonders if it's remotely true.

"It is," Jim looks up at the stars, a calculated wistfulness crossing his features. "You should see the holiday parties."

"I'll bet," Severin feels he's gaining some real ground and he searches for any unattended business between them - there is a cavern from his initial antagonism and Jim's prickly personality. "Me and Seb didn't do much this year, but we usually go pretty crazy on Valentine's Day."

"Is that so?" Jim watches Sebastian's shoulders bobbing in front of him.

"Yeah, you ever heard of My Bloody Valentine? It's this great old horror movie, came out when Sebastian was just a kid."

Severin chatters away about the plot, a maniac undead miner killing the teens who dare to dance on his death-day, before naming several other slashers that Jim has never heard of and describing their plots in detail. He sounds a lot like Sebastian. Gangsta rap and slasher movies - they are a pair.

The springs are undeniably gorgeous, but the view doesn't stop there. Jim lingers by the shore as the two brothers strip without a second thought, their ropy back muscles the same color as the rocks around them. They leave their underwear on, Severin in tight white shorts and Sebastian in plaid boxers. They both wade into the water, groaning at the pleasurable temperature, before Severin glances behind. "Aren't you coming in?"

Jim shifts for a moment, then slowly starts to shed his clothes. "No remarks," he says. Sweet Severin furrows his brow in confusion, but turns his head to his brother as he sees the mastectomy scars. Sebastian levels his gaze at his brother. His expression is articulate. Be nice. "No remarks to be made, boss."

Despite this, as Jim sinks into the water - and yes, moans, to feel it lick away the dirt and sweat of the day - he feels both brothers' eyes on him. He wears only black briefs, and they leave little to the imagination when soaked in water. Jim regrets rushing his top surgery; if he had taken the time and patience to care for his scars, or gone to a more attentive surgeon, they would be much less noticeable. The Morans are similarly exposed, but it's different for them. They have locker room comfort - fond and companionable memories of nudity. "I'll permit one remark," he gives, eventually.

Sebastian blinks. He'd been staring, and now he feels ashamed. But he doesn't stop thinking about the last time he was in the springs.

Severin, on the other hand, does not look away. "I, it's just, I didn't know. It's not a bad thing."

"Were you supposed to know?" Jim asks, his voice cool and controlled.

"Well, maybe we, could've, I don't know, brought you a shirt or something."

"I'm not uncomfortable." Jim smiles pleasantly: "Are you?"

Severin shakes his head. "No, I'm not one of those- I just - it's not a bad thing -" Sebastian cuts him off with a hand on his shoulder. "Be cool, Rin."

Jim studies them. Sebastian is clearly the worldlier of the two, but given his military experience and the general culture of their line of work, Jim is surprised to see him move so assertively for his rights - his right to not explain. The right to merely exist. He's relieved, but confused.

"Sorry," Severin says, scratching the back of his neck. He glances around the interior of the cave, then looks back at Jim. "So, what business are you in?"

Jim's smile takes on a quirkier, more enthusiastic aspect. "Trucking. I run a small distributing company. Retail, novelties, things of that nature."

Severin nods, then his face lights up. "Oh, so that business when you first got here...? They wanted to use your trucks?"

"Yes, exactly." Jim's eyes moved to Sebastian's. Their autumn-brown depths reflect back to him knowingly.

"And so you're out here, and sending money back home? I can't believe those sickos..." Severin shakes his head. "Sorry, Jim. Boy, I'm just hitting on all the personal stuff tonight, ain't I? How about we just swim?"

So they do. Jim's leg is wrapped in plastic but it tires quickly, so he sits on a rock and watches, and listens to the sound of water dripping.

It's been years. Decades, even. He hasn't been out to swim at a lake, a pool - probably he hasn't walked through so much as a puddle.

The natural world was hindered in stone and iron back in London. Here, it seeps from civilization. It floods in some places into beautiful pockets, serene and isolated and attended by creatures of diminutive consciousness. The three men appear more like these creatures than the people they are, delighting in the simple pleasure of moving through the water. And Jim, batty ears shivering in joy at every drop from the cavernous ceiling, feels something like peace.

The established serenity lasts until they drive into Houston to make contact with Sylvia Gutierrez. Her neighborhood is a lot of concrete and barred windows, and the deep thudding of trap music fills Jim's chest, even through the car. It's nothing like the enormous farms or superlabs he employed in the old days. There's a pause in his step as they dismount outside what appears to be a convenience store. A group of people give them both tough looks over their Black & Milds as the two men enter the store, which smells dry and faintly of freezer burn. "You got a craving, boss?" Sebastian asks quietly. The cashier eyes them and clears her throat. “Can I help you?”

Jim points at the back wall, stocked full of cigarettes. “Do you have indigo Marlboros in stock?”

The cashier doesn’t glance back at the wall. She nods, then she points a single, long acrylic nail at the back hallway. Jim marches back there, with Sebastian following at the rear, shooting glances at the front door. "That our only exit?" he asks himself.

In the back, a small, cramped elevator - installed no later than 1870 by the looks of it - takes the pair down a lurching two foot drop before the wall at their back opens up into a smelly, faintly damp hallway made of brick. At the end, long, opaque plastic flaps conceal the truth of a certain presence behind them.

Jim proceeds forward with a kind of disdainful, scant observation. His stride and posture have improved tenfold since his injury. Even before that, when he’d first entered the bar to meet Tommy, the contact who’d shot him, there had been a nagging hesitation in his step. Sebastian could see he didn’t lean on his cane as much anymore, but he couldn’t see that things had changed now that someone was here backing Jim up. In another world, maybe Jim was entering this place alone. How would his shoulders fall? How quick would his breaths be? Would he fight the urge, or would he reluctantly cast a glance over his shoulder to be certain nothing stalked him from behind? In another world, maybe Jim had died on a pile of sticks and leaves outside an abandoned shack in Red Lick. Here and now, he thrust his arms through the flaps and threw them apart to announce himself. “Hello?” he calls in a whiny sing-song.

The main room before him is cluttered and ill-suited for his companion to maneuver through. Wheeled metal carts and folding tables with all manner of equipment crowded inside a dark, windowless burrow illuminated by purplish-blue UV light from one side and fluorescents from the other. Light does not pass through unmitigated. Cables hang from the ceiling, ending in various plugs. Storage needs have forced cabinets up into the already low ceiling, creating a dense, stifling canopy. In the middle of this strange jungle, at an overturned filing cabinet that is serving as a desk, someone moves — and flicks on a desk lamp, as Sebastian’s figure pushes through the doorway.

Sylvia Gutierrez is a familiar sight to Jim. He’s never met her, but he knows her. She’s no taller than 4’2, her hair prematurely gray and her face lacking in collagen, making her look far older than her actual age of 32. Her hair is tied back and knotted up around the hair band, and a strand sticks to the side of her face. She blinks her eyes, large and deep and dewy, before narrowing them. The sleeve of her lab coat quickly swipes away a strand of saliva at the corner of her mouth. The texture of the book she’d just been sound asleep on is stamped into her forehead. “Who’s that?” she asks in Spanish. Jim is quick to reply, with delight and in the same tongue, “your new business partner!”

The small woman’s face lights up. She climbs over the desk and rattles down a narrow chute between two tables, pausing to admire the man beyond them before greeting him with a handshake, “He’s very big. Your muscle?” she laughs. “You brought muscle for a little lady like me?”

Jim shakes her hand with both of his, clasping it and meeting her gaze. It shines in the relative darkness around them. “Something tells me not to underestimate you, ‘little lady’.”

“With flattery, you won’t achieve anything,” she warns him somberly, though she winks before shoving some carts around to make a little space for the three of them. “The Cave said you need a supply. How much, how regularly?”

They start to talk business, and although Sebastian’s grasp of Spanish is pretty good, he eventually loses the thread of the conversation — though he notices that the two of them get on exceedingly well. There isn’t just a businesslike pace to the talks, but a rapid, energetic flow of questions and answers, sudden musings and responses. Feeling a little like a third wheel, he glances around the lab, or farm — a foliage is secreted behind misty plastic curtains on the purple side of the room — and takes stock. There is a minimal regard to cleanliness, besides the equipment, which is sparkling. There isn’t much organization. And the longer he looks, the more it dawns on him. There is a cot hidden away under a folding table. Bags of trash, unattended, bulge with takeout boxes. Behind the desk, a coffee machine with its glassware stained dark as night, burbles and hisses with a fresh pot. And then, beyond that, the little metal case on her desk — the perfect size for drugs of any variety — somehow more damning evidence of her drug use than the laboratory they stand in. But that isn’t Sebastian’s takeaway. No, it’s that Sylvia works and lives alone, back here in the dark.

It isn’t unlike how he first found Jim.

Sebastian finds himself breathing a sigh of relief when they leave the store and are back in the comparitvely fresh air and sun, the sounds of the lively neighborhood grounding him back in reality. Jim limps a little, but insists on holding the cane under one arm as they walk back to the car. “So… was that good?” Sebastians asks.

“Very good.”

Though the clipped, vague responses are starting to grate on Sebastian’s nerves, he tamps down on his temper and tries again. “What’d you two decide on?”

“She’s in. Which hotel did you pick, by the way? I’ll pull up directions.”

Was he deliberatively avoiding the question? Or was that a sufficient response, in his mind? “I know where it is. I’ve gone to a lot of shows here.”

“Shows.”

“Concerts.”

“Ah.” As they get in the car, Sebastian lights a cigarette before starting the car. With Sebastian’s hand on the ignition, Jim suddenly reaches over and snaps the cigarette away from his lips.

“Hey, what the fuck?” Sebastian glances up and sees Jim taking a long, salacious drag, a grin on his face. “Just light another one," he coos, and Sebastian could swear his eyes were sultry.

Chapter Text

No one stands up a Hell's Angel.

After news broke that Rockford had been shot, and in the exact manner requested, the tonsured leader of the Dallas chapter, Ryan ‘Handlebar’ Coleman, had initially waited to hear from Jim Brady. When there was no word, he tried to send a message to the number he’d been given only to find it was no longer in service.

“What is this? Is it a con?”

"It's a shame is what it is," Dan reflects, posing with his cue braced on the floor next to the billiard table, "but he probably turned yellow and ran."

Handlebar mulls, his expression deeply furrowing over his beer as Cobb lines up a shot. "If he was yellow, he wouldn't have done the job we gave him."

Pantera makes harsh the dull atmosphere of the dingy dive bar. Cobb and Dan attend the pool table, while Bottle sits astride, watching them play from an analytical perspective.

"Probably wouldn't have been worth the trouble," Bottle murmurs with a slight roll of his shoulders. He took a bad spill earlier that day, and his body is still aching. “He was asking for lab volume, we ain’t got that.”

Handlebar gives a cursory glance to his boys. They're trustworthy, but not cut out for his position as their leader. As their leader, he sees things that they can't. They're happy to have a routine, a family, something to do with themselves all day. They can't see opportunity. They can't recognize it. All they know is what he tells them.

Even so, Dan tips his head to the side in thought and concedes, “Maybe something happened to him - shit, maybe he got caught.”

"I want answers,” Handlebar announces, "I want an explanation why he ain't called. Nobody - nobody stands me up like that. If he's running some game, I want in.”

Dan shoots, the pool balls smacking loudly and satisfyingly against the sides of the table. Not a one goes to the pockets.

Handlebar continues, “If he got taken in, I wanna know. If he’s, shit, I don’t know, helpin’ Rockford fake his death, I want them both dead.”

“News said no suspects,” Cobb shakes his head at Dan and starts to ready his shot with much more panache, stepping back and applying cue chalk before swaggering up to the side of the table and lining it up. “I’ll reckon there won’t be much to go on for another week or so.”

Handlebar licks his teeth with the tip of his tongue. His molars are all rotten. Two had fallen out in the last six months, and its absence in his mouth sets him on edge. He says, “Is that what you reckon, Cobb?” His voice is soft and low, and it makes the pool game pause. Cobb looks up, rubbing the back of his bald head with his hand. “Well, ah… yeah, I do…”

Handlebar’s chair squeaks against the floorboards and he rounds on Cobb, who takes a half-step back before summoning up the courage to stand straight. His leader cold-cocks him in the jaw, and the crack it makes is like the sound of pool balls hitting together.

“When I tell you what I want, you get it for me. If there’s no suspects, you find ‘em. If the cops are lyin’, you infiltrate ‘em. Nobody stands me up, y’hear?!”

Cobb holds his face and lets out a choked cry of pain.
Bottle hops up from where he sat and squares his shoulders. “Yes, sir!” he says, jerking his head urgently towards the door. Dan nods. “We’ll get right on that, boss.”

The Houston hotel that Sebastian and Jim check into specializes in business travelers. The Beaumont, a tall beige exterior with a white, lime, and blue-jean blue interior. First, one sees the 'business center', a stark and dehumanizing corral of HP desktop computers and spindly swivel chairs. Then, only after moving past the red-eyed businessman on his Blackberry, one finds the reception.

"One double?" The afternoon manager is fat and brooding.

The question of arrangements has not preceded them. Jim looks at his side, towards Sebastian, tempted to ask - would he like to share?

But he quickly looks back, furtive under the manager's gaze, and smiles. "Two rooms. Single beds."

That night, Sebastian smokes behind the hotel. A hundred other nights, a thousand other cigarettes, and a handful of times standing right here on this alley, play through his mind. Houston. It's not one of the glamorous American cities, but to a younger Sebastian it might as well have been New York City or Los Angeles. This was the place with the music, the crime, booze and drugs, a sense of grandeur beyond his suburban upbringing. People signed record deals here. Earned doctorates. Made movies. People had big, disastrous trials at the courthouse. Its reputation was one of dirt and party glitter. Cowboys and rhinestones.

As he looks out at the smoggy sunset peeking between the pillared skyscrapers, he a wave of discomfort sweeps over him. It had been gone for so long, he'd nearly forgotten about it. But now it was back, the seasickness at land.

All those nights, all that smoke, has added up to very little.

Looking back on it, Sebastian’s dark eyes shift around the alleyway. He takes a slight step to the left, angling himself based on a large piece of graffiti that - years ago - he’d determined said ‘Paulie’ in oversized, exaggerated, melting letters.

His memory lines up with it. Yes, it was in this very spot that he smoked a cigarette. At this very hotel where he’d checked in under a pseudonym. In this town, his old handler had sent him his first mission.

It had been exciting. He’d been aware of the excitement, like a little dog he kept having to remind to stop yapping. After his years of military service Sebastian was and still is acquainted with the fact that enthusiasm signals ignorance - of how bad it can be, of how boring - and that ignorance raises the odds of premature death considerably in the field.

When he’d been here last, it’d been bad. And boring. And he hadn’t known enough. But he hadn’t died.

Sebastian drags his cigarette against the brick wall and shoots its remains neatly into a gap in the dumpster lid, then turns back to the door upstairs. He needs to call Severin.

Jim, between setting up his laptop to keep working and reaching for his suitcase - always at his side, that suitcase - he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror.

Although he hadn’t put on the ridiculous costume that Sebastian picked out for him quite yet, he almost didn’t recognize himself. Yes, he still had the same steep peak at his hairline, the same square jaw, and the bleach wasn’t anywhere near fading - in fact, the sunlight had seemed to lighten it even further - but those weren’t the strange things. No, he’d been smiling.

Having caught himself, Jim blushes lightly and his smile intensifies. He takes over, turning it into a devilish, sly smile by furrowing his eyebrows. He laughs - and turns back to his laptop with a contented sigh.

The differences had seemed so stark here at first glance. But it’s just like anywhere else, really. Like anywhere else, they're there. As long as he looks, he’s always been able to find them. The people like him. They look too, that’s part of what makes it so easy. It’s rare, but he’s seen it more than once recently. The longing, the searching, the awareness of the longing and searching. A certain brightness on the edges of the eyes, a certain dullness in their middle. In some places, awkward, slow, dysfunctional. In others, majestic, quick, remarkably adept. He saw it today it in Sylvia. And although he didn’t notice it at first, he’d seen it many times before in Sebastian.

Jim’s hands hover above his keyboard, short-circuiting. What was he about to do? Work - details - getting trucks to go from one place to another without being stopped - state lines less strict than border lines - contacting The Cave. Right. He flexes his fingers and starts to type out a message.

“Howdy, Bassy!” Severin’s joyful voice eases some of Sebastian’s sudden bad feeling. At least his brother’s doing alright.

“Good, and you?”

"I'm doing. Miss ya. Hey listen, we had some people book for next week. You'll be here, right?"

The tenseness in Severin's voice is audible. Sebastian tended to step up to play the jovial, folksy host; beyond that, he has a stronger sense of responsibility than his brother, who rarely if ever considers the needs of their guests. And Sebastian will never tell him he has to. The ranch was more or less supposed to be a playground for his brother, a way to make up for all the years he'd been gone. He feels obligated to take care of operating it.

"Yeah, I'll be there. How many?"

"Five, two adults and three kids."

"Family, nice. They're easy."

"... Do you think that Jim'll be here still too?"

Sebastian wavers.

"I'm not sure."

"Well, what's the situation down there? Did they make you talk to special agents?"

"No, I mean... I gave a quick report, but they don't think I'm important to the case."

"How's he doing?"

They should've gone over this. Sebastian doesn't want to start sketching a story half-cocked. They'd told Severin the night before that they had to discuss the situation with the Houston office of the DEA. Beyond that? Jim had been preoccupied with his meeting, and a hundred other things that Sebastian couldn't perceive. He sits down on his bed and gives it a quick thought before answering.

"I think he's okay. Scared, y'know, that they'll find out he's going to law enforcement... 'course, the agents told him that he hasn't got much on them, but involving the police is a symbolic thing. Shows cowardice."

"He doesn't have anything on them? Yeah, I guess they'd use fake names and stuff..."

"Fake names, burner phones, random locations."

"The cartel wouldn't go all the way to Ireland just to mess with some guy's family, right?"

"I don't know."

"It's scary. I'm... I'm glad you're helping. They give him protection?"

"Yeah, sorta. Our hotel's on their patrol route so they're putting an extra guy or two on the circuit."

"Geez. Aren't they taking it seriously?"

"Dead serious. But there isn't much else they can do."

Lying to Severin is too easy. It doesn't feel good, but the words come easily to Sebastian. That comfort he'd taken in his brother's happiness dissolves into a strong sense of guilt. The guilt dissolves into a faint, secretive pleasure. How long it's been since he's had anything to hide from his family.

"Well... if he needs - or wants - to stay with us... it's okay by me. Just until all of this bullcrap blows over."

"You sure?"

"Darn straight I'm sure. I mean, he's not bad company, and you helped him out. Least I can do is be okay while everything's, y'know, uncertain."

"Thanks, Rin."

"I didn't offend him the other night, right?"

Sebastian can't help the smile curling across his face. "No, Rin, I don't think you did."

"Cause it's really not - I mean, I don't care, it's his body and all."

"Don't overthink it," Sebastian advises.

"I was thinking maybe that's why he came over here. They're really religious in Ireland, huh?"

Sebastian thinks back to a night he spent in Dublin.

"No more than here," he measures out carefully.

They talk more, about the events of the day and how far Severin's gotten in a particularly maze-like dungeon in his game, about Houston and the last time they were both here. But gradually, they realize the distance between them isn't so enormous. The feeling of missing one another slides away, but when Sebastian hangs up he still detects a chasm in his chest.

Time for a drink.

It's quarter past nine when Sebastian's door opens and closes again. Jim can hear it from his room. Before he left this time he'd been talking - to his brother, no doubt - but it was hard to make out. Smoking again?

A knock lands on Jim's door. Interesting. He rises up from his laptop after closing everything open on it - though doing so, he's reminded that Sebastian already knows most everything about what he's up to. A first for anyone on Earth besides Jim.

Jim answers the door for Sebastian with a quirked eyebrow.

"Hey," the taller man says, "I was thinkin' I'd head down to this bar I know."

"Okay?" Was he asking permission? How sweet. "You may," Jim purrs, sweeping out his hand magnanimously.

Sebastian rolls his eyes. "I'm inviting you to come with me, boss."

"Oh." The surprises continue. Jim hesitates. He isn't one for bars, but this wasn't going to be like his father's pub in Kilkenny. Or like the dives where he'd met the Angels and Tommy. This would be a city bar. Perhaps even a nice place.

Jim casts a lingering glance over his shoulder at his laptop. Sebastian follows his gaze. "Work to do?" he asks. Jim thinks he hears a note of disappointment in his voice and - for whatever reason - this makes it hard to say 'yes'.

"No," Jim says instead. "Let me get my jacket."

"Oh - which one?" Sebastian's eyes light up at the prospect of seeing Jim dolled up in his black and silver rodeo regalia.

Jim laughs. "Not that one." He claps his laptop shut and pulls a black denim jacket, still creased from the store, out of his suitcase.

As they walk down the hall to the elevator, Sebastian bumps Jim's shoulder with his arm, gently, catching his attention.

"Thanks for coming."

"Please, I'm looking forward to seeing what constitutes night life in a place like this."

Mission-style, evoking the word 'casa', with a terrace and an obnoxiously green lawn. The sprinklers are running with an air of desperation, bleeding out furtively to keep the grass alive.

It's called Blue Ribbon, and it's busier than any of the bars Jim has been to so far. Even so, Sebastian pushes through the crowd easily, shouldering people aside for Jim to tail behind in his massive wake.

He orders himself a whiskey, and looking to his companion, sees his dark eyes scanning the menu.

Jim knows he must order a drink, seeing as they went out for them, even though he doesn't like the taste of alcohol. "... Paloma," Jim gives eventually. Though he hasn't heard of one before, it strikes him as an inoffensive, fruity, lightweight's cocktail.

One sip, sitting at a little table in the back next to a row of stumbling people throwing darts, and Jim thinks his impression was correct. It's sweet and bright and he drinks it much faster than he thought he would. Sebastian still drinks faster than him.

They're quiet for the first round. Sebastian seems miles away, scanning the crowd, his eyes misty with an impenetrable fog of memories. He only returns to Earth when Jim heaves a put-upon sigh and speaks up,

"So, has it changed since you were last here?"

Sebastian shakes his reverie loose.

"Oh, uh. D'ya mean Houston or this place?"

"This place."

Sebastian takes another look around, this time with clearer eyes than before. "That's new," he says finally, pointing at a jukebox in the corner.

“Think they've got Scarface?"

"Nah, it's probably all country," Sebastian smiles back, unsurprised but still touched that Jim would think of that. Then his expression falters, and he shakes his head.

"You remember that thing you said in the car about - letting yourself get enamored with grand ideas?"

Jim nods, suddenly finding himself thirsty enough to down the rest of his glass. “I’m surprised you do.”

"Well, I... I know a thing or two about that. It's weird, actually, being here again." He falls quiet, but Jim can see words still pressing against his lips from inside, and says nothing.

Sebastian swirls a coaster around on the table slowly with one finger. "... I dunno. Feels like... fate."

Jim's heart jumps. He blanches. Some part of him is thrilled by the words, most of him is embarrassed by his reaction.

"What do you mean?"

Sebastian wipes a hand over his mouth and nose and laughs at himself, self-deprecating.

"Last time I was here I was doing a job for someone who was a lot like you."

Ah. Relief and disappointment spread through Jim's chest simultaneously.

"A lot like me? How's that?"

The words come slowly at first, then quicker, like an avalanche.

"Well - he scouted me out after the military, and, I dunno. There was just something about him that seemed real to me, y'know? Not like my superiors or my teachers or anybody else, really. Someone who was outside everything looking in, who could see it all clearly and didn't care - didn't care who was looking at him."

Then Sebastian softens, quiets, looking surprised at himself.

Jim tilts his head to the side. "Sounds like you got your heart broken," he says, in just the same way.

The man laughs dryly, without humor: "Heh. Yeah, I did."

"Really-y-y?" Jim draws the word out salaciously, leaning forward. "What was his name?"

"Ash." Sebastian's smile is only for that person, wherever they are. "Ashton Martin - that's the name he used, anyways. I've got no idea what his real one was."

Jim scoffs into the ice at the bottom of his glass. Where had the drink all gone?

"Big Sean Connery fan?" he quips. The name isn’t familiar at all, but maybe if he looked?

"Fan of old things, mostly. Old movies, old cars, old - people." Sebastian points to himself.

"What happened to him?"

Sebastian downs the rest of his drink in one long gulp. "I'll tell you if you grab the next round."

So Jim does, and winding through the many jean jackets and camouflage coats, his mind turns. Sebastian - heartbroken - by a man no less.

When he returns to the table, Sebastian has composed himself. "Alright," he says, clunking the glasses down, "spill."

His scars semi-hidden by the Blue Ribbon's dim lighting, Sebastian accepts the drink and starts to explain.

It was nine years ago. Ash had appeared one night behind the Little Stripe, an old racetrack west of Houston, dressed in bright blue with a cravat. He’d bet heavily on Sebastian, who was, at the time, a prize fighter. He had not turned to killing just yet. Instead he was the champ at Little Stripe, trading blows and losing teeth with other desperados under the stadium lights. Weekends at eight. Monday through Thursday was sleepy. That was when they vetted newcomers and put on smaller tournaments. From Friday night on, however, the Little Stripe was lit up like a theme park, men crowded intimately in the center of the track around the pen to watch the fights, and the crowd watched in turn by a ring of guards closer to the seats.

Ash wasn’t a regular. He stuck out like a sore thumb, a Southern gentleman-type among the sweat-stained, leather-clad, and bare-armed regulars. The audience was usually the same. The old racetrack had run until ’98, before going bankrupt. The government would’ve seized it happily, the land being so close to an Air Force base, but a seedy oilman had bought out every loan in the area years before. Tests showed there was no oil on the land, but he kept it just the same. It became a birthday present for his nephew, a dealer in Houston. Now, this oilman and his family were a different story entirely, but suffice to say the young man was interested in tax-free ventures and illicit entertainment. The Little Stripe ran like this: they paid $100 for every fight, win or lose, but if you lost, you were out for the rest of that day. The ‘house’ was represented by a toady old man in a camping chair, a fishing tackle box on his lap, accompanied by two armed guards. If you wanted to place a bet, you would go to the old man. They sold drinks. Sebastian remembers a night that there was a popcorn machine there, too.

Once the show got on, it’d be ten to twenty fights - and they’d expect you to stick around all night to wait for payment, too. After all the rounds, the audience members would settle up - and the guards, who’d looked bored most of the evening, were suddenly sharp and attentive to the queue of drunk, rowdy gamblers. If anyone left the track before they saw the turnout on their bet, their money would be placed aside and could be retrieved the next night. On average, the old man probably carried a hundred thousand dollars in that tackle box. Plenty of people tried to grab it. If you stopped someone from grabbing it, they’d give you an extra $100.

When Ash turned up, the audience was half locals, half soldiers from the nearby Air Force base. Sebastian had made fun of his fancy get-up. He’d offered Sebastian the life of his dreams.

It would be like military work, he said. Special Operations. Freelance. “You come with me, sir,” he said in a Georgia drawl, “I’ll show you the kind of life you deserve.”

“How do you know what kind of life I deserve?” Smoking a cigarette in the stands, watching the sun come up, $2,000 in his pocket. Sebastian’s eyes were golden in the light. “Did you think you only just caught my eye?” Ash stood with his back to the dawn, head crooked. “I heard about you before, sir. I came a long way to find you.”

“From Georgia?”

“From the moment I was born.”

It was so corny, Sebastian had to laugh. And once he laughed, he smiled, and once he smiled, so did Ash.

When Ash smiled, it made Sebastian feel like he was something special for the first time since his discharge.

So began the life he deserved. Those five months he lived in Ash’s mansion, an eyesore in a giant housing development off interstate 85. The two men took everything under the sun, but pot and blow ruled over all. Sebastian completed a job a week, or thereabouts, using a rifle that Ash had given him. In the meantime, they partied, hired sex workers, shot off rounds into the sand. Never did they fall into bed together. Their relationship, in Sebastian’s mind at the time, was far too important to compromise with physical intimacy. Looking back, he was afraid it’d make him fall in love.

Eventually he found out Ash had six other contract killers he was ‘managing’. That, in and of itself, wasn’t enough to spell the end. After all, Sebastian lived with Ash. They had a special relationship, of some kind. No - it was after a job, nothing special, but an overnight job in Houston. He heard nothing from Ash while he was in town, staying at the Beaumont, and when he got home, the place was empty.
Ash wasn’t just gone. His things were gone. The kitchen had been cleaned out. The carpet had been steamed. Sebastian’s belongings, the few he had, were in his duffel bag on the kitchen counter.

Jim’s eyebrows collide above his nose. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he says.

Sebastian looks down at his fourth - or fifth? - drink with a frown and shrugs. “I think I should’ve seen it coming. He was always talkin’ ‘bout leaving.”

“Yes, but I imagine you assumed he’d be leaving with you.”

Again, he shrugs. “I misunderstood the whole thing. I thought…”

“I know what-you thought.” Jim’s words stumble. Tequila - what a wonderful substance. Why had he avoided it for so long? “Forget that. You were saying, you said this man was quite a lot like me.” He frowns. “If - if I was sick of something, I wouldn’t just - leave…” Jim purses his lips, looking down and to the side, and says, “well, what about London?”

Sebastian holds his hands up. “Jim, look, it’s your right to leave, especially if you’re sick of something. I don’t want to force anybody to stay with me,” Sebastian fumbles for the right words, suddenly unsure how to put his hands down, “You’re not him, you’re not - even - like him, I just - I don’t know, I kept thinking about being here, I kept thinking about him, and it - I don’t know, that was a little too much, wasn’t it? How about we get out of here? I’ll, I can pay.” Sebastian starts to get up, but Jim grabs him by the sleeve: “Wait.”

The dark-haired man slowly sits back down, anxiety churning in his stomach. “I-“

“It’s alright, Sebastian. It tracks. Our situation is, is similar. But - there’s a key difference.” One of Jim’s hands is still holding onto the inside of Sebastian’s elbow, and the other gesticulates with one finger. “I’m a much better criminal,” he said, raising a second finger, “I’m not going to leave you without at least an explanation,” as he raises a third finger, Sebastian murmurs, “I thought it was only a key difference?”

Jim glances at his raised digits and lets his hand drop to the table, shaking his head. “Forget that. The big difference is, I’m here with you in Houston.”

“You work more than he did.”

“That’s another one.”

Sebastian smiles, self-effacing. “Sometimes I get something on my mind and there’s nothing I can do about it, ‘cept talk.”

“That’s normal.” Jim drags his finger in a circle around the rim of his glass.

“Does it happen to you?”

“I’m not normal.” A wink and a smile.

They walk back to the hotel in the dark blue night, surrounded by the sounds of the city. In the elevator up to their rooms, Jim leans against Sebastian, pressing the back of his hand into the back of his hand. The warmth of his skin is astounding. Even this small point of contact is electric. The image of Sebastian’s fingers moving over his skin plays unavoidably behind his eyes.

“There’s something on my mind,” he says softly.

“Yeah?”

Jim looks at Sebastian and nods, a gleam in his eye. The taller man swallows thickly, feeling Jim’s fingers brush into his palm. The elevator doors slide open. Sebastian takes Jim’s hand, and escorts him back to his hotel room.

At the door, Sebastian gently pushes Jim against the wall and holds him there with his hips and his hands. They are both highly aware of where this is leading. Jim tips his chin up, his lips parted invitingly, and hiccups.

His cheeks turn pink. He wants to cover his face, but his hands are at his side, beneath Sebastian.

But Sebastian blinks and shakes his head. “Aw, boss. You’re wasted,” he says.

“No, I -“ Hic. “I’m -“ Hic.

The rancher holds his hand against Jim’s warm cheek. “S’okay. It’s not a good idea, anyways.”

Jim frowns, opening his mouth to protest, but Sebastian is already gone.