Making It Up As I Go

When Angel got released from the hospital, the only place that he could think to go was back to the Haywood Ranch. He stopped at the gas station on the way and instantly became acquainted with how many tiny inconveniences he was going to be experiencing for the next few weeks while he was wearing a sling. He’d tried to argue and wave the doctor off, but when it was all said and done, he was too tired and he just let it go. After everything that he’d been through, it wasn’t the hill that he was willing to die on.

He expected more chaos to be happening at the ranch, but a majority of the press, all the metaphorical vultures, were still over at Jupe’s for the time being. He wondered what OJ was going to do when everyone eventually made their way over. Or maybe they wouldn’t. Whatever the case would end up being, for now, people were passing the ranch right on by.

Angel parked in the same spot that he usually did. Out of habit he went to open the back doors of the van but then he remembered that he didn’t have anything that he was dropping off or installing. There was no work tied to this visit, not even the façade of it. Taking a deep breath, he turned around and looked up at the house, squinting against the bright sunshine that was beating down.

The entire ordeal had been terrifying when it was happening. He remembered hiding, trembling underneath the table as Jean Jacket had hovered above the house. He remembered seeing the blood coming down the windows in waves. At the time it had caused sweat to bead across his forehead and pool in his palms, the visceral nature of it something that had felt so inescapable at the time.

But now the ordeal was over. The sun was out and there was no more blood raining down and trapping them in the house. Jean Jacket was gone, but as he stared at the house, all of the blood still remained. It looked different now. Maybe it was the daylight, maybe it was because the stakes were lower now than they had been then. Whatever the reason, as Angel stood there staring at OJ’s house, with the blood dried down the paneling of it, it didn’t seem quite as terrifying as it had before. Or maybe the painkillers the doctor had given him were really starting to do their thing.

Once he’d stared at the house long enough, he looked around in search of Em or OJ. He didn’t see them, didn’t hear Emerald hollering at her brother for one thing or another. Angel was about to head towards the house door when he thought better of it. It didn’t matter what had happened the day before—there was still work to be done, and horses to be fed, and that’s exactly where OJ was going to be. Taking a deep breath, Angel started to head off towards the barn.

He was looking down at his feet, trying to make sure that he didn’t trip and fall on anything since he didn’t have two hands to catch himself on at the moment. He kicked a small stone out of the way when he heard a short, sharp whistle that made him lift his head.

OJ was standing there, head tilted up enough so that the shadow of his baseball cap wasn’t completely obscuring his face. He was holding the lead clipped to the halter of a horse that Angel was fairly certain he hadn’t seen before. He wasn’t too good at telling them apart. It wasn’t Lucky—he knew that much. He stared at the horse for a moment before looking back at OJ again. That was when he saw the confusion on OJ’s face, the pinch of his brows and the way he was almost frowning.

“’Sup?” Angel offered up lamely, not knowing how he was supposed to start a conversation after everything.

OJ didn’t say anything. Instead he just used the hand holding the slack of the lead to gesture to the horse beside him, and then motioned towards the paddock.

Angel chuckled, like he was almost embarrassed but too tired by the rest of it to really commit to the feeling. “Right.” He stepped to the side so that OJ would be able to get by. “Go ahead, then.”

OJ walked by, the horses hooves rhythmically clopping on the ground as they went. He kept Angel in his peripheral, knowing better than to trust people to not spook the horses. Luckily Angel seemed too busy gawking at the horse, at the house, seemingly at OJ to really cause any ruckus. The original plan that OJ had, had been to work a few of the horses, get a little dose of normality after how the last few days had gone. But he wasn’t going to do that with Angel standing there staring at him. So, instead, once he walked the horse into the paddock, he unclipped the lead from its halter and let it roam freely. He took off at a quick trot at first, enjoying the sudden bit of freedom.

He only looked away from the horse long enough to close and latch the gate. Then OJ dialed right back in, leaning against the fence to watch as the horse did short sprints, kicking out its back legs. He heard Angel walk up next to him, and he glanced at him briefly out of the corner of his eye, but he still didn’t say anything.

Angel wanted to mirror OJ’s position, propping his arms on top of the fence in a way that seemed to familiar and casual. The sling made it impossible, though. At least, that’s what he was telling himself. The reality of it was that even if he had full use of both his arms, he would’ve been hard-pressed to have that same air of nonchalance that OJ seemed to carry around with him every day.

He knew that it was supposed to be relaxing, standing there and watching the horse just do its thing. He knew it because OJ was acting like there was nowhere else he’d rather be than right where he was. Angel wished that it had that same calming effect on him, but instead he found himself fidgeting, wanting to say something but all of the words kept getting caught at the base of his throat. He couldn’t remember the last time he had a problem like that. He wondered how OJ stayed so quiet all the time and managed to be so comfortable with it.

“They patched you up then?” OJ asked, still not looking at Angel.

The question caught him off-guard, causing Angel’s eyebrows to shoot up towards his hairline. “Uh, yeah. I mean,” he chuckled and gave the tiniest lift to his slinged arm, “if that’s what they wanna start callin’ this shit. Threw me in a sling, gave me some painkillers, and sent me on my way.”

OJ nodded. “Sounds about right.”

Angel scuffed the toe of his shoe in the dirt. “I—”

“Helps though?” OJ cut him off without meaning to.

He laughed, just glad to be interrupted by something other than OJ disagreeing with him. He pretended not to notice the warmth in his face, the sensation creeping up his neck into his cheeks. “It’s not bad. Medical grade, you know?”

OJ chuckled and nodded but didn’t offer anything else up in response. After standing there for a few more seconds, waiting until the horse settled into stillness, OJ draped the lead rope over the top of the fence and headed back towards the house. It took Angel a second to catch on to what he was doing, glancing back and forth between OJ and the barn a few times before finally getting his legs to cooperate with him. The first few strides had him feeling like a cartoon character with the way the stones were skidding out from underneath his shoes, but he got the hang of it.

Once Angel caught up to him, he couldn’t stop looking at OJ as they walked. He would glance in whatever direction OJ was, wanting to know what had his attention. It wasn’t until OJ stopped and was staring up at the house that Angel made himself focus the way that OJ was.

They stood in front of the house, looking up at it. Angel was looking forward, but out of the corner of his eye he saw OJ take off his baseball cap. He took it off just long enough to drag his hand across his forehead and over the top of his head. He sighed as he placed the cap back into place, frowning in thought.

“Now what?” Angel asked.

OJ shrugged. He looked at the house, then at Angel, then back at the expanse of the ranch behind him. When he was looking at Angel again he said, “Clean up. Fix it up. Get back to it.”

Angel laughed. “Get back to it?” he repeated the phrase back to him, putting it in air-quotes for good measure. “What about—” he gestured up at the sky, “All that with Jean Jacket and you just wanna—”

“All that too,” he said with a nod. “That’s all gonna do what it’s gonna do. What,” he chuckled, “whatever Em does with it.” He paused. “Horses still gotta get fed, though. Still gotta get worked. Em’s not doin’ all that.”

OJ lingered for a moment, waiting for Angel to say something. When he didn’t, OJ continued on towards the house, already picking the next thing from the mental to-do list in his head. It felt like for any singular thing he got done, it made him remember two others that he’d forgotten about. Eventually it’d get manageable. It had to.

“I could,” Angel blurted out, knowing that he had to say something, anything, before OJ just left him standing out there all by himself. When OJ turned around to look at him again, the small pinch of his brows told Angel that he had to say something more to get it to make sense for him. “Do all that, I mean. Or,” he laughed quietly, hating the heat flaring up in his face, “some of it, anyway. You know…” he made a tiny motion with his slinged arm.

The pause that ensued was long enough to make Angel feel like he’d said something ridiculous at best, or overstepped at worst. He couldn’t decipher what OJ’s expression meant, which wasn’t something new but it was more unnerving than usual given the current circumstances.

“I gotta run into town,” OJ finally said.

Angel frowned at that. It felt like it was more of a non-answer than anything, but along with that it still didn’t feel like a positive response. “Oh. Yeah, right, I—”

“C’mon,” OJ interrupted him, brushing right past Angel’s confusion. “Truck’s at the shop.”

Angel’s face lit up. “We can take the van!”

“Mhm,” OJ replied with a nod, already walking towards it.

Out of habit, Angel was getting the keys out of his pocket and getting ready to drive them into town. It was only when he looked up and saw OJ standing beside the driver’s side door expectantly that he gave it a second thought. Maybe it was a control thing on OJ’s part, or maybe it was the fact that OJ had two good working arms and Angel was down to one. Whatever the case, Angel wasn’t looking to fight him on it so he tossed over the keys.

By the time that Angel slid into the passenger seat, OJ was already seated and buckled in. He turned the key in the ignition but waited until Angel was buckled in before putting the van in drive and taking off towards town.

The drive was mostly quiet save for the music coming from the radio. As much as Angel had never relished driving around for work, once the van helped the three of them survive everything with Jean Jacket, he was pretty sure he never wanted to drive anything else ever again. Angel rolled his window down, let his good arm hang out and catch the wind as they went along. He was mostly looking out the window, up at the sky. All the clouds moved. He’d look over at OJ too, the way that he sank back in the driver’s seat. He only had one hand on the steering wheel, settled right at the top of it. His other arm was resting on the center console between them, thumb tapping along with the beat of the song playing through the radio speakers.

Angel tagged along as they went from one store to the next, but most of the things that they were picking up for the ranch were for the horses, and he had no idea about any of it. He also wasn’t much help at all with getting things loaded into the van since a lot of what OJ was getting required two strong arms to lift and carry and Angel had one, and arguably at that. OJ didn’t say anything about it, didn’t tell Angel to stay in the car either. He let him follow right along, and when Angel asked about what it was they were getting and why, OJ humored him with short, half-mumbled explanations. They were brief, quiet, but he didn’t seem annoyed about it. It’d been a long time since anyone was around that was genuinely curious and listening to the answer.

It was dark by the time that Angel left. Despite how late it was, Emerald still wasn’t home. The anxiety that fact caused in Angel didn’t seem to affect OJ in the same way.

“She comes and goes,” he said simply as he walked towards the van with Angel.

It sounded like one of those sentences he was going to have a follow-up for, so Angel waited. When he didn’t, Angel just nodded, figuring that if OJ accepted it, he’d have to learn to accept it too. He let OJ drop the car keys into his hand.

“I’ll, uh, see ya t—” Angel started and then stopped himself, not wanting to seem presumptuous. “I’ll see you around.”

OJ narrowed his eyes, studying him. “You don’t got work?”

Angel laughed and shook his head. “Between the arm and the fact that I hooked up the famous UAP catchers up with our shit, they don’t really care what I do right now.”

OJ nodded but didn’t say anything else. Part of Angel wanted to stay lingering there, but the other part of him was exhausted and didn’t feel like falling asleep on the drive home. He managed a goodbye that was a little less clunky and got in the van to head off. OJ shook his head as he watched him go, able to still hear the music blaring from the speakers the farther away he drove.

Angel did come back the next day. And the one after that. He gave some thinly veiled excuse about needing to update and replace their gear. OJ could see right through it but he didn’t say as much, glad to have Angel around to keep the ranch from feeling the wrong kind of quiet. Plus, Angel and Emerald were way better at either fielding or warding off the news crews and random people with cameras that came cruising by the ranch. All those strangers that got a little too comfortable. Even with only one good arm, Angel was able to talk people into leaving—he and Em made quite the team for that.

When the sun went down, Angel was getting ready to start the process of getting the last few pieces of his equipment into the van to head back to his apartment. It was late, and Emerald was halfway to passing out while she was sitting on the lounge chair in the living room as Angel came back inside to say goodbye.

“It’s late,” she said as Angel tried to get through his farewell, “just stay.”

OJ’s silence was unreadable, but Angel said, “It’s fine. I’m used—”

“You’re just gonna come back here again tomorrow, right?” Emerald said as she stood up from the chair and stretched. “So just stay. Take the couch,” she gestured towards it, “take back your clothes from OJ,” she motioned towards her brother, “and call it a night.” She dragged her hands down her face. “I’ll grab you a blanket.”

Angel’s eyes were wide, something like a mix of shock and hopefulness, as he looked from Emerald over to her brother. OJ still didn’t say anything, but he did give a tiny nod and a shrug, which was as emphatic of a response as Angel figured he was ever going to get at this hour.

“Okay,” Angel said, nodding. “Thanks.”

Emerald started to walk off towards the closet, and stopped when she realized that OJ still hadn’t moved. She sucked her teeth and waved her hand towards the stairs. “Go get the man his pajamas!”

Angel tried to stuff down the laugh that was building in his throat but it still managed to escape. Emerald was laughing as she went to get the blanket she’d promised him, and Angel was laughing as OJ went upstairs. Not that anyone else could see it, but OJ was smiling too as he opened up his dresser drawer and pulled out the clothes that Angel had lent to him less than two weeks before.

Angel was sitting on the edge of the couch that he and Emerald had turned into a makeshift bed. OJ was sitting where Emerald had been, and now it was his turn to nearly be passing out in the chair. Everyone looked as tired as they felt, but the only person who wasn’t trying to fight it was Emerald.

She was halfway up the stairs when she called out her goodnight, a simple, “Sweet dreams, y’all,” that was followed shortly thereafter by the sound of her bedroom door closing.

“Need anything?” OJ asked, eyes focused on Angel’s arm as he did.

He shook his head. “All good. Took the pills the doc gave me already.”

“Right.” Setting his hands on his knees, OJ got up off the chair. Taking a couple steps towards the stairs, he said, “Holler if you need anything.”

Angel chuckled. “Right, yeah.”

OJ kept on towards the stairs, but when he got to the bottom of them he found himself stopping and turning around to look back at Angel. He watched for a moment as Angel swung his legs up onto the couch and pulled the blanket over himself. He shimmied down so that he was lying flat on his back. It was only when he reached to turn the lamp off that he saw OJ standing there looking at him. Neither of them said anything, instead OJ just nodding his head once before making his way up the steps. Angel waited until he was out of sight to turn the lamp off.

It was business as usual for OJ to be up before everyone else on the ranch. Emerald’s bedroom door was still closed when he walked by, and when he got downstairs he was immediately greeted by the sight of Angel still fast asleep on the couch. He was lying flat on his back, mouth open and his good arm draped over his forehead. OJ chuckled to himself at the sight—at least he didn’t need to worry about Angel not having slept well. He was out the door and off to take care of the horses before anyone else was up, including the sun.

When OJ finally came back to the house, the sun was up and Angel’s van was gone. Only one of those things proved to be disappointing to him. When he walked inside to grab a glass of water, OJ called out for Emerald but got no response. He sighed and shook his head, not surprised that she had gone off with Angel. He wasn’t even really frustrated about it either, but he’d be lying if he tried to say that it wouldn’t be nice to know what was going on.

OJ hadn’t been expecting Emerald to come back to the ranch in the truck, mostly because he didn’t know that the truck was even ready yet. Regardless, it was a relief to have it back. Angel’s van was useful for a lot, but it wasn’t theirs and it couldn’t pull a horse trailer either. Although OJ had the sneaking suspicion that if he asked, Angel would gladly get it fitted with a hitch. Times weren’t that dire anymore, so it stayed an amusing thought and nothing more.

“You leave Angel somewhere?” he asked Emerald as she walked over to him, twirling the truck keys around her finger as she did.

She barked out a laugh and shook her head. “He knows how to find his way back home—he’ll be fine.” She saw the look on OJ’s face and rolled her eyes. “Alright, damn. He said he had a couple more things he wanted to pick up before comin’ back here. Didn’t sound like he needed a babysitter, so I took the truck and here I am. That good enough for you?”

OJ cracked a grin that was gone as quickly as it appeared. “Good enough.” He nodded towards the house. “Now come help me out. People keep dropping stuff off and we gotta figure out what’s—”

“What’s gonna finally get you in front of Oprah?”

His smile lasted a little longer that time. “Exactly.”

The two of them were too busy bickering to hear it when Angel got back to the ranch. The downside of well-trained horses was that they didn’t bat an eye at his arrival, didn’t alert OJ. Angel was able to park the van, take out his equipment, and get to work all before OJ came crashing out of the house trying to figure out what was going on.

Even when OJ was looking at him, it took him a moment to truly put together what was happening. Angel was standing a few feet back away from the house, squinting against the sun with a hose clasped securely in the hand attached to his good arm, and an extremely awkward grip with his hand attached to the bad one. The frown on his face said that he knew this wasn’t going the way that he wanted it to, but it wasn’t as though that had ever stopped him from forging onwards before.

OJ was looking back and forth between Angel and the house, confusion taking over his typically neutral expression. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Angel gave a weak wave of the hose wand in his hand. “Pressure washer.”

The silence from OJ that followed prompted Emerald to speak up. “More words, Angel.”

Huffing as though he couldn’t believe that there was more of an explanation needed, Angel motioned towards the house. “You guys haven’t done anything about all the fuckin’ blood on the sides of the house. It’s creepy, and it’s also gross as shit. So,” he waved the hose wand for good measure, “pressure washer.”

OJ was quiet for a moment but then finally said, “Got it.”

Emerald laughed. “Little heads-up next time would be nice so we don’t think we got another alien trying to swallow us whole.” Pleased to know that the only thing close to danger at this point was Angel with something resembling a power tool, Emerald turned around to head back inside. “Try not to shatter any windows!”

When Angel looked at OJ again, he was at the bottom of the steps that led up to the house. He had one hand resting on his belt buckle, the other hanging casually at his side as he stared at Angel. Angel felt like OJ was sizing him up, or trying to find the right thing to say, or both. They both stood there, too far apart to have a conversation at a normal volume, too close to well and truly shout to each other. OJ wasn’t the shouting type, anyway.

“What?” Angel said, trying to sound indignant but not hitting the mark quite as well as he usually did.

Without a word, OJ started to walk towards him. Even though he didn’t look angry, Angel still felt himself tightening his grip on the hose of the pressure-washer, felt himself swallowing past the lump in his throat that appeared out of nowhere. OJ came to a stop in front of him, standing close enough that it’d take nothing for OJ to reach out and touch him.

It was ridiculous to have a thought like that, or at least that’s what Angel told himself to try and slow his heartrate back down. Their proximity wasn’t for a purpose like that. He was halfway through telling himself that in a way that was nearly convincing when OJ reached out for him and the air he was pulling in got caught halfway down his throat. His heart went from racing to nearly stopping altogether.

Then OJ took the spray wand out of his hands the same way one pulls away an item from a dog that was chewing on something that it shouldn’t be. The contact fleeting, over quicker than it began. Angel frowned, looking just like an unruly puppy who’d been scolded, and for anyone who didn’t know better it was because he had his toy taken away.

“Can’t be doing that,” OJ said with a shake of his head.

Angel scoffed. “You don’t think I can handle it? I don’t know if you remember but I was almost eaten by an alien, so I think I can figure out how—”

“Stop.”

“What, it’s that hard to do?”

“For me? No, but you’re not gonna be able to do it,” OJ said, throwing Angel’s own words back in his face with the tiniest lilt of humor in his voice.

The look in OJ’s eyes got Angel to sway from indignant to amused, even if he wasn’t thrilled about having his new contraption snatched out of his hands. Once he saw OJ fussing with it, Angel admitted, even if only to himself, that OJ was right. He really didn’t have any business trying to wield that thing around when he only had an arm and a half at best. But it was something to do, some way that he could help. He didn’t a single damn thing about horses or ranching—what tiny specks of information he’d gathered was simply from being around OJ and Emerald lately, but it wasn’t enough for him to really contribute in any way. Since he didn’t know anything about that, and he’d already swapped out the equipment, this was something that he knew how to do. Sort of. It was simple in theory or at least that’s what he told himself when he showed up to the hardware store to rent it.

“Whatever,” he said, trying to keep up the façade of being bothered. It was a hard sell when he started grinning the moment he thought OJ wasn’t looking.

OJ was always looking, though. He was shaking his head at Angel, partially because he felt like it was ridiculous that Angel was going to try and do this on his own, but also because it was Angel and more often than not these days OJ didn’t know what else to do about him besides that.

He didn’t have anything to say in response to Angel’s one-word little quip, so he contentedly kept his mouth shut as he hooked the pressure washer up properly. He tested it out in short spurts, causing the horses that were in the paddock to make their way to the side farthest away, and OJ couldn’t really blame them for it even if none of it was heading in their direction.

The silence was comfortable enough, but it only lingered for about a minute and a half before Angel started talking. It wasn’t about much of anything that he was looking for OJ to respond to, really. He rattled on about how everything that was happening because of the Jean Jacket footage was causing people to completely rethink what they think of UFO’s.

OJ was smirking as he aimed the stream of water as high up on the house as he could go. “Thought they were—”

“Fuck UAP’s, man,” Angel cut him off with a laugh. OJ laughed too, and it wasn’t so much that Angel was surprised as he was proud. Which felt silly, but it wasn’t like anyone was going to know.

Their laughter quieted and Angel went right back onto his tangent. OJ nodded along, and he really was listening, even if it seemed like the house had his undivided attention. Angel talked, and between sentences he would go back and forth, looking at the house, looking at OJ, looking over his shoulder at the horses and the expanse of land around them.

Angel talked about how other people now were sharing footage of new things that no one had ever seen before, or rather, that no one had bothered to take seriously before. He talked about how crazy it was all going to be after OJ and Em went and talked about it to Oprah and whoever else would inevitably invite them out to tell their story.

“And you,” OJ said as he slowly worked his way across the broadside of the house.

“What?”

“Me. Em. You.” He turned and looked Angel for a moment, cutting off the water while he did. “You’re on Oprah too.”

The feeling in Angel’s stomach almost felt like anxiety but it felt good, too. “Oh.”

OJ nodded before turning back to the house and getting back to what he’d been doing before. “Yeah.”

That seemed to stun Angel into silence. The only reason that OJ knew it was okay was because he was keeping an eye on Angel in his periphery. He saw the small smile twisting the corners of his mouth. Angel stared down at the ground, scuffing the toe of his shoe along the dirt as he tried to keep the rumbles of laughter quieted in his chest. It wasn’t funny, but it was all he wanted to do in that moment.

Then he went back to watching as OJ rinsed the dried blood from the siding of the house. It ran down the wood panels looking like it was rust coming off a metal pipe. Trickling down in streams as it went off the edges of the roof and covering of the porch beneath. Angel remembered, and remembered vividly at that, how it’d felt to see that blood washing down the glass windows when it had been fresh. It didn’t seem so visceral now, didn’t seem so scary. Control, maybe. They had an element of control over it now that they hadn’t before. It wasn’t under the blanket of darkness that Jean Jacket and nighttime had brought.

It was all those things, but it was also OJ. Another thing that Angel wouldn’t ever admit out loud. But it was OJ and his ever-present sense of calm, a different type of control. Understanding. He stood there and listened to Angel ramble on about things that he only cared about tangentially because Angel cared, or it made him feel better at least. Made him feel a little more normal—because nothing about the moment they were experiencing together was normal. Not really. If it’d been normal, though, it would’ve been the first normal moment that the two of them had shared since they’d met. So even in the lack of normalcy there was consistency in a way. Angel wondered what it would be like when things got back to normal with all of them. Then the muddied, bloodied water started to trickle past them on the ground and he figured it would be a while before they crossed that bridge.

They got a side and a half of the house done before they called it quits for the day. And by they, it was OJ doing the work and Angel providing the commentary and background noise. For a long time OJ had relished the quiet, if not silence, that life on the ranch had afforded him. But there was a different kind of peace and comfort that came from Angel chattering away within earshot. Even when he was a few steps away discarding stones and the like, he would still talk to OJ, and OJ would still nod even if he didn’t know whether or not Angel was even looking at him.

There was no question about Angel staying on the couch that night. OJ took some of his own clothes out of his dresser to give him this time. He pretended that he didn’t think much of it, that it was just the logical thing to do since he didn’t have anything left of Angel’s to lend back to him. He handed it over in a neat stack, and he managed to keep his expression neutral in a way that Angel wasn’t.

Angel’s eyebrows did all of the talking for him, shooting upwards when he realized that the t-shirt and sweatpants in his hands belonged to OJ. He took them, balancing them on his hand. He managed to spit out a, “Thank you,” that he had no recollection of saying, and then he turned to head off and change into them. When he came back out, OJ was putting the blankets out on the couch for him, and Angel thanked him for that too.

There was a moment then, with Angel sitting down on the couch getting ready to settle in for the night again and OJ standing beside him looking at the sofa. There was something OJ wanted to say but couldn’t find the words for, and Angel felt like he should be saying something but he had no idea what it was supposed to be. Seconds continued to tick on by in silence, and Angel could see the drop in OJ’s shoulders when he gave up on finding the words that he wanted. Instead of saying anything that they were thinking, they just said goodnight and OJ went to the staircase.

He was halfway up the flight of stairs when he looked back down at the couch. His eyes widened slightly when he found Angel already looking at him, still looking at him. A distant part of Angel felt like he should’ve been embarrassed at having been caught, but he wasn’t. He flashed a grin before flopping down on the couch and turning the lamp off. There were a few extra seconds between that and the sound of OJ’s footsteps retreating up the stairs the rest of the way.

Over the next few days, OJ never asked Angel about why he never went back to his own apartment to stay. He didn’t say anything about the fact that Angel would go there before or after his shifts to grab clothes or other miscellaneous things to bring to the ranch. He didn’t mention how Angel seemed to be spending more nights in the ranch house than Emerald did these days.

OJ never said much about anything until he came downstairs in the middle of the night to find Angel awake and sitting upright on the couch, trying to slowly move his arm around in his sling with a pained look on his face. He didn’t say much in the moment other than asking if Angel needed anything, to which Angel said no.

It wasn’t until the following night that anything was said. Angel noticed the fact that the blanket and pillow he’d been using on the couch were gone. For a moment Angel thought it was OJ’s way of telling him that his time at the Haywood ranch was up, that he should pack everything back up into the van and head on back home. Angel frowned, trying to convince himself in that moment that it wasn’t as upsetting as it was.

OJ was walking down the stairs and saw Angel staring at the couch. He was halfway down the flight when he saw the look on Angel’s face. OJ didn’t have to ask to know what he was thinking.

“Couch isn’t good for your shoulder,” he said simply. “Take the bed.”

The heavy look on Angel’s face was immediately replaced by relief, and then confusion, and then nervousness. OJ watched it happen in real time and caught himself with a small smile on his face. Angel didn’t protest, turning and going to meet OJ on the stairway. He’d never been so aware of how quickly he was walking before. He didn’t want to be slow and linger, but he didn’t want to look like he was rushing either. OJ covered his mouth with his hand to hide his own amusement.

Angel could finally lay flat on his back without feeling like his arm and shoulder were jammed up or dangling off the side of the sofa, not that he would have ever complained about it. OJ was laying on his side, his back to Angel as he said goodnight. It would’ve felt distant if it was someone else, but something about it being OJ didn’t make it feel quite like that. It didn’t take very long for OJ to hear Angel’s heavy, even breathing as he slept peacefully on the other side of the mattress.

When Angel woke up the next morning, OJ was already awake and gone, but he knew that he didn’t go far. He’d look out the window on the other end of the house and see OJ out there working the horses. He sat up, looking around the room and taking it all in since he hadn’t had the opportunity or the forethought to do so. Angel hadn’t given too much thought to what OJ’s room would look like, but what he was seeing felt right. Clean, minimal. A few framed photos on the walls of their horses and family throughout the years. Angel had the urge to get up and start touching things just because he could, like a child being set loose in a museum, but he stopped himself. He sat for a few moments longer and looked around, and then finally got up to get dressed.

Emerald was just getting to the bottom of the stairs from the kitchen when Angel was standing at the top of them. There was a smirk on her face as she shook her head at him. Angel braced himself for retorts and commentary that had no end, and she’d have every right to do it. Instead, all she said was an extremely loaded, “Alright, Angel,” punctuated with a laugh as she slipped by him on the staircase. At that point Angel couldn’t help but to laugh right along with her.

Angel waited for OJ to have something more to say about it the next night, but he didn’t. Didn’t say anything about it the night after that, either. The one time that Angel woke up in a cold sweat from a nightmare, OJ reached over and placed a gentle, calming hand on Angel’s good shoulder. He asked if Angel wanted to talk about it, and listened when he started. He eventually talked himself back to sleep and OJ passed back out soon after, only taking his hand away when he woke up the next morning and had to get to it.

When Angel was working, he would still text both OJ and Emerald. Sometimes it was in the group with the three of them, other times it was just to OJ. Most of the time he was texting things that he caught on the security cameras, because he was still checking them when work was slow. It was usually innocuous things. One time he texted OJ telling him to stop lifting hay bales with his back, and even though OJ was laughing as he read the text, he still turned around and flipped him off through the camera. Angel knew that he wasn’t going to take the time to text him back when he still hadn’t upgraded from his flip phone. The most they’d talk on the phone was when Angel called after his shift to see if OJ needed him to pick anything up on his way back. Even when OJ said no, Angel would still come home with takeout or other things that weren’t asked for, but OJ never turned it away. Never turned Angel away either.

The day that Angel went to the doctor and got fully cleared, he felt like he came back to the ranch a different man. Antics ramped right back up to eleven the way that they had been. There was an extra sense of ease because of it, though. They were all one step farther away from the mess that they had all gone through. Ranch restored to its former glory, and now Angel was too. The Haywood’s weren’t exactly the celebrating types, but if they had been it would’ve been the time.

It was still business as usual with the exception of Angel now being able to gesticulate more than he had with the sling. His rambles, his debates with Emerald, were returning to their natural state of seeming like they belonged in a cartoon. OJ would listen to them going back and forth as he sat on the couch with Angel, Emerald leaning forward as she sat on the large chair in their living room as she gave it all right back to him. OJ never weighed in with more than a couple words here and there, occasionally a head-shake thrown in for good measure. For the most part he left it up to the two of them.

Angel hadn’t even been back at one hundred percent for a week yet when OJ woke up to find Angel’s arm, the one that had previously been confined to a sling, thrown across his stomach while Angel’s face pressed against the side of his chest. He froze up for a moment before realizing that he already had one arm tucked underneath Angel anyway, his palm resting between Angel’s shoulder blades.

OJ settled, allowing himself to sink back into the mattress again while he stared up at the ceiling. He drew abstract designs on Angel’s back through his shirt, one that was actually OJ’s still even though Angel had brought plenty of his own to the ranch along the way. Every now and then Angel would twitch in his sleep, but he never pulled away. OJ turned his head slightly, his lips curling up into a smile as they pressed against the edge of Angel’s forehead. It was the first time in a long time that the horses were fed late.

(divider by @saradika-graphics 💞)