#ev blakely

“We’ll compensate you for the cost of the ticket,” the receptionist's voice is calm, a quiet affectation of sympathy, practiced and packaged and appreciated nevertheless. 

“I understand,” Ev says, looking over his shoulder into the window to their living room. Helen was watching him, as she always was whenever the phone rang. 

It was all their life had become these days. Marked by the ring of the phone, the moments between falling into a monotony fog of worry, waiting, wondering, coping. Caller ID unknown a blessing, a curse, a disappointment more often than not. Ev has answered more scam calls in the last eleven months than he has in his entire life. 

Not gonna have to answer any more, he thinks. It’s not him. I’d feel it, he thinks. 

“I’ll take a red eye,” he says, “I’ll be there tomorrow.” 

“Hotel too, the county covers up to fifteen hundred dollars of travel costs for situations like this.”

“It’s fine, I have friends I can stay with.” 

Helen is still watching as he hangs up, their youngest on her lap, reading her homework to her mother and hardly noticing the disinterest of her audience. Ev turns away, scrolling through his phone until he gets to the E’s. Steps away from the cover of the patio, out into the purple sky evening, everything soft and dewy and sweetsmelling from the rain shower earlier. It’s the sort of evening Ev used to love as a kid– days where his father would throw open the bay windows of his office and they’d put together scale models all evening until his mother forced him to bed. 

The phone rings. Picks up three in, John’s voice coming steady through the speaker, “Talk to me.” 

“Sheridan County Coroner just called,” Ev says. 

Words flee him.

Fuzzily, he listens to the sound of John getting up, footsteps, and a door shutting. A muffled curse, fuck, like John had moved the phone away from his ear, “He’s–”

“They don’t know, they don’t know,” Ev says quickly, “It’s just a– they have one they want me to take a look at. One– ah– christ. It’s badly– they said decomposed, I– anyways, they’re not sure. They want me to look.”

“Christ.” 

Ev takes a breath that feels like a fish gasping for air on land. Open-mouthed gulp. He takes a second, “Anyways, I was hoping I could crash at yours.”

“Of course, man, anything you need.” John’s voice is firm, a comforting memory of when they used to be twenty and John was his C.O.

“I understand if you don’t want me to, with Micah–” 

“You think he won’t know the second you tell your family you’re comin’ here? They share that shit so fast, we’re all toast when they start recruiting teenagers with phones into the army. Let Buck and I handle it. You worry about your son.” 

Not my son, Ev thinks hollowly, the last thing Wyatt had insisted on, in those last few minutes before he stormed out of the house for the final time. 

“I’m gonna try to catch a midnight flight, get in around eight.”

“Gale or I will come get you.” 

“What the fuck am I supposed to tell Helen?” 

He needs to call his mother. He wants to call his mother. 

“I can’t answer that for you, brother.” 

Ev presses a clammy palm to his clammy forehead, heart hammering like he’s under fire again, like he’s just watched another body drop. “Yeah. No, sorry.” 

“Text us your flight details when you’ve got ‘em. Go talk to your wife, go have a drink. We’ll scoop you in the morning.”

“Thanks, Bucky,” He says.

John hums on the other side of the line, the telltale sniff and shuffle of him rubbing at his nose like he always did when he was swallowing back some emotion, “You want me to tell any of the other guys for you?”

“No. Thanks, Bucky. I got it.” Ev gulps a breath again, “I’m gonna go now. I’ll see you soon.”

“Hang in there, Ev.” 

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

Ev rubs the sleep he never got from his eyes, scrunching his brow as the sun glares uninterrupted across the prairie. Back in time, but not enough to turn back the clock on where he was headed, he’d kill for a cup of coffee and something to eat. Eight a.m. in an airport like Sheridan Wyoming, he’s just about the only soul around except for a few sleepy employees and a tired-looking cowboy dragging a beat-up up dust-tinted suitcase behind him, hat jaunty on his head. And a familiar truck bumping along the road, pulling up in front of Ev like a metal carriage. 

Blonde hair stubbornly refusing to go gray, glinting in the sun, Gale hops out of the truck and takes a second to look Ev over before they’re pulling each other into a back-slapping one-armed hug. 

“Flight okay?” Gale asks, voice always deeper than Ev somehow remembered. 

“No complaints.” 

They part, Gale running a hand through the careful gel of his hair, hand resting on his belt. He’d gotten more cowboy over the years, sinking back into the cradle that bore him. Even John had gone a little native, proud to be a rodeo mother for their children. “You ready to go?”

“I have to be at– I’m meeting them for noon,” Ev says.  

“Enough time to go back to ours, get you some food, and maybe a shower.”

Gale breaks it down into simple steps for Ev, something easy to follow when his mind feels torn between flat, blank wasteland and too many vibrating thoughts. He nods, shouldering his duffle back the burn marks in the straps from when Dickie Snyder would smoke in the tent and drip ash everywhere, and heads towards the truck. The bag gets tossed in the bed of the truck, hooked with carabiners to the side so it wouldn’t go flying, and it’s harder than it used to be for Ev to pull himself up into the cab, joints a little stiffer than he remembered from the last time he was out this way. 

“Sorry for the dust,” Gale says, brushing at the leather seat, “Haven’t gotten any rain for about a month and a half.”

Ev shrugs, settling back against the seat with a sigh and stretching his legs out.

“Micah is staying with some friends for the night,” Gale adds, starting the engine.

“Thank you, Buck.”

They’re mostly silent on the drive, and Ev thinks that’s probably why Gale was the one elected to go pick him up. It’s not until halfway to the Egan homestead that Gale speaks only to ask Ev a single question.

“You want one of us to go with you?”

Ev shakes his head, “No, no. That’s kind of you, though.”

Gale squeezes his shoulder. 

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

“What did you tell Helen?” 

Ev pops another chip in his mouth, numbly shocked at his own body’s ability to eat when the rest of him feels so strange, off-kilter. Leftover army training, years of fueling his body no matter what state his head is in. He’s been holding his breath for almost a day now. He’s been holding his breath for almost a year, now. 

“The truth,” he says eventually, “Nobody knows if it’s him, it could be nothing and they only need one of us. It makes more sense for me to go.”

The unspoken part: That he’s seen bodies before. That he’ll be damned if he lets Helen see her son in any condition but alive, happy, healthy.

“It might not be him,” John says. 

“That’s what Cros said.” Ev pauses, “It’s someone’s son.”

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

“I’ll wait out here,” John says as Ev stares up at the squat, sand-colored building, “Holler if you need backup.” 

Ev opens his mouth, looks at the building again and shuts it. Pats the dashboard twice, gently, with the flat of his fist and nods in thanks. Getting out of the cab is harder than getting out of a hospital bed, his body stiff, sore, reluctant to move closer to a building he knows will change his life, irrevocably, forever. It’s the same trickle dread as pre-flight checks, Ev making peace with death and it’s inevitability, its randomness. That when it came the moment there was no measure of luck or skill or try-hard that would stop it from taking. 

If Wyatt was in there, he’d been that way for nights and days that Ev had traveled through none the wiser. Had felt nothing, the moment his son slipped away from him. 

And if it’s not him, then Ev has cheated his grief onto someone else. Cursed them with it, and the chance to bury a son. 

Through the front doors, he stands at near parade rest in front of the receptionist, giving his name with the same hollow clarity he’s felt every time the Sheridan area code has popped up on his phone. Going through the logistics, because it’s the only thing he can do. Answer every question, let them comb through Wyatt’s room for what he doesn’t know. 

In the morgue, shoes squeaking against the linoleum floors and nostrils tingling with the smell of cleaner, and the Vicks they’d suggested he dab under his nose under the mask. There’s a police officer to his left, a woman introduced as a grief counselor on his right. 

“The body is very degraded,” she’s saying to him gently, the way he remembered the nurses and the doctors speaking to him when he’d first woken up, when they’d still been unsure if he’d make a full recovery, “There’s some skin, but visible bone as well. His eyes are shut, and his torso is covered. We can’t have you touching him, but if there’s any birthmarks or scars you’d like to look for, you can tell us and we will have the coroner show you.” 

“When he was six, he grabbed a rag off his mother's vanity, and her straightener fell on him. He has a scar here–” Ev gestures on his own arm, “on his wrist. About an inch wide, two inches across. And he’s got a birthmark behind his ear.” 

“Whenever you’re ready.”

I’ve seen dead bodies, he wants to tell her. I’ve seen the inside of a man’s head.

He stares at the lump in front of him, shadow under sterile white cloth. Small, smaller than Ev ever remembered Wyatt being. The shortest in their family, but never, never that small. Not that Ev could remember, except for when Wyatt was very young. Maybe it was a trick of the eye, the way bodies shrunk and twisted and wasted away, but the figure on the table looks small enough to cradle in his arms. A dog, a cat, a pet, small and unassuming. Too small to be someone. 

“Show me,” he says. 

The coroner’s hands are gentle as he folds the sheet down to center chest, smoothing away wrinkles with military precision.

 Ev exhales shakily.

Not much of a nose left, much of the face caved in, stripped away, yellow-brown bone and whispy dried skin stretched between, over teeth shockingly pale compared to the brown and beige and bruised hues around it. Ev understands the need for the masks, for the strong-smelling grease on his upper lip. Again, with tenderness, the Coroner pulls out one off-colored limb from under the sheet, twisting the left arm upwards to show off smooth skin, unmarred by any scar or damage. The fingertips are blackened, wrinkled and strange. 

Ev closes his eyes for a second, taking a steady breath, “And the birthmark.” 

The Coroner tilts the body’s head, fingers brushing aside the few remaining clumps of hair. The skin behind its ears is mostly intact, still spongy-looking, and completely spotless. No mark in sight.”

“It’s not him,” Ev says, dizziness fuzzing his vision for a moment. Stays standing only through sheer force of will, “It’s– that’s not Wyatt.”

“We still will need to do DNA tests,” the cop says, “To be a hundred percent sure, legally.”

“That’s fine– take it,” Ev thrusts his wrist out, willing to give them blood, spit, whatever they need. “That’s not him. I know it isn’t.” 

None of them blink, but none of them reach for him either.

“Would you like to check again?” the grief counselor asks.

No, Ev almost says before biting his tongue. Better to be sure, to look Helen in the eyes and know for sure.

He nods. 

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

Ev barely makes it two steps out of the door, cheek tingling where they scraped the inside for samples, before he’s throwing up into the bushes. 

The full body cramp sort of vomiting, vicious and loud, and dragging tears from his eyes and snot flooding his nose. He gags, again and again, as he hears the slam of a truck door, big heavy footsteps and then a hand on his back, soothing him through his bout of sickness. 

He can feel the tremble of John’s palm through his shirt. 

“It’s not him,” he says when he can finally speak without gagging.

John sways above him, a hand bracing against the side of the building, like the relief flooding through him was a physical force just like Ev’s.

“Part of me wanted it to be him,” he admits to the ground. “Part of me just wanted it to be over.”

John’s soothing rub goes to a solid, grounding vice around his shoulder, “Don’t think there’s a fool on earth who would blame you for wanting answers, Ev. Wanting some closure.” 

“I want to give my wife something to bury,” Ev squeezes his eyes shut, opens them to the salty sting of tears, “I want something for my kids to say goodbye to. I want to know what happened to my child.”

It’s a nasty, guilty, undeniable truth. It echoes around the parking lot, sucking out all the air around them. A loss of hope he can’t ever admit to Helen because he’s afraid it might break them completely. No way to tell her, he was caring less and less about how Wyatt came home. Just that he did. Just that he knows his son, and there are very few reasons in the living world as to why he would ever stomach going this long without speaking to his mother. 

None of them good. None of them digestible. 

None of them remotely close to what Wyatt deserved.

“That’s someone’s child in there,” he says, “That’s someone else's.” 

He vomits again, stomach clenching against its own emptiness

“Come on,” John says quietly, offering him some takeout napkins to wipe his mouth with, “Let’s get back to the ranch. Regroup there.”

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

They set him up in Josie’s room for the night– fresh guest sheets over the bed and her post-rock decor more palatable than his own daughters. He sits on the edge of the bed, head in his hands and listening to John move around the house, preparing dinner Ev is pretty sure he finally won’t be able to eat. The knock on the door, when it comes, is wholly unsurprising to him. John was as much a worrier as he was nosey, and someone whose business he didn’t stick his nose in was as clear an insult as a curse. 

“You call the wife?” he asks, leaning halfway into the room, crease between his brow in stark shadow.

Swallowing, Ev nods.

John nods, slipping into the room a little more, “Listen, man. Not gonna pretend I got any fuckin’ clue how this feels for you as much as I love Wyatt. But don’t– fuck– don’t sit with this alone okay? It’ll destroy you. Even if it’s you being an asshole to us, long as you’re letting the poison out I’m happy.”

“Not gonna put a bullet in my brain, Bucky,” Ev says hollowly.

Fingers rap on the doorframe, John snorting, “Good. Don’t steal my fuckin’ thunder.”

Gale would hate to hear John talking that way, and it makes Ev puff something that could almost be mistaken for a laugh. John’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes– he looks as tired as Ev feels– but he gives one anyway.

“Thanks, Bucky,” Ev says, losing track now of how many thank you’s he’s doled out over the last twenty four hours, “I–”

John’s phone rings, interrupting them, a pop song twenty years old and considered vintage by their children. To Ev, it would always remind him of being on leave in Germany, so drunk he could hardly see straight. John looks down at his caller ID on his wrist and then tugs his phone out of his pocket, grimacing.

“Kid has some timing– let me just talk to him and then we can pick this up again, okay?” 

Swallowing back his voice, Ev nods, gestures his head at the open doorframe, “Go take care of your kid, Bucky.” 

Giving him a quick nod, John answers the phone, half turning and then slipping out the doorway, “Hey, Micah, hey–”

Before he shuts it fully, Ev hears Micah Egan’s voice, an emotional wreckage through the phone, “It’s not him? It’s not?” 

It’s not him. It’s not him.

It’s not him. He tells Helen over the phone, listening to her sob and wondering if she feels the same heavy walnut of hopelessness as him. 

It’s not him, he texts his mother and father, watching their words of support come through, his sisters and brothers and their husbands and wives and solid, intact lives. 

It’s not him, he tells Curt, Rosie, Cros.

I kid you not, dear Anon, I had a mild moment of panic when Douglass was requested for Cock-versations in my sleepover because where one is the other is surely near and yet??? I didn’t have it in me to have a whole essay on this man. Something about him deters me out of sheer respect and insecurity. Which is hot, and foreign for a scrappy gal like me.

The rest of these legends? I can take them -not in a fight. But I’d try a fight, too.

Everett Blakely?

Fuck he’s just too cool and the swag is not a front or a coping mechanism - it’s his essence and his scarves are somehow better than Gale’s and he’s didn’t get shot down by the end of the series -what BIGGER dick energy could we require?

Also- fuck!!!! how valid you are that this man gets off under the stars?!. None of that teenage shower shit for him, smelling of soap and damp and ten different masculine aftershaves with a hint of something else that should’ve been washed away down the drain and yet lingers. What a place to tug one out to. What’s there to remind him of Margaret?

The stars though? Now, Venus’ far off twinkle, that spurs thoughts of the gleam in his wife’s eye when she gets an idea and oh -how very much this man likes his wife’s ideas.

You’re just so right, this man wants a thing? -he takes it and orchestrates the having of it to his liking, universal forces bend to him, not the other way around and honestly that makes me throb in appreciation.

But he’s also fun?! What a combo!!!

He also gives very strong “use your words, honey pie” vibes, maybe it’s all the riddles or the gentle authority figure energy but that’s just what I’m getting from him: and that’s very essential as you are likely to go quite dumb and silent around him and that gorgeous, lanky cock and those endless dark eyes.

The faithfulness aspect?! SO HOT. Not in a home wrecking urge sorta way, oh ho no. Rather -I wanna be Margaret so bad it makes me look stupid and I’m ok with it.

If you’ve got any further thoughts -if any of y’all do on any of them!! this is a sleepover the swapping should be both ways!!- hit me up with them.