#walker fic

[Act 1]

Lilly keeps insisting that I go on a date. She says that if I don’t, I’ll end up dying alone and feeling sad. It’s kind of funny because, honestly, I’m pretty content on my own. Sure, I feel a bit empty sometimes, but that’s totally normal—100% normal. Lilly also thinks it’s the Avenger in me that makes me feel sure I don’t need anyone else, which I find silly. My identity as an avenger has nothing to do with my desire to be alone.

"Oh, come on, he's a great guy," Lilly is being persistent. She claims that this guy is great, which I find hard to believe considering that she's barely even talked to him.

"Oh really? Because the last time I heard, you met him at a house party and barely talked to him. You don't even remember most of that night. I don't mean to feed a stereotype, but guys who go to house parties are usually trouble."

"Do it for me, please. I want to see you thrive." With a roll of my eyes, I finally give in. She starts showing me his Instagram and talks about how great it’s going to be. She assures me that I don’t need to worry because she will handle everything. She insists on helping me get ready this weekend, and I’m 50% sure that she just wants to see the tower—and maybe the other Avengers, too.

[Act 1.5]

I had about an hour and a half to get ready, and Lilly just arrived. She ogled everything we passed as I made it to my room. Only Yelena, Bob, and John were here; the rest were at their were on a mission. Luckily, I hadn't run into any of the ones at the compound.

Lilly immediately heads to my closet as soon as we walk into the room. "So, what vibe are we going for?" I sit on my bed and stare off for a moment before turning to her. "Surprise me?" I can see the mischievous glint in her eyes, and I instantly realize that I should have said something else.

When she was finished, I felt a bit out of place. However, I did feel pretty; Lilly said I was hot. So, I guess I don't look terrible at least.

We just were about to start Gering ready to leave when, I heard a knock at the door. "Come in" To my surprise it was John. He stood in the doorway, "Did you break the coffee maker" I could hear Lilly snicker.

"No," I respond, giving Lilly a joking glare. "Okay," John replies but then pauses, looking confused. "Are you going somewhere? You usually don't put much effort into your appearance."

"Yes, I do! And it's none of your business—" I start to protest, but Lilly cuts me off. "She's going on a date!" she exclaims, giddy as if it were her own date.

“Hey, you’re kind of cute; you’re like the old Captain America, right?” John made a face when Lilly mentioned Captain America. “Lilly,” I scolded. John just walked out. “Wow, he is kind of a jerk, like you said.”

You and John weren’t friends—he always spoke his mind without seeming to care about how people felt afterward. Even though I kind of feel bad for him since he's in the middle of a divorce, I’ve noticed he’s been staying at the tower instead of his house. I walked up to my full-length mirror and started fidgeting with my outfit. “He’s getting a divorce; I kind of feel bad for him, and he’s not all bad sometimes.”

Lilly gave me a look. “Are you defending him? Because it sounds like you have a crush on him.” I stopped adjusting my clothes and glanced at her through the mirror. “What? God, no!” I quickly replied. “That would be ridiculous. I’m just a caring person.” I returned my focus to my reflection, my face heating up just a little. Lilly must be out of her mind.

I checked my phone, shit I was gonna be late. "We have to go, I'm gonna be late," I say as I bring the phone up so she can see. "Ok but we're not done talking about this," she said pointing her finger at me "There's nothing to talk about" I objected

[Act 2]

I was 15 minutes late, and now I'm rushing in to the building that Lilly dropped me off at, the situation was like a blind date but I knew what the guy looked like I just didn't know where Lilly had set us up at, and for some god awful reason she set us up at a bar.

As I entered, I looked around, trying to find my date. I hoped he hadn't left because I was late and feared I had stood him up. I sat down when I couldn't find him. Reaching for my phone, I decided to text Lilly for his number; I thought she had given it to me previously, but I must not have saved it. Just as I was about to hit send, I heard someone approaching.

“Sorry, I’m late! My bro's were taking forever at the gym, but you understand—I can’t let my body go,” he laughed. I glanced next to him and saw two guys accompanying him.

“Oh, don’t mind them; they’re just going to sit at the bar. I’m their ride,” he said, moving to leave. One of the guys leaned in to my date and said, not so quietly, “You’ll be one lucky guy tonight.” I inwardly cringed.

When I finally took the time to look at my date, I realized he really did just come from the gym. He was wearing a gray camo tank top and black shorts. I tried not to judge, but God, did I want to. He takes his seat, looks around, and then snaps at a waiter. The guy who's taken someone else's order gives us an annoyed look and puts up his finger to signal that he'll talk to us in a minute.

"What's up that guys ass" I just star at my date, "I mean he is buys and it's a little rude to snap at someone" he looks at me and laughs "it's his job. Lighten up baby" oh. My. God. What has Lilly gotten me into? "Sure," I say, already wishing to leave.

I want to make conversation, but my date is just starting on his phone. Finally, I'm saved by the waiter. Before my date can release he's here I mouth 'I'm sorry'. Why am I sorry? Well, I guess I'm not sorry because I haven't done anything, but I know my date probably won't say anything.

"What can I get you?" the waiter said briefly. We order food plus drinks. I don't drink but feel weird being at a bar and not getting a drink. As the waiter walks off with our order, my date speaks up, "he had his eyes all over you. You shouldn't have warned that, you like you sleep around" I was shocked, Appalled even. I didn't know what to say, so I just let it go.

[Act 2.5]

The hours seemed to stretch endlessly as he dominated the conversation, talking about himself without pause. Barely did he turn the spotlight onto me, only inquiring about the number of people I had been with, as if measuring my worth through the lives I’d touched. I felt a wave of relief wash over me when the date finally drew to a close, but it was quickly overshadowed by a lingering sense of melancholy.

Despite my initial reluctance to go out with him, a nagging thought crept into my mind: was romance something that was meant for me? The question echoed as I got ready to leave.

"Maybe you could come over after I drop off my friends," he suggested. I just blinked at him, then replied, "No, I have work stuff I need to do. Sorry." I wasn't really sorry, and I'm sure it didn't sound like I was.

"Well, will there be a second date?" he asked. I thought to myself that no, there definitely wouldn't be a second date.

"I’ll have Lilly text you," I offered, hoping that would make him stop talking.

"Can I at least have a photo? I mean, you're hot as hell and an Avenger," he said. Dear Lord, this guy really needs to get a grip.

"No," I replied, and this time I didn’t offer any excuses—I had simply stopped caring.

"Wow, okay, you're not even that pretty. You're lucky you're famous; otherwise, no one would like you." I just laughed out of shock and walked away.

When I’m outside, I call Lilly. She picks up after a few rings. "Hey, how did it go, girl?" I hear her cheerful voice.

"He was a jerk," I reply. I can hear her gasp on the other end. "Damn, I’m really sorry. If you want, I can send him a strongly worded text." I laugh. "No, it’s fine. Can you pick me up?"

"Ummm, I wish I could, but my roommate is using my car because hers is broken. I can get a taxi and come get you, though."

I would usually get one, but my wallet fell out of my bag when I hurried out earlier. "No, it’s fine," I say, already thinking of who else I could call.

"I’m really sorry this was my stupid idea," she says. "It’s okay," I respond. "You were excited for me to go on a date. Just remember this next time."

I tried to call everyone, but everyone was busy. Bob was in therapy and probably wouldn't be done soon. Yelena wasn't answering; she was probably taking a nap, and everyone was on a mission, well, except Walker. Just my luck.

I let out a heavy sigh as I dialed his number, feeling a mix of frustration and uncertainty swirling inside me. To my surprise, he picked up on the first ring. His voice came through, warm yet concerned, “Are you okay?” I almost chuckled at the absurdity of it, but the urge to cry—or maybe even to throw a punch at my date—was rising within me. “Well, not really,” I replied, trying to keep my tone steady. “Could you please come and give me a ride back to the compound? I’m really sorry to bother you.” A brief pause followed before he finally agreed and asked where I was.

[Act 3]

The drive back was quiet—not awkward, just there. The hum of the car and the low music filled the space. I wasn't even paying attention to the lyrics; I was just kind of annoyed. I mean, how hard is it to put a little effort into a date?

"Date didn't go well?" I want to laugh. "Nope," I reply. "How come?"

It was unusual to see John not be an asshole; he did care. He just had issues that carried on into conversations and the way he spoke to people. Sometimes, he was too blunt.

"You know, typical bad date stuff, didn't put any effort into the date except talking about himself, rude to the waiters, snapped at them, didn't tip, and when all was said and done, he asked for a photo because I'm famous." I put quotation marks around famous.

It was quiet for a moment before John spoke up, "You deserve better." I glanced at him and replied, "Like I'll actually find that?" I intended it to be a light-hearted comment, but saying it out loud made me feel less angry and more sad.

"It's whatever, I'm not cut out for romance, I guess." John laughed at that. "You and me both," he said, which made me smile—a real one. "Yeah."

The conversation shifted into normal, the conversation felt easier than it'd been before. But it ended as we pulled into the compound parking lot. As we reached the main floor, I saw Yelena asleep on the couch, TV playing something.

John didn't want to stop talking; he hadn't felt like a normal person since the divorce. He shut down, but now it felt like he was going to be okay.

[Act 3.5]

John's room was close to yours, so he offered to walk with you, he was trying to keep the conversation going. And he ignored the butterfly feeling he'd been getting more recently when around you. As you guys needed your room (his was further on), you were about to go but when you turned around, he was closer to you than the other one realized, and his eyes looked down at your lips for a second before looking back at your eyes.

You weren't sure what had come over you, but you moved forward without thinking and kissed him. John's eyes involuntarily closed as you pressed your lips against his. When you finally pulled away, John leaned in, attempting to follow you for another kiss.

"John," you breathe out, pulling back again, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that; I don't know what got into me. You just... I feel like an asshole." Despite the guilt, your body craved to be close to him again. John looked slightly flushed, and you were sure you looked the same

He didn't say anything, just looking between your eyes, "Can I kiss you again?" he breathes out, both of you in a similar state. "Are you sure you want to?"

"I'm not sure I can have what I want" You instantly worry, is he filling the hole of getting divorced with you, now a little worried you ask "What would that be"

"To be the guy you deserve," he says quietly but not as a whisper. You had hoped that hearing him say another girl's name would help you move past this moment, but what he said only intensified your feelings. This time, you were acutely aware that you were leaning in to kiss him, no longer worried about what this might mean for you in the future.

The kiss was hungry like before, but there was more to it, an understanding that this was a shared want.

Slowly, John pushed you up against the door, towering over you, one hand on your face and the other next to your head, your hands were in his hair. You pulled away when you heard footsteps in the distance. You both were disheveled slightly, before you could fix anything, Bucky had walked in view.

"Oh come on, what are you guys in high school?" he said before turning around and leaving.

Tell me if there's any mistakes, I think I did ok for geting back in to writing, it's been like three months lol. Anyway have a good day

I MIGHT do a second part that's why I ended it like this, but idk I feel like I already have burn out lol

Micki didn't argue it, just getting in the car and pulling up the address for Black Rock Bar on her nav app. The twenty- minute drive was filled with Walker talking about Stella's soccer team and August's photography talent.

"He'll probably be just as good as his mother was eventually," he said as they got out of the car, adjusting their hats.

The bar was dirty, Walker could tell before he even opened the door. The vibe said 'dive' from the moment they pulled off the highway. "Interesting place for the mayor's son to frequent," Micki said, pulling open the door.

"Maybe he wanted to be around folks who don't care about money, or taste, or…" Walker grimaced a bit as he looked around the inside of the bar. "Dusting or black mold inspections."

"We ain't open yet," a voice called from the back as the door to the musty-smelling bar closed behind them.

"We're with the Rangers. We need to ask you a few questions," Micki called out.

"If this is about Danny," the man said, walking out from the back with a keg in his arms. "I already talked to the cops 'bout 'im."

"Walker and Ramirez...We're Texas Rangers, not police." Micki stood tall as the man dropped the keg and turned to them. "And we are here to ask about Daniel Pierce and Seth Richardson."

"Seth got hisself killed, too?"

"Got himself disappeared. So, you know Seth?" Walker asked.

"He's in a few times a week." The large man scratched at his beard and looked around. "Runs a tab up, starts fights, great guy."

"How big of a tab?" Micki asked.

"Couple hundred. He always settles up at the end of the week."

"And there anybody specific he was starting fights with?" Walker tried.

"Nope," the man dismissed quickly.

"Is there anything you can tell us about either of the men that might be helpful?"

"Nope," he responded again.

Micki and Walker looked at each other. Unhelpful, uncooperative people were nothing new, but it was something that neither enjoyed. They stuck around to ask a few more basic questions, getting short answers for each before they bid the man a good day and left.

"Seems like he's hiding something to you?" Walker asked as they settled in the car.

"Might just have been anti-authority."

He nodded. "Maybe. I think I'm gonna give this place a look after happy hour, see what kind of patrons Richardson might have been picking fights with."

Micki agreed that coming in that night in plainclothes would be the best bet to get some recon done.

His black Stetson went well with his light blue plaid shirt and his dark blue jeans. He nodded at Micki from across the bar. She was wearing a black tank top and a tight pair of jeans, her hair down in waves. There were a handful of patrons at the bar and a few small groups scattered between the pool tables, dartboard, and tables. They seemed like hardworking men and women...except the group of four bikers in the back.

Walker focused on the bikers, trying to get close enough to hear their conversation without drawing attention to himself, but there was no way to do that. He settled for drawing attention intentionally, grabbing a pool cue and approaching the group. "Any of y'all up for a game?"

"Fuck off, pretty boy,” the woman in the middle of the group snapped.

"Come on!" he whined. "I got an hour before the old lady starts blowing up my phone about where I am and I just wanna play a round or two.”

The bikers didn’t bite at his invitation, scoffing and looking away, ignoring him completely as they kept drinking. The fact that they weren’t paying him any mind made it easier for him to listen in on their conversation...which involved drugs, their Harleys, the crazy bitch who’s been trying to get child support out of the largest of the men, and the Mexican outlaw bikers that they seemed to have a rivalry with...but nothing about Daniel Pierce or Seth Richardson.

He sighed and set the pool cue back against the wall, heading into the back to use the restroom. He was barely past the entrance to the dark hallway when pain exploded across the back of his skull and the world went dark.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

His head was swimming as Walker came to his senses. Not just a concussion, he could feel that. He knew what a concussion felt like. He also knew what sedative hangover felt like. The heavy limbs, like he was moving through pudding, the way he felt a bit bobble headed, the way his focus was hard to find. He knew he’d been drugged.

He ran his tongue across the top of his mouth, trying to get saliva flowing in his bone-dry mouth as his eyes fluttered open.

“Thank god, you’re awake,” a voice whispered. The voice didn’t seem too excited though. “Fuckin’ huge, aren’t you?”

Walker’s hand went to the back of his head as he sat up. “Where’m I?” He looked around his surroundings. He was in a cage along a wall made of cinder blocks. Down the wall, there were three more cages in a line. Each steel enclosure had a large man in it. He recognized the one closest to him.

Seth Richardson sighed and leaned back against the bars. “It’s where they keep us until it’s time to fight.”

“Fight?”

“Cage matches, man,” one of the others responded. “Bigger cage, obviously.”

“Modern-day gladiatorial combat.” Seth ran his hand down his bruised face. “I hope they don’t put me against you. You work out, right?”

“Wait, they...blindsided me, abducted us...to force us to fight?” Maybe it was the head wound, maybe it was the drugs, but he couldn’t see the reasoning.

“We’re worth a lot of money. They take bets.”

“‘They’? Who’s ‘they’?”

“No names. We don’t even have names now that they got us.” The man in the furthest cage groaned. “They’ll give you an animal title. I’m Bear.”

“Puma.”

“Bull,” Seth said.

“Well, I hope I get something badass. Like a moose or something.” Walker chuckled at his own little joke and licked his lips. “Okay, so...they, whoever they are, make you fight each other? What, to the death?”

“Only after we stop making them money. They give the kill order when we don’t have people bet on us anymore,” Bear said.

“How often does-”

“Stop asking questions! If you don’t make waves, you’ll last longer,” Puma hissed.

Walker sighed, trying to clear his head enough to figure out a way to get out. “Any y’all tried to break out?”

“No, we just sit on our asses all fuckin’ day. There’s no out.”

“There’s always an out.”

“Except when there’s not,” a new voice said as the door on the far end of the room opened. Walker blinked to clear his eyes as a short, balding man walked in. “You’re a big one, Gator.”

“My name is-”

“Your name is Gator. You’re gonna make me a lot of money...after I drug you up and let Bull beat you to shit.”

“Give him a lot, ‘cause I mean...look at ‘im!” Seth exclaimed.

“Don’t worry, Bull. You’re winning this one.”

“Look, man, you don’t need to give me any drugs because I’m not fighting anybody,” Walker said.

The balding man just chuckled. “Okay. You don’t fight, you die anyway.” A gun was suddenly in the man’s hand. “I got no problem putting down a gator.” He took Walker’s silence as fear, so he laughed. “You’ll fight. You all fight for your lives.”

He didn’t have a lot of choice. Not in the sedatives entering his muscle in his arm, nor the bag over his head, or the cuffs on his wrists as he was dragged out of the small cage and away toward the sound of a raucous crowd. He fell to his knees as he was pushed into the larger cage and the bag was removed. The cuffs were undone as the cage was opened on the other side and Seth was pushed in, no bag or cuffs hindering him.

“We don’t have t-to do this,” Walker tried as the cage was closed and locked, leaving just ‘Gator’ and ‘Bull’ in the enclosure.

“You don’t know, man. Shut the fuck up.” Seth’s foot connected with Walker’s chin and his head snapped back.

He did what he could to fend off the mayor’s son, but eventually Walker had no choice but to hit back. His head fuzzy from diazepam and injury, it took him a few tries to get to his feet. In that time, Bull’s fists connected with his cheek and chin multiple times. Seth was pulling no punches as they landed in his gut and Walker’s initial impulse was to hit back with everything he had. The thought that it wasn’t Seth’s fault stayed the Ranger’s hand. ‘Fighting for survival’ was quite literal in the situation Seth and Walker were in.

Cordell’s hand zipped out, aiming for his opponent’s mouth, and caught Seth’s eye instead. The man was stunned for a moment and Walker took the opportunity to grab him, grappling him into a chokehold. Seth scratched and scrabbled, reaching to get a grip and try to get away.

“Stop. Stop, Seth,” Walker grunted into the smaller man’s ear. “Stop fighting. Just...I’m with the Rangers. Stop.”

“Wha-” The words seemed to get through. “Really?”

“Stop. Just stop.” Walker dropped Seth and stumbled backward.

Seth looked up at him, fear and hope in his brown eyes. “Really?” he asked as the crowd exploded into boos.

“What are you doing?!” the balding man demanded, drawing his gun and walking up to the cage. “Fight!”

He didn’t have time to use his weapon against them, though, as the room was suddenly flooded with officers in tactical gear, bearing semiautomatic weapons. Walker let out a heavy sigh of relief, dropping to a knee as soon as his eyes fell on his partner following in the APD SWAT members.

“This whole ‘me saving your ass’ thing is getting to be habit,” she said with a smile.

“How’d you find me?” he asked as she opened the cage and stepped inside.

“They didn’t trash your phone until after they got you here. Rookie move on their part. I followed your GPS,” she said, leaning down to examine his face. “He got some good licks in.”

“Well, yeah but...I was drugged...pretty heavily, actually.”

“If you need to blame the drugs to justify getting your ass handed to you by the rich kid, by all means, Walker.”

“I was winning that,” he defended as Micki went to check on Seth. “Ramirez, I was winning. He was on the mat when you guys came in.” He winced as he stood. “You saw that, right?”

“There’s two more in the back,” Seth said.

“Micki. I was winning!” Walker called after Micki as Seth pointed her to the back area.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Oh my!" The gasp was loud enough to hear over the Luke Combs song pumping through Side Step and Cordell's eyebrow went up. "What happened to you?" Y/n cooed as she rushed up to him before he had a chance to take a seat at the bar.

"You should see the other guy," he responded, chuckling and immediately wincing when the action caused pops of pain across his abs and bruised ribs. "Could I get a double, neat, of the cheapest rye you got back there?"

"Most certainly not," she answered and his eyebrows shot up. He hadn't been denied a drink in a bar since he was a teenager with a bad fake ID. She put a finger up to tell him to wait and ran back around behind the bar. "Alcohol doesn’t even properly numb pain like that, Ranger."

"Yeah, but it makes me feel better and isn't that the real relief?" he tried to joke as Y/n dumped a hefty scoop of ice into a clean bar mop and took the corners together to make a cold pack.

"Thins the blood, makes for bigger bruises, gives a moment of 'relief' an' then three weeks of trying to hide the thing," she said, coming around the bar again to offer him the ice. "Cold keeps the bruises from spreading. Can't do much for the cuts, but there's an ointment, DerMend, that'll cut the healing time on the bruises down by half. Those look real bad, but...any little bit will help ya."

As he took the ice from Y/n and placed it over his cheek, Cordell couldn’t help but wonder how she got all the information she was giving out. He was a cowboy, a Texas Ranger, a damn rodeo star in another life, and no one had ever imparted the wisdom of bruises to him. How had she learned? Was it something innocuous, like curiosity, or was it necessity?

"How'd you know all that? You a nurse or something?"

Her eyes immediately downcast at the question and she smiled tightly before turning to get behind the bar again. "No. Not-not a nurse. Just...I just know some stuff. Don't know a lot, but I know some useful stuff, Ranger."

"Walker." He smiled what he hoped was a soothing smile as he took a seat on the closest barstool. She didn't really answer that question, deflecting subtly so she wouldn't have to explain her knowledge of heavy bruises. "Can't have whiskey, huh? Can I have a beer?"

"No, sir, you cannot," she responded firmly, starting to wash her hands. Walker took note of the faint lines on her left ring finger and the way she flinched and tensed when the door to the bar opened, relaxing only when two women walked in and the door closed behind them. "I can make you...a Shirley Temple or a virgin margarita. On me, of course. You shouldn't have to pay when you've had such a rough day protectin' Texas."

"Hell, why not? Been years since I had a Shirley Temple."

"Okay. Would you rather the original recipe like my daddy taught me to make it, with the ginger ale, or do you want it like Miss Broussard taught me to make it, with Sprite and orange juice?"

"Dealer's choice."

She smiled as she grabbed a glass and scooped ice into it. He could hear her muttering under her breath, "Ginger, grenadine, cherry, smile." over and over as she moved and made the drink for him. She stuck a straw in the pink drink and smiled brightly, quite obviously fakely, as she set it on the bar in front of him.

"There you go! Shirley Temple."

"Looks great," Cordell started as he set the ice pack down on the bar. "But don't call me 'Shirley'."

She looked confused for a second before she giggled. "Oh! That's silly! You're funny, Ranger Walker. Enjoy your drink!" she said before walking down the bar to help the women sitting on the opposite end.

He watched as she interacted with the other patrons of the bar. She was still stiff and seemed uncomfortable, but her smile never faltered. She was good at putting up a mask of happiness. He had to wonder how she got so good at faking that.

"So, where'd you come from, Miss Salama?" Walker asked, mimicking her proper use of titles as he took a sip of the second Shirley Temple she made him. "You an Austin local?"

"Oh! No, not at all. I grew up in-in Dallas, actually." She pulled the ice pack off the bar and wrung it out in the sink before grabbing another scoop of ice and handing the refreshed pack to Cordell.

"Oh? I have a few buddies from Dallas. Where'd you graduate?"

"Ummm...W. T. White. It, um...was...not the best but it got me through." She looked away and cleared her throat. "Enjoy your drink, Ranger Walker. Let me know if there's anything I can get for you," she said before walking away.

"That’s evasive," Cordell said under his breath. He took a sip of his mocktail and hummed. "Curiosity piqued."

January 2003

Hoyt and Cordell shuffled along the cliff ledge, rifles raised in front of them, almost back to back as they covered their respective directions. They reached the entrance to the next cave and made a final check of the outside surroundings before Cordell deftly stepped to the other side of that entrance, too quickly to be shot at from anyone concealed inside.

They exchanged a quick nod before simultaneously spinning into the entrance, guns raised and fingers tight on the triggers. The headlamps strapped around their helmets illuminated the darkness inside as they each did several visual sweeps of the area, their guns moving with their heads.

As far as they could tell, empty. There was only one rock inside large enough to conceal a person… and it would have to be a small one.

Cordell swallowed hard and pushed down the memory of women and children running at them with bombs strapped to their backs.

Focus.

He locked eyes with Hoyt again, then crept forward quickly, side-stepping to get a visual of the other side of the small boulder.

“Clear.”

They both straightened into more relaxed positions as he said the word, Hoyt turning back around to guard the entrance while Cordell lowered his gun and began a quick perimeter check, ensuring there were no hidden tunnels anywhere on the cave walls.

He did so in silence for several seconds before his best friend’s voice broke through.

“Mongoose, huh?”

“What?” Cordell asked, glancing briefly at the other man.

“The operation,” Hoyt replied with a small hand motion. “Mongoose.”

Cordell kicked a slightly suspicious crack in the wall, but was met by solid rock around it. “Yeah, but what about it?”

“Don’t you remember our mongoose?”

He scoffed a little, but a genuine smile found its way to his lips. “I remember Momma making us rehome it after it bit Liam.”

“Still think the kiddo kinda deserved it,” Hoyt chuckled.

“Strapping him into Denise Davidson’s Barbie car and sending him down the stairs?” Cordell asked with a brief grin in his friend’s direction. “Yeah, I’d say so.”

Hoyt took a breath to answer, but before he could, rifle fire cracked through the silence of the desert from somewhere further down the cliffside.

They cursed together as their own weapons swung back up to the ready position and they rushed back towards the sunlight, Cordell a few steps behind his battle buddy.

But as he followed Hoyt through the cave entrance, an explosion resounded from somewhere in the complex, and they were both thrown onto their backs as the ground beneath them shook violently.

And as Cordell went to hurriedly push himself back to his feet, he registered a cracking sound above him, falling rock plummeting towards him. He heard himself yell, heard Hoyt scream his name half a second later, felt his head being violently pounded back into the ground beneath him, and then felt for a moment like he was drowning in thin air.

It took that moment to register the pain coursing from the front of his head and the hot blood doing the same.

“Cordi!”

Hoyt’s face appeared above him, but it swam, throbbing in and out of focus with the pounding in his head, his voice echoing in the same way.

“Cordi, Buddy, talk to me! You still with me?”

Walker stared up at him, wide-eyed and desperate, choking on the breath he took to try to respond.

He couldn’t focus on Hoyt well-enough to see the expression on his face, but even in the echoes of his voice, he could hear barely-restrained panic.

“Okay, you’re awake. You’re okay. Stay awake, alright? That’s all I need you to do.”

His friend’s hands were shaking as they slid under Cordell’s chin to release his chin strap and carefully removed his helmet. He swore as he took in the state of his head, quickly shrugging his pack to the ground beside him, fumbling it open, pulling out his medical kit.

Dark spots began to appear over Cordell’s blurry vision, the throbbing in his head only increasing as he felt the blood from the wound sliding freely down his face.

Was he going to die here?

Of course, the possibility was always present over here… every morning you woke up and got your orders and it sat in the back of your mind. And he’d seen plenty of action… had bullets come within an inch of his face and known any one of them could find its mark the next time around.

But those moments were adrenaline-filled and action-demanding. They carried themselves to completion before you ever really had time to panic.

Not like this.

Lying here, bleeding into the sand, seeing less by the second, wondering if he’d ever see more again.

“Hoyt…” His voice came out raw and choked and barely audible. “Hoyt…” It was all he knew to say, a panicked cry to his best friend to help him.

“I gotchu, Cordi, I’m right here.” But his voice trembled as well.

Cordell blinked hard, desperate to push the darkness back.

The action wasn’t lost on Hoyt.

“You gotta stay with me, Pal, you gotta stay awake.” He lifted Walker’s head just enough to slide a bandage underneath. “Eyes on mine.”

He crossed the bandage over Cordell’s forehead and pulled it tight, slid each end back under and repeated, then went under one more time before tying them off in front. Cordell could only gasp again, desperately trying to obey him as the black spots made a second assault.

Far off shouts and gunfire and a piercing ringing he was pretty sure wasn’t actually there took over for a moment as he saw Hoyt saying something into his radio, no doubt calling for help.

He started hearing him again halfway through a sentence directed at him.

“... on its way, alright? You just gotta stay with me. I mean it, Buddy, eyes on me.”

Cordell only then realized he’d allowed his eyelids to fall shut, forcing them back open but suddenly all too aware of how heavy they were.

He could see his best friend desperately searching for something, anything to keep him awake while they waited for backup.

“Cordi, that mongoose we had,” he said at last, his voice all the more shaky. “What did we call it?”

He squeezed his eyes shut to think about it, but was quickly rebuked by the man kneeling over him.

“Eyes open, Pal, I mean it!”

“Leroy,” he gasped as he once again forced himself into obedience. “We… we called him Leroy.”

“Yeah,” Hoyt confirmed, forcing a tight smile. “Good. And uh… where’d we get him?”

Cordell went to laugh and coughed instead. “Pet shop. But we couldn’t afford him, so you… challenged the shop owner to a poker game. His Leroy against our free help around the shop for a week. You defin…” Another cough. “Definitely cheated.”

“That…” Hoyt pointed down at him as he looked around them desperately. “has never been proven.”

“Momma only let us keep him at all cuz you gave her that face you do,” Cordell went on, his throat tight and his voice choked. “I never woulda… a gotten away with it.”

“My puppy dog eyes make a regular sucker outta Abeline.”

“That car… the Barbie car of Denise’s that Liam… that he used to push Leroy down the stairs. It was pink. With yellow flowers all over it. Ugliest thing.”

“It was as obnoxious as its owner,” Hoyt agreed with another tense chuckle, his eyes still desperately flicking around them.

“Hoyt?”

The other man finally looked back down at him with his full attention. “Yeah, Cordi?”

“You’re… you’re not gonna leave, are you?”

His friend’s face broke a little at the question, his hand finding one of Cordell’s and squeezing hard. “Course not. I’m right here, Cordi, I’m not moving.”

Cordell nodded a little and regretted it immediately, allowing his eyes to fall shut for just a second before once again forcing them back open. “I don’t… don’t wanna die alone.”

Hoyt’s grip tightened all the more on his hand. “Brother, don’t talk like that. No one’s dying today. You just gotta hang it there a little longer til help gets here, you hear me?”

“I’ll try.”

“Good.” Another brief look around before Hoyt’s eyes were on him once more. “I’m right here, Cordi. I’m right here.”

June 2005

Hoyt sat next to him at the Side Step bar, nursing a beer while he nursed his whiskey. Quietly waiting for him to say something.

Cordell didn’t have to be told to know Emily had called him.

He’d forgotten about an appointment he was supposed to be at with his six month pregnant wife, and she was having to be worried enough to call his best friend instead of mad like she should be.

Finally, it was Hoyt who broke the silence. “Cordi, you can’t murder yourself over this. Em’s over it. She’s not mad. She assumed you got held up at work”

“It’s not just this, Hoyt.”

“So, talk to me, Buddy.”

“I’ve forgotten about a shift and been an hour late twice. I’ve shown up on my day off five times. That’s a lot in seven months.”

“Okay…”

“Sometimes, I can’t sleep, and sometimes I can barely wake up. And that’s not even counting the nightmares, that’s just…” He gestured helplessly in front of him. “That’s just my head. Which always hurts, Hoyt. It always…”

He exhaled slowly and took another long sip of whiskey.

“You remember Mongoose?”

His best friend nodded a little. “All too well, Buddy.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.” It was Hoyt’s turn to sigh. “You been to the doctor?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because… my job… I can’t… I made it past the psych test, I made it through academy. I can’t screw it up now.”

His friend nodded a little, his face understanding, but conflicted. “I hear ya, Cordi, I do.” He hesitated before adding gently, “But I’m worried about you, Pal.”

Walker blinked hard, desperately fighting the tears he could feel welling behind his eyes. “Yeah. Me too.”

There was a long moment of silence between them before Hoyt ventured, “Speaking of nightmares. How are yours?”

Cordell swallowed, shaking his head slightly in a silent cry of not good. “You?”

“Not gone,” Hoyt sighed. “But better than yours, I reckon.”

His eyes squeezed shut as the tears made a fresh assault. “What’s wrong with me?” The question came out pathetically small.

“Nothing is, Cordi.” Hoyt’s hand found his shoulder, squeezing.

“I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”

He could sense the motion of his friend nodding, despite the fact that his eyes were still closed.

“I know, Buddy. But you don’t have to do it alone, alright? That’s what I’m here for.”

Cordell took a shaky breath, opening his eyes to look over at the man beside him.

“You’re here?” “I am.”

“You’re not gonna leave?”

A twitch of pain across Hoyt’s face.

“You remember Mongoose?”

He nodded.

“I’m right here, Cordi. I’m right here.”

Happy Febuwhump! Please let me know what you think I need feedback to survive. Love ya.

*

Seven years between them. Liam always wondered if he was an accident, even if Mama said that with Cordell going to school she was ready to have another baby around the house. Cordell was always the one who was getting into trouble. Rambunctious, loud, falling headfirst into things and getting dragged out covered in mud. Liam learned from his example what not to do. Do not: run along the bleachers at the football stadium and vault the handrails until your foot gets caught and you fall and snap your wrist clean in two. Do not: get caught drinking beer with your high school girlfriend behind the horsebarn, and make Daddy give the most mortifying sex talk in the world afterward. Do not: make friends with the most delinquent-ass kid in the whole hill country and wind up explaining every other week why, really, he wasn't that bad, give him a chance—

Somehow even then he was the golden child. Not the best grades, not the most obedient. That wasn't what their dad cared about. Cordell was good on a horse, good on his feet. Respectful when it mattered and devil-may-care when it didn't. In high school he was the quarterback, of course he was, and Liam was right there in the stands with their parents every Friday night, cheering his lungs out. Weirdly boastful with his fourth-grade friends: his older brother was the star of the football team. His older brother could ride a bull for ten seconds and get off hardly winded. Bookish, kind of short, he needed the borrowed glory of Cordell's success to be proud of. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it got him pushed over on the soccer field while some bigger boy went, gawd, William, who cares?

Liam never got in trouble. Never broke a bone. After bringing Cordell back from the hospital with a fresh new cast on his ankle and a dopey slightly-drugged smile on his face, Mama settled him in bed with Liam's help and turned off the light and then, in the kitchen, sighed and said, "Liam, you are a real relief to the mind, do you know that?" He was proud of that, too, in that moment. It wasn't until later that it nagged at him. A therapist asked him, much later in a sleek Manhattan office that smelled faintly of sage, "Do you think your predilection for being contrarian results from that time?" He went home annoyed with her, and was more annoyed when he told Bret the story and Bret didn't even turn around from the carbonara he was making and said, "Babe, you're the most contrary person I know."

He wasn't. He didn't—think he was. He… was, he realized, after a week of sitting with it, and a week after that it made sense. He didn't pick fights, and he didn't make waves. His rebellion was quiet. His hard head, forcing him to make his own space in the world. Not able to live up to Cordell and knowing instinctively that it would be awful even to try—and so taking the opposite turn, every time. It was better than being compared, even if he knew there was no chance but to be compared.

He studied hard. He read, all the time. He liked math and literature equally and did equally well in both. He hated P.E. but he did what he could there, too, and he learned to ride even if he didn't actually love horses the way the rest of the family did, and when Daddy asked if he wanted to join up with the little league baseball Liam asked to play soccer, instead, and Daddy frowned but Mama said, "Why not, I've seen enough boys drop foul balls for a lifetime." So, soccer, and most of his games were during the day or on Saturday mornings, but Cordi came to a lot of them anyway, and when Liam's team won Cordi would jump down onto the field and grab him up by the waist and crow David Beckham, right here! Little David Beckham for sale! Liam would struggle and then he'd be slung headfirst over Cordell's shoulder like a potato sack and his face would get so red from laughing that it hurt.

*

On September 12, 2001, Mama and Daddy were gone from the house when Liam got home from school and he was glad for it. That was a Wednesday. He was in sixth grade. The teachers weren't even trying to hold normal lessons and everyone was talking about what had happened the day before. Melissa Kettering was out that day and the rumor was that her dad had been on a business trip in New York. Liam had raised his hand and asked the social studies teacher if there was going to be a war, like there was after Pearl Harbor, and she sat down on her desk and shook her head and didn't answer.

He was trying to read his book for English when the phone rang. Cordell, calling from his apartment in town. Hey, buddy, he said, over the line, and Liam sat down on the floor by the phone table and closed his eyes, unaccountably almost about to cry. Is Daddy there? Liam told him he was home alone. Lucky, Cordi said, you can totally throw a rager, and Liam didn't laugh, and neither did Cordell, even though he always laughed at his own stupid jokes. Hey, um. I shouldn't—I don't know if I should tell you this but I've gotta tell someone, and Em's in class, and I just have to—I did something, and I need to—

He interrupted himself and Liam could hear him breathing over the line. He didn't want Cordell to say anything. If he didn't say anything then Liam could pretend that he was going to tell a story about some party they'd gone to at Emily's sorority, or that Hoyt had come back into town and they'd seen a show at ACL, or that he was gonna come stay that weekend, and maybe he and Liam would go riding. Anything but what he was about to say. Liam could hear it, in his head. He could hear it like it had already been said and it was echoing, now, inside, like a verse from a song he'd always, always remember.

Cordell graduated from the Marine boot camp on a Saturday in the middle of December. Liam went along even if he wasn't allowed to attend the actual ceremony and Daddy complained about the cost of the plane tickets until Mama told him to shut up. Liam sat between them on the flight and it was the first time he was ever in the air. Over the top of Mama's crossword book he watched the clouds go by over New Mexico, Arizona, with complete wonder. San Diego, then, different to Austin—palm trees, and the air so wet, and even the parking lot at their hotel smelling like warm flowers.

Mama gave him fifty dollars before they left for the graduation. They were bringing Cordell back, after, because they got one night with him before they had to give him back to the military. "Order a pizza," she said, "at 4:30 exactly, and we should get back at the same time the pizza comes so we can all eat together." Liam watched American Pie on the hotel tv while he waited, something he would never have been allowed at home. He made the call when he was supposed to, and when the girl on the phone asked him what toppings his mind went completely blank because he was never allowed to make that decision. Cordi liked ham and pineapple and none of the rest of them did. Liam ordered it with extra pineapple.

When a knock came on the hotel room door Liam jumped up to open it, cash in hand. The one holding the pizzas was Cordell, grinning at him with Mama and Daddy standing behind. "Pizza delivery," Cordell said, and Liam crashed into him for a hug so hard that Cordi almost dropped the boxes and said whoa, Stinker, soft and laughing.

His hair was cut off, an inch on top and shorter on the sides, so he looked like those pictures of their grandpa when he was in Korea. He was skinny, too, which Liam didn't get, because he thought boot camp was all about building up muscles. "Mostly running," Cordi said. He was tired, dark circles under his eyes. He was stretched out on one bed with his strange starched blue pants and the awful khaki shirt that made him look washed-out pale even if he'd been running around San Diego for thirteen weeks, and Mama was sat next to him squeezing his arm like he'd evaporate if she looked away for a minute, and even Daddy was hovering. Proud but worried. Liam sat by Cordell's boots and tugged on the laces, wanting to ask more questions but not daring to.

Cordi fell asleep before six o'clock. Daddy turned on the television real quiet to the news. More stuff about the invasion. Liam hoped it'd be all over by the time Cordi got there. Mama boxed up the remaining pizza, shaking her head. "Don't know why you picked pineapple, kiddo," she said, and Liam shrugged, sitting at the table, watching Cordell's face, turned away a little on the pillow. Liam wanted to shake him awake but of course he didn't. For his whole life, after, he gets a little sick to his stomach when he smells pineapple.

While Cordell was in Afghanistan Mama and Daddy had Emily over to the house a lot. She was sweet. Respectful of Mama, calling her ma'am half the time, and charming to their dad even though Liam knew that she and Daddy probably disagreed on more than things than not. She liked that Liam played soccer and asked if he ever watched the Premiere League. Liam didn't even know what that was. She helped Mama cook supper and went out and took pictures of the horses which made Daddy smile, and one time when Liam went outside after dinner to read she was there crying, on the porch, quiet with her hand over her mouth, and Liam hung back and didn't know what to say. "Sorry," she said, dashing at her cheeks with the heel of her hand. She licked her lips and nodded at his book, sniffing. "That's a good one. You should read the sequel, too." He did, and told her about it, and she smiled like a sunrise, the way she always did, and he felt like—he didn't even know, what he felt like.

Liam was the best man at their wedding. He felt and looked ridiculous. Fifteen in a tux and he didn't know how to tie a bow-tie, but Cordi didn't either, so Daddy had to do it for both of them, grumbling the whole time that they should've learned this by now. "Not a lot of bowties in Kandahar, Daddy," Cordell said, winking at Liam, and Liam—blushed. Ridiculous, and embarrassing, the way the whole affair and the lead-up had felt, but Cordell didn't seem to care or notice, so—there was Liam, blushing in a bowtie.

Cordell had only been back for a year and somehow things were off. He was serving the rest of his contract out in the reserves but he wasn't finishing up his degree like he'd told Mama he would. He'd entered the training program for the state troopers and was set up to be a highway cop, of all things. He'd rented a house in Austin with Emily and they lived together the whole year before the wedding—an argument with Daddy about that one, which Liam listened to from the hallway with his heart pounding—and they weren't even going to be married in the church because Emily didn't want a wedding mass and, Liam suspected, Cordell didn't either. Daddy lost that argument, too.

The wedding was tiny. Liam the best man, Geri the maid of honor. Emily's aunt that raised her on one side and Daddy and Mama on the other, and a handful of Cordell and Emily's friends making up the numbers in the little rented hall. Afterward they had a bigger barbecue out at the ranch and in front of the crowd Emily fed Cordell a dainty forkful of the lemon cake and Cordell responded by dotting a tiny bit of frosting on her nose and kissing it off, and Mama's best friend Sue-Ellen sighed and said to Mama, where Liam could hear, "Well, Abilene, maybe they're atheists but I daresay you raised that boy right every other way," and Mama said something dry back but Liam was watching how Cordell cupped Emily's cheek in his hand, smiling down at her like she hung the moon, and he thought, yeah. Yeah, Cordell was just about perfect, wasn't he.

"High school in the fall, right?" Emily's aunt said, later. "Emily says you play soccer. Going to try out for the team?"

Cordell and Emily were dancing, swaying in the grass, the bonfire leaping up behind them. His hand still on her cheek. "I'm quitting soccer," Liam said, without even realizing he was going to. "I'm going to try out for wrestling, instead."

*

He figured out he was gay relatively early. His friends at school got hold of a Playboy in fifth grade and didn't really know what to do with it beyond blustering. This was before anyone but nerds was on the internet, and Liam was a nerd but did a decent job of hiding it. Scott beckoned Liam over while they were waiting for the buses and showed him the top of the magazine, the bold logo and the girl with her boobs pushing up out of her bra—the group of them snickering, saying how hot she was—and that they were going to look at it at Scott's house later if Liam wanted to come over—and Liam said, "No, my mom's making me go to the store with her." The lie came out effortlessly.

They did have a computer at home, and dial-up internet it had been very, very hard to argue Daddy into. He hardly knew how to find anything but he did some careful searches while Daddy was out with the horses and Mama was cooking, singing bad over the stove like she tended to. Made Liam's face hot to see some of what he was seeing. Hoyt came over, once, while Cordi was away in the war, and he helped Liam and Mama dig out a bunch of tomatoes that hadn't grown in right, and afterward they sat on the porch drinking lemonade while Mama asked Hoyt all about the oil field he said he'd been working in and Liam watched how Hoyt's legs sprawled out on the porch, how his jeans hugged up against his calf muscle and how the sweat had made his white shirt nearly transparent, and he had to sit very careful on the bench with his knees drawn up to hide the effect it had on him.

When Cordell came home from Afghanistan they threw a huge party. Everyone came, Daddy's friends and Mama's, and Emily and their friends from college, and even Hoyt, magicked up out of somewhere (for the promise of free beer, Daddy said), and then Liam, the youngest person there, watching from the corner of the porch as always. Cordi was very tan and finally bulky with muscle and his hair had grown out, just a little, from that military buzz, and he barely detached himself from Emily the whole time, his arm always around her shoulders or hers around his waist, and when they did step apart his eyes followed her and she watched him right back, smiling at the most random times. Liam was fourteen and a little more aware of the world and he wondered abruptly if they'd had sex yet. Cordi had only been home one day and he'd slept at the ranch and not at Emily's apartment. How would they have found the time?

He was chewing his thumbnail over it when a sweaty weight crashed down on his shoulders, arms trapping his in. Hoyt. "Hey there, Stinker," Hoyt said, and Liam shrugged fretfully and said, "Don't call me that," and Hoyt laughed at him but stood up and ruffled Liam's hair completely backwards instead.

"Still pretty shrimpy," he said. He was grinning, like he had some big secret. "You planning on growing up anytime soon, champ?"

"Don't you have a sketchy job to get to?" Liam said, annoyed. He tried to fix his hair and gave it up as a lost cause the second Hoyt's grin got bigger. Asshole.

Hoyt sipped his beer. Twenty-one—he was allowed, although Liam had noticed that Mama was being a little free with handing out drinks to Emily's college friends. "Glad big bro's home, I bet," Hoyt said.

Liam didn't dignify that with a response. Hoyt laughed, under his breath, and held out the beer for Liam to take, which he did because he didn't know what else to do. "Go on," Hoyt said, nodding at it. "I won't tell your mama. Not fair that everyone else gets to celebrate while little Liam's sober. And boring."

"I'm not boring," Liam said, although he knew he was because half the kids at school clearly thought so. He took a sip of the beer, anyway, not knowing if Hoyt would snatch it away. Nasty, and he made a face that made Hoyt hoot, and then he took a bigger gulp, determined at least to get something out of it.

"There he goes," Hoyt said, weirdly delighted, and he clapped Liam on the shoulder the same way he would Cordi when they were in high school, and the bit of warm in Liam's belly went lower. "That's a welcome home."

Liam kept the beer, curled against his chest. He felt dumb holding it and also weirdly adult. "He's not even here," he said. Sort of scoffing. "Doesn't matter."

Hoyt curled his arm around Liam's shoulders again and ignored how he went stiff, and nodded out at the party. Music playing from a radio Daddy had set up on a truck-bed. Emily and Cordell, dancing in the firelight. Same as it would be for the wedding reception a year from then, although of course Liam didn't know that at the time. "Aw, he's here," Hoyt said. He squeezed Liam's shoulders. He smelled strange, like—skunk, and Mama's compost bin. It was gross but also kind of appealing and Liam shifted, hoping his dumb body wouldn't react. "He's just with his girl, and who could blame him. No call for getting jealous."

He wasn't jealous. Not—exactly. That night after Mama and Daddy went to bed the party kept on, and Liam went to his room and watched from the dark window, the bonfire still going and all the college kids still going, too. When he finally fell asleep he had a strange, blurry dream about Hoyt—building a bonfire together, and Hoyt smiling at him and being a jackass and then touching his face, the same way Cordell touched Emily's face, and then Hoyt touching his stomach, low—and then the dream shifted, the weird way dreams shift, and it was Cordell, touching his stomach, and smiling at him, and leaning in close—with his hair longer like it was before he enlisted—but wearing for some reason the dumb khaki shirt of his uniform—and then Cordell's hand—

When he woke up he was soaked and it was bright morning. He washed his underwear out in the sink, feeling like his head was screwed on to someone else's body, and then he hid the underwear in the hamper, and showered, and tried not to think about it. He had that dream or one like it on and off for years, until he finally lost his virginity to Michael in college and it went away. He never told his therapist about it, or Bret, or anyone. He could rationalize it but he couldn't ever acknowledge it out loud because of what it—felt like, to think about it. To make it real in a place that wasn't just his stupid, crazy, dreaming head.

He had the dream again the night before he came out to his parents. January 2nd, trying out his new year's resolution of honesty. He figured in a ruthless sort of way that if his parents kicked him out or hated him or tried to change him then at least he had early acceptance at UT for the fall and a full scholarship and it was just eight months where his life would be completely over.

Cordell was at home on the ranch and Liam figured that's what triggered it. A couple days of vacation, since he'd worked over Christmas, and he and Emily and baby Stella had stayed up for ringing in the new year, and everyone had taken turns kissing Stella's forehead when midnight struck. Liam had been allowed a glass of champagne, Mama not even fussing about it since it was a holiday and the house was full—so he had two glasses—and when he went to bed he could still hear Cordell laughing from the front room, telling Daddy some story about a bust on the highway, something about stolen Santa suits, something light.

He dreamed they were swimming, up at the lake, and Cordell was naked. Laughing, that same too-loud booming laugh, but just because he was happy and not like he was making fun. Being kind to Liam. Holding him from behind with his arms around Liam's chest, their legs slipping together in the water. Liam could imagine what it would be like for a man to do something to him, he'd seen porn by that point, and he'd seen Cordell naked too because of the vagaries of living in an old house without a lock on the bathroom door, but somehow there was still a disconnect in his head. He was turned on beyond belief but nothing—happened, just the vagueness of Cordell behind him. His big hands.

Mama took Emily and the baby in to town, that day, for shopping. Daddy said they'd just bought half of Macy's and Mama shushed him so Daddy was up at the barn, checking over the new foal. Liam sat on the porch with a cup of coffee and watched birds come to the new feeder Mama had got from Emily and he tried to rehearse it, in his head. What to say. He'd seen it in movies but it didn't feel possible to come out of his mouth.

Cordell sat by him, on the bench swing. "Since when do you drink coffee?" he said. Then, less casual: "Is that my mug?"

"Yes," Liam said, and didn't protest when Cordell took it out of his hands. He rubbed his palms on his jeans. He had a hard time talking to Cordi after he had one of those dreams and so it was a relief that most of the time Cordell wasn't around, that he was in town at the house he shared with his wife. With his wife, Liam reminded himself, as though that could help. Another thing to make Liam different. Wrestling instead of football, reading books instead of riding, and now—this, on top of everything.

"Whatever's going on," Cordell said. Liam blinked, came back to the world. The cold, and the swing barely rocking from how Cordi had set his boot on the porch and pushed, and Cordell looking at him very steadily. "You know you can tell me, right?"

Liam swallowed. "Even if it's—" Bad is what came to his mouth and he shook his head. He prayed about this, he resolved. It's not bad. "Weird?"

"If it weren't weird you probably wouldn't be being so weird about it," Cordi said, frank, and Liam shoved his shoulder. The dream dissipated just like that. How could he possibly be crushing on his brother when his brother is this much of a jerk. Cordell swayed, grinning, letting Liam push him even if Cordell outweighed him then by fifty pounds, but then he set his hand on the back of Liam's neck, more serious. "Whatever it is. We can figure it out."

Liam licked his lips, and nodded. He knew then that was going to tell Cordell the one secret, if not the whole of it, before they left the porch that morning, and Cordi would—back him up, with Mama and Daddy, even if he didn't get it. "Give me back the coffee," he said, and Cordell raised his eyebrows but passed it back, so Liam could take a gulp. The caffeine probably wouldn't help but maybe it wouldn't hurt, and it felt nice to hold the mug. "Promise you won't freak," Liam said then, even if he was—mostly, ninety percent, pretty sure—and Cordell said, immediately, "I promise," and Liam believed him. That was the thing, with Cordell, in those days. It was easy to believe him.

*

It's Mama who calls, when Emily dies. Liam's already in bed because he's got court in the morning and Bret shoves at his shoulder, says, "Oh my god answer it and then change your ringtone, I hate that song," and Liam's still fuzzy from sleep and doesn't quite process that there's no good reason Mama would be calling him after nine o'clock in Texas because she always thought that was bad manners, it had been drilled into him all his life, and he says, mumbly, still waking up, "Hey, Mama," and there's a sharp intake of breath on the other side of the line before she says, Honey, I'm sorry, but I have real bad news.

He flies out the next day. Bret tries to dissuade him. "There's nothing you can do right now," he says, as though that's the point. JFK to Austin-Bergstrom is four and a half hours and he spends the whole time with his chest this weird achy knot. It doesn't feel real but it is. He texted Mama his flight plan and she says that Daddy will pick him up at the airport, and when he gets into the truck Daddy shakes his head and says, "Good to see you, son," but without any truth to it. Liam doesn't take it personally.

Cordell's not at the ranch when they get there but the kids are. "Hi, Uncle Liam," Stella says, remarkably clear, until he hugs her, and then she curls his hands into his shirt and cries silently, her shoulders shaking. August doesn't get up from the couch, sitting there with one arm crossed over his chest and the other over his mouth, and he looks—Liam's always shocked by it—so exactly like his mother. Stella's a copy of her grandmother, to the point that Mama set her prom picture side by side with Stella's first dance photo and the only real difference was the dress—but Auggie always took after Emily, from coloring to temperament to those long straight eyebrows, that mouth that curves up into a wide, easy smile. Not smiling now, and not for a while, and when Stella pulls away and wipes her eyes Liam sits down next to Auggie and sets his hand on the back of his neck and Auggie just folds over, quiet, like whatever was holding him up just isn't there anymore.

"Where is he?" Liam asks Mama, in the kitchen later. The sun's going down. It hasn't even been twenty-four hours.

Mama's eyes are red-rimmed. "Where do you think?" she says.

Liam takes the truck. Lady Bird Lake is officially closed at night but of course that makes no difference. He parks and walks, up to the lookout, and Cordell doesn't hear him coming. He's sitting on the steps to the gazebo, his elbows braced on his knees. The light hitting his hair. Long again. Liam doesn't know how he's always skirting regs and getting away with it, except of course Cordi gets away with everything. Golden child.

He regrets the thought as soon as he has it. "Cordi," he says, and Cordell looks up in complete surprise. Liam smiles at him, as much as he can, and comes and sits on the step. He tries to think of what to say and can't come up with anything.

"Aren't you in court tomorrow?" Cordell says, after they sit there for thirty seconds. His voice sounds thick and distant.

Liam shakes his head. "Today," he says, and Cordell nods and huffs and says, "Right," and then looks down at his hands again. They're twisted together, his thumb rubbing hard and repeatedly at the mount of his other palm. Liam reaches over and puts his hand over the knot of Cordell's fingers and Cordell's jaw flexes but he lets Liam do it. "I'm sorry," Liam says.

"Everyone is," Cordell says, halfway bitter. Liam squeezes his hands and Cordell makes a rough low noise, some sound Liam has never heard him make. "Jesus. They won't let me go in to work."

"Of course they won't," Liam says, and Cordell pulls his hands away, pushes them into his hair. "Cordi, they have to—they're going to be looking for who did it and it has to be by the books so it'll stick. They're not going to risk screwing it up."

"I just want to—" Cordell cuts himself off but Liam can imagine what goes there. He touches Cordell's back instead and the muscle flinches. Set to fly off the handle any second. Fight or flight, but Cordell never used to run from anything and Liam can't imagine he's going to start now.

He stands up. "Wrestle me," he says.

Cordell looks up. "What?"

Genuine surprise. At least it's not misery. "Come on," Liam says. "See if you can pin me." These jeans are nice, were a gift from Bret, but he'll sacrifice them. He holds out a hand and Cordell lets himself be pulled upright, and it's a shock like it always is when Liam's been too long away, how much taller Cordi still is. Liam always was the shrimp. He pushes Cordell's chest, lightly, and Cordell slaps his hands away. "Cordi," Liam says, coaxing, and pulls at Cordell's wrist. "Let me take your mind off it."

Stupid thing to say and he knows it as soon as he says it. Cordell gives him an ugly look and shoves him for real. "Take my mind off it?" he says, while Liam's staggering backwards. Liam sets his boots in the dirt and braces, and when Cordell pushes him again Liam grapples, and they are wrestling, then. It's sloppy, bad holds, both of them in too-slick boots for this ground. Liam manages to swing Cordell around and get his back on the ground but Cordi's always been stronger and shoves him off, and then they're just—flat-out scrambling, Liam's hand sinking into a patch of mud and both of them breathing hard, Cordell twisting out of his grip and getting an arm over his chest, tight, before Liam eels over and flips them—gets Cordell on his back on the dirt—his leg over Cordell's—and then Cordi drops his head back against the ground and taps out, panting.

"You been practicing?" Cordell says. His eyes are closed.

Liam sits up, says, "Class at my gym." Cordi nods and Liam gets off him, kneels next to him in the dirt. The gazebo's bright and the skyline's pretty, on the other side of the lake. Liam looks at that instead of at his brother, so he won't have to see the tears seeping down Cordell's temples, wetting his hair.

"It's not okay," Liam says. He sets a hand on Cordell's chest. At the DA's office in Manhattan he's comforted widows, widowers, orphans. Some of them seeking justice but most of them knowing it won't really be found. Cordell, he thinks, is one of the latter type, but Liam tries out the lines he's learned anyway. "It's not okay and it's not fair. I can't pretend I know what you're going through but I'm sorry." He swallows, his throat trying to close without his say-so. "Jesus. I'm so sorry, Cordi."

"Yeah," Cordell says, rough, and grips Liam's wrist. When Liam looks down Cordell's eyes are still closed. They stay there for a while, by the lake, long past when it's uncomfortable.

When they finally get up, Liam's knees creak like an old man's but Cordell doesn't make the joke he should. He leaves Cordell's truck and drives them both back into town, and gets drive-through Whataburger that Cordell picks at instead of eating, and says, "Do you want to go back to the ranch?" and isn't surprised when Cordell shakes his head, no. They get a hotel instead, two queens and a respectable mini-bar, and Liam calls Mama from next to the ice machine in the hall and says that he's got Cordell, and they're fine, and they'll be back in the morning. She clearly wants to object but doesn't know how and Liam hangs up before she can figure it out.

He gets back, with the ice. Cordell's sitting on the end of the bed watching the news like it's the Superbowl. "I was thinking about the funeral," Cordell says, when the door closes behind Liam. "I have to plan the funeral and I don't even have her body."

Liam sets the bucket on the bar and sits on the other bed. "We'll help," Liam says. Cordell's cheek sucks in on one side. "You don't have to do any of this alone."

"Yeah," Cordell says, remote, and Liam looks at him. Weird hollowness in his stomach and he realizes only after a second why: it's the first time, all his life, that he can remember Cordell lying to him.

*

The Rodeo Kings operation is supposed to be quick. Three months, is the estimate: to get in, to learn the operation, to get out. They need an agent who can be convincingly skilled as a traveling rider, who knows a ranch operation, who can act. There's a depressingly short list and one name at the top of it. Everyone thinks it's a bad idea except for Graves, and Cordell.

"It'll give me something to think about that's not this," Cordell says, when Liam's trying to talk him out of it. They're on the back patio of his and Emily's house in town. The kids are still staying out at the ranch. It's two weeks after the funeral and they haven't gone back to school. Cordell hasn't shaved in a few days and the sound as he scratches his jaw is loud. There's no music playing from the kitchen window, like there used to be. The plants out here are already dying. Liam wants to grip Cordell's shoulders, get in his face and yell, but doesn't dare to. He gets a deep sigh, instead, and Cordell flipping a poker chip between his fingers like a restless card shark, and then a smile, fake as fake. "Anyway, who do you know who can ride a bull better than me?"

"No one," Liam says, and Cordell nods, like damn straight, and in the morning Liam goes in to the Travis County DA and announces he'd like to transfer offices, due to a family emergency that's going to keep him here in Texas, and it's only afterward when some calls are made and the paperwork's signed that he calls Bret, back in Manhattan, and leaves a voicemail that he's going to be staying a lot longer than he thought.

It isn't three months. As the operation drags on, Liam sweet-talks his way into being one of the assistant attorneys on the case and he tries to alleviate how Graves is getting more and more suspicious. Cordell's old partner James gets promoted to captain, six months in, and he vouches for Cordell, too, not that it seems to matter either way. Cordell's the one who's embedded with the rodeo and he'll either finish the job or he won't. They don't have another agent to send in, not without compromising the work that's been done so far, and nothing else will do but to wait.

The kids ask Liam for updates every week when he comes for dinner at the ranch. "I can't tell you everything," he says, like he does every time, and Daddy's quiet at the head of the table, and Mama quieter on the opposite side. Cordell has a rendezvous every Monday when the rodeo takes the day off with a burner cell phone and an agent waiting impatiently for his call, and his reports are terse: still trying to get them to trust me. They're suspicious of newcomers. The ring seems really tight and I can't figure out an opening. Give me time. He's allowed to call Liam the same day and Liam answers every unknown number on Mondays, giving hope to spam callers nationwide. Cordell usually sounds tired but he still calls and they have a dumb, simple conversation—about how the Rangers beat the Angels, how he's breaking in some new boots and has a blister the size of Indiana, how he's craving, inexplicably, sushi. "Sushi?" Liam asks, trying to imagine when Cordell ever tried it, and Cordi says, with rare humor, "Hey, I'm not a big fancy New York lawyer but I've had my share of raw fish," and when Liam hands the phone over to the kids they lean over the speakerphone and talk over the top of each other about a class project Stella did, and a history paper Auggie got an A+ on, and Liam watches with his hand over his mouth for the moment when Cordell has to interrupt and say, tired-sounding still, "Sorry, guys, I have to go," and the goodbyes have to be quick, and then that's it, for another week.

The first time Liam sees him when he's Duke it's a shock to the system. Seven months in and the reporting agent says that Walker missed his check-in. Walker—that's what they all call him, even when Liam's in the room with them. There's a small frenzy in the operation office. Graves calls for Cordell's head, predictably at this point. James, trying again to calm her down, but looking a little like he agrees. Liam leaves the office unnoticed and walks outside to feel cold air on his face and feel less—how he feels—and there's a text, on his phone, from an unknown number. The Alibi, Driskill ST, thirty minutes. Come alone.

Ridiculously illicit. Liam takes off his suit-jacket and tie and ruffles his hair into something unprofessional and goes. It's hard to park—Monday night football—and inside is the opposite of his scene but he finds a seat at the bar. A girl in a too-tight orange t-shirt gives him a once-over and he smiles tightly, ignores her, drinks a watery beer, and almost exactly on the thirty-minute mark someone sits down next to him and it's—not his brother.

Duke Culpepper was the fake name they picked. Originally from Texas but had some misdemeanors that made Texas unfriendly so he'd been hiding out in Tucson for a few years, working the rodeo there. Not dangerous but willing to get up to something that was, and he looks the part. He smells like sweat and horse manure and hay and some shitty, awful aftershave, and there's a bruise on his jaw like someone suckerpunched him, and he doesn't look at Liam but smiles sweet at the bartender and says, with a fake low drawl, "Darlin', I wouldn't mind a shot of bourbon, when you have a chance."

Jesus, Liam thinks. The bartender has an expression like Cordell slid a hand down the front of her jeans and made her the happiest woman alive—the shot takes about ten seconds to arrive, when Liam's been waiting for a second beer for five minutes. Cordell knocks it back in one motion and says, "Again, and—" and he turns, like he noticed Liam for the first time, "another round for my friend, here. We're celebratin'."

She blinks, notices Liam's empty glass. While the next round's being prepared Liam raises his eyebrows and plays his part. "What are we celebrating?"

"Got a new job," Cordell says—but no—it's Duke, who's saying it, Duke who's drawling lazy and has his hat cocked at an off-angle and who's got a bandana tied around his wrist which for some goddamn reason is working the whole, hot-ass look.

"Congrats," the bartender says, and Duke grins wide and winks at her and downs the second shot, letting out a little whoop. "Another?"

"Better make it a double this time, sweetheart," Duke says, and Liam puts his hand on the warm lean stretch of thigh knocking against his under the bar and squeezes, very lightly, a warning, and sees Cordell's eyes tighten just slightly, and sees how his shoulders round out, like he's ready to get in a fight. Cordell takes a deep breath and toasts the bartender, but turns to look at Liam, face a grinning glad mask. "Got a new girl, too. Real pretty."

The bartender's disappointment would be funny, any other time. "Your lucky day, then, huh?" Liam says. Cordell's knee presses hard into his under the bar. "Girl got a name?"

"Miss Twyla Jean," Cordell says, almost crooning it, and Liam raises his eyebrows—he thought they had embarrassing Texas names—and then Cordell downs the double-shot, grimacing at the sting, and then says, much quieter so that only Liam can hear: "All it took was me making it eleven seconds on a bull and she took me straight to bed."

Liam takes a deep breath. Cordell's jaw flexes, in the silence, and he puts the empty shot glass on the bar. "Thanks for celebrating with me," he says, and slides off the barstool, backwards. He grips Liam's shoulder so hard that it actually hurts. "Gotta get back. Job won't do itself."

"Godspeed," Liam says, toasting with his beer, and Cordell gives him a tight smile and tugs his cap and walks out of the bar, taking with him the smell of the stables and his too-tight jeans and this sensation under Liam's gut that's murky and dangerous, unsettled. His shoulder hurts. It's only after he's written down Twyla Jean's name and texted it to James, and gone home to the apartment where Bret's still bitching about the décor, and taken a shower, and pressed his forehead against the cold tile, that he realizes that Cordell was wearing a fucking Texas Rangers cap. The absolute bastard.

*

The night he hears from Cordell again he has a fight with Bret. The same fight, worked over the same way. Bret hates Texas. He hates being away from his friends. He hates the politics and the food and how Liam's always with his family. He doesn't want to go to family dinner at the ranch because he's sure Liam's dad hates him. "He doesn't hate you," Liam says, for the fifth time, but to be honest he's not sure. Daddy never seems to like Bret that much, either. Cordi's never met him and Liam wonders, like he's wondered many times, if they'd get along, at all. Wonders if that'd be a dealbreaker and then wonders, washing dishes while Bret watches MSNBC in chilly silence, if the fact that he's wondering if it would be a dealbreaker makes it a dealbreaker, after all.

The text comes as a relief. Annunziata's. He dresses down more carefully than the first time. It's a weird spot, on the outskirts of town where it feels less like Austin than like a suburb. Karaoke and Italian food and mostly-fake cowboys slapping their knees to the absolutely horrific song being sung—very suburb. And there, at a table right by what passes for a stage: Cordell. But, no: Duke, Duke Culpepper, with his arm slung around the shoulders of Twyla Jean and his lips on her ear, grinning, wild. It catches Liam's breath like it did the first time. Duke, confident in his body and happy and having a good time, easy. Hot. Jesus, Liam doesn't get how it's so hot.

He waits in the backroom and watches Cordell shoves his face into the water. It's disturbing how panicked he is, once he's Cordell again and not Duke. "You have to," he's saying—babbling—"You have to tell them, they're going to kill people, you can't let them go through with it—" but of course that's not either of their decision and Liam can't help. It's awful, an awful awful feeling. His big brother looking to him for an answer he can't give. Cordell pushes his hair back from his face and puts his hat back on and looks miserable but he goes back, he sits right back down with that girl and lets her slide her hand down his thigh up the inseam of his jeans and Liam watches from the corner of the bar, where he won't be seen, drinking a beer he doesn't want, seeing his brother be someone who's not his brother. Maybe someone his brother could have been. They're going to sleep together, tonight. Liam knows it. They've been fucking for three months. Is it easy, he wonders. It shouldn't be, for Cordell, but maybe for Duke it is.

He goes home to Bret and wakes him up, and apologizes for the earlier fight, and kisses him, and gets Bret on his belly, and fucks him that way, a little hard, kissing the back of his neck, making Bret gasp and flinch and groan, delighted. "Where did that come from," Bret says, lazy and satisfied, and when he falls asleep Liam takes a shower and then only then calls James, from the hall outside their apartment door, leaning with his forehead against the wall. The bank location has been obvious since Cordell reported about Twyla Jean; the only thing that wasn't certain was the time. It'll be fine, James says, firm, and hangs up on Liam to coordinate with the rest of the team now that Agent Walker has finally come back in from the cold, and Liam stands there with his eyes closed in the hall and thinks, yes. Yes, it'll be fine.

After the bank—after the clean-up—Graves debriefs Cordell for a long time. It borders on unlawful interrogation at a certain point but Liam doesn't dare intervene when she's this furious—he can't risk being taken off the case. It takes James making a call to her supervisor at the field office, who then calls her and pulls her out of the room, for Cordell to be given a reprieve, and Liam goes in to the conference room and finds Cordell still in the stupid black hoodie stained with Crystal West's blood, his head in his hands, breathing with his mouth open like he can't get enough air.

"Cordi," Liam says, and Cordell shakes his head. Liam licks his lips and checks the hall. No one's guarding them—they wouldn't, because Walker's one of their own—and he says, "Get up." Cordell looks up at him, finally. "Come on, quick before she gets back. Come with me."

Cordell follows him. Down the hall, left to go through the atrium instead of the bullpen, then through the glass doors to the hall to, at last, the men's room, and Cordell stands in the middle of the tile blinking until Liam nods at the sinks and says, "Do it."

He's sloppier about it, this time. His hair hangs dripping in front of his face. He pushes it off his forehead and looks up at himself, in the mirror, panting a little. Water drips off his nose.

Liam brings him paper towels and he dries his face. "You should take that off," Liam says, and Cordell looks down at his clothes like he has no idea what he's wearing and only just realized, and tears off the hoodie in an awkward tangle. Underneath his t-shirt is black so Liam can't tell if it's stained. The big silver cross swings from his neck.

"What happened," Cordell says. A croak.

"Graves didn't tell you?" Liam says, and then bites his tongue. Obviously not. "Clint and Crystal are both dead. Clint at the bank. Crystal crashed the car. They think she passed out. Blood loss." Cordell nods, tight, looking away. These are his friends, Liam reminds himself. These are the people he knew, the only people he really talked to, for almost a year. "Two more people died at the bank. Twyla wasn't there and we don't have information to tie her to the job. I don't know where Jaxon is but we have people looking. They're still trying to recover the stolen money."

"Graves did tell me that much," Cordell says, and turns around, leaning his ass against the sink. It's slowly draining, behind him. "I think she wants to arrest me since she can't arrest them."

"I think so, too," Liam says, and Cordell smiles a little. He looks like he hasn't slept all year. "You did your job. It's over."

"It's not over," Cordell says, immediately. He drags his hand through his hair. "Graves made that clear. The money's still missing and Twyla and Jax are in the wind."

"And Duke's being sent to jail," Liam says. "So his part in the Rodeo Kings gang is over."

Cordell wipes his fingers over his mouth. He's still wearing that bandana around his wrist. Liam wants to take it off of him. Throw it away, burn it. "Duke Culpepper, common criminal," Cordell says, drawling it a little.

"Never liked him anyway," Liam says, and Cordell smiles, dropping his head. Liam touches his shoulder, grips his neck. "Hey. Means you get to come home. The kids will be over the moon."

"Yeah," Cordell says. He brackets a loose hand around Liam's wrist and nods. "Yeah. Can't wait."

His smile faded, as soon as Liam said it. Liam thinks about that, for that whole night, and for the whole next day, after, when James tells him that Cordell put in for one week's leave. "You talked to him?" Liam says, and James shakes his head, says, "He called Connie. I think he still doesn't even know I'm the captain."

He tells Mama and Daddy that Cordell will be home next Wednesday. Stella's frowning, not eating her dinner. "I saw that bank robbery on the news," she says. Auggie's big-eyed, watching, next to her. "Was that Dad's big case?"

"It was," Liam says, and Auggie's eyes get bigger. "But there's a debriefing period. We need to make sure his undercover identity doesn't have any loose ends that'll tie him back to his real one."

Daddy's eyes narrow and Mama's quiet. Liam got pretty good at lying, over the years, but he never was quite able to fool them.

He calls Cordell the next day. "Tell me where you are," he says, and Cordell doesn't answer for a long moment, letting the silence stretch out over the cell line. Liam considers it a victory that he even answered the phone.

He has a room at the Fairmont, on the fifteenth floor. Liam knocks and it's a minute before the door opens. Cordell's in bare feet, jeans, an ACL t-shirt. Liam follows him in and the room is—nicer than Liam's current apartment, that's for sure. King bed, outstanding view. "Wow," Liam says, and Cordell says, "Better than the Super 8 in Kermit," sort of sarcastic, and then sits down on the bed like he can't stand up anymore.

Liam doesn't sit. He doesn't think he's really invited, even if Cordell let him in the door. "I told them next Wednesday," he said. "Mom and Dad, and the kids. A week. Do you think that'll be enough time?"

"Honestly?" Cordell says, and doesn't elaborate.

There's a table, with four chairs, like a dining area. On it a box, like one of the evidence boxes from the office. Liam walks over and tips back the lid and: there's Duke Culpepper. The striped shirt he wore when Liam met him at Annunziata's. That was—god, only three days ago. A plastic bottle of aftershave. The cross necklace. The gun. Liam picks it up and checks the revolving chamber—that one bullet, still ready. It makes him nauseous just like it did the first time.

"I know you're probably not okay," Liam says. Understatement, he thinks, of the century. He closes the box and pushes it away, toward the center of the table. When he turns around Cordell's holding the beer in one hand and playing with a poker chip, in the other. "I know you're going to need some time. But when you're done, we need you back. The kids, and Mom and Dad. And me."

"C'mon, you don't need anybody, Stinker," Cordell says, with the barest thread of levity. "You climb right up to the top of the barn all by yourself, when no one's around to stop you."

Liam pauses, confused by the subject change. Surprised, then. "You were there for that?" he says, and Cordell shrugs, one corner of his mouth lifting.

When Liam was eleven, and Cordell was at college, and the world hadn't yet turned over on its head. It was early August and his school hadn't started, and Daddy and Mama had gone over to the feed store to pick up a truckload for the horses. He was bored, and tired of reading, and he'd gone out to the barn and looked up at it and thought about how Cordell had done it, at his age or maybe even younger, and if Cordell could then Liam could, too, if he set his mind to it. It wasn't even all that hard, once he was looking careful for the places to set his feet. He sat down on the top of the barn and looked out over the ranch—and further, over the where the road into the ranch pushed out into the hills, down toward the town. He wondered how far he could really see, to the horizon.

"Swung by to pick up my football stuff," Cordell says, now. "Em parked on the other side of the house and I didn't think anyone was home, until I looked out the back. You were up there just—taller than anything." He shrugs. "See? Didn't need my help after all."

"I wouldn't have climbed it if you hadn't dropped me on my head," Liam says, and Cordell snorts, shakes his head. Liam bites the inside of his cheek and crouches, and Cordell's forced to look at him or be ridiculous and so Cordell looks at him. Liam reaches out and gets his hand, the hand with the poker chip, and squeezes it, and Cordell swallows and squeezes back. The edges of the plastic bite into Liam's hand. "Come back," he says.

Cordell takes a deep breath. "I will," he says. "I promise, Liam."