Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ray Garraty sits on his front porch under the golden glow of the rising sun.

It’s barely dawn. The sun’s not even really coming up yet, just the faint hint of a lighter blue sky seeping into the darkness and stars. Ray’s been sitting outside since before any kind of light started to peek over the horizon, when the sky was black, bundled up in an old work jacket and a knit cap with a hot cup of coffee that he made himself without burning it. Well, the coffee is long gone and his fingers are frozen where they’re tucked into his sleeves, shoved under his armpits, but he’s still sitting out here like a loyal dog or a particularly pathetic puppy.

There are all these stories about great acts of love, beyond the expected chivalry and gentlemanly manners like holding the door. Mothers lifting cars off their kids. Soldiers who carry their buddies through trenches and flying bullets. Men who stop walking so the love of their life can go on living and doing good, men who fuck the entire institution to keep the useless idiot they love alive even after a bullet’s ricocheted around his skull. He used to think his grand gesture, the greatest thing he could do, was to die. Die for his dad’s cause, die making a change. He’d never made any plans for himself besides that. Adults were always asking that. What do you want to be when you grow up? How many kids were answering a martyr? His dad raised him not to be a lamb for slaughter, but a suicide bomber. Well, all that is in the past. He gave up on dying for his dad. He failed to die for Pete. So now this is Ray’s great act of love: sitting right here, on the porch, all through the night in the late February cold. His breath is more smoke and frost than it is anything like air.

The door creaks open. “Ray,” Mom murmurs sleepily. “Come back inside. It’s too early.”

He shakes his head and hunkers down. “He said he’d be home as soon as he c-c-could get here.”

She sighs. Poor Mom. Waking up at the ass crack of dawn to check on her invalid son. “And I told him to stop and stay somewhere instead of driving through the night. It’s safer.”

He tries not to get frustrated with her, he really does. She doesn’t get it, what it’s like for him and Pete. He knows instinctively that Pete’s not stopping to sleep, not in a shitty motel or even on the side of the road. Driving through the night is nothing compared to the Walk. “We haven’t slept apart since . . .”

Since Ray was discharged from the hospital. There was a bit where Pete was confined to one hospital bed and Ray was tucked away in the intensive care unit. That was the longest they’d been apart. Once Pete was released and Ray was moved to the coma unit with all the other vegetables, Pete slept at his bedside. Since then, they’ve spent every night huddled together in their little-boy bed. It’s really not big enough for two grown men, but Ray sleeps lying on top of Pete most nights or snuggled up to his spine.

Her slippers whisper across the porch, so she can stand right behind him. Her legs and her robe, bundled under her coat, are warm. “At least wait inside, where there’s heat goin’.”

“No, thank you.”

“Who raised you to be so stubborn?”

Ray tips his head back and smiles up at her. “You did.”

“God help me.” She bends down and presses a kiss to the top of his head before shuffling back inside. The door closes with a click behind her. But the porch light comes on, something Ray forgot they had, casting a soft glow over the wood and the snow and the boy waiting on the stairs.

Ray goes back to waiting, tucking his chin down into his collar and wrapping his arms around himself.

He does a lot of this, these days. Quiet sitting around. He’s rich now — or, Pete is, and Pete always says what’s his is Ray’s — so it’s not like he needs a job. Who would hire him, anyway? One look at him and you can see he’s not hiring material. Nasty, puckered, bright red scar aside, his one eye doesn’t see quite right anymore and his face doesn’t move the same. His brain is mush on the bad days and only halfway useful on the good. He used to be handsome and strong and smart, if not freckled and a little chubby and maybe a bit rude. Now, he’s pitiable. The cashier at the grocer, where he used to haul boxes after school, doesn’t meet his eyes at the checkout counter. The families that used to call him to help out on their farms for the harvest or for babysitting didn’t ring the house this year. Girls giggle when they pass him in the street, but not in the way they used to. Even his mom doesn’t look at him the same.

It was hard, he knows, after Dad died. Ray was built like him and looked like him, and looking at him hurt her. And he was such a bitter person after, with all this rage and no outlet. He remembers, kind of, in the way of remembering a book you read a long time ago, getting in trouble for being a smart-mouth and for hitting another boy in the face. He was a handful to raise.

And then he left her, just like his dad did, for the same fucking cause. They saw each other on the Walk, when they came through Freeport, he knows that. Pete confirmed it. God, what a shit show. For her to have to see him like that — and now like this, all mangled and missing pieces . . .

Well, he’s never been the easiest son to have.

She’ll never say she doesn’t like to see him like this, though. No, she’s too happy he’s alive. She’s even embraced Pete — and what Pete is to him, what they mean to each other, what it means that Ray’s in love with a man — without complaint. Goddamn saint of a woman. She could’ve kicked them out, but she didn’t. The first time she spotted them together, a lazy kiss on the couch when they thought she wasn’t watching, she’d acted like it was totally normal. And when Ray went to bed that night, she hugged him and said, It’s good to see you smiling again. I’m glad he makes you smile.

Pete does make him smile. Pete makes his heart skip beats. Pete makes him feel like a lovesick girl.

If there’s ever been an argument for the existence of Capital-G God and his divine, perfect creation, it’s Peter McVries. Pete makes a believer out of him. Not in God, not really, because he’s not a religious type, but in the goodness of people, the beauty of the world. Pete and his beautiful smile, his beautiful teeth, his beautiful eyes, his beautiful skin, his beautiful cock. Pete and his beautiful voice, his beautiful throat, his beautiful thoughts and words and songs, his beautiful elbows and knees, his beautiful toenails on the nine toes he has left. Pete and the beautiful way he says fuck or damn or shit. Pete and the beautiful way he whispers baby into Ray’s shoulder when he thinks Ray’s falling asleep on the couch. Any world that has Pete in it is a beautiful one. Any life that has Pete in it is a life worth living. And, sure, there’s still terrible shit out there. Hell, there’s terrible shit in here, in Ray, in his head, all this anger and frustration and fear, but it doesn’t all seem so bad, not when Pete’s there to help him balance it. If he can help balance Pete, too, even half as much as Pete balances him, then all the bad will be worth it.

A sputtering sound gets his attention. His head pops out of his collar like a Jack-in-the-box with a broken, rusted spring.

The car rumbles down the road, the old jalopy, all janky engine and dim headlights and a cloud of smoke from the hot exhaust against the cold hair. Mom had taken them to an old, abandoned parking lot outside an old, abandoned factory and taught Pete to drive. They went over all the basics, with Ray an unreliable backseat driver; he couldn’t remember all the rules right. Sprawling across the backseat and mourning the loss of his ability to be a functioning independent adult, he’d caught Pete’s eye while the car surged into reverse. He looked so good doing it, one hand on the wheel and the other on the back of the passenger seat, that Ray felt a rush of lust that he really wasn’t comfortable feeling with his mom in the car. He’d rolled himself to face the back seat and curled up small before he could start imagining Pete in the backseat with him, on top of him, between his thighs.

The car turns into the driveway. Ray pushes himself to his feet. The engine turns off. Ray might be vibrating — or shaking from the cold — or losing his balance. The car door opens at the same time the house door opens and Mom joins him on the front porch, dressed for her day already. Pete’s boot finds the gravel drive and then Ray gets to watch him climb out of the car like some kind of movie star, all dark skin and smiling mouth and impossible, perfect eyes.

“Honey,” Pete calls. “I’m home.”

Ray can barely walk correctly most days, let alone run. So, instead, he throws himself bodily off the porch and into Pete’s open arms.

“Ray!” Mom scolds.

It’s too late for her shout to mean anything. They slam into each other like a bullet into a body, Ray’s chest colliding with Pete’s and knocking the wind out of them both — but they don’t need any wind, not when Ray’s mouth is already on Pete’s. His arms wrap instinctively around Pete’s shoulders, one wobbling leg hiked up Pete’s thigh. Pete’s hands scramble to find a place to stay on him, settling on his back and under the fold of his knee, dragging him closer. He thinks, in a delirious kind of way, that Pete might be able to bear his weight and lift him off the ground, carry him around, if only he were lighter.

When Pete left yesterday morning, he’d kissed him goodbye behind the safety of the front door, trailing his fingers through Ray’s hair and whispering sweet nothings. Pulling away had been difficult. Ray had clung to him like a tick, hands bunched in his jacket and face buried in his neck. Once they couldn’t put it off any longer, once they risked being late, Ray had followed Pete out to the car. He watched him put his bag in the passenger seat and his thermos of coffee in the cup holder and then he stared blankly down at the hand Pete offered for a shake. It was the only safe way to touch, manly and masculine and acceptable, on the frosted lawn of their house with nosy neighbors and passing drivers possibly watching. They shook hands. I’ll call when I get there, Pete promised. And when I leave.

Come home soon, Ray begged, even though he knew it wasn’t really up to Pete. He’d be in Jersey as long as the Major decided to keep him there. But the letter had promised a short engagement, a quick recording for television and radio, and a release back into the world. He struggled to uncramp his hand from where it was wrapped around Pete’s.

Pete said, I’ll drive through the night if I have to, baby, which only made Ray want to kiss him all over again. Which obviously he couldn’t, because it wasn’t safe, because they were in public.

But now, in the pre-dawn light, it’s too early for anyone to be out and about. It’s still mostly dark out, all the neighbors snug in their beds or already whiling away at their jobs, if they’re unlucky enough to have one of those kind of shifts. Ray’s safe — or, as safe as he can be — to kiss Pete like a girl welcoming her soldier home.

“Hi, baby,” Pete mumbles against his mouth.

“Raymond Garraty!” Mom hisses. He has a hazy sense memory of her voice like this before, when he was little maybe, swathed in shame and an upset stomach. Her voice asking him how he’d like to be made to walk down the street naked — but she’d never do something like that to him. Sometimes he thinks his scrambled-egg brain makes things up, trying to fill in the gaps the bullet left behind and missing the mark by a mile. Maybe she said something like that to his dad once, warning him off being too openly dissident. “Peter McVries! You get inside now!”

They’re good boys, so they release each other. Ray peels himself off of Pete in slow-motion, until only his fingertips are left against the collar of Pete’s coat. Was it warmer, down in Jersey? Did Pete remember why he liked it there? He lets Pete lean in the car and grab his bag, moving cautiously over the snow to stand beside him; he’ll never pass up an opportunity to watch Pete bend over.

“Good drive?” he asks. He used to like driving.

“Long drive,” Pete says. The car door closes with a slam and he wraps an arm around Ray. “It’s so good to be home.”

It’s so good to be inside again, Ray thinks, when they cross the threshold and close the door behind them. Mom’s been heating up breakfast, he can smell it, and the warmth of the radiator seeps into his skin like relief. Bonus: Pete sweeps him up in his arms again and kisses him hard on the mouth, trapping him between the door and Pete’s firm body.

Maybe kissing like this with his Mom in the next room should be embarrassing. His heart is beating loud in his ears, but he knows he has to be making small hurt sounds in his throat and the smacking of their lips has to be something she can hear. Or — no, she’s put the radio on and a cheery song is playing, something about going out to get your girl. That’ll be enough to give them a moment of privacy.

“God,” Pete says, “I missed you.”

It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours, and Ray’s missed him, too. As soon as he’d pulled out of the driveway, Ray felt like his heart had been taken with him. He’d spent most of their time apart sitting on the porch, waiting for him to come back. His doctors would probably have something to say about that, that Ray’s too reliant on him, that it should be a family member or a registered nurse taking care of him. No one understands that there’s no one in the world who could take care of him the way Pete does. He shoves his hands up the back of Pete’s jacket, up the back of Pete’s wrinkled shirt, and clutches at the sharp wings of his shoulder blades. He’s warm, under the clothes. The cold of Ray’s hands makes him shiver, or maybe it’s the way his mouth folds under Pete’s.

“Boys,” Mom calls from the kitchen, “breakfast. Ray, take Pete’s things upstairs, won’t you, honey?”

Ray doesn’t want to take his hands off Pete, so he doesn’t. Well, he does for a moment, so they can peel their jackets off and kick off their shoes, so Ray can amble halfway up the stairs and toss Pete’s bag through their bedroom doorway like a bowling ball — but then he’s back to clinging. It’s no trouble. They know how to walk as one being. He wraps his arms around Pete’s stomach, feels Pete’s hands fold over his, and settles his cheek against Pete’s shoulder as they amble slowly into the kitchen — where the table is set for three, plates piled high with buttery mashed potatoes and hot, spiced gravy and fresh-ish greens and whatever slabs of meat Mom found in the freezer because Ray forget to pick it up from the store.

Pete frowns around the table in confusion. “We didn’t have all this when I left yesterday, did we?” He would know. He’s a hoarder when it comes to food, stocking it away and hiding it like he’s afraid someone might take it from him. He’s always double-checking the cabinets, making sure they have enough. He thinks nobody notices, but Ray does.

Ray notices everything about Pete.

Ray sits himself in his seat and confesses: “I went to the grocery store.”

“All by himself,” Mom adds. She’s flush with pride, which is embarrassing. It’s such a stupid thing to be proud of. He’s been going to the grocery by himself since he was ten years old, hauling bags back for Mom in the snow and the rain and the heat. But now walking all the way to the shop’s refrigerator to get a carton of milk without crying is an Olympic-level accomplishment. He’d had to sit down in a snowy ditch to hyperventilate on the walk home. Pete’s out there being brave, facing the major, he told himself. You can pick up the fucking eggs. Fucking idiot.

But Pete grins, too, like he’s proud. Like Ray’s a miracle. “That’s good. That’s real good, Ray.”

“I didn’t m-make all this, though,” Ray says. “Just dess-s-s-s-sert.”

Pete’s eyes go wide. “Dessert? At breakfast?”

Mom shrugs, fluffing at the ends of her hair like she’s not sure what to do with herself. “We weren’t sure when you’d be home.”

Dinner-for-breakfast is a never-before-seen event in the Garraty house. Sure, sometimes Ray would eat cereal over the sink after his grocery store shift, when Mom worked late nights, but they never ate dinner foods in the morning. It’s a little weird, in a fun way. Dinner foods and breakfast coffee and the promise of the big, fat chocolate cake in the ice box. Ray had his mom eat a slice yesterday, when it was fresh, to make sure it tasted mostly okay. He hadn’t made a cake since he was small, after all, and he wasn’t sure Pete would even like it, anyhow — but he wanted to have something, something special, something celebratory. Because Pete’s home. Because Pete made it home.

Ray doesn’t really eat, just pushes his food around his plate and sips at the warm coffee Mom put in front of him. He’s too happy, too full of happy, to put anything else in his stomach.

He watches Mom and Pete devour their meals, polite and ladylike if the lady was particularly rabid but still covered her mouth when she chewed, the both of them. Pete chats between swallows, never with his mouth full like he did on the Walk. Mom chats back. A whole bunch of nothing, about the weather or the time of day or how the drive was. The dinner plates disappear, replaced with the chocolate cake. Ray wipes frosting off Pete’s upper lip and sucks it off his own thumb, when Mom’s not looking. It makes Pete’s eyes go hot, like boiling oil, and the sound he makes tells Ray he’s on thin ice. But Ray’s a mechanic’s son; oil’s always smelled like safety to him.

It’s all so fucking normal. Ray can barely stand it. He’s vibrating with the happiness that Pete’s okay, with the worry that Pete’s not as okay as he’s acting, with the fear that Pete won’t tell him if he’s not.

The kettle gurgles on the stove and Mom stands up from the table to tend to it. The radio croons a song about walking a lover home. We go ‘long harmonizing a song, or I’m recitin’ a poem . . . Owls go by and they give me the eye, walkin’ my baby back home . . .

“Was it terrible?” Ray whispers.

Pete shrugs. “Not so bad.”

“Really?”

“Got there in the afternoon,” Pete says, “and it took about five hours for them to get what they wanted from me.” Ray’s heart leaps into his throat. What did they do to Pete? Did they hold him at gunpoint the whole time? He wipes under his eye with a smile and laughs. “I’m wearing goddamn makeup, Ray. They do that, when they put you on television. I told the lady they didn’t put any makeup on me last time they put me on camera, but she didn’t think it was real funny.”

Makeup — to cover the scar. It’s smudged, after hours in the car, but he can see it now that he’s looking, the way it stands out less stark and obvious against the smooth dark skin of Pete’s beautiful face.

Ray loves Pete’s scars. Maybe that’s weird. Or maybe it’s not. Doctor Patterson mentioned it once. Waiting in the entryway, shuffling back and forth on his feet, he’d said something stupid about how girls like scars. He was probably just trying to make the two of them feel better about their faces and imply they looked tough, but then he’d asked Pete if he’d found any girls in town of interest to him. Pete had smirked, his hand on Ray’s back, and said somethin’ like that. Under his clothes, Pete’s got all kinds of scars. The usual childhood ones and the old callouses on his fingers from playing guitar, and then the ones from living rough, living on the streets, from mean men who put their hands on him and hurt him. Ray likes to put his mouth on them.

“You looked the b-b-best of all of us, Pete,” he says. “You didn’t need a-any makeup.”

Pete shrugs, leans his elbows on the table. “I don’t know about all that. Parker was hard to beat. With that hair?”

“Or — or — or Art,” Ray says. “Art was really beautiful, wasn’t he?”

Sometimes, the boys’ faces are blurry in his mind. Was Art really as tall as he is in Ray’s memory and Hank so short? Did Collie Parker ever smile, or is the mush in his skull just imagining it for him? What about Stebbins and Barkovitch? Was Curley really so small, when he was shot? He loses things, those memories, when they come and go. Sometimes he whispers things he knows to himself, just to really remember them. Hank had a wife and a baby on the way; the baby was born in December. Art wore a rosary and Pete had it sent to his grandmother while Ray was in the hospital. Stebbins was a rabbit and Collie sang a song and Barkovitch stabbed himself in the throat. Pete shook his hand at the starting line and Ray never wanted him to let go. And they were all — all of them, every single boy there — they were all so beautiful and alive that Ray could cry.

“Sure was,” Pete says. He raises an eyebrow. “You got a thing for Black boys, Garraty?”

Ray’s face goes hot. Red as a cherry, he’s sure. “Maybe I do.” He thinks. “Or m-maybe not. Stebbins was p-p-pr-pretty pale.”

Pete laughs. “So you’re just a big ol’ fruit, then. Any boy will do it for you.” His fingers crawl across the tabletop, between the cups and plates, until they can slip between Ray’s. “Nobody on that road was prettier than you, baby.”

“Agree to disagree.” It’s not an argument he’ll win, even though he knows Pete is, of course, the most handsome man in the world, inside and out. He likes the warmth and weight of Pete’s hand in his. His parents used to do this, hold hands at the dinner table. “How long d-did the makeup take for them to do? Not long, I g-guess, if they have a pro-pro-professional.” It’s funny to think of, a military position for makeup. Sergeant Lipstick, reporting for duty. War paint, in a way.

“Oh, it took ages. The girl didn’t know quite what to do with my — uh — complexion. There was a lot of mixin’ paints to make it work.” Pete shakes his head. “And then they had me practice my speech, so they could correct me if I fucked it all up. Went through that a few times. Then we recorded it twice — for television and then for radio. But they recorded it way more than twice. I guess I wasn’t talkin’ the way they wanted. Not confident or happy enough.” He turns his voice funny and nasal, like he’s mimicking someone. “Do it again and, this time, try to really sell it, boy!” He snorts. “Took some pictures, too. You might be seein’ my ugly mug on some posters around town, soon enough.”

Ray will rip one down to keep under his pillow or in his wallet, so Pete will never be far from him.

“And the Major?” Mom asks stiffly, standing in the doorway. Her thin hands wrap around her mug of tea, more hot water than flavor.

Pete freezes. It’s not an all-at-once thing, but a slow slink like Stebbin’s pneumonia. His mouth goes tense, then his shoulders, his biceps, his forearm, his fingers around Ray’s. And then, all at once, he relaxes. “Hardly saw him.”

“Really?” Ray asks.

“All of five minutes. Shook my hand,” Pete admits, “and congratulated me. Real proud, that’s what he said, to have a boy with so much sack make it to the end. And then he laughed and said it never really ends.”

Ray knows what he means. Once you’re on the road, you never really step off. Not even if you win. Not even if you literally step off the road. He gets restless legs in his sleep; Pete, too. They’re kicking each other all night long, their bodies remembering the need to walk and walk and walk or die, even if their brains don’t.

“Asked me how my wish was treatin’ me,” Pete whispers. It’s Ray’s turn to freeze up. “Asked me if I regretted it.”

Ray still wants the Major dead. Maybe even more than he used to. It’s not even about his dad or the cause, not anymore, not really. It’s about Pete, all the ways the Walk hurt him and the world hurt him. It’s about all the boys on the Walk, the ones the Major ordered shot and killed and left behind. Ray would kill him with his bare hands if he could — but they’re too clumsy and his grip is too loose to do any real damage. That’s what the Major means, asking Pete if he regrets saving Ray. Do you still like your toy, now that it’s broken? Don’t you wish you’d left it on the ground with the strings cut?

“. . . and?”

When Pete smiles at him, it’s like the sun coming out. “Only regret is I didn’t kiss you sooner.”

Ray has to lean over the table and kiss him on the mouth. He just has to.

“And now,” the radio announcer crackles, “a word from the winner of the Long Walk.”

Ray pulls back, sitting himself in his chair. And then Pete’s voice, his smooth and deep whiskey voice made dull and tinny through the radio speakers:

“My name is Peter McVries. Number Twenty-Three. And I am the last Walker of the 1968 Long Walk. The boys I walked with walked bravely and proudly for their country—“

The broadcast cuts off when Mom turns the radio dial all the way to the left, replacing it all with static until it fades into nothing. No broadcast. No music. Eyes a little glassy, she brushes her hands down the front of her skirt. “Well, boys, I’m off to work.” She gives Ray a kiss on the head again, and then gives one to Pete, too. His eyes light up, where she can’t see, like he’s surprised to get any kind of affection from her. “Glad you’re both safe and sound. Get some rest, okay? After you pack all of this up.” She swirls a thin finger in the direction of the table.

“Yes, ma’am,” Pete says, at the same time Ray says, “O-okay, Mom.”

She packs her shoes up in her bag, tucked neatly away, and slips on snow boots over her delicately socked feet. It’s smart, that way, to save the good shoes for where they won’t get ruined by the road salt and wet white mush outside. Her coat disappears her dress, a nice floral one that she doesn’t mind getting dirty, just in case. The car keys jingle when she grabs them off the hook.

“I love you,” she calls from the door.

“Love you better,” Ray answers.

“No, you don’t. That’s a fact.”

The door closes behind her. After a moment, the car engine starts up with a clank and the wheels crunch over the snow and gravel of the driveway.

Ray pushes himself out of his chair and gathers their plates, stacking one on top of another. They clink together when he drops them in the sink. This time, he doesn’t forget to run the water hot over them, filling up the sink. He keeps forgetting that, to actually wash the dishes and not just leave them in the sink to crust and mold. A short, small shake of the soap powder. He watches it bubble and listens to Pete’s chair scrape across the floor, the soft sound of his socks approaching behind Ray.

“Funniest thing,” Pete muses. “I ain’t tired.”

“No?” Over his shoulder, he watches Pete shake his head. “Me, neither.”

“In fact,” Pete prowls closer to him, grabbing Ray’s hips in his hands and drawing him back into the cradle of Pete’s body, “I got lots of energy.”

His head tips back against Pete’s shoulder. “Do you?”

Pete’s mouth finds his jaw, the skin beneath his ear. “Mmhm. Wanna help me work some of it out?”

As if Ray’s not already rock hard in his pants.

He’s always raring to rip, when it comes to Pete. Where has he heard that before? Fuck, boys, I am raring to rip. Well, fuck, Ray is, too.

They chase each other up the stairs, grabbing at each other and bumping into walls. All the pictures of Ray from when he was little rattle with the pounding of their feet, the wind whistling hard and high outside the windows, the bedroom door slamming behind them when Ray gets Pete up against it, their mouths smearing together.

He gets his hands up Pete’s shirt, up beneath the buttons and against the skin. His pinky catches on a scar.

Pete’s adrenaline must be pounding, to keep him awake this long. He’d hardly slept the night before he left. Ray knows because he woke up to Pete tracing his freckles with a finger and a devastated, terrified look on his face like he was afraid he’d never see Ray again. He remembers it, that expression, from the end of the Walk, before Pete tried to kneel for him. But it’s over now, over for now. He wants to kiss all that fear right out of his man and give him a place to put all that pent-up energy, give him a soft place to land when the adrenaline crashes. Use me, he thinks. Let me be enough to make it better.

Sloppy, soppy kisses trail down his neck and calloused hands shove down the back of Ray’s pants to squeeze. Pete does that a lot, likes to get his hands on the soft and squishy parts of Ray. It’d be more embarrassing, having all his fleshy bits fondled, if Ray didn’t like it so much. But he’s liked everything they’ve done together. He can’t imagine they’ll ever do anything that he won’t like. As long as it’s Pete, he’ll like it.

“I — I — I stopped by the f-f-f-pharmacy yesterday,” Ray says, quiet enough Pete can ignore him if he wants. But Pete never ignores him. He hums curiously against the skin on Ray’s throat. “Grabbed some th-th-th-th-things you might like.”

Pete stops kissing his neck and raises his head to shoot Ray a look, all furrowed brow and pursed lips. “Things I might like?” Ray makes a sound of agreement, a little mmhm. Pete just frowns further. “From the pharmacy?” Ray nods. “Like what? Cold medicine? I still got this awful runny nose. . .”

Like a small bottle of personal lubricant. An enema kit. A box of condoms. He’d hesitated over the last one. The first two could be excused away with a bad stomach bug and a pitying look from the pharmacist. But the condoms? Harder to explain. Harder to buy. The cashier had raised an eyebrow at him, but didn’t say anything to his face. But Freeport is a small town. By this time tomorrow, everyone will be talking. Didja hear what Ray Garraty picked up from the pharmacy? He’s never even asked about buying condoms before, after all, not even when he was with Jan. It’ll be the talk of the town — and for what? He isn’t even sure he and Pete need them, necessarily. It’s not like they’re at risk of getting anybody knocked up.

Ray ducks out of Pete’s arms to pull the brown paper bag from under their bed.

With wary fingers and a funny little smile on his mouth, Pete takes it from him. He doesn’t upend it onto the blankets, like Ray thought he might. Instead, he sits himself carefully at the foot of the bed and sets the brown bag in his lap with a crinkle, folding it open and peering inside like something might pop out at him. There’s a long moment of silence, pregnant with possibility. The smile slinks off Pete’s face. Understanding dawns in his eyes. The horrible, awful, familiar feeling of rejection sinks into Ray’s stomach, forcing words out of his throat.

“I g-g-got the st-stuff,” he blurts, “that you said we’d need to m-m-m-make l-love.”

It’s kind of the main reason they haven’t done it, honestly. Gone all the way. Pete said they needed time, privacy, and something to make it easier — and, no, he was not comfortable stealing Ray’s mom’s vegetable oil from the kitchen for it. Pete said there were things they could use, to make it better, that there was preparation that went into doing it clean and safe and careful. Don’t always have to do it like that, Pete said, but, you and me? We’re gonna do it right.

“I can see that,” Pete says, slow. He reaches a hand into the bag, like he might pull something out, and then retreats with his fingers still empty. “Ray.” It’s a sigh. He turns his dark eyes onto Ray, so dark there’s almost no way to tell where the pupil begins or ends. Oil-slick eyes. “You know we don’t have to do this.”

It feels babying, the way Pete’s always saying they don’t have to rush things and what they do is enough and it’s okay to wait and there’s no pressure to move things along. The way he’s always saying he can wait until Ray’s ready, like Ray hasn’t been chomping at the bit to do anything and everything with Pete. He’s never thought about sex so much — so eagerly — so positively — in his life! But Pete keeps hesitating. Maybe it’s the whole virginity thing. Ray has no experience, after all. Most guys like to be with virgins, at least when the virgins are girls, he thinks, because it makes them feel special and important, but maybe Pete’s different. Maybe he’s annoyed that he’s had to teach Ray so much, that he’s been so clueless about what they can do together. He still blushes when they get naked together, for Christ’s sake. He still fumbles over touching Pete, using his hands or his mouth. Clumsy, like he is in everything else.

“I know.” Ray shuffles on his feet. They’re corded thick with scar tissue, so mangled he can barely feel the fabric of his socks. “I know we d-don’t have to.”

Maybe Pete just doesn’t like it, making love. He said he’s done it before — well, he said he’s fucked and been fucked. Maybe it didn’t work for him. There have got to be guys, even queers like them, who aren’t into it. Maybe Pete just doesn’t want to.

Or maybe he just doesn’t want to do that with Ray.

Maybe that’s why he’s always saying he’d be fine, really fine, with being the girl in the scenario. Maybe he figures Ray will be terrible at it and it’ll be over quicker that way. Just lie back, think of something else, and let Ray prove himself the two-pump chump he probably is.

“Do you . . . n-not want to?”

Pete sets the bag aside. “Baby,” he says.

“It’s o-okay,” Ray rushes to say, “if you don’t want to.”

“No.” Ray stomach sinks again. “No, I want to. God, I want to. Baby, the things I wanna do to you . . . but—“

“But w-what?” Ray asks. He hates the way his voice cracks. More than that, he hates the way he feels so pushy and insistent, like a jerk on prom night. “You want to. I want to. We b-b-both want to. So why a-aren’t we?”

“Ray.” Pete sighs and puts his head in his hands. He looks, suddenly, exhausted. A different man than the one who chased Ray up the stairs. He’d been excited, just minutes ago, to fool around. He’d suggested it. Hell, he’s still visibly hard in his pants! “I don’t know . . .”

Kneeling on the floor in front of Pete feels like right where he’s supposed to be. He reaches out to touch — and thinks better of it, balling up his hands into fists on his thighs. “What don’t you know, Pete?”

“How to make it good for you,” Pete admits, like confessing a sin. Ray’s dad made him go down to the church once, when he was small, and tell the pastor his sins; it was supposed to teach him about accountability and the healing power of faith and the futility of a militarized religion or something. Dad’s lessons always had a lot of jumbled meanings. Or maybe they’ve just jumbled up in Ray’s jumbled brain. “I’m not used to this, Ray. I’m not — sex wasn’t like this, for me, back in Jersey. Or wherever else.” When he lifts his head, his lip is caught between his teeth. “It didn’t feel like this. It didn’t matter, baby, not like this matters. I don’t want to fuck it up.”

Ray smiles and leans his arms on the bed beside Pete, his chin on his crossed wrists. “That m-makes two of u-us.”

“Ray. I’m bein’ serious.”

“Me, too. I’m dead serious. I don’t wanna f-fuck it up, either.” God, talking about sex is mortifying. Why is everything in Ray’s life mortifying now? At least he’s allowed to shit on his own, without being watched, though he’s still not allowed to shave himself. Shaky hands and a razor aren’t the best of friends. It leaves him with ginger scruff all around his jaw. “I n-never thought I’d get this, Pete. I thought I’d be d-dead or I’d marry some girl I could never love and have b-b-boring sex in the missionary position that I didn’t want to h-ha-have.” He holds his hand out and waits for Pete to take it. “I want it now. I want this. You. Us. I was w-waiting for you this whole time, Pete, before I knew what I was waiting for.”

“Savin’ yourself for marriage,” Pete chuckles, teasing, tangling his fingers with Ray’s, “like a good Christian girl.”

A short, small whimpering noise leaves Ray without his permission.

Pete drops his eyes to Ray, eyebrow jumping up his forehead and pulling the corner of his mouth along with it. “Oh. I see. You wanna play wedding night, baby?”

“Yeah,” Ray breathes. His whole body shivers. “Yeah, Pete, I do.”

“Funny,” Pete says, leaning to the side, away from Ray and towards the old duffel bag Ray had thrown onto the floor an hour ago. It unzips with a sharp pulling sound. “I had the same kinda idea.”

Ray perks up. He leans up on his knees, only his thighs are weak and wobbly from non-stop walking for five straight days, so he ends up sitting back on his haunches. There’s some rustling around, like whatever Pete is looking for is wrapped in a sweater or a blanket or a fresh pair of socks. They’d only packed some food and a change of clothes. It wasn’t ever going to be a long trip. Anticipation builds in Ray’s gut, the kind his body has learned to associate with Warning, Number Forty-Seven like any surprise might be a bullet to the skull. What could Pete have? His own pack of condoms? But they’re hard to get hands on, what with the restrictions on contraceptives. You can’t get them just everywhere. Some states, you can’t get them at all. Ray had to pay an arm and a leg, show his I.D., and sign a form declaring that he understood the dangers contraceptives pose to the population density and work ethic of the country.

Pete turns his something over in his hands. “I made one stop on my way home. Just one, other than the gas station.” With a sigh, he holds it out to Ray. “Here. For you.”

It’s a small box, wrapped in nice tan leather. It’s cool in his hands, chilled from the long ride in the car, not quite warmed up from being inside. He glides his fingers over it and looks up at Pete. “What is it?”

“Usually openin’ the box will tell you what’s in it,” Pete says. “Go on.”

Ray goes on.

The box creaks when he opens it, in the way of quality leather. Not that Ray’s ever seen or heard real, quality leather when it’s fresh and new like this. But he has an imagination. Inside, pillowed on a satiny cushion, is a simple platinum band.

A man’s wedding ring.

His head snaps up. “Pete.”

With the back of his hand, Pete wipes at his cheeks like they’re hot and uncomfortable. And he looks so good doing it, so bashful and sweet, his eyelashes casting shadows over his scar with the worn-off makeup. “Stupid, I know. It’s not like we could ever actually—“

“No,” Ray says, and shoves himself to his knees despite the weakness of his muscles. “No, no, no, it’s not st-st-stupid. Marry me, Pete, marry me r-right now.”

Pete laughs. It’s the best sound in the world. “Yeah? You askin’?”

“Yeah. I am. I’m asking you to m-marry me. I a-a-already said I’d be your wife, didn’t I?”

“And my husband,” Pete reminds him. He plucks the ring from the box and holds it up, so they can make blurry eye contact through the empty middle. “Which do you want to be today? For our wedding night? Husband? Or wife?”

There might be better words, but Ray doesn’t know them. If Pete knows them, he doesn’t bother to confuse Ray with them. He loves him for it, the way he tries to make things easy for him, the way he’s always looking out for him.

The pharmacy bag, crumpled on the blankets. The condoms and the lube and the open, empty box for the kit inside. A lonely, uncomfortable midnight in the bathroom with the shower running and the lights off before he took himself outside to wait. “Wife.”

Pete releases a slow, shaking breath. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.” He leans his weight on Pete; he needs to, with his jelly legs threatening to give out under him. His mouth meets Pete’s hard, chiseled jaw. “I want you, Pete. I’m r-ready, I promise I am.” And he whispers a secret in Pete’s ear.

“Okay.” Ray expects him to hold his face and kiss him — but Pete takes his hand all gentle and meaningful, and slips the ring onto Ray’s finger. Left hand. Ring finger. They admire it for a second, a minute, an hour. And then Pete takes his face in his hands, noses brushing before lips. “Okay.”

It’s hard to remember that there was a time before Pete, before Pete had kissed him, before Pete loved him. It’s like Ray already recognized him at the starting line, like their souls were familiar, like they’d met a million times before they ever shook hands. Pete rises from the bed, drawing Ray to his feet. Their toes overlap — or they would, if they weren’t each missing a few. Instead, they slot perfectly together. Meant to be. How was there ever a time he might be scared of this? Of loving a man? He thinks he was afraid of it, once upon a time.

He peels Pete’s sweater off him, drops it to the floor. It’s a heavy thing, knitted with care back before Ray’s hands were so shit, in another life. The button-down shirt follows, but Pete has to help with that one. Too many buttons. They giggle over it like kids, their fingers jumbling together to get to skin.

Ray’s shirt comes over his head slow and purposeful. Their pants and briefs follow quickly, shoved unceremoniously off their ankles. Socks, then, too, even though their feet are ugly now.

He always thought he’d feel sick, naked with another person, showing all of himself. But that’s not what it feels like, not at all. Not when he sits on the squeaking, offended mattress and scoots himself back and lays himself down. Not when Pete stands, proud and hard and beautiful, at the foot of the bed to admire him, lips pressed to try to hide his satisfied smile.

He remembers what Pete said, the first time they did this, the first time he stripped Ray naked for sex and not to give him a fucking sponge bath in the hospital, with an impressed raise of his eyebrow and an eager lick of his lips: big boy all over, arentcha? Like he hadn’t seen Ray whip it out to piss on the Walk. Like he hadn’t seen it when Ray was curled in the bottom of the bath, too tired to stand or eat or wash himself or do anything but cry. Ray’s not the sexiest of guys, he knows that, even if he is handsome enough, but the way Pete said it — the way Pete looked at him when he said it — well, Ray had never felt more attractive in his life.

“What?” Ray asks. His face is red, he knows it is.

“You’re beautiful,” Pete says, like it’s that easy.

“No,” Ray laughs, “you.”

Pete laughs, too, tipping a finger at himself and setting a quizzical look on his face. “Me? This ugly mug?” He’s got the toughest, strongest body Ray’s ever seen — after Stebbins and Parker, probably, if he remembers right, but he never saw them like this. Bare and beautiful. God, Pete is so fucking beautiful. It’s like all the good in him is coming out through the skin, washing him in sunlight and rain and all the good things in the world, just pouring out his eyes. Ray wants him. No — Ray needs him.

“Pete.” He holds his breath for a moment and plants his feet on the bed, tosses a hand over his head and holds the other out for Pete. Sexy. Sure. “Get on the b-bed. Bring the bag.”

“Makin’ demands, Garraty?”

He grins. “Yeah. You have a very demanding wife.”

“Fuck yeah, I do.” The bag crinkles and the bed whines and Pete crawls up between his legs to kiss his mouth.

The back of Pete’s neck under his hand, the other tangling in his own hair. Pete’s — oh — against his. A gasp, one from each of them. They fumble for the pharmacy bag together, tearing the brown paper to bits and laughing about it. The pop of the lubricant lid and — oh! — fingers, slippery and wet and a little cold, but so, so good. Pete whispers a question. Ray sighs yes. God, Ray likes sex. He really, really likes sex. This isn’t so unusual, the hands and the kissing and the frantic grinding of their bodies. It’s usually more than enough to finish Ray off. But he strains, trying to hold his breath and failing, huffing horrible groans, trying to hold off ending it all and ruining the main event. He wants to make love. He wants to — fuck, Pete’s fingers feel so fucking good. He tells him so, and Pete moans, a deep whiskey sound from low in his gut.

“Baby,” Pete whispers. “Ray.”

“Pete,” Ray grabs the flat, crushed pillow under his head and squeezes it hard in his stupid fucking fist. His back arches. His toes, the ones left, curl. “Do you still want to—?”

“Yes,” Pete interrupts. “Fuck, yes. Do you?”

“Yes! Yes, please.”

“Now?”

“Now. Please.”

Pete chuckles. “So polite, all of a sudden. Boy, I’ve heard you wish warnings on people.”

Ray sputters a laugh. He doesn’t remember doing that, but it sounds like him. His chest is heaving. His eyes squeeze shut. Pete hasn’t stopped the thrust of his hand, those clever guitar-playing fingers. “I can be good,” he promises, “when it matters.”

“When it matters, huh?”

“Yeah. This, Pete?” He pushes himself up on his elbows to capture Pete’s mouth. “This — it m-m-matters.”

“Sure does,” Pete agrees. He looks down, between their bodies. In the sunlight, dull and grey through the wintertime window, he likes the way their skin looks so close together. “First time. Hell of a thing.”

Ray puts his hand on Pete’s cheek. “For b-both of us.”

And Pete kisses him, closed-mouthed and shy, like a little boy on the playground. “For both of us.”

They fumble around a bit more, messy and awkward and perfect. The condom tears when Ray has to use his teeth to open it; they grab another one. Pete takes a hand off Ray to put it on himself, slick with lube, and then he guides himself forward. Ray’s legs don’t work so good anymore, but they sure can fold up closer to his head than he thought they could — at least with Pete’s hands tucked under his knees and Pete’s hips between his thighs and Pete’s mouth on his fucking nipple and Pete’s fucking cock inside him.

He must make some kind of embarrassing sound, because Pete lifts his head. His chin digs into the soft give of Ray’s chest. “You good?”

Ray’s head tips back against the pillow. “G-god, Pete, I’m a-a-amazing. Are you—?”

“I’m good, baby. Tell me when you’re—“ Pete trails off, presses his forehead to Ray’s chest. “When I can—“

“Now,” Ray says. His hands reach for Pete’s back and slip through the sweat there. “N-now, Pete, please.”

“So polite,” Pete marvels again, and then he rocks his hips back and forth once.

A sound punches out of Ray. Moving is even better, even all folded up like he is. Every time Pete moves, Ray moves with him, tensing and relaxing and moaning to the ceiling. He knew he’d be loud, so fucking loud. If the neighbors can hear, he wouldn’t be surprised. Whatever. Let them report them for indecency and moral corruption or whatever the State gets homosexuals like them on. It’ll have been worth it, to have this. There’s beauty in this, in making love, in making love to Pete. If anyone deserves it, deserves soft touches and a willing body and a big heart bursting with love for him, it’s Pete. He puts his sweaty hands on Pete’s chest and drag them down the length of him. More, he tries to say, but it just comes out as one long, wordless sound.

“Wow,” Pete sighs, braced above Ray on his gentle hands. When did he let go of Ray’s knees? He’s so goddamn fucking beautiful, the wave of his body, the glitter of his oil-slick eyes. “Wow. Look at you, baby.” Look at him. All stomach rolls and blush down his chest and freckles everywhere. But Pete sounds adoring. But Pete sounds amazed. “You really — you fuckin’ love it, don’t you?”

Ray nods. He feels out of his mind. “I do. I do. I love it. I fuckin’ — Pete, I — I — I love you.”

A guttural, choked sound leaves Pete. His hips pump hard, once, twice, and his stomach goes taut against Ray’s. The roll of their bodies stops, sudden enough to make Ray whine in protest and confusion, blinking his eyes back open. When did they close? Why did they stop? Did he do something wrong? Why does Pete look like that, so shocked and satisfied? With his eyebrows pulled together and his mouth gaping open so Ray can see his pink tongue and white teeth?

He pants: “Did you . . . did you just c-come?”

Pete nods, quick and short, eyes closed. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

Ray blinks. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“Oh.” Ray breathes out. “Okay. So . . . it was g-good? For you?”

Pete laughs. Fully fucking laughs. And his face collapses into Ray’s neck. He snorts — and he’s still kind of got a cold, so he snots a bit on Ray’s shoulder. The grossest part is that Ray doesn’t even mind. He slides his hand around Pete’s neck to hold him at the base of his skull. “Yeah, Ray,” Pete presses a kiss to his shoulder. “Yeah, it’s good for me. Didn’t mean to finish so soon. Sorry.”

Ray pets at him. “Don’t be s-sorry. It was good f-f-for me, too.”

“You ain’t done, baby.” The words smear across Ray’s shoulder, all his freckles, until Pete’s mouth finds his throat. His hand snakes down Ray’s body, finds him still wanting. “You want my mouth?”

“No.” He wraps his legs around Pete’s waist, tugs him in closer. “Don’t leave.”

“I’m right here, baby. I’m not leavin’.”

“No,” Ray says again. “Don’t leave me. Don’t — don’t — don’t p-p-pull out. I want it like — like this.”

It doesn’t take long, after that.

Especially with Pete talking him through it. Pete might not have the same stamina he had on the Walk, that kept him walking for five days without faltering, but he’s still able to hold himself up to see Ray through to the end. When Ray’s done? He just collapses back into the sweaty sheets and tries to unroll his eyes from the back of his skull.

“Fuck.”

Pete grins in a way that Ray hears more than sees, wiping his hand on the blanket. “Yeah?”

God, Ray’s bones feel liquid. His head lolls to the side, smile loose and unthinking. His hips ache, but his body always aches now. He knows he’s red in the face, in the body, and he doesn’t even care. Pete loves him like this. Pete made him like this. “Yeah. You didn’t — you never said it w-w-would be like that.”

“I didn’t know that it could be like that.” Pete eases away from him, all slow and steady and careful, but Ray still winces. A big, flat hand pets at his stomach, soothing him, shushing him, and Pete goes away for a moment. When he comes back, he settles on his side, along the length of Ray’s body, tucking his head on Ray’s shoulder. Ray curls an arm around him, cocoons him. He never wants Pete more than five inches away from him, forever. “It’s — hell, Ray, it’s never been like that before, not for me.”

The first time, for both of them, making love. “Hell of a thing.”

Pete kisses his shoulder. “Hell of a thing.”

Like disgusting teenaged boys, they fall asleep that way. Huddled together, Pete curled against his chest, in the damp, soiled sheets. Ray has a distant, worried thought about the laundry, doing the laundry before his mom gets home, but exhaustion sweeps over him first.

There are two kinds of dreams Ray has these days. The first are good, mundane, domestic dreams that have him sitting at the kitchen table with Pete doing fuck all but sipping coffee and holding hands. Like looking into the future. The second are horrible, hazy flashes of memory that have him flinching away from the sounds of carbines firing and boys screaming and blood, so much blood. That’s when he hears the boys’ voices clear in his head. It ain’t fair! And my ankle’s all twisted up. And I did it wrong! That’s when he hears Luck to you, Mister Garraty. May god reward your bravery. That’s when he remembers the gunshot.

He doesn’t dream either kind of dream. Only content darkness greets him, that static behind his eyelids, and the hours slip away into nothingness to the tune of Pete’s congested snoring.

He only wakes because Pete rolls away, the firm warmth of him leaving and introducing an uncomfortable itching feelings as they unstick from each other. His nose scrunches when he scratches a nail through the dried drops sitting in the hair under his belly button, a soft ugh whispering out of his mouth when it flakes off. The bed groans in annoyance under his rolling to follow Pete, pressing them back together, his front all along Pete’s back. His hand molds to the shape of Pete’s firm pectoral muscle, filling out the empty cup of his palm. The jagged, raised edge of a scar running down from Pete’s collarbone teases at his fingertips. He buries his nose in Pete’s neck, breathing in the sweet scent of stale boy-sweat and whatever goodness naturally seeps out of Pete’s pores.

Pete makes a waking sound, sleepy and soft. “Feelin’ me up, Garraty?” His hand fits neatly over Ray’s, holding him there. Underneath, his heart beats, proud and alive. Their knees slot together, Ray’s up against the back of Pete’s. And then Pete shivers. “Goddamn fools to sleep on top of the blankets in this weather.”

“I don’t know if w-w-w-we want to sleep uh-under them. They’re k-kind of gross,” Ray says into the hollow behind Pete’s ear. He leaves a kiss there.

That’s when Pete seems to realize he’s rolled right into the gunk he’d wiped on them a few hours ago. He makes his own ugh sound and then laughs. “The miracles of the human body, huh? Guess we should clean ourselves up.”

“Probably,” Ray agrees, but neither of them budge. “In a few minutes.”

“Yeah,” Pete says. He relaxes his body back into Ray’s. “A few more minutes sounds good.”

They lapse into silence, just their quiet breathing and the rustling of the sheets, the scratch of the tree branch against the siding in the back of the house. Their chests rise and fall in perfect time together. In, out. In, out. They walked like that, too, on the Walk. Left, right. Left, right. And every moment since then, they’ve been doing it together. It’s part of the reason that Ray couldn’t bring himself to sleep last night, couldn’t even lie in this bed by himself. It didn’t feel right, not without Pete. So he’d sat on the porch and Pete sat in the car, waiting for each other, waiting to be together again. In perfect synch, as always.

Pete’s thumb traces back and forth, back and forth, over Ray’s knuckle. When he peeks an eye open to look over Pete’s shoulder, he spots the bright platinum band on his finger. His wedding band. He’ll have to get one for Pete, too. He watches Pete run his thumb over it, thumbprint gliding smoothly again and again, like he’s soothing himself.

“Pete,” Ray breathes.

“Mmhm, baby?”

“Was it really okay?”

The low, familiar chuckle rumbling out of Pete’s chest warms Ray’s worry into something softer. “It was better than okay.”

“Not the sex,” Ray clarifies. Though that’s good to know, honestly. Pete makes a sound of confusion. “Jersey. The i-in-interview. Was it really okay?”

“Yeah, Ray. It was really okay.” He sniffs. “Scary as hell in the moment. But okay.” His hand tightens on top of Ray’s. “I’m okay. I’m right here with you. Right where I wanna be. I’m not leavin’ again. Never again.”

“But—“ They might make him leave again. The Major might call on him again. He’s the fucking winner of the Long Walk and he wished for something totally unexpected, made a big show of himself to save Ray. Who’s to say the Major won’t just keep dragging them apart again and again, to play with them like a cat plays with mice?

Pete shakes his head. “They’ll have a new winner soon enough and forget all about me.”

“Fame is a f-fickle food,” Ray says, smushing his cheek on Pete’s shoulder, “upon a shifting plate.”

There’s a long, quiet moment where Ray thinks Pete’s fallen back asleep. And then an ugly snort. “I know you didn’t come up with that off the cuff, baby. You been savin’ that or somethin’?”

“No,” Ray says. “No, I think it’s a poem.”

“So you’re a poet now, too?”

“No. I don’t — I don’t remember who wrote it. I think my d-dad, I think he g-g-gave it to m-me.” Ray shrugs. It’s uncomfortable, when they’re all piled together like this. Bodies on top of bodies. It forces Pete’s shoulder to move, too. “He was always givin’ me stuff to r-read. Poets and — and — and f-f-philosophers and stuff like that.”

Pete hums. He’s seen the contraband they’ve managed to hold on to, even though Mom got rid of most of it after Dad got Squaded. Ray held on to a few things. Sentimental, he guesses. “You should recite for me more often. I like listenin’ to you talk.”

Ray laughs. “Lucky you. Mom used to say I n-n-n-n-ever shut up.”

He was a chatty kid, he thinks. Loud, like his dad. A real fucking smart ass. Until he learned to be quiet. Until he was so angry and bitter and suicidal that he couldn’t do anything but be quiet. Until he met Pete and the boys and got shot in the head. Until he had to learn to talk again. Maybe he’s chatty again now. Who knows?

His hand is pulled from Pete’s chest, up to his mouth. He lays a kiss on the palm, on the wedding band, on each of Ray’s fingertips. “Lucky me is right.”

“I-I-I’m the lucky one, Pete.” His forehead drops to Pete’s shoulder. “How a guy like me got a g-guy like you, I’ll never know. And this m-morning, when we — you — it was so—!”

“I know. It was. But next time,” Pete says against Ray’s fingers, “I wanna be the wife.”

If he starts imagining that, the next time will be in the next fifteen minutes. Maybe less. God, if he can make it half as good for Pete as Pete made it for him . . . Maybe he did die, on that Walk, and this is heaven. Not that he believes in that sort of thing, or that he’s the kind of guy to even make it there, but Pete always did make a believer out of him.

“Deal.”