Page 121 of Walking Wounded

~*~

Dawn’s only an hour off when they return to their room. The FBI are scouring the yard, and a whole new Breckinridge crew has arrived, along with yet more Leesburg sheriffs. Hal walks out to survey the damage and comes back looking exhausted. “Try to get a little sleep, if you can,” Sandy urges. Luke expects Hal to shrug that off, get dressed, and throw himself into the chaos. Instead, he leads the way back upstairs and into their borrowed bedroom.

“You’re not going to help?” Luke asks, because he just can’t believe it.

Hal sits down heavily on the side of the bed, like his body is a weight he no longer wants to carry. He rakes a hand through his hair, making it stand up even more. “Help with what?” He isn’t looking at Luke, but at his own bare feet, as if he’s just now realized he’s been walking around outside the house without shoes. Little bits of dead grass cling to the soles; a wedge of brown leaf, slimy with melted frost.

“Here.” Luke finds a sock sticking out of the top of his bag and kneels in front of Hal. His own sore muscles protest the move, but he tells them to shut up. He rubs at the bottoms of Hal’s feet, cleans off the moisture and debris. “With the investigation,” he explains. “That seems like the sort of thing you’d do: stay involved.”

“Oh.” Hal sounds spacey. “I’m not a cop.”

“Yeah, but you’re…” He trails off when he lifts his head and finds Hal’s face chalk-white, lower lip caught between his teeth. He sets Hal’s feet back on the rug and says, “Hey, what?”

Hal doesn’t speak for a long moment. Then he drags a breath in through his nose and meet’s Luke’s gaze with the wildness of fear in his own. “Twice,” he says. “Twice my boss almost got killed. He’s my boss, and he’s a husband, and a father, and a US Senator, and he’s agoodman. And he almost got killed twice on my watch.”

Luke puts his hands on Hal’s knees. “Almost doesn’t count. From where I’m sitting, yousaved his lifetwice.”

Hal shakes his head. “That’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that both times, the whole time, I was scared out of my mind that something was going to happen to you.” His hand covers Luke’s, and slides up his arm, ghosting over the bruises there. “Somethingdidhappen to you,” he says in a small, broken voice.

If he’s honest, Luke is scared shitless to hear his invincible, unflappable best friend talk about fear; to hear him suggest that somehow he hasn’t done enough to protect the people in his charge. But he also understands burden, and the way it eats at all your confidence.

“No,” he says, quiet but firm. “Don’t think about it that way. Matt, and the family, and me – we’re all okay. And that’s because of you. Like I said: almost doesn’t count.”

Hal’s hand tightens a fraction, pressure on the shadowy contusions along Luke’s forearm. “You never would have been here. These are because of me.”

The fear winds tighter in his belly – hereallydoesn’t like hearing Hal like this – but he says, “No, you listen. These? These are because some crazy asshole let some other crazy asshole pay him to try and kill a senator. A US Senator. Dude, do you understand how much bigger than us that is? Some big powerful Washington guy tried to have another big powerful Washington guy he doesn’t likekilled.Tried to have him killed. Because they don’t agree on some bullshit bill or something. And you? Little ol’ you from Roanoke, Virginia, you stopped it. You stopped ithard. So I don’t want to hear a whole lot of ‘I fucked up’ or ‘I almost’ whatever. Okay?”

Hal groans. “You’re full of shit.” But a smile catches at his mouth. He pulls his hand away and rubs at his eyes, though there are no tears.

“I’m a writer,” Luke says. “I’m full ofso muchshit.”

Hal takes his wrist again and gives it a gentle tug; he wants Luke to come to him. But Luke stays on the floor. Lays his head down on the solid muscle of Hal’s thigh. “No. You sat just like this with me on the worst day of my life. It helps, trust me.”

Hal’s fingers card through his hair. It feels nice. Hal’s hand is steady, for what that’s worth, but he’s always had surer nerves than Luke.

“That was a bad day,” Hal says, remembering, and writer though he is, there’s no darker synonym for “bad” that Luke would ever use. The day of Sadie’s funeral was abadday.

“It was,” he agrees. “But it helped that you were there.”

Hal’s voice cracks. “I feel like we’ve lost so much time.”

Luke wants to tell him that no, they haven’t. They weren’t ready for this yet, all this raw honesty that lies between them now. But “no” isn’t the truth. There were chances before. Places in their past when they could have reached deeper into the well of their friendship and found the comfort they’d always feared might wreck the gentle, platonic love they already had.

What Luke knows now, though, is that there was nothing that could wreck it. It had just taken a while to figure that out.

“We have time now,” he says.

This time when Hal tugs on his hand, he climbs up onto the bed beside him, leans into Hal’s chest and wraps his arms around him. Hal holds him tight, breathing into the crook of his neck.

“You really scared me,” Luke admits, “being all brave like that.”

Hal manages a choked laugh. “Right back at you.”

Hal moves them around, gets them on their sides, facing each other, covers pulled up over their heads like when they were little boys reading after lights-out. They lie pressed together, toes to nose, the air warming and growing humid in the dark of their little makeshift cave. Hal’s arm loops around Luke’s waist, holding him there. Luke tangles their legs together, snuggles his face into the hollow of Hal’s throat.

“What happens now?” he asks.

Hal sighs. “Now the media circus starts. There’s gonna be arrests, and investigations, and it’s gonna be all over the news for the next six months. Shit,we’reprobably gonna be on the news.”

---