He'd named her Dahlia.

Raven wasn't around to give him her real name, if she ever had one. Dahlia, Matt decided. Like the flower.

She consumed him, day by day and night by night. He dreamed of dark forest, split apart by fast, cold rivers and encompassed by high-flying eagles. He dreamed of tearing bark from trees and eating the bugs beneath, of dancing circles around young elk just to give them a fright. He dreamed of hard wind and fresh fish, and sometimes he dreamed of Bailey.

And when he woke from those dreams, more often than not, Matt would check his phone to an empty call-log and a neglected voice mail. And more often than not, he'd call up every burger joint he could find in Southern Idaho and ask for a Bailey Walters. And when they'd tell him no such person existed, he'd ache for the cell phone he'd so foolishly left in his father's truck, moments before it exploded. The one with his number still on the call log.

For six months, Matt slept with his phone in his hand on the off-chance it might ring him awake one night.

It never did.

January peeled around at a disorienting speed, the mornings bitter and the roads slick with ice. Matt's used Toyota hated the chill, its breaks grabbing at every stop sign and four-way-stop on the way to the old empty church by Sam Park. Jack sat in the seat beside him, flipping a coin between his fingers. This way, that way, this way, the next.

"Gimme ten-zero."

"Use caution," Matt complied.

"Don't just mean with people. Buildin's too, dangerous situations—"

"I know, Dad."

Jack flipped the coin again. "Ten-ten."

"Fight."

"Ten-fifteen."

"Burglary. Dad, I got it. I know 'em all, alright?"

Jack leaned his head back against the passenger seat, his hair slicked with gel and combed ten times over. He looked as if he wanted to say something, but bit his tongue—only to release it a breath later.

"Just—don't go nowhere on your own, alright? You stay with your partner."

"It's field-training, Dad. I can't do shit on my own. That's kinda the point."

Matt pulled into the church parking lot, easing past old women in large hats and rearing slowly near the door.

"You got money for the bus?" Matt asked, watching the sweat his hands left on the leather of the steering wheel. Eye-contact had always been a challenge with Jack, but more so lately than ever. He'd been a vulnerable man since the fire. There were things behind his eyes that Matt wasn't used to—feelings and thoughts that hadn't been there before.

Jack too, seemed to seek anything but Matt's eyes. "Got cash, yeah."

There was silence. Then rustling as Jack released his seatbelt and reached for the door.

Matt felt the engine shiver beneath his hands, finally finding his father's face in the ice-warm morning sun. And as he opened his mouth to speak, Jack broke first word.

"Son," he said, eyeing the tiny coin in his hand. Again he went quiet. The engine roared in idle, and Jack reached over for Matt's hand, depositing the coin into his palm. "Proud of ya'. Real proud."

Matt's face burned. He turned the coin over in his fingers, watching the tiny five shimmer in the center of a golden triangle. The hatchback rocked as Jack climbed out.

"Wait—don't you need this?" Matt asked.

Jack gave him a grin. A smile unlike himself.

"Nah. Get a new one today. Six months." And as he went to shut the door, Matt felt the smooth golden piece beneath his thumb.

Still, he couldn't bring himself to look at Jack. Richards boys were born cold-blooded. They were born with hard bones and sinewy hearts and they spoke love with well-grilled meat, classic cars and late-night fishing trips, but never words.

But Matt said it anyway. "Proud of you, too."

He assumed Jack heard—assumed 'cause for a long moment, he just stood there in the strange quiet. Then he clapped the door closed and Matt watched the gangling shape of him disappear into the church doors.

It was surreal, putting on the suit. The one he'd dreamed of wearing since five years old. And for a long time after, Matt stared at himself in the locker mirror, shifting the weight of the belt on his hips, unbuttoning and re-buttoning the top-most button of his shirt in a struggle between comfort and formality.

He was led out with the other trainees—some as young as eighteen, none older than thirty. They were each given a book of training tasks, filled with pages upon pages of discussion and learning materials. Then he was dropped into the arms of a field training officer, hardly older than himself.

He reminded Matt of Raven—his hair buzzed, his shoulders squared, his ears a size too large for his face. He laughed at first sight of Matt, hands propped on his hips and a grin so large, it filled his face from one ear to the next. "You look a little scared. Police Academy was that rough, huh? Don't worry, Rookie. We only expect perfection."

Matt was given a tour of the cruiser, the hardware inside, and the multitudes of buttons with multitudes of functions, then his field officer—who he'd come to know as Luke—drove him out for lunch at a nearby steakhouse.

He sat across from Matt for the next twenty minutes, carving into his sirloin and telling stories of wild encounters with naked men, high on bath salts and bleeding from the head. Of high-speed chases and the most beautiful woman he'd ever known: a sex worker named Serena, who he'd arrested twice now for soliciting prostitution. He told Matt of the partner he'd lost, eyes sheening beneath the low-hanging chandelier. And all the while he spoke, Matt wondered if he should feel something.

His sexuality was still a raveled thing, too tangled to know one string from the next. But objectively speaking, Officer Luke Berry was an attractive man. Objectively speaking, Matt should've acknowledged it at one point or another. He hadn't thought about it for a moment.

He'd dabbled in gay porn since he'd last seen Bailey—curiosity at first, then it became something of a hunger pang. He got off to it, sure. Aboutas well as he got off to busty women in short skirts and knee-high stockings. But deep down, a wilted part of him knew it was because of Bailey.

Because watching those videos reminded him of those sounds and tastes. Because Bailey was a broken bone, aching somewhere deep inside him. Because what Bailey made him feel couldn't be replicated—no matter how handsome the officer. No matter how pretty the server, or the doe-eyed college girl across the room, sipping a fruity drink from a tiny straw while she whispered to her friend about men in uniforms.

Matt wondered if he'd ever find anyone beautiful again.

"You look troubled, Rookie," Luke said, with a spoonful of mashed potatoes. "Having doubts?"

Matt opened his mouth to deny his assumption, but a pained scream pushed the words back into him. Gasps rose from the restaurant, and Matt turned to the window, where crowds had clustered in the street.

Luke must've seen something he hadn't through the wide pane windows, because the officer dropped his spoon and launched to his feet, and Matt followed him out through the fire exit toward the chaos in the street.

"It was red!" someone was shouting. "Red! A Chevy!"

"A truck!"

And it was only when Matt spotted the shoe-less foot, its glinting ankle bracelet poking out from the kneeling knees of the crowd, that he realized what'd happened.

Luke walkiedeleven-forty-one. Ambulance needed.

Someone was grabbing at Matt's shoulder. An older man, hunched over on a cane. He pointed toward an empty intersection. "It went that way. Saw it—saw it hit her and barrel down Clove Street. Nearly fishtailed into my van right there by the spirits store."

Matt hesitated between Luke and the sleeping cruiser. Within the clustered crowd, he saw only flashes of the unconscious girl—a small splash of red on black pavement. He could hear someone shout, "She's still breathing!"

Then Dahlia took him over.

The wind lashed at his face as she led him through alleys, feet pounding against the pavement. The direction she led him was nowhere near the intersection, but in the passing months, Matt had learned that his instincts weren't to be doubted. That the wolf in him knew things he couldn't comprehend—that she had a plan, always. He was only the vessel she controlled.

So despite his own concern, he climbed the oxidized ladder of a decaying fire escape and perched himself on its rain-slick railings. From one fire escape to the next, Matt lunged, hitting the platform hard on his ankles. He heard her breath in his ears, felt her tug at her veins. Higher, they climbed, and further they ran, from one fire escape to the next until Matt found himself standing on a rickety ledge, two stories up.

Dozens of feet below him sat empty dumpsters and forgotten vehicles, and not a soft thing to land on might he fall. And yet, Dahlia urged him.

"I can't do this," Matt told her, though he knew she didn't speak like Raven did. "If I jump, I'll—listen, I'm gonna break my fuckin' leg."

And still the want to leap tugged at him with urgency.

"Oh god," he sobbed, hands raking back through his hair. "Don't make me do this."

He couldn't jump. He didn't want to jump. He'd die if he jumped. Well—probably not, but it would hurt like a bitch.

But Dahlia roared inside of him. Jump. Jump. Jump. And hell, Matt was really bad at dyin', anyway.

He shut his eyes and stepped off the ledge.

One moment, there was nothing but freezing air on his face, an empty world beneath his feet. The next, Matt was slamming into hard metal, tumbling backward on the bed of a pickup.

A red Chevy.

Stunned, he scrabbled for control on the moving vehicle, gripping the handles on the edges to pull himself upright. The truck sped through the alley, scraping hastily against an off-kilter dumpster. The speed of its impact nearly threw Matt from the bed, but the hunger in Dahlia kept him planted.

He reached for the baton on his mostly-empty belt and with one hard whip, the back window of the pickup shattered. The startled driver reached blindly behind him to bat Matt away, but he gripped on by the shattered frame. The pickup turned sharply, and Matt slipped on scattered glass.

"Pull over!" he shouted. "Stop the vehicle!"

And when the driver refused, Matt clamored head-first through the frame. From the cramped back seats, he reached for the steering wheel, and with one sudden jerk, the truck slung sideways, slamming onto the edge of a dumpster. Matt was flung forward and into the airbag, the wind leaving his chest as he was whipped back into the passenger seat.

His head spun for several disorienting seconds before he shoved the airbag away and stumbled out of the vehicle—the front crunched in, nearly to the windshield. Aching, he carried himself to the driver's side, where a man with graying red hair slouched forward, arms limp and face stuffed in the cushion of his airbag.

Dread and panic flooded Matt's pounding heart. He reached around the man to shut the engine off—then it found him. The well-beating pulse, like water curling his eardrums.

Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump.

Matt took the talkie from his breast pocket—the one he'd barely been taught to use.

"Eleven-forty-one," he said with a winded breath. "We need a second ambulance." 

Three hours later, Matt sat on a bench in front of his locker, his phone to his ear and his face in his hands.

"Suspended?" Jaylin's voice rumbled through the speaker of his cell phone. "Matt, how the fuck did you get suspended on your first day?"

Matt sighed and shut his locker with an emphatic slam. "It's bullshit, alright? Luke said if I wasn't a rookie on probation, I'd have been given a cold beer and a pat on the back for what I did. I jumped from a second story building, for fucks sake. And anyway, the guy lived. Was just...you know. Tryin' to help."

"You could've died, Matt."

"Dammit Jay, I could choke in my sleep tonight and die. I'm always dying. We're all always dying, who gives a shit."

Jaylin laughed—that soft, sheer voice of his like breath of cool air. "I'm just saying, you're lucky they didn't fire you right off the bat. Isn't that what probation's for?"

"I'm the old sheriff's son," Matt said, resting his elbow on his knees. He watched his hand hang there limp, the skin still scuffed from shattered glass, but quickly healing. "Everyone loved my dad. 'Course they'd give me a second chance. They think I'm gonna take over as Sheriff one day."

"Still weird to think of Jack as anything but a cop. Is he really done? For good?"

"Done, done." Matt stood with an aching breath and slung his jacket over his shoulder. Jack had written up his resignation that night—right after Bronx cleaned up their mess. After he signed the NDA and they sat there in the Sigvard's echoing den, watching the fire burn.

Grabbed a pen right there and wrote it out on a sheet of paper, ripped from a spiral notebook. I hereby resign as Sheriff.

The thought of Rico's burning shape stuck behind Matt's eyes. He shook the image away. "You got school tonight? I need a beer."

"Come over," Jaylin said. "We made dinner plans with Lisa, but you know how much space we have at our table."

Matt considered it only for a moment before a rough, difficult breath answered for him. Couldn't do it—hadn't been able to see Jay and Bronx together. They were too affectionate. Too much.

On the other end, Jaylin whispered, "It's been six months, Matt."

Matt knew better than anyone how long it'd been.

"I'll think about it," he lied, and they said their goodbyes. It felt shameful, walking the halls of the precinct with so many eyes on his back. Word of what he'd done had spread to every experienced officer this side of Washington, and Matt didn't know anymore whether he was meant to be proud or embarrassed. He screwed his police hat on tight and slipped out through the front doors with a drag in his step.

The sidewalk were cluttered with children fresh out of school, and shoppers eager to ring in the new year with new outfits and seven-dollar lattes. The air was still bitter and the nights would be cruel until Spring, so as Matt passed by a homeless man on the sidewalk, wrapped in worn clothing and hidden by disheveled hair, he fished a loose ten from his pocket and dropped it on the stranger's lap in offering.

"I don't want your money, pig," the man said from behind him. There was something about the low grate of his voice that made Matt pause-and as he turned to find the haggard man had vanished, so did the hat from his head.

It lifted away and the cold scraped his scalp. Matt clutched at the nothing that existed there now.

"Hey—wait!"

The thief slipped away, past clustered crowds of mid-day shoppers, the loose threads of his shredded jacket the last of him to slide away. It was battery, by law—taking the hat off of an officer, but Matt didn't care about that. He hadn't paid for his uniform himself and he wasn't meant to wear it off-duty. In his rage, he'd forgotten to take it off. He couldn't afford another strike against him.

He peeled through the crowd, after those fading threads of dark denim. One moment, the hat was in the thief's hand. The next it was on his head—backward so Matt could see the badge glint in the light of an overcast sky.

"Wait! Stop running!"

But the figure had vanished and Matt could see nothing now but a taunting middle finger sprouting from the crowd, budded from the fingerless gloves of a closed fist. Then, for just a moment, crowd thinned. Through the gaps of ever-moving bodies, Matt found him—a face in a sea of plaid shirts and downy jackets.

Black hair escaped through the gap of his stolen cap and covered most of his eyes, but it was the smile Matt recognized. That same grin he'd worn that night in the forest when Matt had asked if he was philosophical, or just a stoner. It was the smile of his when he raised his hand to the sky and said, it's a different world when you feed the wolf. It was the boy from that photo—the one unstained. It was that boy. It was his boy.

As close as he'd come to death, nothing had ever killed Matt more than the moment he saw that smile.

Then he was running—not for his hat, but because it was Bailey. It was so painfully Bailey.

He followed every glance of that shredded denim until he stumbled into a dead-end of dumpsters and shabby apartment balconies. And when he spun this way and that way and found no one in sight, Matt screamed at the mortar walls, "Bailey!"

When only his voice called back, Matt thought maybe he'd imagined it.

Then something brushed at his lower back. "We could have some fun with these."

And before Matt could react to the cold metal around his skin, the cuffs clicked in place—one end curled tight around his wrist and the other locked around an old, mossy pipe. He looked first to the empty space on his belt where the cuffs had been—then twisted around to the sight of him, metal cuffs clinking against the pipe.

"Bailey—"

He was darker, like he'd been out in the sun. His hair longer, an overgrown mess that covered his eyes until he took the hat off, raked it back with his gloved hands and placed it back on. Matt wanted to reach for him, but with his wrist shackled to the pipe, he could only thrash like a mutt on a leash.

"I see you made it through narc school," Bailey said. He watched Matt with that sharp mouth and low, keen eyes. "Sorry I didn't call."

Emotions thrashed wildly in Matt's throat. He bit them back, but his voice cracked wrought with them regardless. "Where've you been? I tried to find you, I—"

"School," Bailey said, still just a step out of Matt's reach. "Community college. But hey, grants pretty much cover my tuition."

Matt's chest ached. His eyes felt wet and heavy, and maybe they showed too, because Bailey stepped closer. Brushed a knuckle to his chin—just a knuckle, like he was touching something too valuable to risk real contact.

"I'm off for winter. Thought I'd stay at your place until spring classes. Your hot dad still around?"

Matt didn't know what to say but to swallow. And at the speechless look he gave, Bailey laughed, slumping back a step or two.

"Hurry home. By the way, I had a bit of an accident with the Wrangler. Bumper's a little...well, you'll see."

"Bailey," Matt said as he started to go, cuffs clanking. With his free hand, he searched his empty pockets. "Wait, the key—"

"Oh, right," Bailey said, dangling the cuff key from the tips of his fingers. He gave them a quick shake. "These ones, huh?" He asked, then promptly dropped them into the front of his jeans. "Come get 'em, Cowboy."

And with that grin—that one Matt thought he'd never see again, Bailey sauntered backward out of the alley and vanished into the street.

It took forty-five minutes for Luke to find him. Ten for Matt to convince him not to report the incident. Five to drive home in his shitty little hatchback, going ten over on every street but the school zones.

Matt pulled up to the ranch to find his beloved Wrangler in the gravel driveway of the guest house, her front bumper bent at an impossible angle. And on the porch, shed of his mangled jacket, Bailey stood in the path of a smaller figure, glorious and gargantuan in comparison.

Gabe had thrown himself to his knees in front of Bronx the night he came with sentinels in tow to clean up the fire and what was left of Rico's charred corpse. Since then, he'd taken the liberty of moving to a watch house in Eastern Washington. Matt hadn't seen him since that wicked night, and he felt a strong pang of jealousy watching Bailey ruffle a hand through his fair, feathery hair.

When the tiny wolf saw the hatchback approach, he ended their conversation and slithered down off the steps, hands tucked in his jean pockets as if to say he's yours. No contest.

But Matt was no one's keeper, and so he assumed nothing of Bailey. Nothing of who he'd been with since he was gone. Who he wanted to be with. Why he was here, or where he was going after this. He pulled up slowly behind the Wrangler and the engine of the Toyota died with a graceless kick.

And he sat there in his own choking silence, watching Bailey's silhouette. Wondering how even the shape of him could be beautiful when nothing else in the world was.

When he finally gathered the courage to climb out, there was something different about the way Bailey held himself. Something was unsettled in him. Something wrought and tangled like a lump of writhing snakes. Matt was brought back to the sight of him that night in California, standing on the watch house porch. The hard wind whipping through his wild black hair. The way he defied gravity. A boy who moved with the stars—not one among them, but around them, instead. The endless, echoing black.

For every hesitant step Matt took, those dark eyes watched him, waiting for him to reach the stoop. Clouds roared faintly in the graying sky. Then Bailey asked, "Why didn't you tell me about Rico?"

Matt paused there, at the ground beneath him. He could smell the looming storm—like wet metal in the distance. "I didn't think it would matter in the end."

"You should have said something." A visible knot grew in Bailey's throat. He swallowed it down, or tried at least. "You should've told me he was after you."

"How?" Matt asked. That pain cracked deep within his chest. "How the hell was I supposed to do that? You left, not me." He hadn't wanted to acknowledge it all this time. He couldn't swallow the taste. He'd been left behind. He'd told Bailey to go, so he left—he left Matt. He left him here, alone. Fire seared at his eyes. "You didn't even fucking say goodbye."

"Goodbye? This isn't about us," Bailey said. "I'm talking about Rico—"

"I don't give a shit about Rico." Matt clawed at his shirt, too tight around the neck. He trudged up the steps, knocking arms with Bailey as he passed by. And as Bailey grabbed him by the bicep, Matt whirled to look at him, tears growing stubbornly in his eyes. "Were you ever planning on comin' back? Were you ever gonna call? I would'a taken a fuckin' postcard." Matt blinked hard and dug his shaking hands through his hair. "Fuck."

"I couldn't," Bailey said—and God, the way he did. A stern, soft sound that pulled everything back to Matt's center. Back to his aching heart, his twinging ribs. Bailey's gaze dug to the marrow, and collected, he whispered, "I thought staying away from you would mean you were safe."

"Well, I wasn't." Matt tilted his head back and took a bitter drink of air, tears hot and terrible. "But you were and I thought—As long as he's okay, I can live with this. And then you—you fuckin' disappear."

"I was trying to fix myself."

"But you're not broken!" The sound of Matt's own voice rolled back at him. Bailey lifted his head—watched Matt with the same, wet tint in his eyes. "You're not a thing to chip and crack," Matt said. "And I may be a fuckin' tool, but I wasn't made to fix you so who gives a fuck if I'm broken, too. We're not metaphors, Bailey. We're people. You aren't damaged. You aren't wrong. Jesus fucking Christ, you're exactly how you should be!"

"This is how I should be?" Bailey said, a tremor in his voice. There was fear in the way he gestured slightly to himself, as if to say are you fucking joking?

That pain panged in Matt for a different reason now.

"Yeah, you're a fucking mess," Matt said. He stepped closer, reaching forward—just to brush a knuckle to the shirt on Bailey's chest. Just a knuckle. Just like Bailey had done. Even just at the lightest touch, the fire in Matt fell low and weak. "You're a fucking mess. And nothing makes sense without you—"

But he hadn't time to finish before Bailey took him hard by the back of the neck. The moment Matt felt his lips, he was back in the barn, in the light of the TV screen. Warm fingers threaded through the back of his hair and held Matt in that close distance where their chins brushed and their mouths met, hungered and lonely, and Matt found himself holding onto an unfamiliar waist—no longer skin and bones, but so full in fact, he could no longer feel the bump in his broken rib.

And by the time their lips settled to slow breath against one another, Matt couldn't feel the ground beneath his feet. He stayed where he could find Bailey's breath—where he could brush against his nose and feel the heat on his face.

"Stay with me," he whispered.

Bailey's fingers moved through his hairline, a deep breath brushing the edge of his mouth. "I can't...but I'll come back."

"What if you don't?" Matt asked.

"Then come get me."

Matt drew back until he could see Bailey's eyes, a barbed feeling pricking in his throat. "Are you better there?"

Are you better away from me?

The question seemed difficult to digest for Bailey. He cupped Matt's cheek in his hot palm, thumbing slow beneath his cheekbone. "It's not that great," he said. And though Matt knew he was lying, he grinned wildly in Bailey's palm. Because he knew this was only his way of saying what couldn't be said. That in another world, where Bailey Walters spoke his heart, he would've said something like, You're not there, so how good could it possibly be?

Matt couldn't stand the thought of Bailey taking his hands away. So he held them there against his face and whispered, "Can you at least stop stealing from me?"

Bailey laughed as he drew him in with those hot hands. "No," he said, and Matt found his lips again in the blind space between them. Everything about him was warm—his mouth, his breath, the still-skinny-but-well-fed curves of his waist. And Matt would've never realized how bitter cold the air was, had a splatter of icy water not rained down on them.

It soaked through his clothing like ice and Matt stumbled back, away from Bailey's warmth. He wiped the chilly water from his face and gawked at Jack Richards—who stood there with a hose in hand, water pouring from the spout.

"Knock that shit off, will ya? You two got work to do. There's a leak in the barn and it's supposed to rain tonight. I want that hay out of there."

Matt shook the beading water from his shirt, lungs still shocked and gasping. "What the hell, Dad?"

"I'm payin' him ten an hour for the next two weeks," Jack said, gesturing toward Bailey with the still-pouring hose. "You do that shit on your own time."

As Jack carried on to fill the trough in the pig pen, Bailey pushed his wet, wild hair back with that grin that killed Matt ten times over. "Come on, Cowboy, let's get dirty," he said, with a generous shove toward the steps. "You still owe me a shower."

And so they carried hay until the rain came. Until Bailey's arms were sore and scabbed because he refused the fleece Matt offered him. And after they showered off the mud and dung and animal smells, and Matt finally forced a shirt onto Bailey that covered his ravaged forearms, they laid there on a bed of spilled sheets, window open to hear the rain beat down. To feel its cold kiss on their burning faces.

Matt wanted nothing more than to touch and feel and hold, but too hot from their shower to tangle with one another, they laid there on their backs instead. The rain cast the strangest shadows on the ceiling.

"How does it feel to be a wolf?" Bailey asked him, arms slung lazily over his head while his plaid shirt rose up over his stomach. Matt loved the full look of him—the way his muscles didn't show much anymore. The way his skin had plumped and softened. He wanted to touch. He didn't.

Matt turned instead to his deep, forest eyes. "Has your wolf..."

Before he could answer, Bailey was shaking his head. It hadn't come back. It probably never would.

Quietly, Matt asked, "Are you...okay?"

And Bailey gave him a smile. One that made Matt feel like maybe he was.

It was quiet for a long moment, only the sound of the rain and the slushing gutters on the roof. Then softly, Bailey said, "Hey, Cowboy." And Matt took him in once again. His mauve lips and soft nose. His wet, mussed hair and eyes like damp moss. For a moment, Matt wondered if he might say it. That heavy thing he never said before. The I love you that came so easily only once and never again.

Matt waited for it. For the I love you.

Then Bailey said, "Let's play video games."

And Matt decided that was good enough.

the end

an; that's the end of Matt and Bailey's story - I hope you guys enjoyed it. Please keep up with the Q&A book found on my profile for updates on what's coming next.

time to cry to Video Games by Lana :')