Chapter Text
Six years after the Walk had two winners for the first time ever, a carrier showed up at their door well into the early morning.
Rural Maine had barely anything to offer; the nearest supermarket was nearly a forty-five minute drive. There was hardly any sign of life, save for the birds and some farm animals. No car was parked out front, no bike, no sign a person was ever here.
Only the carrier.
When Pete answered the door, he almost didn’t see it, lost by the random doorbell ringing, but no visitors. When he looked down, he noticed it. The pattern was cross-stitched, vibrant in different shapes, the fabric covering the entire carrier. Pete crouched down curiously, whispering quietly to himself, what the fuck.
The guardian dog trots over, sniffing at it beside him. When he lifts the cloth, it reveals—a baby. The baby is still well asleep, too. His skin is fair and the clothes he wears seem homemade. There’s a note over his chest that Pete refuses to read alone.
He takes the carrier by the handle, bringing it inside. Once the dog follows, he silently shuts it. The house is quiet, made all too aware by the baby left for them, as if a child they knew nothing about was a gift.
Pete sighs, setting the carrier beside him on the couch. He stares at it while the dog, first named Orleans by her previous owner, whines at the carrier.
He waits until Ray shows up, albeit half-awake and holding fresh coffee in an old ceramic mug with one hand, a cane in the other. Ray looks at him curiously, hesitantly sitting across from him. He still has trouble walking, having taken the gut-shot years ago. It’s visible, a painful reminder of the Walk.
“I’m gonna need you to not freak out,” Pete says carefully, quietly. “Some real… important shit just happened.”
Ray nods a little, but his hand clutches the mug a little tighter.
Pete carefully peels the cloth back, revealing the sleeping baby once more. The baby stirs a little, but doesn’t wake.
“Pete, what the hell—” Ray begins, a little breathless.
“I know,” he begins. “Trust me. They—Whoever left ‘em, they left a note. Wanted to wait for you.”
Ray straightens his posture a little. “Okay,” he says. “What’s in it?”
Pete carefully reaches for the letter, tucking the baby in a little when he pulls it out. He flips the paper open, squinting at the handwriting. It’s neat and cursive.
He reads it aloud, Winners; I’ve watched you, from the very start, I did. I had hope, I still do in some ways. I cannot care for him, the boy you see. His name is Koda. Pete exhales. A boy. You must understand this: my husband has entered this year's Walk. Koda cannot be alone. Please, love him fully.
“That’s it?” Ray says quietly. “No name?”
“That’s it,” Pete mutters. He folds the letter back over. “Fuck.” he says, just above a hoarse whisper.
Ray’s looking at the baby. Koda, the note said. “We can take care of ‘im,” he says suddenly. “Maybe—Maybe we watch the Walk this year—”
“No, no,” Pete responds. “Not this year, not ever, we agreed on that.”
“The baby’s dad,” Ray begins, then shakily exhales. “Fuck, what happened to his mom?”
Koda cannot be alone, Pete recalled. His stomach felt queasy, suddenly.
“I don’t know,” he says, though he has a hard guess. “Think we can?”
Ray looks at him. He looks exhausted. The bags under his eyes are dark again, but Ray nods, “I know we can.”
Pete sighs, rising from the couch to cross over. He leans down and presses a kiss onto Ray’s head. “We’ll call your mom tomorrow.”
Despite the conversation, it takes an hour before Ray’s doubting himself. The boy is small, but barely five months old. He won’t even remember his family. Beyond that, they don’t even know his family and he knows they never truly will.
Pete fidgets with old cars most of the day. Baby Koda sits in his carrier beneath the shade, watching him when he’s not out cold or distracted. It keeps his mind off of—the future, maybe. This year's Walk, the baby’s family.
Ray comes out with lemonade, nudging at Pete’s leg with the cane, telling him to hydrate. Pete won’t admit it, but he looks an awful lot like his mom when he does that, squinting from the sun, hand holding fresh lemonade. The first few years they had the home, Ginnie would visit once or twice a week, bringing goods and making dinner. Her visits wavered as work demanded more from her.
Ray sits in the chair beneath the shade, watching Koda huff and move around. He gently touches the baby’s hand with his finger, watching him figure out how to hold onto Ray. When Pete looks up, Ray’s smiling, just a small thing.
“He’s a quiet boy,” Pete says, hand hovering above his eyebrows to block the sun. “Didn’t fuss none.”
“I noticed,” Ray mutters in response. “Shouldn’t he be hungry by now?”
Pete hums. “I think so, yeah,” he takes a sip of the lemonade before pushing himself up from the ground. “Think he can eat some mashed canned veggies or somethin’?”
Ray narrows his eyes a little.
They’re silent for a moment until Koda makes a whining noise.
“We should call your mom today,” he decides and Ray agrees.
Pete gets all in his head about Koda—how people will see the baby, how they’ll see them with a baby. Usually, it doesn’t get to him, but it’s different now. Despite Ray’s small portion of banned media tucked away, despite their well-known affection towards one another, it’s different. Koda is different.
They sit on the porch and wait for Ginnie to show up. The light breeze calms Koda down a little, which Pete notes in his mind.
He can hear Ray talking to his mother over the phone, “He—It’s complicated, he showed up on our doorstep, mom—Yes, on our doorstep. I have no idea what he eats, or—or when to feed him, I don’t know what I’m doin’, mom—”
Ginnie made it to their house quicker than she ever has, really. She arrived with two large bags in hand that Pete rushed to help carry up. She hands it over happily when she sees the baby, idly fidgeting with the blanket he arrived with.
She’s looking into his big brown eyes when Pete sets the bags down. She coos, lightly dragging her knuckle down his round cheeks.
Pete peeks into the bag. It’s mostly food in one, clothes in another. The food is mostly from the store, the one so far away, but there’s unlabeled mason jars, too. The clothing in the other bag ranges from Koda’s age to at least eleven; the graphics along the pajamas are baseball related, too.
It reminds him of Ray, of the stories he’d tell Pete of his father, their bonding through sports.
Ginnie turns her attention to the men. She exhales. “Some of the food is from the market, but… I made some, too,” she smiles. “The clothes, they’re sentimental keep, is all. He’ll grow out of them pretty quick… Ah, and, medicines, diapers, all that, just to be sure.”
“Thank you, Ginnie,” Pete smiles back. Ray looks antsy, or anxious, either way. “You wanna come in?”
Ginnie’s smile grows a small amount. “That’d be lovely.” she says softly.
It’s how they sit in the living room, baby Koda freed from his carrier and in Ginnie’s lap. Pete kindly made her tea while she brought them cookies—oatmeal chocolate chip. She tells them what she can, what she knows—feeding times, hobbies, hair, nails, the whole spiel. Ray can’t help but dig through the clothing as she talks, holding it as if it’s a piece of glass.
The one thing Pete learned about the Garraty’s is their sentimental mindsets. Ray keeps a memory box, since he was little he has. Once it was recently overfilled with movie tickets, posters, and Polaroids, a new one was made. A small thing, much like a shoe box. Inside, it began filling with old newspaper articles. Harkness and his book, Baker and his religion, Parker and his rebellion—that they’d merely kept the portrait of Parker from, the article flooded with propaganda for the soldiers, how Parker’s legacy was awful.
It took days to convince him to no longer feed that thought process, that he couldn’t change how they were seen—vile, cowards, soldiers, victims—but he’d eventually ditch digging through newspapers and anniversaries in favor of reading books.
Pete thinks about the Walk, the hundreds of miles, the new damages to his body. It was years ago, but he still flinches when the plates clatter too loud, still zones the world out when he takes the long drive out. It terrifies him, but more than that, it’s makes him feel guilty, wondering repeatedly how it was him, why was it him?
He thinks about Koda, hardly nineteen, taking the same path. He thinks about him and Ray, waiting for him in Freeport, just like Ginnie had for Ray all those years ago. It makes him feel nauseous.
“—Pete? Hey, Pete,” Ray’s hand touches his upper arm. It makes him feel infinitely worse when he flinches hard, when Ray’s face is flooded with concern. “Are you okay?”
Pete nods, unable to find his voice. Ray’s hand slides down to his wrist, thumb brushing over his veins.
Ginnie looks concerned, too, and god, they have the same expression, the same face. “So, they left no name?” she asks.
“No, nothing,” Pete mutters. “Uh, just that her husband's been… picked for the Walk.”
Ginnie’s hand is over her mouth almost instantly. “That’s,” she swallows. “That’s awful.”
“That’s why we wanna try,” Ray says. “For her, for her husband. For Koda to—to not have to follow in his footsteps.”
Pete feels dizzy at the thought of the Walk alone. He exhales. “He’ll be good with us,” he nods. “Just need a little advice here and there.”
“Of course,” Ginnie says, her hand coming over Koda’s stomach lightly. “Anything for my boys.”
Ginnie shows them how to feed Koda. How to change him, how to care for him hygienically. She’s so gentle and patient, even when Koda spits the food out, even when he whines at the smell, or cries seemingly at odd textures in clothing. She waits, then restarts. She shows him the simple things aren’t out to hurt him. Ginnie handed Koda to Ray once that night, told him to put clothes on the baby after a change. ‘Think of it like a trial’, she said. Ray spent a good while softly talking to Koda, making silly faces over sweet, silly voices. It distracted the boy well enough and he ended up in a small, red onesie.
Pete called him a god-damn natural and he watched Ray light up, that sweet smile he adores bright. If it weren’t for Ginnie in the room, he could kiss all over his face, count each freckle in his mind. He knows just how many are on his right shoulder, down to his elbow, having counted them for many nights after the Walk.
Koda grasps weakly at Ray’s shirt. He hesitantly picks him up and holds him through most of Ginnie’s visit, feeds him, too. By the time she’s gone, the sun's down and Koda’s fast asleep on Ray’s shoulder.
It’s awfully quiet in the living room, just the noise of a fan going keeping it from being deathly quiet.
It’s nice to watch. A peaceful moment, in their peaceful home with—a baby. A child who, for all purposes, is now their baby. It makes Pete feel warm inside, as if it’s been this way for years, sliding beside Ray and Koda on the couch. He stares at Koda’s little fists, balled up against Ray’s shoulder, watches his breathing, listens to it, too. Ray’s thumb runs along the baby’s back. He’s got a smile on his face, small, but visible.
Pete’s thoughts often come at him with understanding, with logic that is undeniable, but right here, in this moment, he expects to see soldiers burst through the front door and litter them with bullets. Leave the house rotting with their bodies, never to be brought up again. The world can be heartless, he knows it well enough, but this is his world; Ray, their oddball of a dog, a fucking baby—it’s far from heartless, or bleak.
They’ve done well distracting themselves from the past. Pete works on old, beaten down cars—it feels nice, being able to repair, remove, and pretend it’s shiny new. Ray started collecting baseball memorabilia, at least what he can find of it. He sticks to the government-approved art, music, and all, but he can’t shake familiar music, or inspiring quotes.
Sometimes, when it’s a quiet night, he’ll make dinner in their small kitchen. He’ll hum to himself a song or two. Pete will ask what it is—Ray almost always smiles, almost sadly at him. He whispers the song's name, or the book title in the crook of Pete’s neck late at night.
His hand holds onto Ray’s unoccupied wrist, looking up at him once he looks over.
“Hey,” Ray says, painfully quiet. “You okay?”
Pete tongues at his teeth awkwardly. “Keep thinkin’ about the Walk,” he says. He feels Ray tense a little. “Not watchin’ it, not doing all that again—none of that, don’t let your head go there.”
Ray lets out a dry laugh. “Read my mind.”
“Always,” Pete smiles, but it fades a little. “We can’t let his future get as twisted as ours. All this shit, it was worth it, but if we’re really doing this, I mean really? He can’t know about the Walk.”
Ray’s eyebrows furrow. “Pete, that’s impossible,” he mutters. “The Walk is promoted like some massive sports game. He’ll know eventually.”
Pete sinks into the couch a little.
“Fine,” he says. “Can’t let him know we were in it. By any means, he has to know he has a shot at living.”
Ray frowns a little, freeing his wrist to wrap around Pete’s shoulders. He pulls him in, kissing the top of his head. “Never seen you this worried before, not really.”
It’s not the most truthful statement. Pete had worried himself into sickness after the walk, when he wished, begged, for Ray’s life as his wish—the gut-shot was hardly anything compared to what could have been, but it lingered in Pete’s mind for years. They both know it all too well.
Pete shrugs a little. “It’s a human life,” he replies. “And now he’s our responsibility.”
Ray hums. They sit there in silence for a long while after that. When Pete hears light snoring, he realizes the house is asleep. Furthermore, he realizes how much Ray’s going to hate the neck pain. So, he gently wakes him up, telling him to put Koda to bed, to get to his bed.
It takes some effort, considering the lack of sleeping space for Koda, but they manage just fine with a spare mattress and a fuckload of blankets to keep him protected and warm. Ray stares at Koda intently, sleepily worried they didn’t protect it enough, that he might roll out into the floor. Pete reassures him over it, which half-does the trick.
Ray tucks himself into Pete’s side, hand resting over his bare stomach. Pete gently holds his hand, pulling it up to kiss the top of it. Tonight, he’ll count the freckles littering Ray’s hand beneath the moonlight and think—god, it’s all he can do.
He thinks of their temporary days in New Orleans, Louisiana. Thinks of all the invasive reporters, of all the fans—it still shocked him, fans, as if they were government-approved singers, or something—but most of all, the quietness that came after the noise. The moments of sitting on the balcony next to one another, watching the day fade into night. The first time Ray cooked a meal for the two of them, albeit a little burnt. He fed Pete, told him he needed to relax, as if he was the one who had bullets in his gut.
Pete had talked Ray through many panic attacks in that crappy, overpriced apartment. Some nights, Ray would wake up, sobbing, shoving Pete away, declaring he wasn’t real, none of this was. Other nights, he’d spend time hyperventilating into Pete’s chest, arms tight around him. The rain became a not-so-great memory; it would pitter on the windows and Ray would tense. Pete would rub the tension out as much as he could, though it made Ray sleepy more than anything.
He thinks about Art’s grandmother, about Clementine Olson. How they looked at Ray and Pete with sadness, with a touch of anger, genuine or not, he couldn't tell.
He thinks about Ray. Though there’s never been a moment he hasn’t thought about Ray, the light he clutches in his stained hands, the light he finds in all the darkness. Thinks about their time on the dreadful road, latched onto one another during those especially exhausting days. The end of it all left Ray in the hospital, too damn far from Pete at all times. It made him feel queasy, then—he’s thumbing over Ray’s hand, light touches, as if he wanted to remind himself of his presence.
He remembers when he first visited Ray, too, watching his tired expression warm up. Pete, he rasped, then, Pete, Pete, Pete— like a prayer, he repeated his name over and over. Pete, I love—I love you, he slurred some. Under different circumstances, maybe a better lifetime, he would have kissed Ray right then and there. But it’s not a different lifetime, it’s hard to believe it ever will be, so he leaned down, pressing a kiss onto his forehead, then his nose, each warm cheek.
I love you, he said back, You selfless fuckin’ man, I love you.
Pete looks at the sleeping Ray, watching his chest rise and fall with his breathing. He gently brushes a strand of hair out of his face, watching him stir a little. He looks over at Koda, still asleep in his little homemade crib. He sighs softly, relaxing into the mattress.
This must be heaven, he thinks, this is it.