sluttylyingliar | For Raylan and Danny

For Raylan and Danny - Esther plot

Rachel has bounded up and down the steps to their porch hundreds of times. Up and down the four steps quickly and without even thinking about it. Raylan built that porch sturdy and strong and while she's grateful for it, it's not really something she ever thinks about. She doesn't think twice about keeping Jess perched happily on one hip with his baby bag slung around the other shoulder. She's more than ready to get home, half a mind to cook Raylan something for dinner like an actual goddamn wife and reward his heartily with his husbandly rights.

That's the very last thing she thinks before the top step gives way. Later on, she'll try to remember what happened but in that split second, she managed to get both arms around Jess, pulling him tight as first her shoulder and then face catches the side of the porch, landing her hard on her right side in the dirt. Jess immediately lets out a terrified shriek as Rachel lays gasping on the ground, too stunned to move or to check on Jess. Just gasps and doesn't. move. an inch.

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Danny sees the trail end of it, horror flooding him. For a moment, he doesn't move because he sees Jess in her arms. Soon, though, instinct and training kick in and while he's still terrified for both of them, he's sprinting to their side, skidding to his knees and reaching out. "Babe, Rachel!" he says, panicked. "Hey, come on, hey, don't move. Don't move until I'm sure you didn't smack your head."

"Get Jess, get Jess, get Jess," she gasps, trying to make her hands unclench. She's holding him too tightly. She doesn't want to be touched. She just wants Danny to take Jess and make sure he's okay.

Her face is throbbing, but not enough that she thinks she broke anything. Just glanced off the side. Same with her shoulder and ribs. She hurts, but she barely even feels it.

He listens, swooping up the infant into his arms and holding him close, rocking him gently as he stays close to Rachel, a fraught and distraught look on his face as he stares at her. "Babe, what the hell happened?" he asks, searching around them wildly, waving his free arm at anyone that passes. "Hey! Hey! Can you get a doctor here, someone! Get a doctor!"

"I'm fine," she breathes, slowly and gingerly sitting up. Her fucking face hurts but nothing seems broken. "Is he okay? Danny is he okay." She swivels her head staring at the collapsed stairs hanging from one hinge. "Oh my God."

Danny takes his time to turn his attention to Jess, all his instincts working to calm himself and the ensuing panic. "Ten fingers, ten toes, fully shaped head," he promises, wrapping a protective arm around him so he can crouch down. "What about you, Rach? That was one hell of a tumble," he says, not unconvinced that they shouldn't go for help.

She gingerly touches her face, feeling where she's going to have one massive shiner and swelling but there's no blood. Her shoulder seems a little jammed and ribs bruised but nothing feels like it's going to splinter.

"Danny what the hell happened?" she asks, voice trembling. "They just collapsed. Raylan built this thing it doesn't even shake. Jesus Christ Jess could have died."

"Shh shh, shh," he soothes, not sure whether it's for Jess' or for Rachel's benefit, but when he gets going, he doesn't really want to stop. "You're okay, though. You're here and you're talking to me and you're okay," he says, maybe reassuring himself a little, too.

Rachel carefully scoots over, running a hand along the place where the staircase hinge has ripped away from the porch. The screws aren't stripped at all. They're just loose. "Danny," she chokes out. "Danny this looks like someone loosened these."

Danny doesn't want to jump to any conclusions, especially not when Rachel just took a hard fall and he hasn't brought her to a doctor yet. They don't know what the damage could be and he doesn't want to feed or deny any paranoia. Cautiously, he kneels down with Jess in his arms. "Babe, when did you guys build this place? Screws get loose all the time, you ought to see my old place in Jersey, the things are falling out of the basement stairs from all the pounding down I did on them."

"He finished this porch like a year ago," he hisses. Her mind is whirling but keeps sticking on the same thing. There's no way. She's just a freaky kid. But her gut says she just tried to kill her kid.

"It was rock solid this morning," she grunts, pushing herself up to stand, reaching out a hand to smooth back Jess's hair and kiss his face. She doesn't trust herself to hold him, but she needs to feel he's okay.

"Rachel, you just had a hard fall, okay? Can you please looking for some conspiracy theory about the screws in your porch?" he hisses, holding onto Jess as lightly as he can so as not to scare the young boy. "It was an accident. And if it wasn't, I'm sure it happened by accident."

If it didn't, then Danny's really freaked out. "How about I send Nick this way later today, okay? He'll do a CSI sweep of the place?"

"I'm not crazy, Danny," she murmurs in a hard, low voice as she moves to slowly move with them towards the clinic. "And yes, I want someone to look at it. I..." she trails off, not yet willing to tell him what she thinks. Who she suspects. "I think someone did this."

"I'll talk to Nick, okay? But you have to promise me that if he looks and he doesn't find anything that you'll let it go, just like I'll look into it," he says. "You just had a baby, you're sleep-deprived. Rachel, this is probably just nature. The daily rain showers making the wood contract so the screws don't fit right."

He's close enough that he hears her cry out, hears Jess start screaming a split second lat nd he breaks into a run in his rifle against his shoulder.

"Jesus, Rach," he says, all but skidding to his knees at her side. A glance tells him that Jess is okay, so he focuses on her. "Don't move, okay? What the hell happened?"

"I don't know," she gasps out, fingers letting Jess go one by one. "Take him, Raylan take Jess. Take Jess. Is he okay?"

"He's okay, Rachel," says Raylan, picking him up. He checks him over quickly, finds nothing amiss other than the screaming, which is more shock than anything, and lays him gently down in the grass before he turns back to her.

"What hurts?"

"I..." she starts, bringing one jerky hand up to her face. "I don't think anything's broken. I think I hit my shoulder and my face. Maybe my ribs. It's fine, Raylan I don't care are you sure he's okay?"

"He's fine," he says, again, his hands on, feeling for more obvious hurts. Gently, he turns her face with his fingertips against her jaw. "We'll take him to the clinic and we'll get you both checked out but I just want to make sure that you're not gonna fall apart if I lift you."

He glances at the stairs.

"They just went?"

"I don't...I don't know. They've never even shaken before, Raylan. You built them they were solid," she says, slowly managing to push up to her knees, hand out to stop him from helping. "Carry him; I'll be fine just carry him"

"They were solid," he says, looking at them for a minute. Hell, he'd come down them himself an hour or two before, with no problems at all. He gives her one last look and then turns to pick the baby up because the last thing she needs is to end up agitated.

"Okay," he says, the baby balanced in the crook of his arm, still screaming, as he offers her his hand. "I've got him."

Rachel finally lets herself be pulled up, immediately dropping kisses to Jess's red, angry face. "Those steps didn't so much as fucking wobble," she grinds out, teeth clenched in an effort not to raise her voice. "Someone fucked with it. Christ, Raylan, I could have crushed him to death. I could have dropped him."

"But you didn't," he says, voice firm and level and eyes still on the steps. "Now, we are going to go get both of you checked out and then I am going to come home and I am going to look at the damned steps, okay?"

And that's when he sees it - a flicker in the corner of his eye that looks like Arlo, just for a split second. He doesn't turn his head.

"Please, Raylan, please," she breathes, turning up the path, cradling her rapidly bruising face. "I'm not crazy, okay? Look at them when we get back. I just...something feels really wrong about this."

"I'll look at them," he promises. In the back of his head, he thinks about whether an island that can change all around them between one breath and the next could also fuck with steps. "I promise."

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For Raylan and Danny - Esther plot

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