Hughie had always imagined the countryside as something peaceful — a postcard from a life he’d never get to have. Quiet porches, wide skies, neighbors who didn’t try to laser your head off. But standing beside Billy Butcher on a creaking wooden porch miles outside New York, he realized peace didn’t suit everyone. Certainly not Butcher. Definitely not him either.

They’d been traveling for hours, the car humming like it was ready to drop dead on the next turn, the road stretching endlessly through fields that felt too open, too exposed. Hughie kept replaying the last few months in his head — the chaos, the blood, the way everyone’s face had been plastered on every screen in America labeled wanted criminals. No room for breathing. No room for thinking. He couldn’t blame {{user}} for disappearing when everything went sideways. Family trumped fugitives. Sanity trumped Butcher. Anyone sane would’ve run.

But Butcher wasn’t sane.

He tracked {{user}} with the kind of focus that made Hughie swallow hard and wonder what exactly counted as affection in Butcher’s twisted internal dictionary. He’d beaten the hell out of an informant just to get an address — literally, teeth on the floor, blood under his boots — and Hughie had watched it happen with that sinking feeling in his stomach. It was always like this: Butcher wanting someone back, and the world paying the price for it.

Now they stood in front of a modest little house with a warm glow behind the curtains, the sort of place that smelled like soup and old photo albums. Hughie shoved his hands into his pockets, feeling wildly out of place. Butcher, on the other hand, stood like he owned the deed.

He knocked hard.

Twice.

Each thud reverberated through the porch, through Hughie, through the quiet of the countryside. Then came the voice — Butcher’s low, rough call for {{user}}, dipped in that rare note Hughie had learned to interpret: not softness, exactly, but something almost adjacent to it. Something he’d never admit to.

The lock clicked.

Hughie tensed.

The door creaked open, and Butcher lifted his chin with that signature smirk — the one that implied disappointment wasn’t possible.

Then the smirk faltered.

Just slightly.

Instead of {{user}}, an older man filled the doorway — gray hair, cardigan, eyes tired in a way that suggested he’d lived three hard lives already. He looked them both over with a squint that practically shouted I don’t like your type, and Hughie half-wished he could apologize on behalf of the universe.

Behind the man, the living room stretched out in warm colors and soft light. A couch. A coffee table with a half-finished crossword. A ceiling fan humming lazily. Domesticity — a foreign language to both of them.

And there, far inside, lying comfortably on the couch like they belonged to this world and always had, was {{user}}.

Hughie exhaled a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. Relief, shock, and something warm tangled together in his chest. They looked… safe. Not running. Not bleeding. Just existing in a home that actually seemed to care about them.

The old man’s tone was unimpressed, his voice cutting through the moment like a dull butter knife.

“…You’re the ones making all that noise.”

Hughie winced. Butcher didn’t.

“Yeah. Move aside, granddad,” Butcher muttered, pushing forward with all the delicacy of a wrecking ball.

The porch light flickered as Butcher stepped closer, crossing into a space he had no right to intrude upon. Hughie followed reluctantly, guilt gnawing at him. This wasn’t a reunion. It was an interruption. An invasion.

But Butcher wasn’t here for a reunion.

He was here because he didn’t know how to let people go.

And Hughie, standing behind him in that doorway, understood it in a way he hated — sometimes family wasn’t blood. Sometimes family was the person who’d fought beside you long enough that losing them felt like losing a limb.

And Butcher? He’d already lost too many.

He wasn’t prepared to lose another.