Author's note: Just like my last longer story I feel compelled to warn you that some folks may not care for this one. I have no interest in disturbing anyone else's vision of the Dukes, so if you're not enjoying the story, feel free to opt out.

Another warning: proper grammar usage in fiction seems to be a thing of the past for me. (Also, the language is sometimes a bit rough, but never worse than PG-13.)

I have to thank Card for the sort of "idea pool" that we have created, and Gia for putting up with and encouraging me through my "I need a plot" crisis.

As always, I own nothing but the words (and the occasional original character), earn nothing for what I post here, and appreciate the feedback.

Chapter 1 – The Rest was Disaster

Luke, at least, had the good sense and grace to be born at nine-thirty in the morning. Oh, he'd heard about having pained his Mama all night, but when it came down to it, all the work involved in getting him birthed had taken place after morning chores and before the heat of the day. Was done with his dramatics, cleaned up and in his mother's arms in time for a mid-morning nap, to hear Jesse tell it.

And Jesse should know, having midwived him. Good boy, didn't put up much of a fight, came quiet, eyes already open and studying the world. He'd heard it a million times, almost always followed by "who would have guessed what a handful he'd turn into." Which just went to prove that they'd all, from the moment he'd shown up in the world, expected more of him than he could ever be.

Bo came along somewhere around zero-dark-thirty. Oh, Jesse didn't call it that, it was the latent Marine in Luke that supplied those words. Jesse said something closer to "even the good Lord was sleeping when Bo finally decided to stop poking around in his Mama's belly and get on with living." Seemed like Bo done decided to get born and then changed his mind a couple of times in those last days, too. He was trouble from the beginning so it was no surprise how he turned out, and everybody loved him for it anyway.

Didn't matter, leastwise not much. They were both lucky to have a home and to be loved at all. And the type of home they had, the brand of love they were given, let them have more fun than most of the folks they'd grown up with. Moonshiners kept their own hours, wrote their own rules, laughed hard and often.

Bo was laughing now, driving like a fool, blonde hair in his eyes as he looked at Luke instead of the road.

"Pay attention, Bo," a casual reminder because the fact was, Bo didn't need to keep an eye on the road, but it was just tempting fate, letting him get too comfortable about that. And saying it didn't change a thing, except maybe the angle of Bo's eyes. He was still grinning like all the world was a fresh-from-the-oven brownie and he had an endless supply of whipped cream for the top. And the only reason for that incredible glee was having hit that last dip in the road just perfectly for a fun little hop.

Luke really would have thought that something would have put an end to that smile long ago. The loss of their parents, or if Bo was too young to have been aware of that at the time, maybe Aunt Lavinia's death. The poverty that they'd skirted the edge of all their lives, maybe, or the threat of prison looming over them when they'd gotten caught on that moonshine run. If nothing else, the monotony of their current lives should have done it – relentless pursuit by the inept law of Hazzard and the sort of weekly triumph of the Duke boys over the Dipsticks. But there Bo was, grinning like he always had and maybe he always would, and maybe, just maybe, that was what made Luke's life tolerable.

Luke was not that innocent. There was enough evidence of that fact sitting in plain sight throughout the county, from the scar in the oak tree at the intersection of Ridge and Pond Roads (left behind after Luke nicked it with the old farm truck, racing Cooter before he was even legal on the roads) to the way that Rosco's trigger finger twitched at the mere sight of him.

Girls, though, the ones that didn't have any sense anyway, always fell for Luke's wide-eyed act, that almost-shy way he could look, like he was half embarrassed by their attentions. Whatever he actually felt by way of discomfort had to be very short-lived, because he always managed to get over it in time to take them someplace private and questionably romantic.

Luke wasn't that innocent and anyone who had grown up with him knew it. Rosco didn't fall for it anymore (except when he did) and even Enos was a bit suspicious after twenty-odd years of seeing Luke in action. Jesse threatened to tan his hide for it (and for some reason, this threat still worked) and Daisy played along when it served a purpose, but always let him know, in no uncertain terms, that she was fully aware of what he was up to.

But none of them, no one but Bo, knew the half of it (well, maybe Jesse did, he always knew more than they thought he should). There wasn't anyone else that was almost always there when Luke started things, put on his who-me? face and then found one way or another to finish it. No one else got nearly the dirty looks that Bo did for starting things, but at least being honest about it. Jumping the gun, Luke called it, but Bo knew better. It was just admitting, outright, something's wrong and it's up to us to fix it. Luke, he always pretended to be patient, to wait for things to fix themselves. But as soon as he had the excuse, Luke appointed himself chairman of the Fix-it Committee and set directly to work. Sometimes he was in such a rush that he didn't even bother to form the rest of the committee. Just "Let's go, Bo" and the rest was disaster.

And then there was today. Luke's nose wrinkled like he smelled manure, chin coming up and muscles tensed, and all this just on entering the Boar's Nest. Bo couldn't get a whiff of whatever it was that Luke did, but the place was reasonably crowded, and he could see the usual mix of townsfolk and truckers. The pulse of the place felt normal: could explode into a brawl or just settle into a normal yaw and sway without ever quite tipping over.

Except for Luke, whose head rocked back so he could watch the scene through slits of blue, as if the filter of his eyelashes would reveal to him the trouble he sought (and if there was no trouble, Bo knew well enough that Luke could start some all on his own). Already tired of his cousin's hyper-alert mood, Bo headed to the bar to get them some drinks. A watery beer or two and Luke would settle down. Probably. Besides, there were a couple of relatively cute girls by the bar, girls Bo had never met. They were the most promising kind, the ones who noticed for the first time how tall he was, what pretty hair he had, and didn't know any better about succumbing to his sweetest smile. If Luke wouldn't keep him company, surely one of the girls would.

"Howdy," he greeted the girls, using his left hand to signal Daisy for two beers, even as he shook hands with his right, turning on the charm. "Name's Bo Duke, what's yours?" Another thing that would annoy Luke, if his cousin hadn't already drifted across the back end of the place with that same slightly tipped head, complete with scowling face. Luke found a corner seat, the kind he liked best, where he could scan the crowd for whatever his pessimistic mind figured was already there. Daisy was back already, sticking a beer into each of Bo's hands, and why in heck had he ordered two? Now he had to leave the girls (full of promise as they were, named Cherry and Louise) to go back to his surly cousin, at least long enough to drop off a beer and make some token effort at settling Luke down. Grabbed the drinks and nodded to the girls, an assurance that he'd be right back in the movement of his head, acceptance of that fact in a lip-biting smile from Cherry. Luke could have Louise, if he could get over his suspicious ways.

But heading back to his cousin, snaking his way through tables in a much clumsier way than Daisy usually did, he just about bumped into whatever it was that Luke had smelled. Men, unfamiliar, way too sober for the place and moving toward the bar, past Bo, not gently, but with no real harm intended either. Just single-minded in whatever they were doing and exactly the type Luke would watch. Nine times out of ten, there was no good reason for it, but that tenth time, Luke came in handy. Still, it seemed like the bar would settle back down in the wake of their passing.

"Luke," he said, handing him the beer that had sloshed over the side a bit when he crossed from the bar, keeping the intact one for himself. Luke frowned about it, but didn't bother to argue. "Come with me back to the bar. There's a couple of ladies…"

"Bo," and there was some kind of a warning in that tone. "Sit down."

"Luke." There were more important things than his cousin's mood. Like Cherry and Louise. "Come on…" There was more to that sentence, something about girls and the bar, but by then all hell had broken loose.

Blue blur to his left before he could even spin around toward the bar and the trouble. Luke was gone, but there was nothing to be worried about. Except that Bo might miss out on the fun unless he got moving. And by the time he turned back to look at the bar there were bodies flying everywhere. Luke still had both feet on the ground though, and there was no sign of Hazzard's excuse for law enforcement. That was all the invitation Bo needed to jump into the middle of this thing.

A tangle of bodies, in front of him and at his feet, and he took more hits that he dished out, probably. Didn't hurt worth mentioning. If you'd ever been hit by Luke Duke (and Bo only really had a couple of times) you knew what it meant to take a punch. The rest of the riff-raff in the Boar's Nest couldn't come close.

And this was definitely the riff-raff. Here came one now, all full of bravado and adrenalin and beer, and it didn't take more than a half-hearted swing of Bo's fist to send that one flying. Used to be he and Luke had to work to clear a room, but the next fool that came tripping over barstools to get at him was as hapless as the one before, in fact landed pretty much on top of the last guy Bo had hit. Looked up to see who was next, and caught Luke's eyes. He'd expected his cousin to have a one-sided grin about the whole thing, what with him having been right about trouble brewing and the chance to beat the tar out of a few fools dumb enough to start trouble in the Boar's Nest when the Duke boys were there. But Luke's eyes were big and his mouth was in that O shape, like he'd just finished shouting Bo's name, and then there was nothing at all.

A stool, damn it, a stool. They got broken all the time, and people did wield them as weapons, but not that way. Over someone's back sure, and legs first so they'd shatter and scare everyone, but never over someone's head, never the hard seat of one into the back of someone's skull like that. People in Hazzard weren't that mean.

Bo hadn't even put a hand out to catch himself on the way down. He had to be out. And the stool-wielding fool wasn't done yet, was between Luke and his cousin, and still waving the damn thing in the air.

Thought stopped; reflex took over. Too bad for the big (he really was big, and he was one of the guys Luke had watched from the start, too big; heavy, pudgy face under that beard somehow looking like someone's sweet baby boy) ape with the stool.

Luke knew how to fight and he knew how to bring an end to a fight, and he didn't need a makeshift weapon to do it, either. The stool was wrenched out of the goon, the jerk who had hit his cousin, the idiot's hands and was across the open space of the Boar's Nest in record time, funny, he didn't remember throwing it. All the same, there it went, and then there was the face of the guy in front of him. Dumb surprise on that face, and then he was gone, Luke must have hit him, too. Yeah, come to think of it, his knuckles did hurt a bit, but he only noticed that because he needed to use that had, his right, to check for Bo's pulse. Instinct, stupid one at that, since Bo was visibly breathing. He just wasn't awake and that was bad. Wasn't awake and there was blood, and there was –

"Bo! Baby, are you all right?" Daisy. There was Daisy.

"Get Rosco." That was pointless. "Get an ambulance!"

And she was gone, because that was how things broke up, the way he'd always insisted it had to work. Daisy went for help and Luke took care of Bo. Bo, who was pale, clammy, bleeding, and out cold.