Author's note: Here I go again.

This one's back to being a little rougher around the edges and focuses hard on the relationship between the boys. It's another what-if kind of a tale: what if Bo had gone off traveling with Diane Benson's carnival after all? Imagine the Carnival of Thrills episode proceding pretty much as it did in the series, right up to the point where the boys make the jump. Then send it spinning off into an alternate timeline from there.

Also, the chapters are longer. The structure called for it (and it seems pretty natural to me to write ~5,000 word chapters on average).

Don't own, don't earn, don't mean any harm to those that do.

Cheers!

Chapter 1 -- Favorite Idiot

It makes perfect sense when the afternoon takes on a chill that the morning didn't have, with a damp feel to it, and there might even be a flurry or two hiding in those gray clouds that have gathered to greet him. Bitter, breath-stealing cold that only wanders this far south about once a year, and it would pick the day when he's got a longer walk in front of him than he's taken in a good eighteen months.

Used to be Hazzard kids drifted away from their school desks to stare out the windows at the slightest threat of a dusting of the white stuff. Probably still do, but it's late enough now they should all be out of school for the day, trudging along red clay roads and shivering. Luke used to holler at him to hurry up on days like this, but somehow the icy winds made him move about as well as cold syrup. More often than not he wound up wearing Luke's oversized coat on top of his own and getting just about shoved toward home.

Reckons it would be easier now if he had Luke behind him, but his cousin doesn't even know he's in town. Not a soul except Hobie has seen him, and no one would believe a word that man said, not with the way his brain's been permanently pickled by muscadine wine. I'll get out here, Bo told the town drunk, and it was only partly self-preservation and the desire not to get wrapped around a tree that made him do it. The other part was time and space, and just maybe the chance to think a spell about how to take those steps up onto the porch of the old farmhouse, and how in hell he's going to walk in and face them. Arriving in a car is no way to slink home on his belly.

Shivering along the road isn't a whole lot better, but at least it feels honest. Nothing more than the faded, green duffel bag that's weighing down his left shoulder to his name. Oh there's still some earnings tucked away in there, but not enough, nothing near what he'd like to be able to show for the last year and a half.

Wonders whether it's best to go in head bowed and offering himself up for whatever anger and righteousness his family (well, Luke) would like to heap on him. Then again, he's got nothing to be sorry for. He left with blessings (Uncle Jesse's anyway) and kept to his end of the agreed-upon bargain. And while he was gone he didn't do anything that hurt them in any real way (and Luke would actually agree with him there, because that there is a man that can't be hurt), but there are things he regrets. Things he could have done differently.

He knows better than to worry about the past. As his third grade teacher used to remind him, it's too late now, Beauregard. You should have thought about how sorry you'd be before you hit Ricky Thompson. (Never mind that the punch had gotten thrown in the first place because the rotten kid had called him Beauregard.) Hours in the corner of a classroom meant nothing in comparison to facing Jesse at the end of the afternoon. Didn't matter when he got around to being sorry in the old man's eyes, he was getting whipped.

And Luke would drag him home, shaking his head all the way about fools that were afraid of a whipping that only lasted for a few minutes anyway, but for all his smarts, his big cousin never understood a damn thing, really. How it wasn't the burn of the whip, but the sting of the words that hurt. The misery of the confession, then waiting to hear how Jesse was mortified by what his youngest boy had done. Didn't Bo know there were better ways to deal with problems than to strike out at them that way? Hadn't he learned a single thing in all the years he'd been in his uncle's household? Didn't church teach him right from wrong? Then finally the old man would lower his eyes, and tell Bo to get out to the barn. I'm so mad I can't look at you. I'm ashamed of you, boy.

Luke didn't know a lot about shame because he'd never felt it. The oldest of the Duke cousins was always right, even when he'd started a brawl that got the whole schoolyard rolling in the dirt. Sure, Jesse punished Luke, gave him everything he'd give Bo and more. Wheedled at him, threatened and shamed him with all his might, but Luke never gave in. Whatever discipline their uncle tried to instill bounced off Luke's exterior quick as a skipping stone, because his cousin always knew exactly what he was doing. Luke would as like as not stand up to his full height and give a complete confession. Yes, sir, I did stay out all night with Janie Arnold after the hayride. No, sir, I ain't sorry about that at all. And then, just to make sure there were a few extra licks coming his way, in fact, I ain't got no regrets about that whatsoever.

The wind's getting downright personal about how it's blowing around the collar of the jacket that has no business being in Hazzard, and directly into his ear. Frozen lobe and an earache starting to develop. Maybe slinking home on his belly isn't the best way to go, maybe letting the town drunk drop him off in front of the house would have worked perfectly well. Maybe it's no different from when he was knee-high to a grasshopper and dragging his feet along this same stretch of dirt, dreading what would be there to meet him at home. Except, of course, back then Luke was on his side of whatever happened, even if his superior mouth set itself into a smirk. You're an idiot, was Luke's take on any daily situation, but you're my favorite idiot, and I won't let anyone hurt you.

He's not Luke's favorite idiot anymore. He is, he might have to agree, as his toes start to go numb from the way the cold's seeping through the cloth of the sneakers he's wearing, still an idiot. One without appropriate attire for the weather or the distance he's crossing. At least the fence that has lined the front of the farmyard for his whole life is coming into view now. Same beacon it's ever been on late afternoons when the light's fading and his stomach's growling. Good, old fashioned farm meal on the stove and a warm fire in the hearth. A wool blanket and a down quilt for the depth of night and back when he was little enough, sometimes he'd manage to slip under Luke's with him.

Memories are enough to propel him through the cold air and along the property line, even if his stomach's twisting up into knots. By the time he gets to the driveway it's probably the cold that keeps him moving forward instead of turning tail and heading back to the highway with his thumb out.

The front door looms and he's got to think about it. No one's ever used that door except strangers and fools peddling junk that no one in Hazzard can afford. Heck, even Rosco P. Coltrane wouldn't bother with the Dukes' front porch, though Jesse might want to banish him there. It's the formal entrance, pretty, perfectly painted, and rarely used. Friends, family and anyone familiar enough with the Dukes knows that the way into the house is up those back steps, through that screen door, across the splintering porch there, and into the kitchen. Seems like maybe Bo ought to go knocking like a formal visitor this time, surrounded by tidy whitewashed boards until someone moseys their way down the hall to open the door and see what manner of stranger the winter wind has blown in.

And while his brain is busy thinking that, his feet are carrying him across the yard and around the back, like an old habit he's never really tried to kick. Sees fluttering movement, blue plaid waving on the laundry line, then his name's getting screamed out.

Weight in his arms, hot kisses on his cheek. Daisy. So that was the dark shape that was moving there under Luke's shirts. Given a few more seconds, he would have moved his eyes down to focus there. He drops his duffel bag to the ground just in time to catch his sweet, beautiful-as-ever cousin in his arms.

"Bo!" Good thing his ear's already half numb, or Daisy's screaming voice might actually have hurt it. "Uncle Jesse, Bo's here!"

Aside from Daisy's laundry basket there on the ground, which she's going to need to rescue from the wind in a minute, nothing looks any different than it did the day he left. Same bare patch of dirt under the old oak where they used to drag their feet under the tire swing that once hung there, same assortment of rocks lining the concrete steps to the porch, treasures from childhood arrowhead hunting trips, same way that Dixie and the old white pickup are parked just far enough from the house to require a mad dash to roll up the windows in sudden rainstorms. There's a third car over there, olive green, boxy thing, and it would just figure that his family's already got a visitor. Maybe he'll get lucky and it'll be the tax collector. Might be the only person on the planet that Luke would be less happy to see.

And there's the door, swinging wide, Uncle Jesse bursting through and muttering something about what in tarnation is all the noise about. Daisy turns him loose so she can wheel around and explain that the tarnation is actually the prodigal Duke boy returned, but their uncle has figured that much out.

"My boy," and his uncle's waddling down the stairs to greet him. Bo reckons it's only fair to meet the man at least halfway, what with how his legs are so much longer. "My baby boy," almost makes him laugh, considering that Uncle Jesse has to reach up to hug him. Bo stoops to make it easier, gets beard hair tickling that same ear that's not quite as numb as it seems. Hears the door creak again, and then the man himself is coming out. Jesse turns toward the noise as Bo busies himself with noticing how many more wrinkles his uncle's eyes have collected. "Look, Luke!" the old man says, and the joy in it is forced. "Look who's here!" (You remember Bo, don't you? He's the cousin you used to have, before he went off to make his fortune on the Carnival of Thrills. You remember that, don't you Luke? How you and Bo fought for a solid week about whether he should jump thirty-two parked cars? You reckoned he'd get himself killed, he reckoned you were jealous that Diane chose him for the jump instead of you. Turned out he might just have gotten killed after all if you hadn't saved his neck, like always. You made the jump with him, he finally apologized for being a jackass, and just when it looked like peace might break out between the two of you, he announced he was joining the carnival after all. You remember that, don't you Luke? How you threw up your hands, said, "I give up" and stormed off? How you barely managed to show your face for your cousin's last day here, how you told him to take the General if he was going because you didn't want that dang heap anymore, how you disappeared and didn't come back to see him off, remember, Luke?)

Luke's leaning on the post now, casual stance. Shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows and no sign that he feels the chill, even if his cheeks are pink. Impassive stare, like maybe he really doesn't remember who Bo is.

"Hi, Uncle Jesse," Bo gets around to saying. Odd how no one has noticed his silence. Used to be his uncle would slip a thermometer in his mouth if there wasn't something he was going on about, nonstop. "Daisy," he adds, then, deep breath, "Luke."

His cousin tips back up out of his lean, takes the two steps down in that same kind of confident, fluid motion he's always had. A man who knows his body and how it works, knows he can take any opponent that would bother to throw a fist at him. Jesse steps back, and Bo could be wrong, but it seems the old man might be holding his breath to see what'll happen here. Daisy's got a nervous hand twittering around her mouth like she's worried that maybe there's a trace of lunch still staining her lips. Everything's real quiet and still as Luke looks him over, blue of his eyes as intense as it's ever been.

Bo sticks out his right hand. Figures he's got another hand to spare if Luke wrenches this one right off his body, but it doesn't happen that way. Luke just puts his hand in Bo's, pumps it up and down a couple of times. Feels just like all those times they chanted out their perfunctory sorrys and glared at each other through the handshake. Still, there's a curiosity in the way Luke's eyes hold his.

He's wondering, too, what this peaceful reunion means. Maybe Luke's not holding as many grudges as Bo thinks. Their right hands are still clasped together, so Bo uses his left to grip Luke's bicep, then when he doesn't get shoved away, he slides it up over his cousin's shoulders. Luke's left arm comes around him, too, but their other hands are still clenched there between them. Dang hard to read this thing that's somewhere between a hug and handshake, nothing in it to warm Bo up from his frozen walk. He holds on longer than he figures Luke wants him to, longer than his cousin has ever really tolerated in the past. Still, there's no commitment either way from the man. Bo thumps his cousin's back, waits for the echoing thump. It's how their hugs always end, someone (usually Luke) gets tired of being that close together, and the thump is a warning – this moment of affection's about to end. One of them thumps, the other one thumps back and they release each other.

The second thump never comes, so Bo lets go. Luke does the same, disentangles their right hands from where they've been pinned between their bodies, and walks away. Up onto the porch and pulling open the door. Starts to walk through, but then he turns around and gestures. After you.

Jesse comes back to life from where he's been holding himself stiff over there. Waits for Bo to retrieve his duffle, then grabs him by the elbow and propels him forward. "Well, come on, boy! We wasn't expecting you, but we got plenty to feed you, ain't we Daisy?"

"Of course we do, sweetie," agrees his girl cousin, coming out of her own stupor. "You bet!"

They're walking up the stairs now, a threesome. Warm spots on his arm and back where Jesse and Daisy are holding onto him. "What brings you to Hazzard, boy?"

Yeah, well. That's a story that might want to wait until the old man cracks open the celebratory moonshine.

Just look what the cat done dragged in. By this time he's pretty much figured this wasn't possible. Two harvests and one planting season later and he got to reckoning Diane would keep Bo wrapped around her little finger until he turned just as bitter as old Carl had been, still hanging on to the periphery of the world the little lady spun around herself. Dizzy and discarded and always fancying himself as more important to her than he'd ever be. If anything, Luke expected Jesse would wind up dragging him off to the see the carnival the next time it came within a fifty mile radius, and there Bo would be, limping around on whatever injury Diane's wild stunts had left him with, collecting tickets or selling popcorn.

But no, here's the man himself, sitting at Jesse's right hand, shucking corn and talking about the carnival circuit like it's a world tour, like Murphy, North Carolina actually doubles as Paris come nightfall. Telling tall tales about the NASCAR scouts that came to the show in Greenville (but clearly didn't want themselves a yellow-haired, thick-as-a-brick stunt driver or Bo wouldn't be sitting here in the dingy old kitchen of a Hazzard farmhouse, shivering with every breeze that makes its way around the cracks in the door) and the fans that egged him on to ever greater feats.

Funny how he's talking to Jesse (and Daisy, too, who's at the counter dicing up whatever vegetables she's going to use to thicken the stew for four instead of three, though she's not too diligent about her work, turning around to pat Bo's head every few minutes – her cute, foundling puppy) but any time Bo thinks he can get away with it, his eyes steal away to look at Luke. Who is leaning against the sink, staring right back. Watching how his cousin just sits there and announces he's home to stay in the same casual way he declared he was leaving. Like it shouldn't surprise them, like it won't affect any of their lives one way or the other. Move over, Luke, you've got a roommate again.

"Luke," Jesse says, and it's that same a-hair-too-loud, slowly-delivered voice he's been using since they all stood out there on the hardpan of their own farmyard, pretending to celebrate. Seems like Jesse reckons Bo being home has depleted Luke's IQ by a few points (and there might be some merit in that) so he has to speak carefully, enunciating every syllable, or he'll never be understood. "Tell Bo about your plans for the planting this spring."

Oh, that's laughable. In fact, Luke almost bursts out with a cackle at the ridiculousness of that suggestion. Manages to keep it choked down, but it's still there clawing at the back of his throat, just about ripping it to pieces. Nothing he could talk around even if he tried.

Spring planting. Will entail hiring a couple of guys with a better ratio of brains to brawn than he was able to find last year. Though last year's farmhands, whose names didn't mean enough to Luke to stick in his brain, weren't the worst ones. No, the biggest disaster was that first harvest.

Jesse was on his case from that first week. It's about time you found someone to help us with that harvest, Luke. Best if you pick them out. Which was a nice way of saying that if Luke hired them, he'd have no excuse for complaining about their work later.

Bo was a fool. Jesse would call him a fool in love, but Bo was a fool long before he met Diane Benson, and falling in love didn't make him any more of one. Then again, his brain might have been just as blonde as his hair, but Bo would figure it out soon enough, how Diane's ex-boyfriend, saboteur that he was, wasn't the whole problem. In fact, his cousin had said it best himself, how the carnival came first with Diane. And then, for no reason Luke could figure, after they'd both risked their necks for her, when the General had just about killed himself making that jump so she wouldn't lose the carnival to Boss, Bo announced he was going off with her anyway.

It was – well the two of them had fought it out already. Luke would have sworn that victory was his, and Bo had seen the error of his ways. But in the end both Duke boys lost, and Diane got herself one brainless stunt driver. So Luke just threw up his hands at it all, reckoned if Bo really wanted the girl, he might as well have her. When it came right down to it, that pretty face of Bo's always got him whatever he wanted, right from the first time he'd wagged his toothless gums at Aunt Lavinia.

They didn't bother to revisit the problem of Diane. What they did end up fighting over was the General.

"Take him," Luke said, quick and to the point. "Maybe he'll keep you from breaking your dang neck." Besides, the car preferred Bo – anyone who'd ever seen the way it performed for the boy could attest to that.

"Nah," Bo said, and it was trying to be good natured, but failed. "You need him more than me. I've got Diane." Oh, that there was prideful, and Dukes should know better than to get too sure of themselves.

Lightning shot through Luke's skull, same blinding white he always got when his thoughts violently shut down in deference to his fists. Muscles of his arms twitching in response to fingers clenching then releasing, little warm up exercises.

"I don't," he said, and it was amazing how any sound made it past where his teeth were gritted so tightly together that his jaw ached. "Need no dang car to be my girlfriend, Bo." Which didn't make a lot of sense, not even to him. "I don't want him. You might as well take him because if he's still here when you're gone, he's going down to the crusher." And he'd turned around, deliberate move, away from Bo, out of the reach of where his fists were just itching to punch that red-hot righteousness off his cousin's face. Walked away, two steps, then ten, then—

"Dang it Luke!" Like clockwork. "Get back here. Luke!" He counted the seconds, waited for those scuffling feet to run up behind him, that hand on his elbow, and when it came he was going to—

"Luke!" was coming from nowhere near close enough to mean Bo was following him. Maybe his cousin did have half a brain after all. Too bad he didn't use it when his solicitous girlfriend came around, telling tales of roaring crowds and easy money. "Luke!" one more time, as if Luke had any intentions of turning back to him now, saying sorry, shaking hands and then handing Bo over all nice and neat for the broken neck the carnival was going to earn him.

Nope, Luke kept walking, one end of the farm to the other. Hopped the fence where it was getting rotten anyway, out and across Blacksmith Lane and into the woods there. Old trails under his feet, so familiar that even the dark, when it came, couldn't make him get lost. Was a shame, a man really could do with a chance to genuinely disappear now and again.

By morning, he was exhausted, sweaty in the late summer swelter that never let up. Back across the old Blacksmith Lane, over the fence, through shoulder high rows of corn. Most of the way back to the house when that diesel rumble crowded its way over the morning birdsong and into his ears. Must've gotten back too early, Bo wasn't gone yet. Considered dragging his feet, turning around and heading back into the corn that would only do a half-decent job of hiding him.

He was a Duke, he wouldn't run. He just kept on putting one foot in front of the other, same pace as he'd been going all morning. If it was a little slow, that could be blamed on the fact that he hadn't rested all night. Nor eaten, and a man needed food for energy if he was going to chase after that RV that was pulling away from the front of the house, rolling off down Old Mill Road. He had no energy, so he didn't bother, just watched the arm reaching out the passenger side window, waving toward the front of the house. Glimpse of a blonde, fuzzy head, then Diane must have hit the gas, because the vehicle turned the corner and was gone.

And there, under the oak tree, sat the General. Jesse tsked when he came around the house to see Luke staring at it.

"You missed your cousin," was just rubbing it in.

So the dang General sat there, unwanted, as they all walked around it to live their lives. Daisy might have patted the hood a couple times on her way to Dixie and off to the Boar's Nest, but if she did, Luke sure didn't pay it any mind. About four days in, the sky clouded over and Jesse told him in no uncertain terms that he needed to take care of his things. Same warning he'd gotten some twenty years ago when his 'things' had consisted of a baseball bat and mitt. Can't leave them outside to get rained on boy, got to put them into their rightful place.

Which was how the General came to take up residence next to Sweet Tilly in the second barn. Put away alongside the rest of their past, which included moonshining.

Then the nagging to find hands to help with the farm began. But Luke figured his cousin was like those tiny spider webs he had to walk through each morning on his way out to the barn. Sticky, clingy, and for every dawn that they got broken, they were back by evening chores, to be walked through again. Stuck to his skin, annoying little things that rubbed him in all the wrong ways, and that was Bo. Always there, tickling right up against his skin. No need to hire anyone to do anything, because Bo would be home by evening chores.

And one night Luke was banging around in the barn, getting all the danged hand tools out of the way, and they really ought to have a better storage system. Heavy evening, heat lightning streaking the sky, air just about liquid enough to drown a man. Surrounding him, tight and close, sticking his shirt to his back and his hair to his forehead. Soaked though with his own sweat, and he figured out that this was what loneliness felt like.

Found himself up in the loft and if his face was wet, so was the rest of him, and there wasn't anyone who could say that that part of him was any wetter than any other part.

The next day he'd gone into town, and made it known that the Dukes were looking for labor. Got the bottom of the barrel, because all the best men had already gotten themselves hired work on other local farms. Had to fire those guys after only a week and pick up the slack himself.

"Luke?" Yeah, there's a question he never got around to answering. Same loud, slow tone to Jesse's voice, and it's grating on his nerves.

"We's just about to hire us some farmhands to help with the planting," comes out from between his clenched teeth. Would've made him just as happy to keep his own counsel on the subject. But it's the price he's got to pay to get out of the too-crowded kitchen, hot and stuffy. Before anyone can say anything else to him, he's walking off to his bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

Well. That clears things right up. Bo's money is welcome here, as are the men it can hire. Bo, on the other hand, is not a real part of Luke's thoughts or plans. Hard to blame the man for that, actually. It's been a year and a half since he was last here, and it seems the farm has ticked right along without him.

It's really going to put a hitch in Luke's get-along when Bo admits that the cash tucked away in his bag is just about enough to buy seed corn, and nothing more.

"We still got goats?" Someone's got to break the silence Luke dumped on them. Family policy dictates that an angry Luke gets left alone to cool off while the rest of them huddle together and wait for his next exhibition of bad behavior.

Jesse's nodding there at his side, still peeling the hide off an ear of corn like Luke hasn't just turned his back on the whole bunch of them. "Bonnie May and Ginger," he acknowledges.

"Keep them in the same place?" Bo asks, shoving his chair back. His hands seem to be already free, must've happened when he dropped his ear, still mid-shuck, on the table after Luke walked out. Up on his feet and pulling his coat off the back of the chair where he left it when Jesse welcomed him in, then put him to work on making his own supper. Exactly like old times, right down to how his oldest cousin just watched the proceedings, feeling no compulsion to jump in and help.

"Now, Bo, you ain't got to go—" that's Daisy, but she has no real idea what he's got to do.

"Bucket still by the back stoop?" he interrupts. It's not polite, but he reckons getting out fast is more important than being nice.

"That jacket ain't warm enough," is Jesse's acknowledgement that Bo's going out there, no matter what Daisy has to say on the matter. They need the milk to serve with dinner anyway; why not let the willing family member go out into the chill after it? "Take Luke's," head nod to indicate where it's hanging on that same old hook by the door.

Now that right there poses an interesting conundrum. What's Luke's is his, or always has been anyway. But that was before Bo went out and got himself something Luke didn't have: a serious girlfriend, a paying job, and a life outside of Hazzard.

"Mine's fine, Uncle Jesse," and he's out on the porch before anyone can argue the point. What's a little cold after the way Luke's already frozen him out?

There's quiet muttering going on when he gets back to the kitchen; his uncle's voice isn't loud and deliberate anymore. Apparently Daisy's IQ is not affected by Bo's presence, only Luke's.

Could be he should blame Jesse for any Bo-related brain damage anyway. All those years in the same room with a boy who had no understanding of the words quiet and still. Might just be that if Luke hadn't been exposed to him from early childhood, his own concentration skills might have been better, and he could have brought home those grades Jesse always wanted him to get. You're smarter than that, the old man would say every time Luke laid a perfectly reasonable C-average report card in front of him. Might have done better without a live-in distraction.

And now that Bo's back, Luke's concentration is about to get scattered to the wind again. Not that it matters; farming, like C-averages, doesn't exactly tax Luke's brain. Hard work, but the same danged routine over and over, complicated only by nuisance problem-solving like (who to hire by way of farmhands) combating summer pests.

He's made space for his cousin again. Not that he has encroached a lot on what was once Bo's; he pretty much stayed out of that side of the room. But his clothes drifted over the center line in the closet, and at some point he confiscated Bo's sock drawer, if only to give his own underclothes more room to breathe and less of a chance to get wrinkled. But everything's back to its rightful place now; there's plenty of room whenever Bo wants to get around to unpacking that duffle bag of his. And then there's the bed; musty old sheets probably hadn't been changed since the morning Bo hopped into Diane's RV and waved his happy fingers in goodbye to everything he'd ever known. Luke's fixed that now, fresh sheets for his cousin, and he's switched their bedspreads so Bo's will smell fresh. Luke can deal with some neglected, old blankets for one night.

Everything's ready for his cousin to move back in, even if Luke might advise him to turn right around and go back the way he came.

And there in the kitchen, where the prodigal cousin is nowhere to be seen, Daisy's quiet voice is saying, "I'm worried about him, Uncle Jesse." Yeah, little boy blue must've lost his girl somewhere in the last year and half. It's a tragedy, really, and requires a great deal of worry on Daisy's part. He lingers in the doorway, waiting for Jesse's sage response about how gentle loving will surely cure the boy of his heartbreak. But the old man doesn't get a chance. "Where are we going to put him? He can't stay in the same room with Luke."

Must've shifted his weight on that old board that creaks, because suddenly Daisy's turned away from her ministrations over the old pot to look at him, wide eyed. Jesse's probably staring, too, waiting for Luke to explode into angry little shards all over their nice, clean kitchen.

"I ain't gonna hurt him, Daisy," he informs her, calm and quiet, and it's not his fault her mouth is gaping for something to say as he turns on his heel and heads back to the temporary quiet of the bedroom he just cleaned up in honor of his cousin moving back in.