Slingin' from the hip, never the heart. | Open Post

[tinstar]

Raylan's job took him everywhere, from Harlan to Los Angeles to Paris. The Marshals service was demanding but Raylan leaned into the work, traveling as needed to get to get his man.

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[tinstar]

Raylan's grin peaked in its spread at the admonishment, eyebrows bouncing up a little as he bobbed his head. What are you gonna do about it, old man. They both still had plenty of years to learn something new, to still be surprised by the world. Or themselves, though that was less likely than the rest.

"You'd have to sharpen up in different areas, that's for sure. Tech bein' what it is." Paperwork, cameras, trails. All the best ways that people like him chased people who broke the law. Regardless of the reason why they broke it.

But Raylan was interested in Wynonna, and the type of woman that would snag Doc's eye, forehead creasing as he frowned gently in faint confusion. Of course, the crack at the end broke it back into an innocent smile, Raylan blinking big dark eyes at him.

"I don't have the faintest clue what you mean by that. My file is thick based on bias and nothin' more." Complete lie. But back to Wynonna.

"But rules are meant to evolve to a situation.. Even though I work for the Federal Government, I still support not trustin' it in whole. Especially some of the agencies." like the FBI. Don't get him started. "What do you mean 'went after the wrong sheriff'?"

[thering]

"Maybe they just don't like the look of your face," Doc teases. He has heard many defences before. Has himself needed to produce such defences. But different times necessitated different courses of action. It was one man's word against another's and who could outdraw whom where a bottle of your special occasion whiskey couldn't solve a disagreement. They didn't need any lawyers to prove anything. Maybe Raylan would have lived well in his time. But you can't choose where and to whom you are born.

"The Earps are... caught up in something you would find hard to believe." More so than Doc Holliday still being alive and kicking is hard to believe. Nevermind the whole getting his best friend's great great granddaughter pregnant and all. Well, he does love them hot and batshit crazy, so on that front Wynonna has got those covered at least. There are complications there - which relationship doesn't have any, really? - but he tries not to think of the two of them as anything more than... whatever the term is these days for consenting adults who enjoy sleeping and killing and watching the occasional TV program together. Maybe that term is simply a special kind of... family friend.

"When I was close to death, Wyatt rode to Purgatory, take care of the sheriff. Word is he was terrorising the town. Before he could put the sheriff down, he cursed Wyatt Earp and all his descendents. The seventy seven people that Wyatt killed would come back every time the next Earp heir turned 27, a little more feral and demonic each time. It was the sheriff's wife Constance who came after me." Doc glances over at Raylan and sighs, lowering his gaze as his jaw shifts uncomfortably. It is what they do, going around hunting resurrected unsavoury characters. There is little time to be spent on more conventional endeavours.

"She's got 27 good years with her baby, should she choose to keep it." Doc is actively choosing not to get attached to any idea of a happily ever after. There is no such thing. "And then it all goes to shits, all over again. That is if they both live that long. I... God I pray that they do, but. I do not think they will."

[tinstar]

"Maybe so," Raylan agrees with a curl of his features and a bob of his head. He did have the tendency to rub some people the wrong way, only made worse by his childish poking of said raw rub, just to get what he wanted. Raylan might have done well in Doc's time, but he'd rather have been born in the one he was.

Just for basic vaccinations and medicine, if he were honest.

"We're caught up in something I find hard to believe so that door's hinge has already been greased." But he hadn't asked his question idly, and watched Doc's features as he spoke, and as he got into Magics, Raylan leaned forward a little bit in his consumed interest. As Doc finished, Raylan had to chew it over, expression saying just that as he sat back in his chair, eyes casting off the porch again. Eventually they came back to Doc.

"Also means that the family line has managed to continue in.. very short busts of time. Well shit, Doc," was all he could say for another minute.

"So you get seventy seven that you gotta put down every time a new Earp hits 27? Was the.. the sheriff's wife the one that cursed you? Saved you?" Was it a little bit of both, considering that Doc was dying anyway?

[thering]

"Pffuh. It's just your everyday kidnapping, possibly trafficking depending on what they're after." Nothing too strange about that, apparently. Maybe it would make things a little easier knowing what they want, why they have been put here. It's the question that many people have been asking, after all. But hey. If there isn't going to be an easy road back, maybe it's better that it's two lone wolves chewing out their cowboy hats than the people they know.

"Mm, that would be her. We did get her, in the end. Took care of her without getting myself killed in the process." They're... linked? It's complicated. And Doc isn't going to get into the details. He doesn't even know the full details of it himself.

"They haven't... hm... I mean no one's managed it yet. And I don't think it ends, after that." That would be too simple. It's perhaps worse than the fate of being trapped alone in the dark, just having to watch them all die. He has grown quite fond to the girls.

"Honestly Raylan I don't know it's going to work. I'm not just a bartender. We are violent people in a violent place doing violent things, and I know it. It just- ain't what anyone deserves." This isn't worrying about your baby's first steps or their first day of school or their first date or the first time they put their foot down on the gas pedal. This is going to be Doc and Wynonna arguing over why they should or shouldn't be putting a gun in a hand too small with a thumb too short to reach the hammer and this constant need to protect someone, not being able to let go or even let them out of their sight for half a second, always fearing the worst.

Underneath all that is what Doc doesn't want to say, about Earps, Hollidays, and Givenses, but that Raylan will understand precisely because he doesn't want to say it out loud. They are who they are because of the luck of the draw, and because they are who their violent worlds need them to be in order to survive. There are enough cold and hard people in this world, and if he can help it he doesn't want anyone else to turn out like himself. Or Wynonna. Or Raylan.

[tinstar]

"There ain't nothin' every day about this place except you and I, if you haven't noticed." Raylan had no doubts that Doc absolutely noticed. "Traffickin'", he scoffed as his head turned back out to the porch and the scoff betrayed him into a short laugh that he tried his best to bury in emptying his cup. "Like we got anythin' worth the trouble we'll cause in the tryin' to keep us."

Raylan wasn't going to ask for the details. Even if Doc did know them, hearing them alone wasn't going to make him understand and it was a pointless path to wander down without context. It wasn't like he was suddenly gonna figure it out.

"A whole lotta live ain't what anyone deserves. No one deserves half the shit that's thrown at 'em." He sat forward to tug that moonshine bottle back out from under the table they'd stowed it away under like it was something they were keeping neat and tidy, hidden from no one but tucked away per the social rules nonetheless. "But that is a lot to deal with. I hope like hell to keep Willa away from Law enforcement, away from the people like her granddaddy, like her roots.."

He popped the cork and poured a generous amount in his mug, holding the bottle out in offer to pour Doc some more too.

"Don't matter much what I'd do, so I won't bother. What I will say is that you got the skills and intestinal fortitude to figure it out. I know that kids are.. soft and innocent. Full of possibility.. Only a rare few ain't got but a single option for their path for in life. You help raise that little girl. You help teach her to be proficient. You do your best. Hope for the best.. What else can anyone do. Don't start killin' yourself over decisions you haven't even made yet."

[thering]

"I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be considered 'every day', neither. Think you're on your own with that one, Marshal." Sometimes Doc does enjoy the limelight, and he likes being special. Sometimes he shies away from it. But the fact of the matter is, just because it's easy to forget he's more than a century and a half old sometimes doesn't mean that Doc is any less strange than the other people or the other things that are happening in this town. At least he is able to be an anomaly that Raylan can blend into. Surely two cowboys don't stick out more than just the one.

"Sometimes you cannot protect them from everything, hard as you may try." Sometimes you are the problem that you are trying to protect someone else from. Doc understands that too. He doesn't quite make eye contact as he holds his mug out for an unhealthy ration of moonshine. He would never risk asking if it is maybe too much or perhaps too early or say or do anything other than bring his drink in close once Raylan has finished pouring and peering into his rippling reflection before taking a drink.

"I think we're in the same boat for that. Not mattering much what we would do." Doc is actively rejecting the notion of making any plans beyond taking things one day at a time. Maybe decisions will be made that will require his input. Maybe there will be none. He is not allowing himself to get involved any more than he already has. For Doc it is not a matter of sticking his head in the sand as much as it is not wanting to meddle in something that, for better or worse, he doesn't feel is his place to interfere in. But maybe Raylan does perceive this very conscious, deliberate distancing as strange.

"Well if we can survive living on this I'm pretty sure we're set to survive this place at least," Doc jokes, lifting his glass of moonshine to gesture at what good shit he is referring to, changing the subject again to more neutral, friendly banter territory. "Whatever else is waiting for us back home, however we get there, it's a whole other problem for another day."

[tinstar]

Raylan bobbed his head, begrudgingly. It was more than odd to be the most 'every day' of the bunch of them, part of why he'd gravitated so easily to Doc's like type habits and mannerisms. There was a comfort there, in their large group of two. It wasn't as though Raylan really forgot but it was easy to let slip from the forefront of his mind that Doc was coming on a hundred and seventy.

Pouring out, the bottle was set back down so he could get back around his own cup. He wouldn't find any argument to the idea that it was too early or too much - they had nowhere to go. Nothing to do.

"Even if you could, we shouldn't want to. Not everything. Shit shapes a person. Either way, we could never think of all the things that might happen." One day at a time kept the plate that was already heavy enough, a little lighter. He didn't understand Doc's distancing but.. he doesn't have to. Understanding wasn't going to give him any secrets or gifts that would change Doc's mind. Man had a right to make it up the way he wanted to.

Raylan huffed a chuckle. "If we can survive this, we'll survive anything. Pretty sure we're workin' on being test subjects for how to liquidate our livers. They might need a doc for us, we keep goin' at this pace for weeks more. Somehow," he mused with a look into his cup with a pull of his lips before he spoke into it as he lifted it up for a drink, "I doubt we're going to stop."

[thering]

"Oh you and I have stomached worse things, I'm sure." There has been no reason to stop, so far. Doc doesn't think he would find any reason to in the coming days. He is in a better mood when he's had a glass, aboe to think more clearly than when he is cranky and grumpy, and other people who have had a glass themselves would find him more tolerable too. It's a win-win situation, as far as he's concerned.

"Suppose we are turning in after this bottle. That's about as responsible as I am willing to be." Gives them a little bit more time to finish up, but not too much that they might risk filling in the silences that fall between them with questions or suggestions that might go too far.

[tinstar]

Raylan chuckled and sighed, setting his hat a little too far forward on his face as he laid his head back against the chair. "Far too many to tell," he admitted with a heavy hefted breath that sounded fairly satisfited with how they'd spent their evening.

He glanced at the bottle from under the rim of his hat with a nod and settled back down. "Probably a good idea. Else we're gonna pass out out here and I don't know how safe that is. Malcolm would hate to come down at see us lookin' like to CowboyPopcicles out here." He heaved another deep breath.

"Might as well finish inside, let our toes remember what it's like to be warmed by actual heat and not moonshine,mm?" Raylan pushed his hat back and stood up, wobbling a little before getting his feet under him. "Maybe we don't wait for the rest of the bottle," he admitted with a laugh.

[ooc: yeah, I feel the wrap up of this one comin' you wanna cap it off?]

Sure 👍

[thering]

"My soul is unwilling but my toes might agree with you," Doc jokes. He doesn't think he has much of a soul left anymore, but that's another topic of misery for another miserable day.

Standing mostly upright out of sheer stubbornness, he reaches over to get the door, holding it open long enough for Raylan to get inside. A heavy hand claps against his back on his way in and Doc follows soon after, letting the porch door swing closed behind them. Thought of conquering the stairs is a little daunting right now but with a few laughs and clumsy bruises on their way to the promise of a dreamless sleep in a soft, warm bed, they can probably manage the feat between the two of them coordinating their efforts leaning against each other on their way up.

But first. They have a drink to finish in the dark.