tinstar | Slingin' from the hip, never the heart.

"We'll pull one of the mattresses down to the living room. It'll be like a sleep over." Given with a smile, Raylan pulled himself out of the car and got the groceries from the back.

"Just follow me until we can get some lights on." It was better, less creepy with the lights on. He just hadn't been able to handle the silence and being alone, tormented and left with his memories and his heartache and had driven all the way back to Lexington a few nights, to sit in a booth of some diner to soak in the light and the life of other people. The lack of terror in the air.

Athena sticks close, taking one of the grocery bags to feel like some kind of useful. She's pretty sure, in her light-blind vision from the car, that she sees headstones to their left.

She's not positive they're there, but she shuts her eyes anyway, taking a handful of Raylan's shirt to guide her way until they're inside and the lights are on.

Somehow, it's not what she expected. She's not sure what she did expect. The place is a little battered, a lot worn, but it's just... a house. A regular, people-spent-lives here house. She loops one arm around Raylan's, leaning her head against his shoulder.

Raylan grew up here. It's weird to think about a tiny drawling cowboy, and she wonders for the first time what he was even like as a kid.

For a second she's not sure what to say, then: "I'll have you know that if there are any embarrassing photo albums anywhere in this building, I will find them."

Edited 2021-09-19 02:20 (UTC)

Athena had their food too; very important. Raylan wasn't sure if Athena had seen the headstones, but it was too macabre for him to warn her about now. He was more concerned with getting them in and getting those lights on.

That effort was stopped short once he'd kicked on the first few, finding himself with another Bard Barnacle that he embraced with a soft smile as Athena tucks herself against his shoulder. He wasn't sure how she was going to find the place. He wanted to see it through her eyes; eyes that hadn't seen Arlo screaming and ranting back and forth, eyes that hadn't seen the blood splatters that had long been covered up and painted over.

If walls could talk.. He'd burn this place down.

Instead, he squeezed her shoulders softly and huffed half a laugh. "If you wanna see me when I was about nine or ten, there's a picture on the nook between the kitchen and the dining room. Which is where we oughta head. Dunno about you but I'm hungry."

It was easier, somehow, to slip back into what he oughta be which was totally fine, with her here. She was someone to keep that face up for and despite them only having been here a few minutes, he already felt a little lighter in here. Squeezing her shoulders again, he stepped forwards and away from her, unloading onto the aforementioned dining room table.

She relaxes a little, perking up at the memory of promised waffles. She's also going to beeline for that picture. Athena picks it up almost reverently when she finds it, smiling at his tiny self. "You look like a noodle."

The picture was him in his little school baseball shirt, his mother, and Helen. Briefly, he wondered what Aunt Helen would make of the scrappy young woman who had barreled most unexpectedly into his life and her home. She'd like Athena, he thinks. Spine and spunk in the face of danger.

Stacking their boxes and the bags, Raylan headed into the kitchen proper with a passing smile at Athena as he passed by. Athena's waffles were popped into the microwave first, plated up on a older print plate that would speak to its age when she got to the bottom of it. While that warmed, Raylan put away the rest of the stuff.

""Hadn't grown into my shoulders yet. You're not gonna find much more than that though, I'm afraid. Aunt Helen fought with Arlo somethin' fierce to keep it up." Athena could guess as to why.

Athena smooths her thumb over the glass in the frame, smiling a little.

"I want a copy," she decides. Executive order. Athena gently sets the photo down and joins him in the kitchen, inhaling the scent of (re)hot waffles with a relish that most people save for things like cocaine. She waited until he'd sat himself down with his own food to attack hers--Lenore had managed to squish at least that much into her when it came to manners.

She pauses mid-waffle to look at him, a little uncertain. "So... what do we do? Now that we're here?"

He only hummed in response as he mounted her waffles with whipped cream and chocolate chip sprinkles on top before tending to his own food. He'd see about that. Raylan didn't really notice that Athena was waiting for him to dig in, but give it a few more meals and he would.

"You get to rest. Take the time to reset yourself and heal. It'll take a few days to run down Jeff and Lenore's names at least." If they were even here. He hadn't gotten to thinking about that far yet - What they would do if they proved to not be in the same world.

"And after Mathis.." he poked around with a fry for a second before looking up at her. "I had a pretty rough time when I came back. I don't want you to have to go through it alone."

Rest. She’s never been very good at that. Rest, in this quiet place, in the middle of nowhere, when she might be alone again.

Well. Mostly.

Not alone.

She gives Raylan a tentative little smile. “…Can I see it, where like. You went to school and shit like that?”

Lifting his eyebrows over his bite of food, shrugging as he cleared it, he nodded. "Sure, if you want. Not much to look at, compared to what you're used to. I can take you up in to some of the other hollers too, show you some of the mines, abandoned and otherwise."

She might not know it, but he had a story or three for nearly each Holler. But he'd also show her the slurry pits. For him, there was no escaping what the cost of coal was for Harlan.

Edited 2021-09-19 14:40 (UTC)

“Look, after Mathias, ‘what I’m used to’ isn’t what it used to be.”

She makes an amused little noise at her own accidental play on words. For another minute, she eats, wondering whether or not this is too fraught a question to ask.

“Um… Your guy, Boyd, he’s in Harlan somewhere too, right?”

He bobbed his head in concession. Mathis changed a lotta things.

"Yeah. Him and Ava and Winona.. Here's hopin' we don't have to see him," he sighed as he popped another fry into his mouth. "I don't plan on showin' you his bar, either. Before you ask."

She ducks her head, grinning a little. "Man, I bet I could even get away with buying myself a drink down here, too."

Raylan's eyebrows almost did a wave as he looked over at her, the arch starting at one side and, in a roll, ended with his other eyebrow raised.

"You want a drink, you can have a drink, here. Shame Mags Bennett isn't still alive; she had an Apple Pie Moonshine to die for. Worth a sip, even for the younger folk." Yeah, he bent a few rules.

The grin is no longer hidden, and it's aimed shamelessly his way. "It's not the drinking part, it's the getting it when I shouldn't be able to part."

He bobbed his head in confirmation as he speared a few more of his fries. "Outlaw rule number one: It don't count if you don't get caught." Raylan's eyes glittered as he tucked his fries into his mouth.

"'Sides, you deserve a little fun. A little.. Supervised rule breakin'. Won't hurt you, scientifically speakin'."

"Are you going to help? Is that the supervised part?" She puts a too-large bite of waffle in her mouth, chokes slightly, then manages to swallow.

Raylan snorted as she choked.

"Chew darlin', you got plenty of waffle to get through. And yes, that's the supervised part. There's some harmless fun to be had around and I'm not a Marshal all the time."

Only half a lie. He was a Marshal when he needed to be.

"But that'll be in a few days. We probably oughta get through one night at a time. Hope you don't mind old TV and popcorn."

“As long as it’s b-movie style garbage.”

Her smile goes a little quieter, watching his face. “Fuck, I’m sorry I took so long to show up.”

Edited 2021-10-01 00:00 (UTC)

"All old westerns are by that gauge," he said, smile curling as he cleared off the rest of his plate. TV was one of the things that had gotten him through some shit when he was a kid; they were predictable, most of the time, mostly all carrying the same tone under the 70's grade haze that films had around the edges of the (normally) Spanish countryside it was all shot in.

The edges of his smile fell a little before curling down with a little shake of his head as he pushes his last uneat fries around. The lapse in conversation, however brief, wasn't silent - the crickets were out and there was a breeze that rustled the trees, the sound carrying with the soft buzz of natural white noise.

"There's no controllin' that kinda thing, so there's no need to be sorry. I spent the first week an' a half thinking that I had fully lost my mind. Gone sideways in the head like Arlo has. Like.. maybe I'd made you and Mathis and Jeff and-" Malcolm, Doc, Neal, Klaus. The first two in that list broke his heart more than he could stand to say and he hadn't so much as said their names aloud since returning.

"But I decided that even my imagination couldn't be that creative and vivid. Hurt too much to think that it wasn't real so after a while.." Raylan shrugged. Maybe he'd succumbed. But this was Athena and Raylan wasn't going to sugarcoat or bottle up this.

"You're here now. Confirmation that I'm not. Hell darlin', it's like Christmas."

If her eyes are a little watery, it's definitely because of choking on that bite of waffle. For a second she looks for something to say, and she lands on, "Fuck it."

Softly said, but still. Athena gets up, circles the table, and hugs him tight again.

Raylan blinked a few times at her answer, catching onto her plan as soon as she stood up but the half waved gesture of dismissal was ignored as Athena wrapped around him. It might be stupid or weird that he was taking comfort from a person miles younger than he was, but that didn't stop the rush of relief that she was there, solid against him.

"I love you, Songbird. Never got around to sayin' it there, but somehow, you managed to wriggle in and hook me and I'm not gonna let you get away again without sayin' it to your face." Just in case. Just in case he woke up in the morning to an empty mattress beside the couch he'd end up sleeping on.

"I love you too," she mumbles, pressing her face against his shoulder while staying wrapped around him. "I would have thought I was nuts too if you hadn't been here. Like... Me, with the Gift, and a bunch of people who don't even know it's supposed to exist, and... I mean I could manage on my own, I've done it, but. I don't want to."

That last part is very quiet, almost ashamed.

"You don't gotta," he replied with a breath and a pat of her shoulder. It hurt too much somehow, beautifully, to say this all and look at it in its face and he wasn't able to do much more of it without breaking in a way he wasn't sure he could handle.

"Alright, c'mon. We're gonna soak somethin' at this rate. We gotta pick out yer mattress."

She gives a soggy little laugh and draws back, letting him lead the way--after snagging an un-syruped waffle to eat like a giant cookie while they're at it.

The old TV is comforting in a way that surprises her, though it shouldn't, given what she and Jeff always do when he's trying to make her feel better. She keeps up a steady commentary through the whole thing, teasing while still making it clear she's enjoying herself.

Eventually she crashes, unwillingly, and dreams about fire chasing her through tunnels blocked by gates. Athena gasps awake, still on the mattress, in a fresh change of clothes that aren't pajamas but were still better than what she arrived in. That was going to be a thing she needed. Clothes.

She curls up on the mattress for a moment, pulling the blanket over her head, but it's too late and too light out for her to go back to sleep. Instead she gets up as quietly as possible to explore the house.

It really had been kind of like a sleep out, if firearms were allowed; Raylan, stretched himself half upright in the corner of the couch, hands folded over his middle as he listened to Athena's critique of the movie. His tease back consisted of her just being jealous of the swagger, the horses, and the hats. The latter two they could get her, the first one she would have to work on herself.

Raylan lasted all of three minutes after the TV's static fuzz was turned off, ears perked towards her light breathing amid the soft noises of the night.

The gasp awake has Raylan waking up too, but he wasn't as high strung anymore. Getting out of Mathis had been the best thing for him and his head, and he might still be on the way, but on the way he was towards normal. His cracked eye slid shut as Athena decided she was done laying down and he was happy to play asleep to let her get up and around.

One he was sure she'd found her way out of his intended path, her quiet footfalls not so quiet in a house he knew the sounds of so well, he got up himself with a half breathed groan and went to start coffee. God only knows what she'd find - Arlo's anything, one of his guns or his uniform that was still kept in the closet. Boxes of his mothers clothes in the attic, maybe even the not so secret box that was in his old dresser drawer. There were a lot of little treasures to find throughout the house and no one to stop her walk through his history.

Bets on if she sees the mini graveyard tonight or in the morning.

six of one, half-dozen of the other??

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