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

“I’ll be okay,” she says softly. She drags in a deep breath and straightens up. He’s right, about the dangers of staying still too long when there’s so much emotion hanging in the air. It’s a panicked smothering waiting to happen.

Athena helps him bring in the groceries, puts things away, showers and changes into properly clean new-old pajamas before returning to the kitchen. “How do you brine chicken anyway? I want to learn so I can impress and confuse Aunt Nory with my culinary acumen.”

He feels better in the kitchen, the ugliness of the porch left there with the other bullet holes and damage that the house had suffered. The simple work of feeding himself, of feeding Athena, was it's own comfort. One foot in front of the other, right?

Raylan chuckles at the statement following the question, lifting his eyebrows with a bob of his head as he starts peeling the plastic off the pack of chicken and dropping the pieces into a bowl.

"You ever heard of briney water? It just means heavily salted, so brining is soaking meat in heavily salted water. Salt and some spices if you want your meat to taste like your breading. Always use the same spices in your flour that you do your brine, so it'll all taste the same. Your Aunt Nory used to cook for you? What was your favorite dish?"

Athena snorts. “God no, Nory can’t cook for shit. Except for spaghetti. She does make killer spaghetti.”

She peers into the bowl. “What kind of spices do you use?”

"Cayanne.. Lawry's - It's a seasoning salt that does the salting work," he explains as he grabs the spice containers to do just that, dumping more than might seem strictly necessary.

"Don't ask me for amounts, I eyeball everythin'. You're gonna help me fry it, right? It's mostly waitin' anyway. Fried chicken is the easiest thing in the world, if I'm honest. Just takes time."

“Hell yeah, bring on the teenage recklessness and boiling oil.”

She ticks herself up under his arm as soon as he’s not using both hands, studying the amounts of spices like that will help her remember what to use next time. “And hey easy isn’t easy when it comes to stuff like this, you know? Have to get the timing right and all that.”

Raylan chuckles as he finishes, popping the clear glass lid on the pot. Once he wiped his hands, he found himself with an adorable growth and squeezed a hand around her shoulder before draping it there.

"Just long enough for a TV movie and a bowl of cereal to tide you over until then." Or to tide him over, to be honest. "Only place where timin' matters is the pre-heatin' time for the oil and how long they cook. Can't be eatin' raw chicken. C'mon," he says, turning her and tugging her towards the living room. "Let's find somethin' to watch on this shitty tv. I could use the noise and the meat needs the time to brine. From 2 hours to 24, if you can manage it. 24's better, really. Gets into all the fibers. It's science, really."

Athena keeps up a commentary on what they watch practically until she falls asleep sitting on the couch, snuggling in against Raylan and pretending to be unconscious. She lets him move her to the mattress like she's a ten year old who's properly asleep instead of a nearly-eighteen-year-old who's faking it.

It doesn't take long for her to actually fall asleep after that, though.

She wakes up earlier than she wants to at the sound of the front door opening. Athena scrambles to her feet, not sure what she's on the alert for but knowing there's something.

...It's Raylan. Raylan, going somewhere, with car keys in his hand.

She stares for a second, then gives an affronted, "What the fuck?"

The fact that she was here still blew his mind; the fact that she trusted him enough to curl up against him like a cat that wanted his heat blew his mind and how goddamned sweet it was tugged at his heartstrings as he posited her into the matress he'd given up on thinking would be moved any time soon. It was a good thing the couch was comfortable and doubly so that he had no problem sleeping fully dressed.

But he didn't really ever sleep long when he wasn't in bed and comfortable, and 6 AM was an easy hour when it felt like you hadn't really slept at all.

He really had been thinking that he was silent enough to get by - there was three notes strewn along the kitchen, in hopeful estimates of where she might look first come sunrise, but the start of sound from behind him and the obvious question had him wincing as he stops and turning around in the door.

"Was hopin' to let you sleep in. You need it," he explains with a soft little smile.

While that was true, it was far from the whole truth.

She scowls. “Fuck that. I’ll nap later. Where are we going?”

She casts around for her tennis shoes, pulling them on unevenly as she seesaws over to him.

Raylan sighs out his nose, key holding hand propping on his hips as he watches her.

"To Boyd's. Before he gets too much sunlight under him to be trouble. It's not gonna be pretty, Athena, and it's early. You should probably stay here, considerin' what you did to him last time you saw him."

“That’s exactly why I should go with you!” She glares up at him. “What if he gets ideas or something and… I don’t know, sends people here while you’re gone?”

"Then I'll run into them on the way; there ain't but two ways into the driveway. And if someone does come in, you go out the back and into the woods until I come back. Boyd can't be left to settle into his ideas, I have ta go talk to him before he gets his hairs too far up. You bein' there.. Honey, I wish it was simple enough of us talkin' him into understandin'. It's shit and I know it, but I also know him. Before he was what he is now, he hated the blacks and hated the jews and they're just .."

He gestures. He was going to say 'they're just people' but he worried that Athena might take him for saying she wasn't somehow.

"No one deserves that shit. Not the blacks or the Jews or the Muslims or you. What happens if you come and his guys surround the car? Puttin' you on his terf is dangerous, darlin', that's all."

She doesn’t really have a counter argument for that. Athena bites her lip, feeling her throat tightening up, her eyes starting to burn, and she tries to swallow it down.

“…I don’t want to be by myself,” she finally whispers.

Raylan watched her crumble and cursed the way his chest seemed to cave into itself in guilt that he ever thought about leaving her, no matter how good his reasons were.

A deep breath was taken in and out of his nose.

"What about Ava? Would you be okay stayin' with her? She'll keep you safe; she knows how to handle a gun and Boyd or his men."

She doesn’t want to. She wants to stay with Raylan, she wants to stay with someone familiar, but she makes herself nod. Athena looks down so he won’t see her face. “Yeah, I’m. I’m okay with that.”

He didn't need to see her face to see the drop of her shoulders.

"'Thena. You know I'm only tryin' to keep you safe, right? I.. I don't want to put you into a postion where you gotta defend yourself against... Against shitkickers that I'm used to. They're stupid and they don't understand shit and you've--"

He gestured at her with the comment but his hand fell back at his side as he fought to urge to step forward and collect her into his arms.

"Ava is good folk. I promise." He turns halfway, his body's edge pointed towards the door. "It's either her or you tuckin' into the backseat under a blanket in a place where godknows what'll happen."

Athena looks up abruptly. “Option two. Door number two. Whatever the game show reference is, that’s the one I want.”

"Athena," he implores with a bob of his head, a rare enough occurance on it's own. "You-" He sighs again and rubs at his forehead.

"You've already been through a lot. These idiots, they're.. They're not worth the trouble that they'll bring you. Let me.. sort it out. Where they can't use you against me, where they can't disable me by threatenin' you."

That takes the wind out of her sails, even though it’s also weirdly comforting to know that he cares enough for it to be a risk. Of course he does, she scolds herself, but it’s one thing to know and another to know.

Still: he’s planted the seed.

Which means as soon as she has a moment at Ava’s, she’s sneaking into Raylan’s trunk.

So, to buy the time she’ll need there: Athena glares at the ground, not feeling a quarter of the anger or resentment she’s pretending at. “Fine. You can take me to Ava’s place.”

In the Village, Raylan would have throw himself onto the fire if it would save Athena and that hadn't changed with the change of scenery. He still remembers tucking a very drunk young girl under his arm and making sure she got home safely. He remembers finding her coming out of the tunnels, terrified and panicky. It was everything for him to keep her away from more of the same or worse.

So he's relieved when she agrees, no matter the amount of dissatisfaction he was witnessing. She could be dissatisfied. She would at least be alive to do so.

"Thank you. Now that you're up, you.. wanna brush your teeth or anythin' before you go?" Personally, he always had to piss when he first got up and Ava's house was about 15 minutes away. If they weren't going to sneak out, he could at least make sure Athena was comfortable as she could be.

If she knew what he was thinking, she might even stay at Ava's. Keep herself out of harm's way.

Maybe. If she could handle the idea of him facing Boyd and those people on his own.

As it is, she (sullenly) brushes her teeth and (sullenly) brings her backpack with the most important of her belongings. There aren't many, but she's too far back into the feral attitude of being ready to move at a moment's notice to leave them behind.

She leans her forehead against the window as Raylan drives, letting the glass cool her skin. "...What're you going to tell him, anyway?"

He was glad to see her take the offer and the time to sort her morning business, resisting the urge to start and have a cup of coffee while he waited but she didn't take long and they were in the car quickly.

It was a cool, overcast morning, one that didn't bode well in the too open areas they were driving through.

"I'd tell him to get outta town if I thought he would listen. But I'll be tellin' him that anything he might do or conceive to passin'ly consider in seriousness will answer to me." He glances over. "It means I'd put my badge and service weapon down, put my skills to use."

Raylan was often accused of being a good man. Not a soft man, but a good one. Except when he was not.

Athena stares at him, wide-eyed. “Y…”

It’s not the fact that he would do what he’s implying, really, though that’s a little scary. It’s the fact that he’d do it for her.

Athena bites her lip, closes her eyes, then groans in frustration at her own stupid unwillingness to disobey these days when someone says something like that.

“…I was going to hide in the trunk.”

She lifts her head away from the window to look at him. “When we got to Ava’s. I was going to pretend to go to the bathroom and then hide in the trunk so I could come with you.”

He was driving so he had to keep his eyes on the road, but he glances over at the groan and the sigh that came with her words, eyebrows lifting a little. He nods slowly and as she finishes, huffs a breath and a smile of approval.

"Never let anyone tell you that you wouldn't fit in here." The whole no other Gifted people here being an aside.

"I know you're scared to let me outta your sight, darlin'. Worried that somethin' might happen to me? But I've been dealin' with Boyd since we were in Elementary. Some of the rules for us are... Well.. Different."

She nods slowly, trying to accept that, knowing it's probably true, but hating it just the same.

Raylan pulls up into Ava's driveway, slows, and Athena's stomach clenches as the front door swings open and Boyd saunters out--clothed once again--in the lead of several armed men.

"Uh. Fuck."

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