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

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.

She's pretty sure Raylan would have warned her off any things she's not allowed to explore. She does indeed find Arlo's uniform and a gun that looks too much like it works for her to want to touch it. In the attic, she sees the boxes. Frances Givens written on the side. For a confused moment she wonders if Raylan had a brother or a great uncle he's never mentioned, but when she opens the boxes it's all women's clothing.

It's not hard to put two and two together. Carefully, respectfully, she folds things away and boxes them up again.

When she finds the little box in Raylan's dresser she's tempted to open it right there. Checking the dressers, the cabinets--it's habit by now from Mathias and from when she looted places she was able to get into while she was on the street. She smooths her fingers over the top of it, thinking of those boxes in the attic.

Finally, instead of opening it, she takes it downstairs with her to wait for Raylan to wake up. Or she plans to wait, anyway, but the couch is empty and she panics for a moment before hearing him in the kitchen. She pokes her head in, smelling the coffee. "Holy shit, is that something that isn't knock-off Folgers?"

There wasn't anything here he cared about her seeing. Most of it was trash, if he was asked, and all of it would be donated wholesale - from the pictures, their frames, down to the bedding and knickknacks. Everything that made this place feel even slightly the way it did now. Like a home, yes. But a home haunted for Raylan, not matter how peaceful the nights.

The smell of coffee wafted through the house, helping draw Athena back into the hopefully now familiar kitchen and its chintzy, old yellowed wallpaper. He was staring out a window at the barren fields and turned around with a grin.

"Maxwell house. Folgers is expensive." Not that he couldn't afford it but he kept his money by not spending it. "We got half and half and milk, unless you want it black," he said, waving a cup in her direction. His eyes glanced over the box in her hands but for now, he didn't say anything.

She wrinkles her nose. “I had thought better of you, sir.”

She sets the box on the table and starts to reach for a spare cup and the pot handle, but Athena grins slowly and steps back again. “Remember that day when I tried to move a cup and like. Exploded that house’s living room?”

Raylan chuckled and shrugged with his shoulders and the rolling lift of his eyebrows as he sipped at his cup. It didn't matter that he made decent cash now, some habits couldn't ever be shaken.

But at Athena's suggestion, his gaze narrowed on her before glancing over at the pot and cup.

"If you break 'em, I do not have a spare pot or cups beyond what's in here." Forewarning given, Raylan stepped back several feet, hands widening in a gesture of 'Go ahead'.

Athena cracks her knuckles, lighting up even further, though not literally. "I'm going to Mary Poppins the shit out of this bitch."

She considers for a moment, takes a deep breath, and starts singing Elton John's The Bitch is Back.

It seems appropriate.

She's not just moving the cup, though, and pouring the coffee with the kind of precision a barista would envy--she's manipulating her own voice with it, serving as her own back-up vocals in lieu of having any instruments.

There might be an Elton John-worthy lights show going on along with it.

Once she's added half-and-half just to show off, she winds the song down, floating the cup over to herself and finishing the last note as she plucks it from the air. Looking extremely self-satisfied.

'Mary Poppins the shit out of this bitch' got an amused curl of his features and as much as he trusted Athena, the last experience hadn't been great and he didn't know how it was supposed to work. Not really.

Until now. Raylan watched with an attentive critical eye, brow pinching faintly as the cup and pot started moving. It didn't look anything at all like Matilda, for example, but more like Harry Potter. (No, he hadn't read the books or watched the movies but it was hard to not have seen enough little bits of the source and listen to the fans that followed it to catch on to the general gist.)

By the time she's done, he's staring at her with his head tilted, hazels narrowed over the creeping curl of a smile he was trying to fight.

"Well damn, Mary. Didn't know you could do all that. Can you call birds and shit too, like Snow White? Might have some work for the squirrels." The house and land were in a state of creeping disrepair that needed to be addressed sometime in the next 15 years.

She takes a cheerful, satisfied slurp of coffee, makes a face both at the taste and at the heat, and then sighs happily. "I mean I could, yeah, actually? But it's really fuckin' hard, like... Say if I want to make myself float or some shit. No problem, I'm me, I'm casting the spell on myself, I want it to work. Tada."

She gestures out the window. "But like... another person? Or an animal? They've got a will of their own and if they don't want to be lifted off the ground I'm going to have a fuck of a time doing it. It's basically their will against mine, in a way."

If she looked at his face just right, she could probably see the gears turning. Raylan had to ask himself if it was something she got asked a lot - didn't she say that there were people like him around? People without the gift?

God forbid he re-enact some high school bullshit.

"That's something. A balance to it, of sorts. Let's keep it to inanimate objects and yourself for now." If it looked like he was gonna get into any shit while they were up here, he might decide to reiterate that point.

"What do ya wanna do today, songbird? Walk the property? Go for a ride?" She had him all day, her personal chauffeur.

Well, until his phone rang. He was hoping it wouldn't but it always did, eventually.

Athena hops backward up onto the counter, making a slight dismayed face as her coffee starts to slop over the cup's edges a little.

She whistles it back into the cup, just because she can.

"Fuck. I have no idea. I--oh. Um. Is there somewhere around here where I could get some clothes? Just like. Nothing fancy, but I'm going to start to smell if I keep switching between the little bit I've got. Kind of wasn't packed for a trip, if you get me."

Even that? Even wild coffee drops? Raylan whistled low and buried his face in another sip of his coffee. He was gonna have to watch her now; Little Miss Lightshow.

"Oh." Right. "Shit. Um. Corbin's probably the closest place to find somethin' like that. About thirty minutes from here. We can go after breakfast... Which we're also gonna get in Corbin, because it's the closest thing that serves something other than breakfast at breakfast time." Of course they sold the usual breakfast fare, but the restaurant didn't care much what time it was.

"Prepare yourself for more country than a whole country album," he warned with a grin."

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