Deputy U.S. Marshal Tim Gutterson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
comfortablyerect) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
singillatim2026-02-23 08:11 pm
comfortablyerect) wrote in singillatim2026-02-23 08:11 pm
Entry tags:
your body's aching, every bone is breaking
Character Name: Tim Gutterson (Big Tim)
Who: Tim and You! (OTA + closed starter)
What: Paying respects, dealing with Fog Things (may add more later!)
When: Mostly early February
Where: The farm house, milton outskirts, around milton, community hall
Content Warnings: Mentions of character death, dead animals (no descriptors), food scarcity with The Fog(tm), the required self-harm for dealing with the fog. Will update as needed.
It’s not like he hasn’t known that the Darkwalker can do some serious damage. Physical, mental, emotional, getting to them through nightmares and curses and insane weather. Some of it he’s only heard about, some of it he’s experienced himself in the almost year he’s been here. Death has always been a very real threat, and he lost plenty of people he loved to it long before this.
Somehow, Chloe’s death has him reeling. He didn’t expect it. In Afghanistan, he always expected it. It was always right around the corner. It is here, too, but the circumstances – she should’ve been safe in the farmhouse. She was one of the toughest of them. In the stories they swapped– he knows she had to have fought tooth and nail.
They didn’t know each other incredibly well or particularly long, but he saw her as a brother in arms. Now he won’t see her at all, and he’s feeling a particular way about it. Angry, of course, but also oddly helpless. That’s never been his experience with death. The anger has always fueled a need for retribution, given him a sense of stubborn patience to see it through. Right now, he feels like there isn’t any point. If it can get to Chloe, it can get to any of them. If she couldn’t win against it, none of the rest of them can either.
He’s at the farm house. Not on the property proper, but at the edge of it. Last time he was here was when he was helping her pull boards from her windows after the hail storm. It feels appropriate to pay some form of respect.
"All gave some, some gave all,” Tim says. “‘Til Valhalla.”
Tim never hated fog so much in his life.
Just the presence of it puts him on a particular edge. Last time it conjured a memory and triggered a full blown PTSD episode that took months to fully come back from. He’s not sure that he would’ve if he didn’t have someone here to keep him sane. He’s not very keen on repeating the experience, and he’s almost relieved at first when he realizes that’s not what the fog is doing.
Until he realizes what it is doing.
The traps have been scarce lately. Maybe this is why. Tim finds a rabbit rotting in one of them that was empty just the morning before. It’s not long after that he discovers the fog’s effects extends to all living things by way of coughing up a bit of blood. Rather than trying to make it home, he barricades himself in a (hopefully) empty house. Which doesn’t do much, but the rune he recalls from the dream does, Tim not hesitating to cut open his forearm for the blood to draw it on the door.
He draws it on the back of his hand, too, leaving his glove off to keep it from smudging. He doesn’t run as hot as he used to, the lightbringer power feeling fizzled inside him, but he doesn’t mind the way it numbs his fingers. It’s the hand that adopted the injury of Raylan’s to heal him, which has been aching and stinging more and more lately.
He stops by the community hall on his way home, trying to take stock of what food they have in storage. There’s still some meat from the moose hunt, but not a lot. He paints the rune on the ice chests and pantry doors. They’re going to be eating scarcely for a while.
[ ooc: Feel free to find Tim checking traps, at the community hall, or around town in between! The house he barricades himself in doesn’t even have to be empty tbh. ]
A little bit of it is left over from physically pulling him from the mines just a couple of months ago, but most of it is this feeling of helplessness he can’t seem to shake. The truth is, he’s terrified. Terrified that every time they part ways for the day, it’ll be the last time they see each other. That the next time he sees Raylan, his body will be distorted and disfigured the way they say Chloe’s was. That they won’t make it home together to live out the future he’s longing for.
He makes each kiss last as long as he can. He tries to keep himself busy throughout the day, but he always spends it feeling like something inevitable and horrible is going to happen. A lingering sense of dread that he didn’t even get in Afghanistan and Iraq. The only thing he feels certain of for some reason is that it’s almost over. He just doesn’t know how it’s going to end.
Tim’s sitting at one end of the couch because it means he can see the front door. There’s a glass of bourbon on the coffee table – since the Holiday Boar’s visit, he’s fallen somewhere between drinking like he used to and still trying to ration, which essentially amounts to a glass a night, occasionally two. The end is nigh, or whatever. It doesn’t feel imperative to make it last a year.
There’s a book open in his lap that he’s very much not reading when the front door opens. It’s probably an interesting book, but focusing on menial things has become increasingly harder to do.
“Welcome home,” he says before Raylan’s even fully in the door. Something begins to settle a bit inside him.
Who: Tim and You! (OTA + closed starter)
What: Paying respects, dealing with Fog Things (may add more later!)
When: Mostly early February
Where: The farm house, milton outskirts, around milton, community hall
Content Warnings: Mentions of character death, dead animals (no descriptors), food scarcity with The Fog(tm), the required self-harm for dealing with the fog. Will update as needed.
FARMHOUSE
It’s not like he hasn’t known that the Darkwalker can do some serious damage. Physical, mental, emotional, getting to them through nightmares and curses and insane weather. Some of it he’s only heard about, some of it he’s experienced himself in the almost year he’s been here. Death has always been a very real threat, and he lost plenty of people he loved to it long before this.
Somehow, Chloe’s death has him reeling. He didn’t expect it. In Afghanistan, he always expected it. It was always right around the corner. It is here, too, but the circumstances – she should’ve been safe in the farmhouse. She was one of the toughest of them. In the stories they swapped– he knows she had to have fought tooth and nail.
They didn’t know each other incredibly well or particularly long, but he saw her as a brother in arms. Now he won’t see her at all, and he’s feeling a particular way about it. Angry, of course, but also oddly helpless. That’s never been his experience with death. The anger has always fueled a need for retribution, given him a sense of stubborn patience to see it through. Right now, he feels like there isn’t any point. If it can get to Chloe, it can get to any of them. If she couldn’t win against it, none of the rest of them can either.
He’s at the farm house. Not on the property proper, but at the edge of it. Last time he was here was when he was helping her pull boards from her windows after the hail storm. It feels appropriate to pay some form of respect.
"All gave some, some gave all,” Tim says. “‘Til Valhalla.”
MILTON OUTSKIRTS/COMMUNITY HALL
Tim never hated fog so much in his life.
Just the presence of it puts him on a particular edge. Last time it conjured a memory and triggered a full blown PTSD episode that took months to fully come back from. He’s not sure that he would’ve if he didn’t have someone here to keep him sane. He’s not very keen on repeating the experience, and he’s almost relieved at first when he realizes that’s not what the fog is doing.
Until he realizes what it is doing.
The traps have been scarce lately. Maybe this is why. Tim finds a rabbit rotting in one of them that was empty just the morning before. It’s not long after that he discovers the fog’s effects extends to all living things by way of coughing up a bit of blood. Rather than trying to make it home, he barricades himself in a (hopefully) empty house. Which doesn’t do much, but the rune he recalls from the dream does, Tim not hesitating to cut open his forearm for the blood to draw it on the door.
He draws it on the back of his hand, too, leaving his glove off to keep it from smudging. He doesn’t run as hot as he used to, the lightbringer power feeling fizzled inside him, but he doesn’t mind the way it numbs his fingers. It’s the hand that adopted the injury of Raylan’s to heal him, which has been aching and stinging more and more lately.
He stops by the community hall on his way home, trying to take stock of what food they have in storage. There’s still some meat from the moose hunt, but not a lot. He paints the rune on the ice chests and pantry doors. They’re going to be eating scarcely for a while.
[ ooc: Feel free to find Tim checking traps, at the community hall, or around town in between! The house he barricades himself in doesn’t even have to be empty tbh. ]
CLOSED to Raylan
you know i play with all those strays prowling outside your door
It’s getting harder and harder to let Raylan out of his sight.A little bit of it is left over from physically pulling him from the mines just a couple of months ago, but most of it is this feeling of helplessness he can’t seem to shake. The truth is, he’s terrified. Terrified that every time they part ways for the day, it’ll be the last time they see each other. That the next time he sees Raylan, his body will be distorted and disfigured the way they say Chloe’s was. That they won’t make it home together to live out the future he’s longing for.
He makes each kiss last as long as he can. He tries to keep himself busy throughout the day, but he always spends it feeling like something inevitable and horrible is going to happen. A lingering sense of dread that he didn’t even get in Afghanistan and Iraq. The only thing he feels certain of for some reason is that it’s almost over. He just doesn’t know how it’s going to end.
Tim’s sitting at one end of the couch because it means he can see the front door. There’s a glass of bourbon on the coffee table – since the Holiday Boar’s visit, he’s fallen somewhere between drinking like he used to and still trying to ration, which essentially amounts to a glass a night, occasionally two. The end is nigh, or whatever. It doesn’t feel imperative to make it last a year.
There’s a book open in his lap that he’s very much not reading when the front door opens. It’s probably an interesting book, but focusing on menial things has become increasingly harder to do.
“Welcome home,” he says before Raylan’s even fully in the door. Something begins to settle a bit inside him.
Community Hall
(Zoey painted the rune on Tayrey's home, and the young lieutenant might never realise how much of her survival she owes to that action.)
She only emerges when she hears another person's presence. Their footsteps. It's Citizen Tim, she sees, and she's reminded of when she was last in this place. Another fog. It seems so long ago.
'Peace and prosperity,' she says quietly. There doesn't seem to be much of either to be found right now, but it's as much a wish and a hope as a greeting.
'Do you- oh, your arm!' The cut is almost a blessing in disguise, giving her a focus, a purpose, however fleeting. 'Have you cleaned that?' His behavior, drawing that sigil in his own blood, she doesn't remark upon. He's far from the first she's seen do it. If Tayrey has secretly experimented with the marking, she used far more prosaic substances.
no subject
He doesn't draw his gun this time, either. It's hard to say if it's because he's not hot off the heels of a PTSD episode, or because this overwhelming feeling of hopelessness makes him care a little bit less.
"Hey--"
Oh, his arm. He looks down at it, unbandaged and freshly bleeding thanks to having just applied it to the cabinet doors. It's not very deep. It'd probably be mostly healed within a week if he stopped reopening it to repaint the rune on various doors and himself.
"Not since this mornin'," he says, shutting the cabinet door. "Hard to keep clean when I have to keep paintin' this damn rune everywhere."
no subject
He isn't one of hers. She'd be overstepping. She can't fix everything and everyone here. A lonely sort of survival is better than the alternative.
His words, then, she accepts with nothing more than a shrug, a shake of her head. 'You'll know to be careful. Infection kills faster than starving.' There's a little upward twist of her lip as she says it. Dark humor is better than despair.
Tayrey turns her attention to the sigil then, staring at the cabinet instead of the man. 'As I see it,' she remarks, 'there's a sort of logic to thinking Citizen Enola's sign might help us. People try anything in desperate times. What I don't understand is the choice of paint.'
no subject
It's not the threat of infection that has him fishing some ice out of one of the chests, turning up a metal bowl from one of the cabinets to throw it into. It's the threat of Raylan lecturing him later for not taking better care of himself. The gifts he received from Enola feel weak -- the fire that once burned through him only flickers now, but if he focuses it he can still emit a fair bit of heat, and he uses it now to begin melting the ice in the bowl.
When he glances back at her, it's with a faint crease of his brow. He hasn't actually seen Tayrey in awhile, but there's a lot of people in town that he only sees every once in a while. Maybe she left and came back, like the other Tim did. He can't even begin to understand how this place works.
"That's what Enola used in the dream when she showed us the rune," he explains, starting to reach into his satchel bag for the clean cloth before realizing it'd be with his injured arm, and all he'd be doing is getting blood all over it. "Rune doesn't work any other way, trust me, I tried paint first. Can you--"
He pulls the satchel off entirely and tosses it onto the ground between them. "--get the cloth out of there for me, please?"
no subject
'Sure. No trouble,' she replies as he drops the satchel on the ground. Picking it up, she starts searching through it for a clean bit of fabric. Her focus is on efficiency; the other contents only attract her notice for as long as it takes for her to push them aside.
Once she's found the cloth, she steps forward to hand it over, into his uninjured hand. 'I wasn't trained as a medic back home,' she tells him. 'Not that I think it would help here if I had been. Best I can do in this place is roll bandages like something out of a Breakaway War holo.' Tayrey smiles softly. 'I've got plenty of those, although me wrapping your arm won't help if you've got more painting to do. I thought that was... dreams, being what dreams are. Symbolic, and complicated. I drew that... what did you call it, a rune?' She over-enunciates the unfamiliar word. 'I drew it on my backpack, and on a big square of cloth like a flag, just in case it was meant as a way to prove to someone out there that we're friendly.'
Yet again her instincts drive her towards logic, to making sense out of the impossible. To do that, however, she has to look at the evidence, and that leads to one more question. 'How do you know if it's working or not? Real proof, not hunches.'
no subject
He's focusing on heating the water in the bowl. He won't be able to bring it to a boil with his 'gifts' as drained as they are, but he can at least get it warm enough to make the cleaning process more efficient. Milton has long since burned through anything resembling antiseptic, but he's been dabbing bourbon on it every night. Does it work nearly as well as actual medication would? No. He also doesn't like wasting his liquor on it, but desperate times and all that.
Setting the cloth on the counter, he takes one strip of it and dips it in the water, using it to begin wiping away the dried blood around the wound. It doesn't feel great, but the discomfort doesn't show in his expression. He's had much, much worse.
"I tested it." He pauses what he's doing to show her the back of his hand of his injured arm, the rune painted there now smudged and half washed away. He'll have to repaint it before he can bandage his arm. "Painted it here and I could walk around the fog without it touchin' me."
no subject
Staying out felt dangerous but today, he had good reason for it. Word had gotten around about some of the Wolfdogs, that those that had promised to look after them dying or vanishing, anything that could happen to all of them at any time. But Raylan finds himself soft-heart for these animals now, especially after Goose's companionship.
So tonight when he opens the door, a wolf trots in first instead of the cowboy with her tail low and eyes scanning, but that tail comes up a few inches, wagging softly and the wolf relaxes a little as she sees Goose. Raylan follows after her and once the door was closed, he had good enough sense to look a little guilty as he looks over at Tim.
"Hey darlin'. I, uh-" He glances at the dog with a swallow as he starts de-coating. "Well, this is Scout. Goose's mother."
Had he thought about if Tim would be angry about this? No; he didn't think that Tim would be mad. Goose needed one of his own around, just like they did, and proved it by the way he scrambled up to his feet to go and greet his mother with a round of sniffs and playbows.
no subject
There's another whole-ass wolf in their house.
Tim doesn't bother to keep the exasperation out of his voice or off his face as he watches the older wolf slink further inside. Really, it's bad enough that Raylan adopted a wolf and named him Goose before Tim even got here, and even worse that he can turn into one himself, and now he's brought a second one home. Tim's never been a dog person, not since his daddy's mean-ass brothers liked to scare him with their untrained pits when he was a kid.
He'd be lying if he said he hadn't gotten used to Raylan's wolf form, or formed a very soft spot for Goose. But another one--
Raylan had to have known he couldn't say no once he saw the two wolves interact. The way Scout's uncertainty drains away at the sight of her kin, how Goose acts like a pup greeting his mother. Tim sighs, throwing up a hand in easy defeat.
"Is this how it's gonna be when we're back home, too? You bringin' home whatever strays pull at your apparently very tender heartstrings?"
When, not if. Everything feels hopeless but he hasn't exactly been vocal about that feeling. He has to at least pretend he thinks it's going to happen, even if he can't make himself feel it.
no subject
"No, I don't think so. Milton special, these two. It was a chance of opportunity, but we can help." That grin turns to look at Tim properly, not so much as faux guilt in his face in the slightest anymore, and softens down to something a bit closer to serious as he explains himself.
"Better that they've got each other if somethin' happens to us, too. But I don't know that I'm gonna be bringin' home any strangers, four legged or otherwise. Least not without talkin' to you about it." He looks back over at the wolves with a slight, thoughtful tilt of his head.
"Don't know that they really count as dogs in my mind either. Maybe that makes a difference."
no subject
It's the only time things feel right anymore, when he's close enough to feel the heat through their clothes and the steady rise-and-fall of Raylan's breathing. The reminder that they're both still here and alive, that they have something worth fighting for. He feels like he needs that reminder more and more frequently these days.
"Well, if you started bringin' home strangers of the two-legged variety, then we'd have some problems."
He's teasing. Mostly. Truthfully, it's hard to have a boyfriend that looks like Raylan and not get a little jealous over the idea of him looking twice at someone else. He's quiet for a moment, watching the two wolves circle and sniff and lunge back and forth. It's a little like having kids, if the kids took up most of the bed and could feed themselves.
"I'm not really a dog person," he says, tipping his head to rest it against Raylan's shoulder. "Didn't think I was a wolf person either, but I think we'll have a hard time keepin' those back home."
Raylan's right-- they have each other. Scout and Goose should have each other, too. Eventually, something will happen to them. It's just a matter of whether it's going to be dying or making their way back home.
"Wouldn't mind it if you brought home a stray cat, I guess."
no subject
If they were to die tomorrow, Raylan would die with dreams of what a life they could have had together consuming his everything. There was no other fight for it in him. What would come would come, and he would be grateful for every second he got to have today. It was the only way he came out of this sane. If they came out of it at all.
"A cat, huh? That's unexpected. There's a tasteless joke about likin' havin' assholes in your face in there." He expected to be hit for that. "I don't know that I'm really a pet person at all but.." A one-sided shrug followed. "I don't think I'm really against 'em either. If you wanted one..."
Of course he'd adjust. Like he's adjusted to Goose. Just like he'll adjust to Scout. He might not love them, but he was fond of them and would put their base needs above his own. Thankfully the most basic of those needs were needs the wolves themselves could handle.
no subject
The joke earns Raylan a slight prod in the ribs with Tim's elbow, but his mouth twists in that way that means he's trying not to smile. It was funny. And not necessarily untrue.
"No," he says, shaking his head as he watches Goose and Scout lay down in front of the fire, the younger wolf still nuzzling his mother.
Fuck. He misses his mom.
"I don't actually want somethin' else to clean up after in addition to a child. I'm just sayin', if you're gonna let yourself get won over by one, let it be a cat."
no subject
He squeezes Tim's shoulders lightly and presses a kiss into his hair before laying his head back down, happy to watch the wolves get comfortable and just enjoy the moment of peace.
"If somethin' happens, I'll try to be that kinda specific." It wouldn't. Animals had support at home that these wolves didn't have. "Anyway, another wolf also means that we don't have to share Goose. I like their protection and company out there and I hate when we leave you alone."
Even though Goose had been staying closer to Tim at Raylan's insistence and due to Raylan's issues.
no subject
It still feels like a million lifetimes away anyway. They have to get through not dying here. They have to get through figuring out their way back home, if they don't just get magically transported there like they did here. They have to figure out how to navigate a relationship when their primary concerns aren't starving or freezing to death.
Everything's simple right now. Even with the Darkwalker and all the other supernatural forces trying to kill them, it's simple without all those little superficial things that would've prevented them from starting this at home. It's crazy and exhausting to think about, what they would've missed out on if they didn't both end up here.
Tim leans forward, grabbing his half-drank glass of bourbon from the table to take a sip, offering it to Raylan with a purse of his lips.
"I don't need protection," he says automatically. "Or company. I'm a sniper, I do my best work alone."
no subject
Maybe it was easier to think about that kind of problem, rather than the ones that faced them here. A little escapism and something Raylan could easily find in the offered protests. For a half second, he thought about shaking his head no, but that nagging thought is better quieted with a shallow wash of whiskey.
"Sure. And I'm the Pope. You know I'm also seven feet tall. And black?" Eyebrows lifted faintly, he hands the glass back. "If we were at home, two of those might be true. One definitely is but-" He shrugs a little.
"You're gonna hav'ta work hard to convince me you don't need company."
no subject
It's a deflection mostly, even if he does like that Raylan's taller than him and certainly wouldn't mind him being a little taller. Up until recently, he could also throw Tim around like he weighed nothing, and that might be the only other good thing this place has given them besides each other.
Tim sets the glass aside on the coffee table. There's still a drink or two left in it, but he cares more about doing this -- shifting on the couch so he's laid across it on his back, head in Raylan's lap, looking up at him. Everything about this position should make him feel at least a little bit emasculated, but it never does with Raylan. It just feels warm and safe and right.
"Just your company," he relents, finding Raylan's hand to bring it to his mouth, placing a kiss against his fingers. "If you wanted to follow me around all day, I wouldn't mind that."
no subject
Tim starts shifting and Raylan obediently lifts his arm to make space and ease of things. The half smile brakes into a proper one as Tim lays down and a grin flashes at the kiss to his fingers. He always loves this. Being able to watch Tim be relaxed so openly, being able to play with Tim's hair in long and easy strokes of his fingers. Sure, they both needed haircuts, but the long curl, 80's fabulousness was pretty goddamned cute.
"I wouldn't mind either." Considering the view alone. His fingers comb through Tim's hair a few more times, smile slipping to a faint cant of his lips. "Agreeable company is fine for a guy to get by but.. You deserve somethin' real. 'Course I would like to continue to put forward my application for that-" Another pull of a smile; he was trying to not be too serious about it, lest Tim change his mind about a conversation.
"But you deserve that. Someone you can take some kinda reprieve in."
no subject
There's no way to have that without dragging someone down with his baggage. The nightmares, the paranoid, the episodes-- the drinking that's probably well on its way to becoming some kind of problem. He found out rather quickly after coming home from his last deployment that most folks simply aren't able or willing to deal with all that. And he really shouldn't expect them to.
But Raylan did. He did even after Tim gave him an out, he does every time he reaches over in the dark when Tim jolts awake in the middle of the night. He can't imagine his life at this point without Raylan taking up space in his bed and his heart. He certainly doesn't want anyone else there. This is it for him.
So when Raylan starts talking like there's a chance that it isn't, Tim frowns. He reaches up a hand, taking his partner by the chin. Not rough, but firm, making sure he has every ounce of Raylan's attention.
"You think this is me settlin' or somethin'? Like we're gonna get home and I'm gonna realize I have greater prospects than the Milton datin' pool?" His hand slides back to the back of Raylan's neck, pulling him down a bit closer. "I don't want anyone else, darlin'. Only you. Hell--"
He smiles, pushing himself up so their faces are close, not even a full foot apart.
"It was only you before either of us even got here."
no subject
No, his fear tore at his heart and stomach to even think about it. The worst thing, amid death and insanity, that could come from this place. Them not remembering. Them losing every bit of this, the connection and trust they've built and it gutted him that it was a possibility. And how could he even think about it now with Tim smiling up at him like that and pulling him down.
Hand sliding around from Tim's hair to the back of his head, Raylan flashes a grin before kissing Tim soundly. His off hand comes to settle on Tim's stomach but fists into his t-shirt as they kiss. Maybe it had been the way that Tim grabbed his chin, or the fear, or good old fashioned hot-bloodness, Raylan's fingers push Tim's shirt out of the way so they could spread over bare skin.
When the kiss ends due to that annoying need to breathe, Raylan doesn't pull away any more than he needs to, to mutter out his words.
"I want it to be me forever when we get back," he husks and, with a new spike of a totally different variety of fear for having said it out loud at all, Raylan solves the problem by kissing Tim again. He could, and aimed to, lose himself all over again in his sharp tongued sniper.
no subject
Could they even get back to this if they had to start all over? Or would they get hung up on the domestics they haven't had to face here? Their jobs, Raylan's ex-wife, the kid. After everything they've faced here in Milton, he knows those things are menial in the grand scheme of things. Easy to figure out. But if they don't even remember what they've been through here, all of those menial things become monumental.
It's the worst case scenario. At least if they die, they die together. They die having known and loved each other so wholly. There's a part of him that thinks that might be the best case scenario.
It terrifies him to think about, so he doesn't think about it. Which is exceptionally easy when Raylan's kissing him like this. The hand on his bare stomach sends a shiver right up his spine, like he's a teenager again, eager and wanting, fumbling around with a boy in the backseat of his truck. He doesn't think Raylan ever won't have this effect on him.
He's still pushing himself up with one arm, the other hand not moving from his partner's chin as they kiss. He doesn't even have time to respond when they break to breathe, the words striking his heart at nearly the same time those lips cover his again. With a hum against Raylan's mouth, and without breaking the kiss, Tim shifts to sit up, sliding into a position he's grown very familiar with -- straddling his partner's lap.
When it becomes necessary to breathe again, Tim doesn't draw back at all, instead placing kisses along the edge of Raylan's jaw, only stopping to murmur in his ear. "It's you forever, darlin'."
no subject
Forever was right now and every scrap of his being was focused on Tim.
Raylan sighs out another note as Tim peppers kisses along his jaw, face tilting a little to give Tim all the skin he wants as Raylan's hands move again. Those words in his ear made him shiver, made his blood run hotter, turning the need to touch Tim's bare skin into the same involuntary command that drove his need to breathe, and one hand finds its way back under Tim's shirt.
"You're gonna spoil me, with that kinda talk." His faint restraint only lasts half a second before he's pushing Tim's shirt up and out of the way, eager to get his mouth on Tim's neck and collarbone. There was no way he was getting out of tonight without ending up with some kind of love-mark on him, as if to cement the sentiment.
farmhouse.
Maybe that's why he doesn't feel the shockwaves of Chloe's death as strongly as the people around him, even Kostya. He'll miss her, and he's sorry that she's gone. He liked Chloe, even if it wasn't a deep friendship, and he feels neutrally about most people. His wariness around her had started to melt as she established herself as an ally, an altruist under the surface impression of stubborn self-interest. But no tears come, even once he visits the farmstead he'd visited so many times before to exchange eggs and meat.
There's just... a numbness that shouldn't be, a melancholy chill as he steps through the snow around her homestead. The boiler they'd examined together is fixed now; there isn't even a ghost of her presence. The place is just quiet. Still, like the forest after a fresh snow.
At least until he hears a familiar voice a little ways away and immediately pins it as belonging to Tim The American, saying something he can recognize as a freeform paying of last respects. ]
She was a good person. [ It's something, in his experience, that Americans throw around far too lightly. Vasiliy means it. Most of the people here, Tim The American included, are still pending judgment. ] You knew her?
no subject
He slides his hands into the pockets of his coat. They're gloved, but the fire-wielding power gifted to him by Enola doesn't keep him warm the way it used to. ]
Knew her well enough to miss her.
[ It's more than he'd normally admit, but if Vasiliy is calling Chloe a good person, then he must have known her well enough, too. Besides, Tim gets the feeling that he's experienced his fair share of deaths, too. ]
She was among the toughest of us. Hard to think she went out the way she did.
no subject
[ Maybe he's interpreting Tim a little literally, here, but unpleasant to think about and difficult to conceptualize are two different things entirely—and, for someone who spent years of his life as a cog in the body mill of Lubyanka Prison before ultimately dying in it himself, such a horrible death as being consumed by the Darkwalker isn't incomprehensible.
Vasiliy remembers, for a moment, the fear of his own death, the overwhelming pain opening in his chest like a yawning void before the bullet came: this was it, the end, and there was nothing he could do to stop the oncoming train of his death. He remembers the acute awareness of his own tears crawling down the skin of his face. The click of the man's service weapon's cocked hammer behind him, the way it echoed on the cement walls of the execution chamber. The way he counted the passing of each second, and then—nothingness.
Chloe probably knew she was going to die. She was probably afraid. It's a heavy feeling, even if he doesn't bother himself with American platitudes like 'She didn't deserve that'. ]
Chloe was not afraid of death. She was brave. She took danger for others.
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[ He repeats the military platitude he's heard a hundred times before. He keeps expecting it to eventually lose its meaning, but it hasn't yet. The phrase never held any amount of comfort for him, but it's something he finds still rings true for most veterans he meets.
Chloe wasn't a veteran. But she fucking fought like one. She stood on the front lines and laid down her life like one. She deserves the medals and the accolades far more than he does. She deserved to make it out of this place alive.
Tim looks towards the farmhouse. For some reason, it's the fact that there's no smoke curling from the chimney that makes his heart ache most. ]
You can be brave and still be fuckin' terrified. [ He was every time he put himself between his parents when his daddy got mean. When he pulled the trigger on a human being for the first time, just eighteen years old.
He glances over at Vasiliy. ]
You like bourbon?
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[ And he has been. He was never brave in Lubyanka Prison—he did what he was told, killed when he was asked to kill, kept his head down. He was meek. He swallowed back his apprehensions as time went on, or drank them away. Most of the time he was too exhausted and overworked to think about individual cases in the unstopping cascade anyway.
He drank a lot, and he still does, but he's never had bourbon. Vodka's always been the drink of choice; it's simple and clean and powerful. It's pragmatic, unornamented (though the Americans have tried to change that with silly fruity drinks), a liquid embodiment of the Russian spirit. ]
I drink. But I have never had it.
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Or maybe he just cares less about his well-being than he has been, because Chloe's dead and everything feels hopeless. Either way, his lips turn up in the barest hint of a smile that doesn't reach his blue eyes. ]
I got a case of it from the-- [ He gestures vaguely with one hand ] --weird ass Holiday Boar thing. If you were interested in tryin' some.
[ The truth is, it's the middle of the day -- even though the sun isn't out -- and he wants to get a little drunk, but he doesn't want to do it alone with his thoughts for once. ]