polyfacetious asked: “ He is a weapon. a killer. do not forget it. “
Song of Achilles: (Accepting)
Tim has got to be deep in the bottle, because he’s got the smell of it when he strides right on past Raylan. It’s soaked into his clothes, his hair, seeping out of his pores. Like he’d bleed whiskey if you pricked his finger.
His shirt is undone, tails hanging open against his jeans. It’s the least put together Raylan has ever seen the man, and it’s like a rubbernecker on the highway, he can’t seem to look away.
Booze has made Tim’s sharp sense of humor go syrupy, and he walks with a purpose, right up to the soldier standing vigil at the door. Heroes only. Raylan had rolled his eyes at it, the same way he rolled his eyes at the sign on the door when he was six years old and could finally read it, during all those hours he spent sitting in the parking lot.
But Tim, Tim walks himself right up into the personal space of the man at the door and he says Evenin’ soldier and if Raylan didn’t know any better, he’d peg that drawl as flirtatious. (Or the way Tim’s tongue catches just the middle of his bottom lip. Raylan doesn’t see the soldier looking, because he’s looking himself.)
The bolt of ‘shouldn’t have done this’ strikes him right in the damn chest when they sit down at the table. Shame coats the back of his throat and cracks open his ribs, having to show Art and Tim just what cesspool he crawled out of.
And of course, Arlo tries his bullshit on Tim, with a condescending laugh, and Raylan has never appreciated that sharp eyed stare more than his does right now. (There’s relief in there, maybe. That Tim doesn’t buy into his daddy’s dog and pony show.)
Not that he spends long thinking about it. Because Arlo is Arlo and nobody can light Raylan’s fuse faster. He’s got his hands clenched into fists underneath the table, nails biting into the meat of his palm. And even that isn’t enough for him to keep his seat.
Raylan knows better. He knows through decades of yellow sky weather that the second Arlo grabs hold of his arm that it’s all downhill from here. He knows he should shrug it off and walk away, that nothing gets to Arlo more than no reaction at all.
But there’s still a kid inside of him, a kid who spent too many years cowering beneath an arbitrary iron fist, and he don’t want to back down. So Raylan runs his mouth, and he uses lowlife when all he wants to say is worthless asshole and it ends exactly the way Raylan expects it to.
His cheek burns, the sound louder than the actual pain, but it still does the same thing it’s always done. It breaks up pieces inside of Raylan, until he’s the one weathering a tornado behind his ribs.
The thing is though...he sees it. Or hears it, more accurately, because looking away from Arlo is a weakness he will not allow himself. The squeak of wood against tile. Art’s placating voice. And in his peripheral vision...one Deputy Tim Gutterson, willing to come to blows for him.
It’s hours, and miles, and several fingers of whiskey in a cheap plastic hotel cup later before he realizes why it got to him so damn much, seeing Tim come up out of his chair.
All his life, Raylan has been carrying bruises. Busted lips. Black eyes. Teachers stopped asking, not wanting to know the answer. Pastors looked the other way. Other kids knew and whispered.
Nobody dared cross Arlo. Everybody knew, and nobody did a damn thing.
Tim was the first person in Raylan’s life willing to stand between him and Arlo’s blows. And there was no way on God’s Green Earth that Raylan was going to face that thought sober.
So he drinks himself down into the darkness.
The thing was...Raylan was never much of a dreamer.
In the metaphorical sense, he was never a man of ambition. He never wanted to be the best. Not in law enforcement, not playing ball. Every choice he made, it was tempered by one desire and one desire alone.
But in the physical sense, Raylan has always been a heavy sleeper. Dreams were at most, snatches of lights and colors and individual moments, like sand between his fingers the moment he woke.
And this night’s dreams are no different, street lamp circle in gold like a halo, buffalo plaid and soft cotton white. The taste of whiskey on his tongue, tempered by the salt of skin.
And a single, solitary sound.
