026 》sweet troubled man are you giving or taking?

[thering]

characters: Malcolm, Neal, Negan, Raylan, Doc
location: 1306 Phillips Dr
date/time: day 26 morning
content: the reset Playstation button was pressed
warnings: tbd

After the strangeness of the past two nights they were likely fully expecting to awaken in the same strange, different, not-so-new anymore places they found themselves in in the past two days.

Instead everything seems to have reset, again. The three permanent residents and two guests are back in 1306, exactly where they had been two nights ago. Malcolm was in his own room, Neal was in Doc's and Negan in Raylan's master bedroom. The two displaced cowboys are downstairs sharing one too-small couch, a night of drinking culminating in fighting over couch space and who gets to be the bigger spoon.

The fire in the fireplace had gone out and their Winter 2020 Collection of bespoke lanterns have vanished, but nothing else seems to be awry.

Comments

[thering]

So it seems Doc lost the size measuring fight this time around and ended up being the little spoon. Honestly he doesn't seem to mind. Two weeks of interrupted sleep means he's been playing plenty of catchup over the last two days.

"Mmm, no..." His eyebrows furrow and he turns a little more to bury his face into the couch cushion, clutching hard into the edge of the seat, not awake or conscious enough to stop any inappropriate crotch-to-butt rubbing action although that is fast changing as he is inevitably nearly rolling off the couch.

[tinstar]

Raylan huffed a breath and dropped his head back down, the hangover threatening to start in his head more important than his dignity of a man laying this close next to him and in no place to stop the shuffle of settling in that Doc was attempting to do. He could only groan agonizingly and sigh heavily, not totally unaware of the deep comfort that a body, any body, next to him brought.

"Doc," he said, voice sleep rough as his hand moved up to Doc's hip to rub a thumb back and forth. Shaking Doc would mean having to firm up enough to not shake himself and he didn't dare make that kind of jostle yet. "Yer gonna fall off."

[thering]

Doc is used to waking in different women's arms, be they a one night stand or a long term lover or someone who stopped charging by the hour a few hours ago, and it's much preferable than being curled up in the dark waking up cold and alone, so the weight of an arm and a comforting touch isn't so foreign to him.

Raylan's voice isn't so foreign to him either, even if it's never breathed so closely to him, but he can't quite make out the words in his steeped-in-sleep state. He almost elbows the poor man in an effort to turn around, which is when he starts to lose his balance on his little sliver of couch enough to start pulling himself out of his half-asleep state.

Lifting his head ever so slightly, eyes still squeezed shut, Doc groans quietly and lowers his head back down onto the couch again. He takes a long time rubbing his eyes slowly with the back of one hand, tensing up a bit, breathing slow.

"Mm... Raylan...?" But Raylan wasn't in the house; he'd checked.

[tinstar]

At the shuffling, Raylan pressed back into the couch in an attempt to avoid what he could of the turn, but as soon as he felt Doc's weight start to fall, the hand on Doc's hip tightened to help him stay up off the floor. Having quite a number of years experience sleeping next to a body night after night, the movements were automatic; a courtesy given to anyone laying next to him. "Uh-huh," Raylan grunted to the general mood of 'Ugh, morning'.

"Don't remember goin' to sleep here, and I ain't tryin' to cuddle but my head ain't ready to move just yet. Think we're back home though. Just.. don't talk too loud."

[thering]

Raylan wasn't in the house and... and Doc's not in the house, because he had gone to sleep in a bed bigger than this.

Something feels right for the first time in two days and it's not sending Doc flying off the couch. Not just yet, anyway.

Another bum shuffle later and Doc is firmly settled back in the couch. It's impossible not to be pressed flush against some part of Raylan's body if they're both staying on the couch but at least neither of them are making a scene of it.

"Home..." When did they start thinking of this house as home? When did they get this comfortable that they're not shoving each other off the couch?

"...just give me five minutes." He'll get up in five minutes and stop hogging all this space, do something responsible.

[tinstar]

If there was one thing Raylan was sure about, it was that Doc wasn't going to tell anyone about this fracture of tough man Marshal mask so easily accepted by anyone laid eyes on him. The hint of real humanity that he had to keep in his holster most of the time. While there was still a fraction of his mind that would worry about it later, for now, everything was okay.

It was just as dangerous as anything else, but Raylan fully relaxed back into the couch, arm slipping forward to a more natural drape over Doc's waist. It was home, wasn't it? The place he stayed with people he cared about. Nothing was ideal, but he wasn't alone. None of them were. The worry he'd been holding for the past two days settled down in the back of his head - If Doc was here, Malcolm was too. They were back in a safe place for a little while.

A handful of minutes passed as Raylan drifted on the edge of going back to sleep, lulled further into it by the solid weight against him, and the rise and fall of steady breathing. But after a few more minutes, Raylan inhaled sharply as he came to again, letting out a soft, back of the throat noise with his exhale.

"Hey. People gonna wake up soon. We gotta get up."

[thering]

He covers the back of Raylan's hand with his own for a touch too long before moving his arm aside gently, complying wordlessly. Just once he would like to be as careless and irresponsible as he had been in his youth. But he doesn't think he can let himself get that way anymore. Once one leg slides off the couch, the other follows suit shortly, and then Doc is sitting up, hunched over with the base of his thumbs pressed against his eye sockets. He didn't have anything to get drunk with in the house he ended up, but he has been dead tired and it's a struggle trying to shake the sleep off.

"You can stay," Doc offers as he slowly moves to his feet. He reaches over for the throw that's draped over the armrest and drags it over to cover Raylan up, from feet to chest.

The cold is helping to keep him awake, though his movements are still a little sluggish as he ambles over towards the fireplace and tugs on his pants up at the knees to crouch down, inspecting what's left of it, the cogs in his head grinding slowly towards get it going again.

[tinstar]

The touches were familiar, even if the hand wasn't but he had enough sense of mind to not squeeze gently. He withdrew his hand to Doc's hip before it was gently placed further back and kept there. If they were more familiar, it would have found a place to prop his fingers on Doc's back. As they weren't that flavor of familiar, Raylan kept his wrist on his own waist and stretched out the arm that hand been cramped up under his head with a heavy breath.

The blanket was nice and he'd take the invitation to stay stretched out onto the newly freed space, half moon hazel eyes locked on Doc's shoulders as he moved around.

"You alright?" Raylan knew he wouldn't get a fully truthful answer, but he trusted that he'd get a general overview answer - Doc wasn't bleeding, hadn't lost any limbs but no matter what he'd suffered over the past two days, Something had Happened. They didn't have to talk about the details of it, but Raylan had to ask.

[thering]

That question gets a noncommittal grunt out of Doc and he tries and fails to stifle a yawn, squinting into the fireplace as if he could stare it down into submission and just start a fire with the intensity of his half-asleep glare.

Nope. Didn't work. He'll need to start over, light up some paper and build a little tent of wood around it.

"Well I was waiting to get murdered last night." Doc sniffles as he stacks his wood and gropes around for the matches. Is he doing talking right? He's not sure. "We were in the dark, with strange noises, seeing things. Had an odd dream, didn't help. Must say I much prefer this instead."

[tinstar]

"Clearly you missed train for murder. So long as none of us sprouted any holes," he rumbled in response with a bit of a groan as he pushed himself up onto his elbows to take a glance around the living room. Nothing seemed out of place - it hadn't been ransacked or shot up. Perks. With a sigh out his nose, Raylan shifted up to an upright position and tugged the throw blanket around his shoulders.

He'd woken up in what he'd gone to sleep in - jeans and his undershirt, but he would have liked his boots on, if there was anything up there listening; it was cold as shit.

"Wasn't dark where I was but the rest..." He took a deep breath and laid his head back, slouching into the couch. Nope, not ready to be upright, but he'd made it this far and he couldn't go back to laying down now. He might not get back up again.

[thering]

"Lord knows a great many people have tried," Doc mutters with a sad little laugh. It's a little sad really that for all the wild encounters that he had survived, it would be tuberculosis that would have put him down in the end. If there was a sad, angry, bitter little man upstairs then he did have a sense of humour at least.

"The power went out," Doc explains. He'll come around to explaining the other details later. It is too early to be putting on a grandiose talk about the past two days, and he probably would wait until they had a bigger audience so he didn't need to repeat himself.

It takes three broken matches to get the fire started but once it's lit he pokes at it to get the bigger pieces of wood to catch on. One look at their stockpile of salvaged wood and it's fairly obvious that they will be needing an axe to get through the winter, but that is another worry for another time when they're a little less sluggish and a little less spooked.

"Are you alright, Raylan?" Doc casts a sidelong glance over towards him. He's just tired, himself, and it feels like the kind of tired you get when you've had too much rest, but not hung over like Raylan is.

[tinstar]

Raylan didn't doubt that. If he could have more than four people vying for his own murder at the same time in modern times, he could only imagine the damage he could have done 'back in the day'. So there was no telling how many people someone like Doc got in his wake.

Raylan grunted from his spot, happy to wait til later so everyone could hear it at once. There was nothing more irritating than having to repeat yourself again and again so everyone got the story. "Least you started with power, that's not nothin'," he said. Knowing Doc's issues as he does, waking up in the dark was probably worse than having to go back to it sans power.

At the question, Raylan took a deep breath and sighed it out. "Same as you - no holes, I've got all my limbs. I'm fine. Nothin' a few hours of not thinkin' about it won't fix." The things that disquited him only really disquited him when he was still and in his bed. That was many many hours away, so he'd deal with it then.

"Got myself a hellva hangover workin' up though. Whiskey's a fickle lady."

[thering]

"You had whiskey?" Doc perks up like a dog's head lifting at the sound of the rustling of the treat bag who was otherwise content with just lying lifeless on the floor.

"I don't think you get to complain about whatever happened over the last two days if you had whiskey," he quips lightheartedly as he makes his way back to the couch once the fire is going steady, sliding into the seat next to Raylan's. He isn't awake or lucid enough to hesitate or deliberate over whether he's sitting too close or too far or maybe he should take Raylan's chair or just not sit down at all, where to put his hands and all the rest of it.

A comfortable silence settles between them and gives way only to the spittle and crackle of the wood going up in flames. In that moment it didn't seem necessary to say that he appreciates being back here in familiar company. They communicate through looks, nods, snickers, sighs, and occasionally if they're sitting close enough, reassuring and reaffirming little knee bumps.

[tinstar]

"I tried to bring some home for you, I promise," he replied, the exhaustion of everything in his voice as he watched Doc from his half lidded station. "Though between Constantine and I, we mighta drunk it all."

He wouldn't put it past them. Unmoving as Doc settled on the couch next to him, Raylan ruminated on the feeling of having the company that understood him without knowing everything about him. It was nice, their communication and he'd even argue that it was nice to have the fleeting contact. He'd long stopped keeping count, but his well was far from full.

"'m glad you're back," he mumbled after several minutes of them sitting there. He didn't have to say he was worried about Doc, that was implied in the statement. They weren't going to talk about how they'd woken up but that too, was implied in the statement.

[thering]

"I am sure you did," he quips right back with no malice in his tone. Maybe he's a little jealous, but he'll get over it. He doesn't think that anyone got their tropical island paradise getaway while the others were left to suffer.

"You're getting sentimental, old man," Doc teases with a playful knee bump and a smile he can't keep off his face. Not that he minds hearing such kind words. There was a time he didn't think he would be missed.

"Better wake up before you profess your love."

this work for transition?

[tinstar]

"Shuddup," Raylan grumbled back to all of it, but the edges of his lips curled.

Upstairs, they could both hear the shuffle of someone moving around, though it stopped after a second, earning only a glance up of Raylan's attention. "That scratchy shit better not start here too-"

But it was only Malcolm.