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

[tinstar]

The lift in Neal's voice, the obviously kind feeling towards babies and their power, was more than enough to make Raylan's face break back into a smile. One that could have almost looked happy. "I don't doubt it at all. I got another young lady that I'm keepin' an eye out over in Harlan.. She ain't even mine and she knows to call me for something."

Of course, Raylan knew that Loretta was going to end up taking over the county, if she could manage to survive her teenage years and the hell of what the Bennetts had put her through. She'd be unstoppable if she made it to adulthood.

The curl of his smile stayed as Neal answered his question. "I don't think learnin' to shark or playing pool for money is illegal yet, even if I suppose, it is bettin'. You always been in New York? Never gotten the time to check out any of their pool halls, myself but I'm sure they've got 'em."

[conning]

“St. Louis.” This was so strange. Just talking about his history. The only person who knew this much about him was June, and June was June. He could tell her anything.

“I was born in D.C., but I don’t remember it. We went into WITSEC when I was three.”

[tinstar]

"Missouri? Three explains why I don't hear the accent on ya." Not that it would have suited him but maybe Raylan had just gotten used to the New York rounded that came with Neal's vowled curves.

He chuckled a little under his breath. "The fact that you can't remember bein' born is probably a good thing. I hear it's a little traumatic for everyone involved. Since we're doin' this.." His lips curled, a finger gesturing between them both in suggestion. "Might as well come clean."

He leaned over, emboldened in his telling only by Neal's only hesitant admission. "My mother and her side of the family are hill folk. Only come down the mountain with her." He straightened. "I wasn't raised by them or anythin'. Didn't even know til I was a teenager, but.."

It was something to offer in return.

[conning]

Neal laughed at the remark about not remembering being born, but when Raylan leaned in, so did he. Neal loved a good secret almost as much as a good story.

How did he end up in a house with people who had so many threads of their lives run parallel to his own?

"I didn't know about my dad until I was eighteen. My mom told me he was dead, that he went out a hero." He made a noise that wasn't quite amused. "Funny the things that family forgets to mention."

[tinstar]

A laugh. That was a good sign and it fit Neal's face a lot better.

"Makes sense that she'd want to keep you safe. Give you an ideal to look up to that was worth somethin'. Frances tried but.. Arlo didn't give anyone much of any choice, when he was involved. He didn't like her roots. Made her and I both.. dirty somehow." Which they both suffered plenty for. Raylan kept his easy smile anyway, always finding that easier than admitting to how much Arlo had left in and on him.

"Sharkin' had to lead you to somethin' else, right? What's next on your .. resume," he said, huffing a little breath of a chuckle to lighten the word choice. Anything to maybe turn them off the parent conversational path.

[conning]

"Uh. Well. More like other things led to sharking. Sort of."

He shrugged helplessly. "I forged city bus passes when I was seven so I could go where I wanted, which is what led to the pool hall in the first place."

[tinstar]

That made Raylan chuckle, head tilting back a little with it. He glanced over, one eyebrows lifting with the motion.

"That's called workin' the system and really, as a lawman, I think it makes the system healthier. Not that I'm advocating it but.. I tend to only care about federal level crimes. Plenty of people gotta live, shit - we woulda called that ingenuity in Harlan.. If we'd had buses... We didn't. If you think that the fact that I got a badge means that I play by every rule in the book, I will clue you in on the fact that I lost a suspect once because I put him in my trunk and my car got stolen, taken to the crushers."

He was no untainted Angel. He wasn't a crooked cop either, just.. wildly unorthodox in his own Kentucky way.

[conning]

Neal laughed again, more delighted by the story than he probably should have been. "Please tell me he didn't actually get crushed, or I'm going to feel really bad for laughing at that."

[tinstar]

"Nah," Raylan assured. "Got let out by the two dumbass copper thieves that stole it. Poor kids didn't know what they were lettin' out. Saved the car before it loaded in too, which is better. I like that car."

Yes, the car was more important than the almost accidental manslaughter.

"It all worked out, in the end. No one was crushed but one unlucky lady got shot in her foot by the constable with me. We can't blame Bob though, he kinda gets the crap kicked outta him due to his mouth every once and a while."

[conning]

"I'm not sure what it says about my day-to-day life that you're making me homesick. Though fortunately there's less getting shot involved with white collar crimes." He shrugs one shoulder. "I've never really been a fan of guns. No offense."

[tinstar]

Raylan shook his head. "None taken. It ain't for everyone. All the more reason for people like me to be around."

Guns and what they could do, what they did, what they inspired others to do was overall terrible and shitty and ended with a lot of people in early graves. Raylan understood not liking them. He couldn't agree, but he could understand it.

"And I think that says your day to day is interestin' if that's the case. There a particular reason you don't like guns or is it the whole kit of what comes with 'em? If you don't mind my askin'."

[conning]

Neal shrugged and shook his head, looking down again. "I'm good with them. Know the practicalities of how to handle one."

His throat felt tight. "I just. I've been saved by them before. More than once. Peter's shot people to protect me. But I've never been able to pull the trigger myself when it's something alive on the other side of the barrel."

It was more complicated than that, but these things always were.

[tinstar]

The Marshal watched Neal try and swallow around the truth of the words and he didn't doubt them at all.

"That's not somethin' to be ashamed of." The reassurance was quiet, meant for them and this conversation. Not any of the ears that might be catching the edges of it upstairs. "The world would be a better place if pullin' the trigger was harder for more people. I wish I could say that it'd hard for me, but it's.." He shook his head a little, eyes falling back into his cup as his jaw worked. Chewing his own liver as it were. "Never done it without reason, but I've never had a hard time puttin' someone down. Don't know what that says about me as a person," he huffed, trying to put a spin of dark levity on top as he took another sip of his coffee and avoided meeting Neal's eye for the moment.

[conning]

Neal watched Raylan in silence, trying to sort out his thoughts.

"...There was a man named Vincent Adler. I met him a few years after I came to New York. I was--" Neal huffed a soft laugh. "Long story short, I was supposed to be conning him. Me and my partner were. I was the inside man."

He tapped the fingers of one hand against the side of his mug. "But it didn't exactly work out that way. He took me under his wing. Taught me..." He laughs again, though it's a little sad. "Everything. Everything I know about wine, and good food, and how far above the shoe the hem of a suit pant should fall. It was the first time I thought maybe I understood what having a father was like. And the thing was, he knew. He knew the whole time I was trying to con him, and he never said a word. Then one day... he disappeared. Took every penny from his investment company with him, including mine."

Neal shook his head. "But I couldn't hate him for it. After everything he'd shown me? After he left me that note that said he knew what I was, and cared the whole time anyway?"

He leaned forward, setting his cup down on the table. "The next time I saw him he told me I was the closest thing to a son he ever had. Then he pulled a gun on me."

Neal cleared his throat. He still hadn't sorted out all his feelings from that day. Seeing Adler again. Knowing he was responsible for so much of Neal's own pain. "Peter knew what he was to me. Maybe not everything he was, but enough. Adler pulled a gun, and Peter put him down, and if Peter had hesitated even for a second I'd be dead."

The thief leaned forward again, a little, trying to get a look at Raylan's face. Trying to get Raylan to look at him. "I would never, not for a moment, think less of Peter for being someone who could act without hesitation when the situation required it. That's the path you both picked. You're the people who make it possible for the rest of us to avoid violence. You've got a soldier's heart. That's not something to be ashamed of either."

[tinstar]

A story wasn't what he'd expected in an answer but he didn't interrupt and listened, eyes glancing over to Neal as he kept going. He wasn't sure where it was all leading, but he didn't think it'd be a reprimand. Neal didn't seem the type, though that didn't mean he wasn't capable of it. Weren't they all.

His brow furrowed a little as the final thrust was set up and the little lean forward that Neal did to catch his gaze worked, luring Raylan's head up a few inches for both their comfort. Hazel eyes darted back and forth between Neal's too blue eyes before Raylan dropped them back into his lap with a little nod and a lift of his smile that fell immediately with an equally faint pinch of his brow.

"I should have you talk to my ex-wife," he managed, voice a little tight and strange for the feelings boiling in his chest. Yes, he knew what he did was necessary and good, but knowing it and having people recognize it was.. different. Them recognizing what it laid on him and what it meant for him to carry on. But maybe he was being selfish. That was likely more probable.

"Maybe she wouldn't have left again. Not that I can blame her. Job that brings mob gunmen in that might threaten the house, the baby.. makes sense. Be glad the rest of the wide world ain't here too, otherwise it might be a lot noisier.."

He couldn't say 'thank you'. But he appreciated it nonetheless.

[conning]

Neal frowned, speaking without thinking. "Again? ...Sorry, that's none of my business."

He knew not everyone could be Peter and Elizabeth. Most people couldn't be Peter and Elizabeth. They were something special. Still, he knew how many people in law enforcement struggled with relationships outside of work. But that Raylan's ex would apparently come back, knowing what to expect, then leave again--it strikes Neal wrong.

[tinstar]

Raylan offered him a small tight little smile and a glance of his eyes that way, almost forgiving.

"Winona and I are complicated." Well, Winona was complicated and Raylan went along because he did everything he could to make her happy. Except be himself or do the job he did. No matter what it brought him as a human being. "Long story short is that we were married for six years. Until we weren't anymore." That, somehow, he could face more bravely, putting on an almost genuine smile to hide flair of prideful incredulousness that it stirred in him. "Didn't see her again for another five or six until I ended back up in Lexington. She remarried but is now in the middle of leavin' him too."

There was. So much more to all of it than just that but the way Raylan said it, one could almost believe that it was that simple. That straight forwards. But she was leaving Gary for Raylan and that was something.

"Hate to say that I'm part of one of those statistic now but at least I know 50% of the country is with me." He was a peace with being divorced. He wasn't at peace with Winona, but the divorce part.. It had happened. That wasn't the worst of it.

[conning]

"I don't think I've ever had a relationship that wasn't complicated, somehow." A tiny smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. "It wasn't six years, but I had someone I thought would last, and then..."

He shrugged. "We were together until we weren't any more."

Granted, in their case it was because she found out he was hiding a stolen treasure large enough to buy a private island, if he'd wanted to. It hadn't mattered in the end that he didn't want to without her, but he couldn't blame her for not wanting to cross that line.

"She's your little girl's mom?"

[tinstar]

"I don't know that any relationship can be uncomplicated," he replied, in the in-between, eyebrows pinching together again with a sharp inhale as he drew himself from his thoughts enough to register the question.

"Sounds like you're familiar with that kinda gig. Sorry." He meant that earnestly. It was shit. None of them deserved it. But what were they to do against the disappointment of the people that meant the most to them except... accept it.

"She'll be about three months along by now.. Got her sister there to help, I'm sure. Gayle. Hates me," he said with a huff of a laugh. "Never could figure out why.." He glanced over with a little lift of his chin. "What was her name? Your Almost."

Winona has been his Almost, was his Almost. As much hell as he got from it. Mostly from her.

[conning]

"Sara." Neal couldn't help smiling when he said her name, even now. "She's an insurance investigator. The first time we met she was chasing me, trying to find a painting I--allegedly--stole."

He tilted his head a little, still smiling. "Like I said. Complicated."

[tinstar]

Raylan couldn't help but chuckled softly, halfheartedly. "Allegedly, huh?" The curl of his features suggested he didn't believe that, but either way, he wasn't holding it against Neal. He didn't much care about or for art. It was above his class level and then some.

Easy to appreciate art when you weren't starving or risking getting black lung working in a mine. He didn't hold that against Neal either; neither one of them could help where they stood in society, not now. They were to far in.

"All your lovers chase you for stealin' art?" He didn't know why he asked or why that was the option his brain went with but. There. There it is.

Sorry Neal.

[conning]

He breathed out a laugh. He couldn't hold the question against Raylan. He'd opened himself up to it. "Well, one of them was stealing art with me, and one of them..."

The smile faded. "I got one of them killed."

He shook his head. "The rest weren't anything serious."

[tinstar]

His head bobbed, eyes casting back down to his lap at the mention of death. "I'm sorry to hear it." He wasn't going to ask for the details on that; they weren't drinking and it was still too early to start.

"But you're still young. What are you, thirty four? Plenty of time. Be it stealin' art or gettin' chased by pretty women for it." He assumed women because.. well, because of where he came from. Neal was a handsome man - no doubt a lotta people were after that.

[conning]

"Maybe." He smiled softly. "I hope so. I... I'd like to have kids. Settle down."

Neal made an amused noise. "Peter probably wouldn't believe me if he heard me say that."

[tinstar]

Raylan smiled crookedly. "I never wanted kids before a couple of months ago. Wanted to get married, sure, but.. passin' the Givens name onto someone wasn't somethin' I was interested in."

He glanced over. "Why not? He think you travel too much? A playboy?"