villagelogs | 028-029 » the winds of change

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028-029 » the winds of change

WHO: Everyone.
WHERE: Eastern/Central Mathias.
WHEN: Days 028-029
WHAT: A town meeting is called.
WARNINGS: Will update as necessary. PM this account to have a warning added!
NOTES: Plotting post over here!

RECOMMENDED ♫ Deadly Avenger "Ikiryo"

DAY 028
SOMETHING ON THE WIND
Another day dawns in the fair town of Mathias. The sky is a blanket of light grey, tiny specks of snow lightly falling as the hours pass. It makes the town feel almost quaint, the scenery quite peaceful in its winter garb. But beneath the veneer of peace there is a pervasive dread of something approaching. Something inevitable is on the wind, something that has come before and will come again...

Throughout the day, residents will consistently experience feelings of deja vu, that sense of having done or seen or said something before that can never be fully recalled. It happens again and again, tugging at the back of their minds, the memories just frustratingly out of reach.

Residents will also notice a note pinned around town:

The note can be found on the town hall's bulletin board and the front doors of many town establishments, including the Grey Gull, the library, and the boarding house. At the bottom of the note it is specified that the meeting will take place "tomorrow, when the sun is over the town square."

NEW ARRIVALs
The newest arrivals to Mathias will wake on the frozen lawn of the town hall atop a snowdrift. They had best hurry inside and get warmed up before hypothermia sets in.

DAY 029
A GATHERING OF MINDS
In the late afternoon when the sun hangs over the town square, residents will converge upon the Town Hall, where a larger meeting room has been filled with rows of chairs. After most people arrive, John Constantine stands and addresses the room... and then sits again. A grand introduction, truly.

Residents are encouraged to share their experiences and information they have gathered in the town while holding questions until the end. Rather than getting tangled in the intricacies of each person's tale, it seems better to absorb the broad strokes and try to connect the puzzle pieces to get a look at the bigger picture that is the mystery of Mathias Township.

THE INEVITABLE
As the meeting comes to an end and residents begin to converse among themselves, the feeling of something approaching and sense of deja vu begin to build, becoming almost oppressive as night falls. An hour after nightfall, residents learn the reason for these sensations that cease immediately as the earth begins to rumble. The buildings shake, furniture tumbles, and breakables crash to the floor as the earthquake sets in without warning.

The tremors last around a minute, far longer than a normal earthquake, and then the town settles again. There are no aftershocks, which many may note is quite unusual. Residents will find quite a bit of mess in their homes and other locations around town, but there is no structural damage to be found despite the intense shaking.

CONDITIONS UPDATE
— THE WEATHER is fairly typical of a northern winter. The sky is grey, the temperature hovers just below freezing during the day (colder at night), and a light snow falls during both days. Residents should bundle up when going outside and not venture too far into the dark night...

— THE FOG remains blocking the paths in the forest, urging residents to stay huddled within the town proper, and it also now blocks the northern section of town, beginning just before where residents know the chasm in the earth to be. Venturing into the fog is ill-advised.

— DISAPPEARANCES continue with Sherlock Holmes being the latest victim of the town's unsettling whims.

OOC NOTES
— TOWN MEETING STRUCTURE The town meeting section of the log is designed for characters to share any information they would like to with the other residents in attendance. ICly, characters should "hold questions until the end" with the intent that they can get the Big Picture first and connect any dots they see. OOCly, this means players should post their character's information sharing tag in the Meeting section, but the actual conversation about whatever they share happens after the meeting proper in the Mingle section. That way, these conversations can happen however players prefer, be that one-on-one or in small or large groups.

— HOUSING Please be sure your character's housing arrangements are up to date on our list. We're missing a few people and it really helps to know where everyone is for planning. Frequent updates for wandering characters are perfectly acceptable.

— THE BULLETIN BOARD has been updated. Players should note there is a change to the wall near the board that may be of great interest to some residents.

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Raylan was exactly the same way. His drinking, his habits, his keep busy or isolated attitude went a long way to tamping down what of the real him had survived life. If there weren't the moonshine and something to do, Raylan shudders to think of what he'd become. Someone, he was sure, would argue that it was freeing. He didn't exactly agree.

Raylan let his head dip forward. "I'm plenty comfortable," he said, far too aware of where his voice would cast along Doc's ear. There was a unique comfort to having Doc and his weight right against his chest, that pine shampoo curling up into his nose. Saved Doc's back and his chest the freezing, if he wanted to be pragmatic about it. Despite that or maybe because of it, Raylan continued, right where he was.

"No point in sufferin' while we're here, any more than we already are?" He huffed another half laugh of a breath. "I've been sleepin' alone too long to mind but mindin' and likin' it are two different things. I don't want a face but.. there seems to be plenty room in my bed if you ever decide you want a body next to you. No strings or expectations attached." Shit, they didn't even have to talk - Doc could walk in and find a wordless embrace waiting for him. It wasn't a far cry from that one tease that was still bouncing around in his head from when they first moved in together.

It wasn't nothing but two grown men being there for each other, right? In a more basic needs way then Raylan was used to, but he'd never been starved out of life the way Mathis had; he could more than understand both their bending to this. Just for now.

"Not to prod but I gotta argue heartless. You're a lot of things, sure. Heartless ain't one of them. Doesn't mean you have to be a bleedin' heart, you're not that for sure. Hard ass maybe, even though I ain't ever had a feel."

Hm. Maybe too comfortable. Not that Doc minds. Too comfortable is better down here than being scared shitless by something that two grown ass men should be able to handle. They can shoulder everything else this town has thrown at them and somehow try to keep a house of people afloat throughout the shitstorms they have been through, but a hole in the floor is too much for them to handle. It's a sorry state of affairs.

"Ain't never met a Marshal with no strings or expectations attached," he muses quietly. He finds Raylan's hand hanging a few inches away from his knee in the dark and drags it down to the top of his thigh, dangerously close to his crotch before nudging it to his hip, following the curve around towards his rump. He wouldn't be sitting around with Raylan talking - that's all they're doing, really - if he was alone in the dark with Raylan in his bed. Although he is mindful of not wanting to upset anything he's got going on with Malcolm. Doc is not enough of a strings or expectations kind of guy to get entangled between two fellows who are all strings and expectations.

"Is it hard enough for you?" he asks with another chuckle that sounds almost ominous, the way it echoes around in the chamber. "If I have to get up I would be giving you a lot more than a feel." Doc lets his head roll to one side, exposing more of the side of his neck to that warmth radiating off Raylan's chest. "Not sure you could afford me, on government wages..."

That was the risk taken when trapped down in a hole in the dead of winter, it seemed. Comfort. What a terrible thing to endure while they were surrounded by such damp, inhospitable horrors. Well. At least no one topside had to know that they were so easily undone by a bad ladder and a trap door.

"Maybe just a few," he admitted as Doc's fingers found his. He hadn't expected the touch on his hand, or the pull but he was honestly surprised by the boldness of the guidance and his head ducked down a little with an uneseen smile as he let Doc do as he would.

The roll of his head was felt and mapped out in Raylan's head as he chuckled at the question, squeezing Doc's ass and letting his hand run a few inches up the back of his thigh before coming back down and around Doc's hips to settle a hand across the furthest one as Raylan took a chance and bent down to press a not so chaste kiss against Doc's neck.

"I think I can handle whatever you dish out, cowboy."

There were.. minimal strings with Malcolm but no one asked and he wouldn't tell. The selective attachment of strings left room for other possibilities. Like this one. Something he'd wanted since.. he wasn't sure when. Somewhere along the way, their drinking sessions had become for something more than just drinking and talking. Raylan wasn't sure when, exactly, the idea had set in but it didn't matter. It was there and had been for at least a week and a half.

"Government pays fairly decent now and the perks aren't bad," he joked huskily. "Might even pay for a few bottles on top. Not that anyone's got enough for what you're worth."

Usually there's copious amounts of alcohol involved when one thing leads to another. They can rely on a natural sort of flow when they're not mired in self-consciousness and doubts about who's doing what where or clumsiness, awkwardness, stuttering uncertainty. Bumbling around in the dark helps alleviate that somewhat, but the inhibitions and the fear of the darkness swallowing up a desire to touch, hold, pull, kiss, feel are still there.

With both legs outstretched and an arm slung low around his waist, he reclines a bit to the side, elbow grazing the wall as one hand plants itself firmly on the ground, life mimicking art of two entwined lovers carved in moving marble. His hat slides off and ends up a few inches away in the dark on the floor as he breathes out an approving sigh, free hand sliding into the short, soft tufts of Raylan's hair on the back of his head. His grip is tight enough to feel the hurting in yesterday's grown out roots, more salt than pepper these days but who has the heart to point that out to him?, callouses scraping against scalp an unspoken warning that this is playing with fire, with someone who plays rough, and that he shouldn't stop because they're only just skirting the surface.

Henry hisses, panting lightly as he turns, bumping cheeks before temporarily abandoning the effort to engage in those lips, deciding that this kind of attention is nice to indulge in for a while. One leg shifts, bending at the knee, heel digging in, undecided between straightening up and taking control or just kicking out uselessly until he can't hold them both up any longer. If he could grab onto Raylan's hip with his other hand he would, but he's fairly certain they would both slide down onto the ground then if he even started to try. So he's stuck, almost down on one elbow while his other hand loosens its grip from Raylan's hair, fingertips combing down to run over the nape of his neck.

He's too afraid to say anything that might ruin the moment, so there is only the sound of them kicking around and seams stretching beneath taut muscles, rubbing fabric against fabric, skin against skin between hot and heavy breaths in the dark.

Smiling at the slowly melting man that he'd suddenly gained, Raylan's left hand shifted to help keep Henry's weight from falling too far to one side and his head ducked in encouragement to fingers running through his hair, stealing one or two more lazy, soft lipped kisses while he could. He inhaled sharply through his teeth at the grip, nose pressing against Henry's neck, but the off hand that fists tightly into Henry's shirt and turns up enough to tug some his shirts from his waistband was telling enough.

Between them? No, it wouldn't be a soft, easy go - that was for people less tormented and compressed by themselves and what they want. What they feel they wouldn't get or don't deserve. Raylan welcomed it, the rough abandon that he found just as intoxicating as the shine they so freely drank. He knew what to do with fire.

His left knee lifted as Henry turned and a half growled note of his own approval slipped out as the water testing bump of their cheeks turned into a proper kiss. There was no hesitation, none of the awkward self doubt that Henry had seen in the garage in Raylan right now. He had gotten too many sounds, too many signals that this was okay and didn't hold back in the invasive and hungry kiss. Underneath all the smoke and moonshine, he could still taste Henry himself, mingling into something uniquely Holliday. As Henry's hand loosens, his free hand let go of his shirt, opting instead to slide up and around Henry's neck.

Even when the kiss broke, Raylan didn't say anything, running his hand down Henry's neck to fist into the collar of his shirts as he leaned in again. A little too much enthusiasm was all it took to tip their precariously balanced weight backwards, the shuffle of denim and heavy breaths echoing around them as they found their way to shouldering in the dirt and Raylan wasted no time in rolling his weight over, one hand sliding up Henry's hip and over his belt to pull him close against him in the way he needed them to be.

They'd hardly needed words so far, passing bad evenings with nothing more than a grunt and a few short sentences. Who said they had to start now?

It's cold. When Raylan's fist is in his crumpled shirt and it gets pulled high enough to expose an indecent couple of inches of midriff, Henry protests with an involuntary gasp and shudder, and a slight arch of his back away from wall and floor. For someone who is all hard edges and stone walls behind stone walls behind stone walls, he's a soft kisser, yearning with a kind of hunger he tries not to stoke as he teases with a playful, gentle, testing bite, tugging on Raylan's lower lip. A bit of mutually-acquired intuition, being in a kind of sync that they are not on with anyone else in town has them knowing whether they're tipping their heads to the left or the right, where their hands can and should roam in the dark, whether to floor the gas pedal and power on through or take things nice and slow.

Right now it's with a certain kind of urgency that has him hitting the ground with a thud and a low groan. The cold and damp radiating off the floor seeping into his back has him lifting and rolling his hips, shifting a leg to nudge against the outside of Raylan's knee while his hand strokes a line down the familiar feel of contoured tweed, finding a curve of a butt to grab while they snap their hips together and grind eagerly. He seems desperate for the touch, the warmth, anything he can grasp onto and pull in close to stave away the loneliness and the fear. A dull thud of the back of his head hitting the floor rattles all the unspoken worries out of his head and a furtive exploring in the dark morphs into an almost affectionate nuzzle as he bumps his nose against Raylan's cheek, kissing and nipping at his jawline.

In the end he is too claustrophobic, too afraid and jumpy at all the distant little noises in the dark to really want to tend to the growing discomfort in his already tight pants. Their priorities are scattered on the floor, ready to hitch a ride and weasel their way back into prominence. But holding tightly onto Raylan until the fabric of the coat creaks between his fingers while his other hand roams beneath the layers to finds warm skin and a flesh-covered tailbone serves as the best distraction he's got.

They probably should have done this in the house. They... probably will do this in the house. At some point. When it's... almost, just as dark, and nobody is looking.

Raylan knew it was the cold that made Henry gasp and roll into the turning fall of their weight, but it sent what was left of his forward thinking mind tumbling into something much warmer than the cold, sharp air around them. They should have done this in the house. They weren't set up to do anything more than what they were where they were, but the nipping at his lips only made him hungrier for more and smile into the skillful parry of their kiss. Where that would actually end them in the next few hours, he didn't know. Nor did he care right now, about much of anything.

Grunting into the kiss roughly at the roll of Henry's hips, he took advantage of the position and slid his hand up Henry's shirt to let his fingers slide and play over his side, humming a note at the hot, soft skin that greeted them. Somewhere, many years ago, Raylan had lost what shame he had left - the hurdle that he had needed to jump, was in the middle of trying to jump, had very very little to do with it, so nothing in him questioned the hotblooded need that deeply echoed his own.

For all the sheer pleasure he got out of touching Henry, the cold fingers up under his own shirt made him inhale sharply, head tilting and breaking their latest kiss with a chuckle that bled into a soft sigh. There was a passing idea of saying something - anything - but it was overridden by the urge to let Henry kiss up his jaw as he lowered his head to nose his way into the warm pocket of his neck, place several lazy kisses there, the last of which came with a soft nip of teeth against skin. It was testing as mush as Henry had been and he trailed his lips up to Henry's ear.

"I've been wantin' to do that for a week and a half now," he admitted, secure in the fact that there was no one else down here to hear the crack in his otherwise fairly stable wall of repressed emotions. But if he couldn't say it while they were tangled together and halfway to dry humping like desperate teenagers, when could he?

"Only a week and a half?" retorts the incredulous voice in the dark, sounding too amused to be as slighted as the words themselves would have suggested. "I'm losing my touch." He should have had the Marshal hook, line and sinker from day one, long before there were revelations about the kind of man he was or the kind of man people assumed he was.

Losing his touch is not something Raylan can complain about right now. Henry is all touch. But before they can get too intimate - a territory that comes with its own reservations and fears - a little taste test with teeth in the side of his neck doesn't go unnoticed. A left hand grips Raylan's shoulder while the right goes for the opposing hip. In under three seconds Henry has got one of their legs entangled with each other, and then he's rolling on top and taking over faster than they can say each other's names.

He pins Raylan down with a kind of strength he usually keeps in check, experienced enough rolling around in dirt and sheets and carpet to know how hard and how far he should push that powdery line in the sand. Hands on wrists and knees on knees, he leaves a bruise to remember their little tryst by on Raylan's hip, well hidden and easily excused as a careless collision against doorknob or countertop or... anything hard, really.

He releases one of Raylan's arm and slides his hand over a hard Adam's apple, tipping the good lawman's head back with one thumb, countering a furtive nibble with his own threat of teeth sinking into Raylan's upper lip. If they're going to bring this home with them then it should be abundantly clear that he's not cut from the same romantic cloth as either of the New Yorkers.

The too hard and too fast and too overwhelming approach is soothed by a calculated tapping on the brakes, with his fingers curling under Raylan's jaw, a deceptively apologetic soft kiss and an even softer groan.

If he's honest, and stops chasing that addictive heady rush that they're not discouraging for a few seconds, Raylan tastes like misery. Much as he enjoys it himself, he can imagine that for others it might be a bit of an acquired taste.

Before Raylan's lust addled brain could come up with any suitable reply, his world was being spun and the not so gentle knock of his head against the floor followed by the surprisingly strong pinning of his arms had him grunting softly, hips pushing up for more despite the clench of Henry's knees. He couldn't tell if it was the heat they'd build up ebbing away that made him shiver or if it was the sudden, swift callused hand on his neck, tipping his head back like a show horse, earning Henry a throaty, hitched half moaned sound that was muted by the kiss. Raylan had been in a lot of beds with a lot of different women, and now exactly one man, but it had never come with such rough play.

No, nothing like the New Yorkers.

Sliding his free hand up Henry's thigh, Raylan got bold and let his hand wander between them, fingers finding the hard length that felt like it had almost put its own bruise into the soft skin of his hip and stroking firmly down and back up before sliding away around Henry's waist as the almost wrestling turned soft again. More and more, Henry seemed like a storm that had finally let out some of the rain furiously onto very dry crops, the intensity ebbing and raging unpredictably.

It probably spoke to how desperate he was to find it intoxicating. The relinquishment of control for half a second to someone he could trust to not kick him around for it.

Edited 2021-02-19 01:54 (UTC)

It's easier to be bolder in the dark, when they don't have to be under each other's scrutiny, where every touch could be misattributed to them not being able to see where they're putting their hands, what they're touching. Excuses they can't capitalise on once they're back in the house - not that they would need to anymore, probably. Once that first move had been made it would be easier to go again (and again, and again).

Much as he would like to have the problem in his pants tended to, especially with Raylan offering like he knows exactly what to do with his hand, Henry ends up rolling to the side with some reluctance, thighs rubbing in a futile effort to alleviate the discomfort while he cups Raylan's cheek to give him a parting kiss. His hand trails over Raylan's shoulder, down the length of his arm and falls away as he shifts in close enough to bump his forehead against his own coat, smelling and feeling like a Henry-Raylan blend while it's hanging off Raylan's shoulders.

Since they can't relocate to fuck this energy out, he's left panting shallowly, nuzzling, swallowing, licking his upper lip. Maybe they'll need a safeword before they start throwing each other around, choking each other or beating each other up. If Henry had been the firm but gentle, kindly man that 1306 knows him to be, he would not have survived his time or his world. There is something there, beneath the charm, clawing and rippling beneath the surface of his skin, a caged beast waiting to unleash some pent up frustrations, but he doesn't trust himself or this increasingly fragile Thing he has with Raylan to let it all out.

"I can't, now, or here," he admits between laboured breaths, even though he seems like he very much can when he holds Raylan's hip and bumps crotches, grinds like a slow dance at the wrong angle, holding him close keeping him there while he brushes his lips against Raylan's temple. "I want to, more than anything." He hopes Raylan knows that without needing that soft kiss on each closed eye and on the tip of his nose to reassure him. "I am sorry. I'm too-" too scared, down here, and of himself, what he is if he's not a gentleman. "-...preoccupied."

Raylan didn't need nor want any excuses for what he was doing; he knew full well what he was welcoming, no matter how the questions about him surrounding it would come back and hit him in the face when his head was clear again. This was no mistake, no 'we got too drunk and one thing led to another' for either of them to hide behind and he was grateful for it. He didn't like the way that dancing felt, like it would hang either one of them out over a cliffs edge by a fist in their shirt with the wrong thing threatening to rush in push them over the rest of the way.

Raylan gave a shudder groan into kiss as Henry rolled away, lips following him until he couldn't anymore and wondering if his wandering hand had been a step too far as he blinked blindly through the white tint in his vision at the ceiling. His own breath came in heavy pants, body tightly buzzing with need he didn't quite recognize.

Whatever that was, tucked away deep in Henry's waistcoat, wasn't completely unexpected and, in the same breath, it was for all the softly understanding, sage wisdom that made Henry who he was. The surprise of it didn't matter, not with Henry's hand sliding over his hip holding him in place, and he couldn't not touch in return. One hot hand slid over Henry's thigh and moved up as his other slid over his forearm, gripping him tightly enough to likely leave bruises of his own.

Of course they had to pick the most inopportune and impossible time to fall into each other.

Raylan turned his head into the kiss with an uneven heave of breath as he only just starts to catch it, shaking his head softly as he forced his way over onto his side so he could slide a hand up Henry's jaw and guide it up the fraction to meet his lips, interrupting the assurances that completely did their job. "Don't be," he whispered, stealing one more kiss before pulling back to shift up onto his elbow and start shrugging off the jacket so he could drape it over Henry's shoulders as he continued. "Not exactly the most romantic place in the world for... somethin' like this.'S'not safe," he elaborated, resisting the urge to reach down and steal yet another kiss like it would fortify him topside when all this was just a story they kept between each other. "And when you can..."

Well. He knew where to find the good Marshal.

Edited 2021-02-20 02:15 (UTC)

For all their flirting which, in retrospect, may have had too many undertones to truly be relegated to mere jokes that men so closeted they were sitting in powdery Narnian snow buried under the weight of stifling antiquated social expectations and the sheer stubbornness of staunch denial tended to make, they're all talk and laughs until they're clumsily scratching and bruising each other in the dark. He's not exactly the most romantic man in their house, so he can hopefully be forgiven for not taking Raylan somewhere nice to try and abscond with a few stolen touches and kisses. He never takes Raylan anywhere nice.

The weight and the ghost of Raylan's warmth stashed away in his returned jacket settles him, gives him something to cover up the tent in his pants with even though they both know it's there and there's no one else down here to see and call them out on it anyway. He's not embarrassed about what he wants, even if they could have picked a better time and place for such confessions. But it's more than a little distracting from what they should be doing. Running around like headless chickens courting an untimely death down here or... whatever the plan was for getting out.

Tempting as it is to attempt snuggling against Raylan, when he finds his hat patting around the ground groping in the dark for it, he pushes himself a little more upright, sitting up and pulling his hat onto his lap, keeping his desire covered up under his hat where he hides all his other wants and thoughts and emotions. His back hits the wall with a sigh and he keeps his hands on top of his own thighs, swallowing the longing and the craving down his throat and stuffing everything back down into the pit of his stomach where he can easily set everything ablaze with moonshine.

"Since you left your handcuffs in Harlan, do you think Malcolm would notice if we borrowed his sex dungeon?" he asks once he's got his breathing and mended the cracks in his voice back into some semblance of total control, trying to elicit a laugh and unconsciously ease a comfortable transition back into that kind of machismo that they wear like armour that Malcolm would probably not approve of.

It only felt right that they break apart in the same way they came together; softly and without much noise about it. Raylan didn't bother to move until the rest of Henry's presence next to him shifted to the wall and once he had, he could push himself up to his feet without any reluctance. Laying on a cold ground alone wasn't an attractive alternative to what he'd just had and staying down there would only make him linger in his need. Their need - he could still feel it, even with Henry outside of his reach again.

Brushing himself off and readjusting himself from the outside of his jeans with a rough exhale, Raylan was a little amazed at how warm he felt, considering how frigid the ground was. His thumb played idly with his horseshoe ring as he paced back and forth, never going more than a few feet in either direction before turning around. He was back to not being able to sit still, but for a much better reason than the anxieties that were creeping back under his skin now that there was room for them again.

He huffed a breath, a half chuckle as he ran a hand through his hair with another deep breath. "Couldn't say." He had no idea how Malcolm would take the idea. Would he feel disappointed? Rejected? What had he gotten himself into? He couldn't tell if the coil in his stomach was fear of the tunnels or fear of something else.

"Course, we always got our own belts. Ain't hard to recreate. How rough you plan on gettin," he only half teased, tone lifting in amusement. "We gonna need a safeword?"

Henry stays sitting, if for no other reason than because the both of them pacing is going to be far more nerve-racking than just the one of them pacing.

"Always." Although Doc Holliday is far more likely to pull a safeword when it comes to affection and the L-word than he would getting bound, beaten or choked, or doing the binding, beating and choking in bed. It's not that he doesn't want to be held, or loved, or worried over. But despite not wanting to be some kind of glorified, unattainable, mythical creature, he is very conscious of it. That branding, which is wholly incompatible with the cursed, undying monster that he is, doesn't allow for any vulnerabilities.

"I am not incapable of being gentle," Henry points out, as he has demonstrated time and time again. And if Raylan could look him in the eye and tell him in complete honesty that he wants gentle, Henry might even believe him. But he didn't need any ambient light to see that Raylan isn't after gentle. Spend enough time in a bordello and you know what kind of a good time any man who walks in is looking for. Henry has known since their second night on the porch drinking moonshine. Just because he doesn't kiss and tell doesn't mean he doesn't know.

They should drink silently over it sometime. When they get out. He is still hopeful about that, even if he is sitting on the floor in the hole in the ground with no real plan or idea of how to claw his way back out of this one.

"Before you get too carried away with your sexual fantasies, let's fantasise about ways to get out of here first," he teases right back as he slowly pushes himself up off the floor, grabbing the edge of his hat before it slides right out of his lap. At this point, he's not above throwing his shoe at the hatch they think leads up into 1306 if he thinks it would get any attention.

Raylan scoffed at the answer, the chuckle behind it apparent. There was no way to make this just a joking matter anymore, not with the way he could still feel Henry's weight and grip and almost furiously needy kiss. It scared the hell out of him, how easily it had wrapped and whipped everything in him up. It scared the hell of him that he wanted more, to feel it unfettered by their situation. There was nothing monstrous about Henry and Raylan doesn't believe they'd be where they were with it if the man didn't want to be loved and held and worried over. The latter was true, regardless of anything else anyway.

Wasn't that what they all wanted, no matter the fronts they hoisted to the rest of the world?

"Yeah, but I bet it only comes easy after you burn some of that fire out," he replied, a smile quirking in the dark. Road they were on, if they could stay on it, Raylan intended on finding out. Raylan had gentle. Tended towards gentle. But Henry wasn't wrong. Not a lot of people would risk getting rough with him. Henry, apparently, wasn't any of that sort.

"Shuddup." But the smile had turned into a grin that seeped into the word and Raylan stopped his pacing to focus up where he knew the hatch was. Right. Their doom and peril. Of course that meant he had to focus on the fact that their survival depended on either the New Yorkers finding them or them finding a way out through the tunnels.

"Assumin' they come lookin' for us.. We do have a good bit of debris from this ladder. Might not hold weight but It should throw fine, right?" He'd prefer the first option, if God was taking requests today.

If he's honest, he can't be sure how it works. Usually there are outlets. There are guns. There are women. There is a whiskey. There is a car. Here he can only hope to not subject the housemates to whatever it is he needs to burn out.

He wants to tell Raylan that they might not come looking, but he isn't cruel enough for that. Perhaps it is too early to give up on others. Doc just thinks he knows better from experience. God don't take requests from poor old country boys. They've been making home in places where angels fear to tread.

"Won't work well if it's too light." They can ignore all the small fragments and salvage some big ones. And then... what? Keep throwing and hoping? He doesn't know. Maybe they just need to be doing something to keep themselves busy, even if it is something as futile as that.

"Let's gather everything up anyway." Maybe they'll need to burn the smaller pieces to start a fire if it gets too cold, in which case they'll need to use the bigger pieces they can salvage as firewood and figure something else out.

If anyone in the house was able to take it, it would be Raylan.. Or Negan, no matter how Henry may not like the idea. That was something else on the internal itinerary, however futile it seemed on it's face.

"For once, I'm not gonna suggest a stress test." With the way their luck was going, the bits would pass the test but not the actual attempt at the floor. He couldn't handle bringing on their failure in that for wanting to be 'through'. He'd like to get out of here, thank you very much - preferably before the panic that had plagued them before returned it's grip full force.

"But we should probably sort it," he said as he moved forward to turn on the light before using his boots to scuff lightly and kick everything towards a central point where they could sort it out without reaching too far.

Edited 2021-02-23 03:10 (UTC)

After finding Raylan’s hat on their second pass of the house, they started looking around with a more scrutinizing gaze. Malcolm noticed the corner where the furniture had been moved. He waved Neal over to help pull the trap door open. He peered down into the dark.

“....Hello?” he called.

Neal hovered at Malcolm's shoulder, trying uselessly to see deeper into the darkness. He wasn't sure what to do next, if they weren't here. If this was just a coincidence. Start searching the snow banks, maybe, or ask if anyone had seen them near the woods...

He bit his lip. "Raylan? Doc! Are you down there?"

Sorting was easy with the light on, much faster when everything was heaped together in a pile. All that was left to do was to take pieces from the middle pile and throw. Leave the smallest pieces for kindling and the biggest pieces for firewood. And maybe save that one that snapped like a stake for anything that might attack them down in the tunnels.

A piece of wood comes flying out the trapdoor when they open it at a speed that an expert knifethrower can muster, nearly taking their eyes out as it hits the ceiling and leaves a faint mark before clattering to the floor.

"...shit," came a voice from down the shaft. Did Doc just take the help out?

Raylan had stepped back a little as Doc cocked his arm and while it had been for safety, clearly he was on the wrong side to be in any real danger. With no screams to follow the accidently careless chucking, Raylan assumed all the eyes survived.

"Nice timing." Stepping forwards, he peered up at the hatch door and the worried faces over them. "We were startin' to think maybe y'all weren't comin'," he said, hiding the very real concern that was behind a dryly teasing tone.

"We ain't dead yet but if you don't find some rope or a ladder, it's still on the table."

Thank god.

Malcolm looked at Neal. "There's a big ladder in our garage across the street," he said. "Can you grab it?"

He needed to stay and make sure Raylan and Doc didn't just... disappear or get dragged off somewhere.

He looked down in the hole again. "We're gonna get you out! Hold tight!"

"Yeah--yeah. I'll be right back."

He bolted from the room, practically sprinting across the street. At least if Malcolm was there, they had some insurance against... Neal didn't know what. Something.

It will sink in later that someone had actually come looking, sometime after he's done processing the relief. He must have known these people for a few weeks, and they had come looking. Maybe they weren't worth being looked for, looked after. It didn't seem to matter.

Doc unconsciously tugs the hem of his shirt down just in case there is some residual awkwardness that needs to stay concealed. There is little that can be done about his tight pants. Raylan is anything but a dirty little secret, but what happened in the shaft might need to stay in the shaft for a good long while to come.

"...'preciate it," is all Doc can manage to say for now. With that little bit of light hanging up in their black sky, even though it doesn't shine all the way through, it is reassuring enough to have Henry lowering his head, checking the floor for anything they might have left behind.

Now that the New Yorkers were very nearly within arms reach, freedom from this goddamned pit so painfully close, Raylan was antsy for them to get on. For the singular perk of having been down here, the cons were still chewing on his bones, working under his fingernails in an urge to claw his way up and out to the fresh air. The only tell of it was the way he fidgeted with the horseshoe ring, off hand resting on cocked hips, eyes locked up at the hatch.

Everything else was forgotten - the sexual tension, the damage it would do to Malcolm, what he was going to say about it; Raylan didn't care what they left so long as they left.

"You think he'll be able to find it?" The question was for whoever wanted to take it.

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abrightboy - 2021-02-24 13:30 (UTC) - Expand

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conning - 2021-03-20 01:55 (UTC) - Expand

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028-029 » the winds of change

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l o l whoops

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