(Untitled)

[angriestman]

Between high school and finally up and leaving Harlan at twenty, Raylan Givens had mined Kentucky coal. Not sure what he wanted to do with his life, it'd been a good paycheck, even with the danger and long hours. Sometimes, years away from that time, he wakes up with the taste of coal dust and dynamite smoke in his mouth and he knows that those

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[rhymingdevil]

I didn't actually get up to the compound as much as I guessed most people did, if only because Shari's house was a little further out and was almost like living in another place entirely. Still, food was still a novelty I hadn't quite gotten over yet, after spending two years as a ghost, and I found myself eating way more than I ever did when I was alive. It just tasted better, somehow.

I was on my way back out when I stumbled a little and looked down to see it was a person I tripped over.

Real graceful, Nichols.

"Uh, sorry about that. I guess I'm not as graceful as I used to be."

[angriestman]

"Don't worry about it," says Raylan, straightening, tucking his booted foot in more neatly and the nudging the brim of his head back, studying the young man standing over him, his cigarette still between his lips.

"My ex-wife woulda said that that's what I get for makin' the place look all untidy."

[rhymingdevil]

I hadn't ever heard an accent like that outside of a tv show or a movie and while I could ballpark it as southern, I had no idea where. I wasn't about to guess. This guy looked like a cowboy...Texas, maybe?

"I wouldn't know. I've never been married."

I waited for a moment, then I had to just ask. Writer's curiosity.

"Texas, right? With the hat and the accent?"

[angriestman]

"Thankfully, only briefly. Once," says Raylan, taking a drag on his cigarette and pausing for a moment before he exhales grey smoke towards his boots. "In the line of duty. It's Kentucky. I can see how the hat would be misleadin'."

[sluttylyingliar]

Rachel doesn't really question the mornings that Raylan disappears early. It's not her damn business and more times than not she's sneaking out for dance or exercise or something else disturbingly healthy and well-adjusted.

Her eyebrow raises at the cigarette but what the hell is she going to say? She rolled the damn thing. She slides in next to him, bare leg skimming his side as she reaches up to knead at his neck and blink up at the early morning sun.

[angriestman]

"Hey there," he says, smiling despite himself and turning his head to below smoke away from her. He leans in to kiss her temple; the last thing she needs is a kiss with him tasting like an ashtray.

"Dirty habit," he says.

[sluttylyingliar]

"I've seen worse," she murmurs, thumb circling down his neck. "I've had worse."

It's strangely quiet, everyone probably still sleeping off the club and God knows what else from last night.

"Missed you this morning."

[angriestman]

"I do not doubt it," he says, and he offers her the cigarette in case she wants to take a drag. The touch on his neck is incredibly good.

"Restless," he says, with a smile tugging in the corner of his mouth. "Didn't want to wake you."

[fireinthe_hole]

Boyd has been up for hours.

Sleep isn't really much of a priority these days. Days that stretch out longer and more meaningless than the next. Days spent in fervent and useless prayer. Boyd knows that such desperation goes against everything the Lord commands, but what else is a man to think?

He sees Raylan sitting there, like some kind of a sign. Some kind of a purpose. As much as the club has been shown to his as something that he might have to destroy, Raylan is someone he must save.

"You look troubled, friend," he says, boots falling quietly.

[angriestman]

"Talk about thinkin' of the devil to conjure him up," says Raylan, taking a drag on his cigarette, shielded by the brim of his hat before he looks up, taking Boyd in, standing over him.

"I was just thinkin' about you."

[fireinthe_hole]

"Were you now?" he says, easing down on the step next to him. "I would imagine those thoughts could be varied. What precisely were you thinking about?"

[angriestman]

"Coal mining," says Raylan, wryly, rolling the cigarette between his fingers. "I was thinking about how it felt to be down there. How it felt to come out of there."

[eggman_henry]

Henry spotted him as he walked toward the Compound, saw him sitting there on the front steps. He was far enough back it gave him time to recover from the brief but automatic shock at seeing that face, Pete's face, to get over the stab in his heart that meant he still missed the fuck out of his best friend.

It had gripped him so hard his skull cracked. Henry hadn't been there, but he knew through Jonesy, like borrowing a memory from someone else.

By the time he was at the steps there was a smile on his face, small but friendly. "Raylan, right?" he said, pushing his glasses up on his nose with the index finger of his three-fingered hand. "How's it going?"

[angriestman]

"Henry," says Raylan, with an easy smile; it's a skill that he's developed over a whole career, but he's pretty good at not forgetting faces. He remembers that he shook Henry up last time; something about a dead friend. He looks down at the cigarette in his hand.

"Oh, you know. It's goin'."

[eggman_henry]

SSDD, Henry thought, even here. Even if that same shit was different shit from the shit he used to have. "Yeah, same here," he replied. "Seems like this place is either a hundred miles an hour or fuckin zero. Can't say I mind the peace and quiet when it's zero, though."

[angriestman]

"Can't say I disagree," says Raylan, taking a quick drag on his cigarette and then, on a whim, offering it to Henry, just in case.

"Never thought I'd be holding out for a quiet life."

[morethentheend]

"Can I use your lighter?" She didn't even say hello - it honestly didn't cross Violet's mind, mostly because she was currently peering at the end of the cord she was working on. It kept fraying no matter what she did, and it was looking at one of the pictures that Sunny had drawn that she suddenly found the solution.

So here she was, smears of charcoal on her arms, legs and face from where she'd been working on plans (bedsheets covered with architectural and mechanical drawings covered her treehouse's walls) and she had both her cord, a metal bowl, and a handful of crayons. "I'll only take a minute, promise."

[angriestman]

He takes in what she's got in her hands and, for a moment, he can't figure it out for the life of him, but then it all clicks into place.

"Sure," he says, finally, fumbling the Zippo otu of his jeans pocket and holding it out to her. "Go wild."

[morethentheend]

Violet crouches without a thought, holding onto the edge of the bowl with a corner of her tank top as she dumps the crayons into it - and holds the zippo under the bowl, her eyes narrowed with concentration.

Crayons have a relatively low melt point - something like 150 degrees fahrenheit, so it shouldn't take long. She knows it, and still she suddenly feels awkward, in front of someone she doesn't know as she bends over a bowl. "Sorry," she says awkwardly, flashing a sort-of smile. "I just really need to stop the end of this from fraying, and my sister doesn't need to see me melting crayons down. I'm Violet, by the w-" She stops abruptly, because there, they've hit the melting point, and with an economy of movement she flips shut the lighter, sets down the bowl, retwists the fraying cord, and dips the middle section in the wax. She'll cut it later, but for now she just needed to wait for it to harden back up.

[angriestman]

He watches her, pretty fascinated by the whole process, his head tipped on one side, his cigarette held between two relaxed fingers.

"Nice to meet you, Violet. I'm Raylan."