dust & devils.

@cathedralofdust

“Dickie Bennett is an asshole, and he had it comin’,” Riley mutters, dabbing at her nose and split lip with her sleeve.

@cathedralofdust​ liked the starter call and gets Sam (for Raylan)! 

It’s almost cliche. Side of the road, standing beside a broken down car with a steaming engine, and then a stranger approaches. 

Sam looks up from the open hood, offering an apprehensive smile. 

“This must look like some kinda damsel in distress thing, eh?” 

He’s seen stranger than a woman with a broken down car on the side of the road. Running late to the office, his first instinct is to keep going and yet, somehow, he ends up pulling his Towncar in just behind her. His hazards come on and he steps out.

It’s not the promise she wants, but it’s good enough. Maybe there’s a way that we’ll get out ends up meaning we’ll run away together. But getting out is more than enough. They live in a world where they have to fight and bleed to get anything, but he gives her the promise for free.

But then he asks, and she lets out a garbled laugh.

“I ain’t gonna make you ask anything,” she mumbles even as a grin stretches her cheeks. “Except it seems to me like you’re already askin’.”

It’s not like there was a singular moment where everything shifted and suddenly, she wanted to kiss him. It just grew over time, watered by proximity but nurtured by closeness. But its roots go deep enough that the world wouldn’t make sense without it. 

“A while, I guess,” she admits, and her reluctant tone is undermined by how she’s still half-smiling with a blush creeping up the back of her neck and onto her ears. “When we, uh, when we went driving in March, really late that one night. It was a school night. I wanted – I was gonna – but then some people walked by where we were parked, and it was two in the morning, and I… you know, didn’t.”

She fumbles all over her words like a puppy with ears too big trying to run. It’s endearing. It’s something good to hold on to and Raylan makes notes to make Riley McDaniels blush even more and often. He doesn’t laugh ( hell, sometimes he ain’t sure he knows how ) but he smiles. 

There’s no denying the heavy weight of fates yet undetermined. 

Maybe they’ll spend forever chasing it.

Raylan prefers to focus on the now. So that’s what he does. He moves his hand, sliding it along her back, and up so he can cup her cheek. She feels small, but her heart is huge. Gently, his thumb brushes just along the height of her cheekbone and then he tilts her head up, just so. And kisses her.

This time, he lets it linger. This time, he doesn’t make it about his anger. 

                          “Should’ve just done it. Damn what people would’ve thought.” He smiles against her lips before drawing back to take in the look on her face. “We both know I already got somethin’ of a reputation.” 

She curls as close as she can get to him, so close she can feel his body as he breathes. It’s trust, and it’s safety, and some of the tension that never releases in her body, not even when she sleeps, eases out of her bones. She shuffles even closer. Her arms are secure around his waist, fingers laced together so it’s not so easy to let go.

She doesn’t touch people, but she touches him, and it comes easily to her. 

“The only promise I care about,” she says, her voice muffled because her mouth is half-smushed against his shoulder, “is if you promise to leave, too. I will not abandon you.”

Riley thinks about Arlo Givens, and she thinks about the haunted, hunted look in Raylan’s eyes, and the rage flares again. She could kill that old man. Unlike her, Raylan’s never done a damn thing in his life to deserve what he gets.

“We’re gonna get out of here,” she decides quietly. “I don’t know how, but I don’t want to die here.”

She says she doesn’t wanna die here and he doesn’t have the heart to tell her he’s already dead. His daddy picked out a plot of land meant for him and everything. He’s gonna be buried in these Harlan hills and that’ll be the end of him. Born here, die here. Is there anything else for a man like him? 

                     “You won’t,” he settles with instead. His arms remain around her and it’s a cold shock to a system that always runs hot that she fits right nicely against him. Not puzzle pieces, but two broken bits that happen to merge just right.

It’s dangerous.

“We’ll get out, Ri.” Raylan draws back without breaking the band of their arms and the press of their bodies. He draws back, drops a kiss on her forehead, and then sighs. “Now, you gonna make me ask how long you’ve wanted to kiss me?” 

Thing is, Winona’s all heart. Always has been. he’s never seen a woman like her; she doesn’t just wear her heart on her sleeve, it’s also in her eyes and the way her fingers pass over his jaw. It’s in the way she teases, teases like they’re a couple of school kids. winona is all heart, and it makes his own heart squeeze and shrink in his chest.

“Old? Old?” He repeats, eyes widening as though he is hurt and shocked by that. But he’s grinning down at her. his voice drops into that tone that is all for her, intimate and warm and daring. “What made y’so mean, I’d like t’know. ‘Cause you’re mean as a snake.” But he can’t help it, his arms go around her and he pulls her close for a kiss. “Mean as the day is long.”

Raylan’s good - no, great - about knowing how to soothe those aches and worries. The monster in the dark lurks at the edges, but it’s nothing compared to the shadows she sees etched across his handsome features. And when he kisses her, when he draws her close and steals her breath like it’s what he was put on this earth to do, she can’t help but smile.

              “Are we talkin’ about the length of my days or your days? ‘Cause I feel the need to point out your days seem to never end.” She looks up at him, all squinty and sincere, but the truth is the scrutiny she’d use to nail him with is soft and quiet in the tenderness of this moment.