Work Text:
He’d known all kinds of wannabe cowboys in the Army, but Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens was the realest of them, even though Tim doubted he’d ever sat on a horse or lassoed a cow. But he definitely had the swagger down, with his boots and his hat, his quick draw bullshit. He’d found it really fucking funny at first until he found out it was real. Before he became a marshal Raylan Givens had been down in the mines digging coal instead of herding cattle, but damn if he wasn’t a real cowboy.
Now Tim had shot his share of bad men, in the Army as well as after. You could get all sorts of philosophical about the degree of separation the barrel of a sniper rifle gives you, compared to shooting someone so close you’ll get their blood on your shirt, or how at Glynco they teach to aim at the heart but through the scope you’re supposed to see pink mist where a man’s head used to be. Anyway, the brass had put a target on a guy and that’s why he’d taken the shots he had, and that was the real difference. The paperwork was enough of a deterrent to keep him from playing judge, jury and executioner, but that definitely didn’t seem to discourage Raylan Givens from pulling his gun. He did seem to hate the paperwork as much as anybody, but still kept putting himself in situations where shots would inevitably be fired. Then again, Raylan Givens also seemed to have a talent for making all kinds of bad guys want to kill him, so maybe all of it wasn’t just him looking for an excuse.
He’s not staking him out, but he still makes up little scenarios about Raylan Givens, like going for a drink, talking about sports or whatever at a bar, maybe playing some 8 ball or darts or something like that. Tim never had that problem, of getting too attached to take the shot when you finally got the go ahead. Raylan Givens drinks his bourbon neat so it becomes a chore to go all the way to the fridge to get ice for his glass.
A shooting’s good or bad based on whether you got the okay or not, and not shit like who drew first or whether they deserved it. Does anyone deserve to be shot? Tim’s never had a bad shooting, because he doesn’t think about unnecessary shit like that and only puts holes in people he’s told to. Raylan Givens has a whole different ethic, but Tim’s seen him diffuse a good shooting situation with just that cowboy stare of his, that or a fist.
The little scenarios grow more elaborate, start getting a little bit too much detail. The venues on the other hand become less easily defined, no longer a bar or other public space, but just somewhere. There’s less talking, even less doing something like shooting pool. Raylan Givens, with his hat off and his boots slung up and long legs crossed at the ankle, a bottle at his lips and that crinkly eyed cowboy smile that makes women drop their panties.
There were all kinds in the Army, even in the rangers. Some guys grew attached watching their marks, even without making anything up about them. You see them with their wives, their kids, how they treat the dog, the faces they make when they eat their favorite food and pray to their god, and they become too real to shoot. Some took their first real shot at a human target and chickened out, got shaken by the responsibility. They say killing a man with your bare hands is the worst, then a knife, then a gun, it’s supposed to get easier the further away you get, but it’s not really ever supposed to get easy. You lie on some sweltering roof for hours or days to take a shot at a guy, and even with the lag from the distance, when you see his head disappear, you damn sure know it was your finger on the trigger that did it.
There’s also the guys, the real outliers, who get addicted to the pink mist, forget it’s a job and not a hobby. Raylan Givens might be one of those guys, the way he seems so happy to gun his way out of situations.
What do boys do out here after crawling up from the pits in Bumfuck, Kentucky, with not enough sisters and girl cousins to go around? Smoke weed and drink popskull, shoot rats and eat roadkill maybe, but what about after?
In the Army, out in the middle of a desert, thousands of miles from crushes and girlfriends and fiancées and wives, hundreds from the nearest whorehouse, you learn to get a read on people, whether it’s just the time and the place or always there, what people are ready for. With Raylan Givens he has no fucking idea. Damn sure it wouldn’t be situational, because even middle of nowhere in Kentucky isn’t the desert, but let’s say he made a move, just for the sake of the argument. Would Raylan give him the cowboy smile or the cowboy stare? Raylan Givens has stared down the barrels of all kinds of guns, but there’s more ways than that to make a man feel threatened. Who’s to say he wouldn’t get a bullet through the heart and Raylan saying it was justified.
He gets off at 5 to drink his bourbon neat and think about his little scenarios because there’s fuck all else to do, and if the scenarios grow hazy on the details even as they get more elaborate, and if at some point of the night he puts his trigger hand down his pants, whose business is that but his own?