002 ★ take me back to my southern ways

[comfortablyerect]

WHO: Tim Gutterson
WHERE: The woods, House 52
WHEN: February 23rd
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Possible mentions of PTSD
STATUS: Open!

The Woods

It took roughly a week for Tim to be able to sleep for longer than two hours at a time. It took a little longer than that for him to quit walking around with knives hidden on his person. He still carries the metal fire poker with him, however, because he can't bring himself to walk around weaponless. That, actually, has little to do with being here and a lot more to do with what he brought him with him from Afghanistan. Nightmares, paranoia, the inability to feel at ease without a firearm. It was always a work in progress. Now it's an even bigger work in progress.

Of course, the paranoia's only gotten worse since he's been told that they're being watched the first night he was here. It makes him feel like his skin's always crawling.

Since arriving here, he's explored every inch of the land he can reach. He's mapped out the layout of the village in his head, clocking who lives where, and where people tend to spend most of their time. He's explored several community buildings inside and out until there were no more left to search, and has since spent time exploring the woods.

If he had his gun, he could do some hunting. Kill a few deer, squirrels, maybe some rabbits. Contribute what he can to the community. They have bows at the Inn, he knows, but he's not well-versed with a bow. It'd take a lot of practice, and he's fairly certain they don't have the supplies for him to be losing arrows in the woods. He can probably set up some crude forms of traps, even do some fishing at some point when it's a little warmer. For now, though, he's making his way carefully through the trees, noting various plants that he recognizes and knows might come in handy, examining tracks that he finds in the dirt.

Any movement heard results in sudden stiffening and Tim being on guard.

House 52

Upon returning home later in the afternoon, Tim finds a fairly large box in front of his door. He's not sure what to make of it, at first, and stands a good few feet away like he thinks it might blow up. There are round holes in the sides of it, and he's leaning forward to see if he can peer into the holes and see what's inside.

Something rustles inside, and he hears a sharp Meh!

"What the fuck." It's not a question, and it's murmured under his breath. With the tip of the metal poker, he flips the lid off the box, and a baby goat pops its head up to look around. One young enough that its horns have just barely started coming in. Tim knows shit about goats, but upon further examination, he finds that it's a female. Beyond that, he hasn't got a clue.

He can be found for the rest of the evening sitting on his front porch with her, feeding her piles of grass out of the palm of his hand.

[ ooc: feel free to find him in various other parts of the village too! if you want to plot something, hit me up on plurk or message me! ]

Comments

[tarnishing]

For a moment, Taylor actually considers sliding up all suave-like and saying to this stranger, hey, nice kid, possibly complete with finger guns to supplement the pun. Fortunately for everyone involved (including the goat), she thinks better of this method of introducing herself, although it does mean that she probably looks a little odd at first, hesitating briefly at the edge of the lawn like she thinks she may have left the oven on.

"That is a very small goat you have there," she finally says, with a smile. Small enough that she's got to wonder about feeding it grass instead of a bottle, but what the fuck does she know about goats?

[comfortablyerect]

Either introduction, really, would lead to Tim glancing up and arching his brows, which is exactly what he does now, complete with all the appropriate amounts of apprehension. He realized she was there from the start, hesitations and all. Not because he has some weird sixth sense, but because the sort of training that comes with the Army doesn't wear off very easily, and he's always aware of the people around him.

"Yeah," he agrees, his southern accent thick and noticeable in that one word. He reaches out to scratch the goat on the head, between where her horns should be. "She's just a baby. Showed up on my front step in a box this mornin'."

[tarnishing]

"Oh right," Taylor says, and then pulls a face. "That's a thing that happens. The mystery boxes out of nowhere, right? Someone told me about that." Because apparently the creep factor of this place just wasn't high enough, they had to toss in some added weirdness to make sure you didn't forget.

"I haven't been here that long," she explains with a couple of forward steps. "I mean, it feels like way too long, but apparently not long enough to rank getting baby animals on my doorstep."

[comfortablyerect]

He'd heard of it, too. It was hard to believe that somebody could sneak into the village and leave boxed surprises without anybody seeing them. Even if they do it at night, there's plenty of people here who aren't necessarily sleeping (like him), and are too aware of their surroundings for much to get past them. He wonders if it'd be possible to lay some sort of trap for something like that.

"I've only been here a few weeks," he says, shrugging a shoulder. "I'm sure you'll get your baby farm animal soon enough."

[tarnishing]

"Well, when that day comes, I'm bringing it to you, because you clearly know more about them than I do." Which is unequivocally nothing, not unlike what Taylor knows about living in a town straight out of a period piece.

"Hey, how are you at lighting fires?" she says, and then pauses, eyebrows drawn briefly together. "Sorry, that was kind of a weird segue. I'm just really shitty at it and looking for any and all ways to make it easier to, you know, not freeze in my weird, free housing."

[comfortablyerect]

One thing Tim's good at is pretending he knows what he's doing. Usually, he does know what he's doing. But on the off chance that he doesn't, he can usually fake it until he makes it. In this case, the only thing he knows about goats is what he picked up from the goat farm behind his childhood home while he was chasing them around as a kid (something his mother expressly forbid him to do, yet he did anyway.)

He still doesn't know how to milk one. Hopefully it's not unlike a cow. They did that once for a field trip in high school, and he remembers most of it.

Tim's lips twitch in a smile and he glances up at her, his brows arched mildly. Maybe it's the way she talks, but he gets the impression that she's from a place not unlike his. Maybe not the south, but the States, and during more modern times. "Would you believe me if I told you I was rubbin' two sticks together?"

It's a little more complicated than that, but that's essentially what he's doing.

[tarnishing]

"What, like a caveman?" Taylor can't help but laugh at that, although this guy seems sincere enough. "I mean, I guess I believe it, it just seems like a lot of work when there's a fire going down at the inn everyday."

That's what she's been doing, albeit rather poorly -- Lighting a stick and carrying it back home, hopefully getting the flame there before it snuffs itself out, although that's really a crap shoot despite how close she lives to the inn. And then there's the matter of actually getting the wood in the fireplace to catch.

"But hey, maybe you're just really good at rubbing sticks together," she adds with a quirk of her smile and arch of her eyebrows.

[comfortablyerect]

More like a Boy Scout, or a southern boy, or a military man, or any number of things that Tim is or has been throughout his life. He learned how to start fires out of practically nothing at a young age, around the time he learned how to hunt and fish. There's something to be said about growing up as a boy in the heart of Kentucky — his father wasted no time in teaching him all those traditional manly things.

"You spendin' all your time at the Inn or are you just carryin' a torch back and forth?" Either way, it sounds like a terrible waste of time when building a fire from scratch really isn't that difficult once you learn.

The coat wanders towards the edge of the porch to investigate the steps, and he looks up at Taylor with arched brows. "I can show you how to do it, if you want. Not that hard, really."

[tarnishing]

"A very tiny torch," Taylor admits with a laugh, a joke in there about it being for him if they knew each other a little better.

"That would actually be amazing," she says, the vise around her chest loosening just a bit. It's the way this place makes her helpless that she really hates. That and being away from her brother.

"I can't promise I'll be the world's best student, but enthusiasm has to count for something." She smiles, a faint shimmy to her fingers when she steps forward and offers her hand. "Taylor. Hi."

[comfortablyerect]

It's a habit, but he eyes her for a second when she steps forward, like he's assessing her. She doesn't appear to be much of a threat. Just a pretty, slight girl far out of her element. Though, where he's from, even the smallest of women can give one hell of a fight, and he knows better than to doubt someone based on their size.

Still. He doesn't find himself uncomfortable having her move closer, and his gut's telling him there's nothing to fear, so he takes her hand in his. His fingers are long, elegant, almost, but his palms are rough and calloused.

"Tim," he introduces, shaking her hand before getting to his feet, moving to open the front door. "You're in luck — I'm a pretty patient teacher."

Least, he assumes so — he's not much of a teacher, but he is patient by nature. Eight years of hiding out in snipers nests just watching targets and waiting for the green light can do that to a person. He steps down the porch steps, gesturing for her to follow him, and the baby goat follows along behind him clumsily.

[tarnishing]

Taylor stills but for the hand she'd shaken his with, fingers curling under and then tucking slowly in against her abdomen. It shouldn't make a difference, it's a common name, and yet it feels a little like a punch to the gut to hear it tossed out so casually.

Her eyes track him as he moves until she manages to unstick her feet and swallow roughly against the sudden lump in her throat.

"My brother's name is Tim," she says, her voice strained at the edges despite her attempts to sound conversational. She does force herself into a faint smile, though. "Just so you know, it's a pretty high bar, but I won't hold it against you if you can't meet it."

[comfortablyerect]

Tim notices the change in body language almost instantly. He's been trained to watch people, after all, usually for days at a time, and at some point it's just become habit. A good habit, though — in his line of work, it's saved his ass more times than he can count, giving him the ability to notice when someone's going to run or attack or shoot just half a second before they do it.

This is different, of course, but he notices anyway. He notices the way she curls in on herself a bit, notices the change in her voice. When he glances at her, he can see her expression is a little bit strained, too.

Now he's got to tread lightly, because while he doesn't really know her and isn't incredibly concerned with whatever she's got going on, he doesn't want to make things more difficult for her than they clearly already are. He's an asshole, but he's not that kind of asshole.

"That's good, 'cause I'm more of a low-bar guy myself." He glances at her, and the corners of his lips lift in the faintest smile. "I'll be the least impressive guy you know."

[tarnishing]

"Well," Taylor begins, and then lets out a laugh, the sound light and genuine. "As long as you're aware, I guess that's all that counts. Wouldn't want you straining yourself trying to reach an unattainable goal and all that. It would just be disappointing all-around."

Tim -- Her Tim -- would like him, she thinks. Drawing levity out of an awkward moment is a rare and underappreciated talent, in her opinion.

"But I do expect top-shelf fire-making instruction," she amends with a smile. "So I hope you're not leading me on about that."