sixthiterationlogs | 003 ★ this place is so cold and i just wanna come home

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003 ★ this place is so cold and i just wanna come home

WHO: Tim Gutterson
WHERE: Canyon wall, the woods, House 52
WHEN: March 20th
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Firefly stings, so accompanying paranoia and, in Tim's case, PTSD
STATUS: Open!

Canyon wall

Tim is not a mountain climber. Canyon climber?

Kentucky, the lands he's grown so used to, the place he undoubtedly calls home, is all rolling fields and farmland. They have their dips and their valleys and, in some places, climbing, rocking terrain, but nothing worthy of being called a mountain, and certainly nothing worth any sort of challenge. And Afghanistan had it's cliff sides, high places overlooking small villages, which is where Tim spent a bulk of his time at war, but that's not the same as a steep, vertical wall of hard rock.

Still. He's felt increasingly more trapped here as the days have ticked by, and he can only go so long without doing something about it. This, all in all, seems like a better option than trying to force his way back into the depths of the fountain. Always go up, forward, never back.

He's got no climbing gear to speak of, and this is probably an incredibly stupid attempt. But instead of approaching the wall directly, he chooses to give himself a leg up by scaling a nearby tree first, hoping to find better foot and hand holds higher up the wall. He begins shimmying up the tree, and has just grabbed onto the lowest viable branch when the first firefly comes around. He's seen them before now, of course, around the village and on his trek through the woods. It strikes him as odd, seeing as it's the middle of the day, and his experience with fireflies has always been at night, catching them in jars as a child.

This place is fucking weird. He hoists himself up onto the branch, and a few more fireflies come out, and then a handful more, and Tim's just beginning to think the word swarm when the first one stings him.

Fireflies don't sting, he thinks, just as a second one stings him, and then a whole bunch more come out of somewhere, nowhere, everywhere, and he literally bails out of the tree, landing and rolling like he's eighteen and in bootcamp again, as opposed to thirty and frequently waking up with a sore back. It's all muscle memory, though, and he sticks the landing wonderfully, knowing he's definitely going to feel it in his muscles the next morning.

House 52

It's nearly evening by the time Tim makes his way out of the woods, having to spend far too much time shaking off the fireflies and losing their trail before making it to the village. He feels warm all over, just a tiny bit dizzy, but he chalks it up to the physical exertion of sprinting through the woods to escape a swarm of fireflies.

This is not what he expected his life to be after the war but — here he is.

He moves through the village, the sun beginning to sink behind the trees, and the fireflies seem to be everywhere. More than usual? It seems like it. It seems like the blinking green insects are appearing more frequently, hovering particularly close to the fountain, their numbers actively growing with each step Tim takes. He has to be imagining it. There weren't this many a few days ago, and the weather hasn't changed enough to bring in more, he thinks. They certainly can't be growing in number that fast.

Something familiar has snaked into system, twisting around his very bones and taking root there. He recognizes it for what it is — paranoia, sharp and dark and and ever-growing, absolutely unshakable. This is how he was for months and months and months after coming back stateside. Feeling like the very walls in his home were watching him, feeling like every person who looked at him for a second too long was going to strike. Feeling trapped and suffocated with the ghosts of the lives he took infecting his dreams and his life and reminding him who he was, what he's done, every time he turned around.

This is just the beginning. He makes his way quickly through the village, avoiding the swarms of fireflies the best he can. But by the time he reaches his house, the fever has exhausted him, slowing him down enough that he sits on the porch steps, resting his head against the railing.

He's tired, but he can't close his eyes. Exhausted, but he won't sleep. Because his skin crawls like there's bugs beneath the surface, like his veins are full of gasoline and he's just lit a match. Because he's trapped here, and he'll never get out, and he's sure — so sure — that this is where he's going to die.

[ ooc: feel free to also find him in the woods, either before or after the firefly stings! ]

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Cougar's seen a lot of sickness in the field, but the fireflies seem to have something in them that's affecting the people they bite. He's been careful to go out when they seem to be at their lowest, but he still needs to make trips to and from the inn to deliver his goods. It's on his trip that he sees Tim looking bad, very bad, the kind of bad that he sees before he calls in the medivac. He sets his things down and runs, mountain the porch steps so he can take Tim's face in both hands, doing a quick assessment.

He takes off his hat and tosses it to the side, wanting to get a better, unobstructed look. "Tim," he says, low and sharp, a demand to be listened to. "Look at me," he says, trying to see if his pupils are responsive.

There's a lot to be said about Tim's current state, seeing as he doesn't react immediately to being grabbed by the face. His skin is flushed and warm, his fever trying to claw higher and higher, even as he's beginning to feel a chill in his bones. Logically, he knows that's not good, and if he were at home, his mother would somehow magically find out he's ill, as mothers do, and would be force feeding him soup as they speak.

But he's not at home, and his open eyes take a moment to focus on Cougar. But once they do, everything that's happened in the last several seconds catches up to him, and he's suddenly unsure if he's being attacked or attended to. Cougar's friend, not foe, but it doesn't matter — his reaction is an automatic, knee-jerk one, all fight-or-flight, and Tim's always been fight.

He jerks back, swinging an arm up to, hopefully, elbow Cougar in the face. The movement is one that would normally be fluid and smooth, coming from the ease of practice, but this time it's a little sloppy and uncoordinated.

Cougar narrows his eyes and studies the man in front of him, having seen reactions like this before, but usually when some new idiot on the team decided to try the local drugs and had a bad trip. Right now, he has other things to worry about, taking the hit a little, but only so that he can use the opportunity while Tim is still finishing the swipe to duck under him and pin him to the nearest wall, one hand clinching tight around his wrist.

He's not as big as the rest of his team, but he's plenty fast. "You get one," is what he says. "Tim, it's Cougar," he says. "Calmate," he directs sharply, a barked order.

It's Cougar, the accented voice assures, and Tim knows, logically speaking, that Cougar's one of the good ones. Or, at the very least, one of the ones he feels more comfortable around, even if comfortable is fairly subjective for Tim, and it might only be because of their similar military background.

That's hard to remember when he's being pinned to the wall, though, feeling trapped and attacked and suffocated. He doesn't calm like Cougar directs, but struggles briefly instead, trying to use sheer strength to twist himself out of the other man's grasp. If he weren't otherwise impaired, it might even work. But that's not the case, so he goes for a different tactic.

"Two," he corrects, his speech a little more mumbled than it should be, and he brings his head back just to attempt to slam it forward into Cougar's nose.

That's definitely all he's getting. Cougar bends his arm after he's done staggering back, twisting it until it'll be painful so he can shove his knee at the back of Tim's knees to get him down, moving behind him and keeping a step back to make sure he doesn't get any other part of him hit. Sighing, he glances around to look for something he can use to tie up Tim.

Seeing nothing, he decides on another tactic, crawling on top of Tim and sitting on him, including his hands, giving him a look of warning. "You try three, parts are going to come off," he says. "I'm trying to help you."

This definitely isn't helping matters any. Of course, if Tim weren't burning up with a fever and some crazy amount of paranoia, then he wouldn't blame Cougar a bit for doing what he's doing. If the roles were reversed, Tim would probably just punch the other man in the face and be done with it, knocking him out cold rather than trying to deal with him conscious. He should be grateful that Cougar's taking a more graceful route.

But he's not. Instead, he's twisting and struggling and grinding his teeth in pain at having his arm wrenched behind his back.

Cougar probably isn't very heavy, truthfully. But the fever has Tim weak, and the wooden porch is cool against his forehead, so he's still for a second, breathing heavily, feeling vulnerable and attacked, despite the fact that the only other person there is someone he actual feels some amount of trust towards. He's beginning to calm, just a touch — logic fighting its way through the fever and paranoia.

"You could try not sittin' on me," Tim says, turning his head to press his cheek against the porch instead. "That might help."

"No, this seems to be working," Cougar says casually, like they're just talking about the weather and not him restraining Tim down beneath him. He's seen people lose their mind before in the field, but usually it comes after too many sleepless nights and something going wrong. Cougar, himself, had a few months where he'd been a liability to everyone and only the Losers would touch him. He knows he's the resident basketcase amongst the team, knows that they would do this to him, if needed.

"What happened?" he demands, making sure to keep his knee in a place that will cause a lot of pain if Tim tries to wriggle out of the hold.

"For you, maybe," Tim mutters, and he's still straining against Cougar's hold, feeling it pull uncomfortably in his shoulders and his back. Pain is the least of his concerns now — while he's mostly come to the logical conclusion that Cougar is not, in fact, out to get him, he still can't help but to feel awfully trapped like this, like a cornered animal.

He would feel much better if he could move around again, he thinks. If he could get up and put his back to a wall and sit awake with whatever weapons he could find, much like he did the very first night he was here.

"Thought I might try my hand at climbin' the canyon wall," he says, huffing out a breath when Cougar's hold doesn't let up. "Them mutant-ass fireflies didn't much like that."

Cougar reaches down to press the back of his hand to Tim's forehead when he mentions the fireflies again, the memory clicking about how they caused fever in a person. It doesn't seem too bad and Tim seems to be becoming more lucid, so Cougar eases a little bit of the pressure off of him, just enough so that it's more of a friendly sitting, not so much trapped.

Of course, if Jake walks by right now, he's going to get a very wrong idea. Sighing, Cougar extends a hand out. "If I help you inside, are you going to attack me again?" he asks, as if he can somehow trust whatever Tim says. Still, he's decided that the next attack, Tim is going unconscious, so at least he has a plan.

Coungar's hand presses against his forehead, and Tim attempts to jerk back from the touch, startled and still on edge, but there's not enough room for it. Not with how the other man has perched himself on Tim's back, leaving very little wiggle room. He turns his face away anyway, though, feeling a bit like a child now and disliking it immensely. He remembers when he was growing up, how his mother would kiss his forehead to check his temperature, and he's grateful that, at the very least, this isn't that.

The other soldier eases back, and Tim feels less like he's being crushed and suffocated. For someone so small and light, Cougar's applied a hell of a lot of pressure. He wouldn't be surprised if he wound up with knee-shaped bruises on his back.

"Not gonna make any promises," Tim deadpans, exhaling sharply again. "But I definitely will if you don't get off of me soon."

Edited (oops html fail) 2017-04-03 22:59 (UTC)

Cougar weighs the risks in his head and decides to throw caution to the wind, knowing that he can take care of himself, if it comes around to this. He stands, giving Tim the first freedom he's had since Cougar had been a punching bag to the man, standing casually like he isn't completely strung and on guard.

"Inside," he says, with the tone of a man who's already decided that he's going to go with him, whether Tim likes it or not. It's not just worry for Tim, but also worry for the others, because he knows what a man like Tim could do. It's about the same as Cougar or Jake, in that position.

As soon as he's given the chance, Tim practically shoots to his feet, holding back a grimace at the way his shoulders ache from Cougar's hold. He positions himself quickly, carefully, so that his back is to a solid chunk of wall, where nobody could potentially sneak up behind him. It was this way for a long time after he came back stateside from his deployment — the way he slept, the way he sat, the way he stood, even just in his own home, was always defensive and on guard.

He realizes Cougar intends to go inside with him. Under normal circumstances, he would love to have somebody so damn good-looking come into his home. These are not normal circumstances, though, not even close, and so Tim frowns instead.

"You first," he decides, unable to help the crawling, lingering paranoia, even though he's no longer trying to outright attack the other man.

Cougar ambles after him casually, like he hasn't just been attacked twice by the man, passing him without even sparing a look over his shoulder. If Tim attacks from behind, Cougar will have to deal with it, but looking fearful is going to do nothing for him, so he settles on the kitchen counter once he's inside, silent and waiting.

He wants to let Tim lead, mainly because whatever's happening is clearly fucking with the man and him shooting his mouth off sarcastically doesn't seem like a very good idea, but he's also not leaving.

Tim allows Cougar to pass, taking care to make sure there's a reasonable amount of distance between them. Logically, somewhere in the back of his mind, he's aware that this is ridiculous. He's being ridiculous. But the more immediate part of him just can't fucking help it — he swears there are things lurking in the shadows, he swears everyone he's come across tonight has had some other agenda.

He huffs, surveying the porch one last time before stepping inside. He debates for a moment, trying to decide if he wants to keep things shut out, or avoid shutting himself inside with Cougar. Eventually, he decides the latter is less dangerous, and lets the door fall closed. It's dark inside, and Tim stays near the door while he's eyes adjust to the dim lighting. Cougar's within sight, perched on the kitchen counter, and Tim's moving towards the living room to check out the rest of the house, as if he thinks someone else might be in there.

"Didn't anybody ever teach you it's impolite to put your ass on other people's counters?"

"You're not cooking me any food," is Cougar's swift response, leaning over a little to pluck at one of the cabinets to peer inside, finding more of the same things that they have in their house, which is pretty much what he expected to find, so it's not very interesting, but what is interesting is the way that Tim's been acting.

He gives him a very long and pointed look when Tim isn't heading to the bedroom to rest. "You should get to bed," he warns, the unspoken 'before I put you there' lingering in his tone.

"Damn right I'm not," Tim mumbles, still working his way around the living room. He wishes there were more light, but he makes due with what little moonlight manages to peek through the windows. He could always build a fire in the fireplace, but he doesn't think he can sit still long enough for that. Instead, he peers behind the couch and the chairs, and beneath end tables and into closets. He hates that he doesn't have a weapon, but he can certainly work with his fists if needed.

Tim makes a scathing noise, giving Cougar a pointed withering look over his shoulder. "What are you, my mother? I'm fine."

He's not fine, but that's beside the point. He's busy.

Cougar's still worried, of course, but he doesn't want to let it show. After all, he can't go getting a reputation for being overly worried enough to let it show on his face, because then people will know just how soft he can be, inside. He heads inside and follows, arching a brow to say that he might not be his mother, but that tone isn't appreciated. "You're not," is his blunt reply, shaking his head at Tim.

"For now, call me friend and mother, because I'm not leaving you," he says, knowing Jake will take care of things at home. "Not until you seem more lucid."

Cougar's become like a shadow, not letting Tim wander too far away unsupervised. It reminds him of when he'd had to shadow Raylan, how the man managed to give him the slip despite Tim's best efforts. Most of what Raylan did annoyed him, but that had actually angered him a bit. That was his job, and the other had bee bent on making it difficult.

Vaguely, he wonders if he could give Cougar the slip, too. Not that he has anywhere to go, really. No real purpose beyond checking his house for threats.

"I am perfectly fuckin' lucid," Tim states, while kneeling down to peer beneath the couch.

"You attack everyone when you're perfectly fucking lucid," he mimics, but his accent wrecks some of the mimicry and Cougar ends up shooting Tim a look that says he doesn't believe him, at all, giving him an incredulous look at what Tim's doing. "Get up, you can't crawl under there," he says, not grabbing at Tim's shoulder, but he wants to.

He drops onto the couch to make it sink a little lower, giving Tim a pointed look. "I'm going to put my feet on your back, if you don't go to bed."

"Maybe," Tim says back, and he pointedly ignores every look Cougar sends his way. He's busy. He has to be certain that there's nobody else in the house before he can settle down. Not that he's going to be doing much settling tonight. Probably, he's going to sit with his back to a wall and a weapon of sorts in his hand, waiting for something to happen. It's a miracle this hasn't turned into a full blown PTSD episode for him. It could be much worse, really.

"I'm not tryin' to crawl anywhere." He sounds exasperated, looking up to where Cougar's dropped himself onto the couch. For a second, he swears there's something darker and more malicious looming in the other man's expression but he blinks once, twice, and it's gone. "You're lookin' to get yourself hit again, aren't you?"

Cougar shrugs casually, like he's just hanging out with a friend and not worried about the man suddenly turning on him because he's going crazy, the way Cougar is when he wakes up from a bad dream. He knows very well the damage that can be done because he's done it, which means he ought to act more concerned, but that would require him to not be a smug asshole, sometimes.

He waits for him to get up, as patient as he can. "You know how I don't get hit and you start getting better? You go to bed," he says, a little sharper.

Tim climbs to his feet, but he doesn't head for the bedroom. He's busied himself with checking the kitchen now that Cougar isn't occupying it, looking inside cabinets and in the pantry. One hand clenches and unclenches at his side, an anxious movement born out of heightened paranoia and his lack of a firearm. He would feel much better, he thinks, if he just had a gun on him. Even one without any ammo. Just the weight and feel of it would bring him some measure of peace.

But not enough, probably.

"You can't make me go to bed," Tim says flatly. "I'm an adult."

Cougar mutters 'a very stupid adult' in Spanish under his breath as he settles on the couch, leaning forward to press his elbows against his knees, giving the man a look that clearly says what he thinks about his behaviour right now. "So, what? You stay up until you pass out? Because you don't look good, not even for a handsome man," he informs him, gesturing to all the signs of what appear to be this paranoid, strange fever he's nursing.

"Go to bed," he says again, harder this time.

Tim catches the mutter, if only barely, and chooses to ignore it. Much like the way he ignores what the other man says next, even the handsome man part. Though, in the back of his mind, he hopes he remembers that part tomorrow morning, or whenever this feverish paranoia wears off. The very least he can do with it is tease Cougar with it later.

He pulls open the door to the ice box, peering inside at it's emptiness. Nobody in there either. Good. He turns back towards Cougar, giving the other man a flat look.

"If you want me to go to bed, you're gonna have to physically manhandle me there. And I'm not gonna promise I won't hit you again if you try."

Cougar doesn't feel like being hit a third time, but his patience is starting to wear thin. The trouble is that he doesn't want to leave, because it would be a bad idea to leave a man like Tim to wander when he's paranoid like this. If he's not going to go to bed, the least Cougar can do is stand in the doorway and block his escape (though he hasn't exactly blocked off the windows), but he just stares right back, as if challenging him.

"Fine, keep looking all over. You missed a spot in the cupboard," he deadpans, as if something could fit in that small space.

Tim hesitates. Cougar's fucking with him, obviously. The cupboard is too small to fit a person, even if said person were a small child. Checking would be stupid, and a waste of time, and would probably just prove whatever point Cougar's trying to make. Unease creeps up his spine, curling around his neck and suffocating him. He can't leave it unchecked. It's stupid, it's so stupid, and yet he reaches for it anyway, and pulls the door open to peer inside.

It's empty, of course. And suddenly, he feels tired. The fever sweeps over him again, leaving him feeling weak and chilled. He sighs heavily, leaning back against the counter just to keep himself upright. Cougar's right — he needs to lay down. He hates that Cougar's right.

Cougar just gives him a pointed look when he starts rummaging through the cupboards, his face filled with 'I told you so', not that he's not enjoying this privately, in the kind of way where he'll never tell Tim that, unless he ends up getting revenge at some point in the future. He's on his feet easily, offering an arm out to him to support him if he chooses to go do the smart thing and listen to Cougar's advice (finally).

"Come on," he says, voice low and rough. "Bed."

He hates everything about this. How weak his legs feel beneath him, how the shadows in the corners appear to be creeping out further, trying to curl around him. How Cougar's at this side nearly as soon as he sags against the counter, offering physical support like he's a fucking invalid. He supposes he is, but he certainly doesn't like being treated as such.

He's tempted to shove Cougar's arm away just on principle, but as he goes to do so, to room sweeps dizzingly around him at the movement, and he ends up using it as the support it's meant to be instead. Fuck.

"You comin' with me?" He asks, and he'd like to think that if he were a little more lucid, he wouldn't be flirting with the other man. But that's probably not the case.

"Not unless my boyfriend suddenly decided he likes threesomes," is his reply, calm enough even though there's a hint of reprimand in his words, mainly because he doesn't think that he'd expected blatant flirting while under the influence of bugs, but here he is. That's not enough to drive him off, though, and he settles Tim into his bed, ending up staying after all, even if it's in the corner of the room instead, where he tips his hat just low enough to cover his face.

"Maybe when you wake, you will be better," he offers, even if his platitude is devoid of the hopeful optimistic tone it needs. He's not so good at that tone, unfortunately.

Tim laughs. It's hilarious and ironic and awful that the first and only person he hits on here is not only spoken for, but that he also does it while under the influence of some crazy firefly bites. At least it's easy to brush off this way, to sweep under the rug and pretend it was just some bullshit hallucination stuff. Even if it's not. Even if he'd admire Cougar's arms and shoulders and the lilt of his accent anyway.

He heaves a sigh as he all but falls into the uncomfortable bed, pulling the blankets around him, cold despite the heat of his fever. "You don't have to stay here," he mutters. "I'll be fine."

"I'm not leaving," Cougar tells him, "so get used to me," he adds, because he's still convinced that Tim is going to sneak out in the middle of the night to go start looking under rocks for whatever mischievous gnomes or things he thinks might be doing this. On the one hand, it's frustrating, of course.

On the other, if Cougar got bit, he has a feeling there might have been some actual injuries, so it's a good thing that he hadn't been. "Rest, I have your six."

Tim doesn't even know if he could pull himself out of bed at this point, feeling a little too weak to do much more than throw an arm over his face. If he could, though — if he could muster up the strength, there's a high chance that he'd try and go off and do something. Everything in him is telling him to fight the fever, fight the weakness, fight whoever gets in his way. But his body won't listen, and so he lays there, breathing, trying to fight off sleep as long as possible.

"Thank you." It's mumbled, barely audible at all, but it's there. Even if he might not remember it in the morning.

The bugs - Peeta's not sure what they are, so he doesn't try to give them a name - are pretty at a distance, but not something he wants to see up close, not after his experience with tracker jackers. And especially once it's become more obvious that people bitten or stung by them have bad things happen to them, he's doubly sure to avoid them. One time being subjected to hallucinations and terror by insects is enough.

But keeping an eye out for people going through whatever they cause is a good thing to do, and as he's passing by the outer stretch of houses from the river, he spots a man on one of the porches, looking not very good. Very not very good. He sets down the stack of pans he'd been scouring in the cold, rushing water on a clean rock and moves to see what he can do for Tim. "Can you hear me? Can you understand me?"

Tim can hear. The fever has him in and out of focus, though, and it makes it hard to concentrate on what's being said to him. One sting probably wouldn't have had him in such bad shape, but by the time he got away from the swarming bugs, he'd gotten a few of them. Hopefully it's a 24 hour thing. Hopefully it's a fever that burns out fast, along with the itching paranoia that's come with it. He hates being in this state, it makes him feel weak.

It makes him feel like he's in danger.

He wishes he had a weapon. Because once he focuses, he recognizes the man in front of him as a stranger. As a potential threat. He gets to his feet, stepping back a touch clumsily to stand on his porch. "You're gonna want to stop right there."

His drawl is slow, and maybe a little bit slurred, but he's ready to fight. Or attempt to, anyway.

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003 ★ this place is so cold and i just wanna come home

House 52

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House 52 (because the Kentucky boys need to stick together)

y e s kentucky boy's gotta stick together :')