Chapter Text
He hears footsteps in the hall.
Whoever’s responsible for the sound has a long, slow gait, but even so they must be walking cautiously. Tim can hear each step they take in its individual components; the thunk of a hard heel on the wooden floor, followed a long moment later by the tap of the toes, then a shift in weight that makes the floorboards below creak as they prepare to take another careful step. Then the hard thunk would come again, sounding slightly nearer than before.
Cowboy boots, Tim thinks idly.
They’re drawing closer, albeit at a snail’s pace – then they grind to a halt completely. Silence returns, and Tim listens to his heart pump a few beats, the only sound he’d had to occupy him for some time before he heard those boots come creeping down that hall.
“Tim?” a voice calls, low and wary.
Tim’s eyes fall shut. “Yeah, Raylan.”
He’s walking again, faster now, like his strides have a definitive purpose. Tim hears the door open and there he is, framed like a portrait against a dark and gloomy backdrop. He stops again before he’s crossed the threshold into the room, gazing at what’s inside.
“Shit,” Raylan breathes softly.
There’s the sound of rushed steps across the room. Boots and denim appear in Tim’s field of vision. The boots pause, hesitating for a moment at the very edge of a forbidding, dark scene on the floor lying in their path to Tim.
“Shit,” Raylan says again, although it’s more of a hiss this time.
The boots are moving again, creeping along the edges of the room towards Tim. Next thing, rough hands are shaking him at his shoulders, angling him towards Raylan, who is sitting on his haunches next to him. Tim lifts his eyes to Raylan’s face, dragging them away from where they had been resting on something lying on the floor before him with an effort that makes him feel like he’s fighting a magnetic pull. The expression he finds twisting Raylan’s normally smooth features is not one he’s accustomed to seeing there – the eyes are wide, the mouth set at an odd, unfamiliar angle. He looks bewildered, Tim thinks, and maybe a bit frightened too, words not often associated with Raylan Givens, cowboy lawman extraordinaire.
“Are you hurt?” Raylan asks urgently. Tim blinks a few times, pondering the question – his brain feels so sluggish, he doesn’t normally have to try this hard to understand and respond to speech, he’s sure of it – and he feels Raylan’s grip at his shoulders tighten like a vice, shaking him again. The question bounces around his head like a pair of shoes in a tumble dryer.
“Tim,” Raylan pleads, and Tim doesn’t think he’s ever heard Raylan pleading before, either, now that he thinks on it, “You’re covered in blood, I need to know–“
“’S not mine,” Tim replies. This does not appear to set Raylan much at ease – his eyes dart away from Tim’s face, landing and lingering on what’s lying on the floor in front of him. Tim never consciously decides to follow his gaze, but he finds himself doing so anyway. The bloodied face of a woman at his feet stares back at him, dead. She’s lying in a large amount of her own blood, a long, gaping wound at her throat which has long since run dry. It’s clearly the fatal injury, but Tim knows that there are others besides.
When the hands at his shoulders start shaking him yet again he tears his eyes away from the woman for the second time, with some degree of effort. Raylan somehow looks still more alarmed than he had previously.
“Can you– please, just–“ Tim hears himself say, a bit desperately, leaning forward and shifting his arms as much as he can. Raylan’s eyes fall to a place at the small of Tim’s back, where abrasive ropes are coiled tightly around Tim’s wrists. There are a few loops of rope that wind from Tim’s hands around the foot of a heavy wooden chest of drawers at his back, anchoring him to the spot where he is sitting on the floor, facing the dead woman.
Raylan’s hands flash away to undo the bindings, but the knots have been pulled tight and the rope is oddly slick. He struggles with it for some time before Tim finally feels the restraints go slack. When Raylan’s hands emerge from behind his back his fingers are spotted with shiny traces of blood.
Raylan’s opening his mouth to say something when Tim lurches to his feet. His legs are unexpectedly unsteady, though, and for a wild moment he thinks he’s about to come crashing down on top of the dead woman before Raylan’s hand finds a fistful of his shirt and yanks him backward. He bounces off the wall behind him and rolls left, bolting around Raylan, out the door, and into the hall.
He’s out the front door just seconds later, the cool night air filling his lungs in short, ragged breaths. The smell of the outdoors is very nearly overwhelming, burning fresh and cold in his nostrils, standing in stark contrast to the heavy, rusty smell of blood that filled the room where the woman was, hanging thick in the air like a fog. Traces of that scent have followed him out of the house – he remembers what Raylan said, covered in blood – but it’s not as strong as it was inside.
His tongue flicks unthinkingly across his lips and it’s there too – that telltale, metallic tang – and the nausea rises so swiftly and strongly that it’s all he can do to stagger to the edge of the porch and vomit onto a rhododendron planted in the earth below. He wipes his mouth weakly as he collapses onto a porch step, leaning heavily against a white railing. When he scrubs a hand over his face and through his hair, a few dry reddish-black flakes flutter down past his eyes, settling at his feet and across his pants.
The sound of Raylan’s voice floats to him from back inside the house. Tim can’t make out what he’s saying, but he supposes that Raylan’s calling for police and a coroner, maybe an ambulance too, a ride Tim already has no plans of accepting. Or perhaps he’s talking to Art, or Rachel, reporting what he’s found, in which case the end result will be same – this house will be swarming with law enforcement, and sooner rather than later.
The conversation – whatever it is – ends, and Tim hears Raylan’s footsteps coming back up the hallway. He walks out the open front door and down the porch steps, turning once he’s reached the bottom to survey Tim carefully. There are a few moments of silence before he asks, “Are you okay?” Tim lifts his head lethargically to shoot Raylan a withering look, and Raylan changes tack immediately. “What happened?”
“Raylan…” Tim’s gaze drifts away from Raylan’s face, settles somewhere over the hat resting on his head. He gives his head a few small shakes, like he doesn’t know where to start and he’s hoping that the explanation will just fall out of him on its own. It doesn’t, and eventually he makes a hoarse laughing sound and says, “I don’t know.”
Raylan frowns, but doesn’t press.
If this were Raylan’s hometown, it would take ages for local PD to show up; in fact, he and Raylan would probably have time to bury the body and bleach the room before they arrived, if they were so inclined. But they’re in Bourbon County tonight, not Harlan, and only twenty miles or so from the Lexington office. There are flashing lights pulling up in a matter of minutes.
It’s two locals at first, but Tim knows that even as he sits here a small army of state and federal authorities are preparing to descend on the scene. These officers will be relegated to traffic duty and crowd control before long, something they seem to be aware of – they’re practically scurrying up to the porch, eager to see something impressive before higher-ups banish them from the action.
“Is the house secure?” one of them asks, by way of greeting. Raylan gestures to Tim, who doesn’t miss the startled double-take each of the officers perform upon laying eyes on him.
“Unless he’s hiding under a sink in there,” Tim offers with a shrug. The cops draw their guns from their holsters, which is unnecessary, and enter the house, which Tim is sure they would have done no matter his answer. There’s a low whistle ringing out from the end of the hall before long.
“Well, damn!” one of the officers calls out to them. Apparently they’ve found the body. “The hell happened in here?”
“Don’t know,” Raylan replies. Tim can feel Raylan’s eyes on him but acts like he doesn’t notice.
The officers return to the front door a few minutes later, guns holstered. “Guess the sink tip was a bust,” Tim mumbles, to no one in particular. It doesn’t seem as though anyone is paying him any mind, which is just as well.
“Dispatch told us this was concernin’ that escaped prisoner?” the first officer to step out onto the porch asks.
“It is,” Raylan answers shortly.
“He the one made that mess in there?” When nobody answers him this time, the officer asks instead, “Who’s the vic?”
“Lauren,” Tim says automatically, visions of the dead woman swimming before his eyes. He scrubs his hand over his face again, dislodges a few more flakes of dry blood. “Lauren Witt.”
Raylan breaks in before the officers can ask any more questions. “You boys mind moving those cruisers? There’s gonna be a lot of activity here soon, you’re blocking the drive.” The cold finality in his voice doesn't invite any argument, and the two officers slouch down the porch steps back towards their cars, looking disappointed.
An ambulance arrives next, and Tim shoots Raylan a resentful look that Raylan promptly ignores. The EMTs hop out of the cab but choose to hang back instead of proceeding to the house, acting very much as though they have been forewarned about the irritable deputy marshal they’ve been called to examine and have chosen to wait for him to come to them rather than risk making a scene. Tim feels no inclination to pay them such a visit and remains resolutely on the porch.
The next cars to arrive are from the County Sheriff’s office, and KSP shows up not long after. The street beyond is growing thicker with official-looking vehicles – uniforms and investigators, all making their way towards the house. They goggle at Tim when they reach the porch, stammering out questions about the crime scene until Raylan points them in the direction of the body inside. Soon the foot traffic in and out of the front door speaks for itself, and new arrivals walk right by them without saying anything at all, all doing relatively poor jobs of hiding the curious looks aimed in Tim’s direction as they pass.
“Tim,” Raylan says a bit testily after one gaping bystander nearly falls on his way up the steps, “Art may not be here for a good while yet, so will you do me a favor and go see the paramedics, please?”
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Tim maintains stubbornly.
Raylan doesn’t respond, just leans in toward him with an outstretched arm. He grasps the end of one of Tim’s long, black shirtsleeves and shifts it upward with a delicate motion, revealing deep, bloody grooves carved into the flesh of Tim’s wrist. Tim’s almost surprised to see it, he hadn’t really felt anything – perhaps a dull ache, something he was only dimly aware of in the recesses of this mind – but once he lays eyes on it the gouges begin to burn and smart in earnest. Tim inhales sharply, feels the same pain blossom across his other wrist as well. He realizes that Raylan knows about it because he’d fumbled so long with those knots, struggling with ropes that had apparently been slick with Tim’s own blood.
Still, they’re not exactly mortal wounds – nothing that can’t wait – and Tim is getting ready to say precisely this when Raylan says, “And, come to think of it, I doubt you ended up tied to the furniture because someone asked nicely.”
“Stun gun,” Tim admits grudgingly. “The little pink ones they market for ladies to keep in their purses.”
“Cute.”
“Not really.”
“Tim,” Raylan says again in tones of repressed exasperation, making a lazy gesture in the direction of the ambulance.
Normally Tim thinks he’d be somewhat indignant about Raylan ordering him around like he has any actual authority to do so, but it turns out he’s lacking the energy to put up much more of a fight tonight. He grabs the porch railing and uses it to pull himself to his feet, not missing the half step Raylan takes in his direction, as if he’s expecting Tim to lose his balance again.
“Should I bother trying to walk there myself or would you rather carry me?” Tim snaps.
Raylan shrugs. “I could get ‘em to bring the stretcher,” he says mildly. Tim turns his back on him without another word and heads in the direction of the ambulance. Raylan doesn’t move to follow, and Tim feels relieved – he could do with a few minutes away from Raylan’s vigilant scrutiny.
Tim gets off to a predictably rocky start with the EMTs when one of them tries to force a shock blanket onto him. They come to a tolerable compromise eventually – no blanket, but he does accept some wet-naps to try cleaning the blood off his face with while they tend to his left wrist. As Tim scrubs his face raw, the EMT applies a thick, cooling salve to the rope burns which immediately soothes the searing pain, then covers the gashes with a layer of gauze before wrapping the whole area in a white cotton bandage.
“They’re pretty deep,” the EMT says as Tim shifts his position to allow his other wrist to be worked on. “You’re gonna have to monitor for infection, change the bandages frequently…”
Tim nods, not really listening. When both his wrists are satisfactorily bandaged, the EMTs insist on a more thorough examination, which Tim agrees to simply because letting them do it will probably take less time than an argument on the subject. They find some minor burn marks smattered across his back and chest where the stun gun made contact, along with some mild scrapes and bruises, but otherwise he’s issued a clean bill of health. One of the EMTs insists that he’s a lucky guy and Tim levels him with a look that could blister paint.
The EMTs apparently realize that they’re better off cutting their losses and don’t even attempt to talk Tim into a ride to the hospital, sending him on his way after they’re finished patching him up. Tim savors this bit of good fortune as he strolls aimlessly around the edge of the drive, seeing as good fortune’s been in short supply for most of this day thus far, and takes some time to observe his surroundings. He’d allowed his mind to drift while he was in the ambulance, a singularly rare occurrence given his predisposition to total alertness at all times, and he finds that the scene around him has changed markedly.
Small bunches of people are bustling around in the night air, wearing uniforms and plainclothes, all cast in the eerie red and blue lights flashing from at least a dozen police cruisers in the vicinity. Forensic teams are lugging heavy equipment cases from their vans to the porch while a group of officers work on establishing an official perimeter around the property. It’s not quite loud, exactly, but there’s a definite hum of activity piercing the atmosphere now, where before everything had seemed almost unnaturally quiet and still.
The change is disorienting; it seems absurd that only an hour ago he’d been trapped in a scene from a cheap slasher flick and now – his heart is thumping so loudly in his chest again that soon it’s all he can hear. He feels winded, all of a sudden – he slouches against a nearby cruiser, bent over, hands gripping his thighs. The people, the sound – all this procedure and bureaucracy and normalcy is casting a surreal pall over Tim’s memories, fresh though they are, so that it all starts to feel oddly unreal to him, like remembering a nightmare right after waking up safe in bed. It’s making his head spin – he feels stunned, he feels–
Shocked, he thinks. Then, caustically, I should’ve taken a fucking blanket.
Just as abruptly as it came, the feeling starts to pass – his heart sounds less and less like a bass drum pounding in his ears, each lungful of air is easier to catch than the last. There’s cold sweat on his skin and his muscles are twitching with exhaustion. He leans there for a while as the frenzied feeling dissipates, leaving his body sore and aching in its wake.
He straightens, surreptitiously searching for any sign of someone watching him, but he seems to have gone unnoticed. Lucky, he thinks, just like the EMT said.
He pushes himself away from the car he’d been leaning on, deciding to strike out in search of the United States Marshal Service. Tim doesn’t see anyone that he recognizes milling around in his general vicinity, and the choice between returning to the house in search of a familiar face and looking literally anywhere else isn’t much of a choice at all. He turns toward the street and trudges away down the long drive, where a small crowd of cars and people are gathered.
His clothes are still sticky with drying blood, but it’s not so noticeable to observers on the black fabric of his shirt and pants at night, and the rough cleaning he gave his face ensures that he no longer draws much attention from distracted strangers as he passes them by. He’s careful not to bump into anyone, weaving anonymously through the throng, pausing every now and then to scan the area for any sign of Marshal presence. He catches sight of it eventually – a familiar hat bobbing above the rest. Tim makes a beeline for it and soon sees Raylan gathered with Art and Rachel, all apparently deep in conversation.
They’re huddled around an unmarked SUV, and as he approaches he starts to pick up on what they’re saying. “…bad is it?” he hears Art ask, and without really meaning to, Tim slows his pace, remaining just out of sight.
“Not good,” Raylan offers, rather unhelpfully, a sentiment Art seems to agree with.
“How ‘not good’ are we talking, Raylan?” Art asks, the words layered with that loud, impatient tone he gets when he’s stressed.
Raylan shrugs jerkily, so that it almost looks like a spasm. “From what I picked up from the guys working inside, it was ugly. Slow. He cut her throat when he was done.”
“And Tim?” Rachel presses. She sounds a little nervous, a far cry from her usual cool demeanor.
“Seemed mostly uninjured, but I got him to go get checked out anyway. He didn't say much when I found him. Couldn’t get out of that house fast enough, though.”
There’s a pause, and though Tim can’t see the expressions on any of their faces he gets the impression they’re all thinking the same thing. Raylan’s the one who finally says it. “Pulled up here, no lights on, real quiet, front door wide open… I was sure I was gonna find him dead in there with her,” he says, low and serious. “I was sure of it.”
There’s a sudden, unpleasant sensation in the pit of Tim’s stomach; it feels like going over a hill on a roller coaster, except instead of being exciting it’s just making him nauseous. Regretting his decision to eavesdrop in the first place, he clears his throat loudly and the three of them turn to face him.
There’s a tense moment of silence where no one really knows what to say. Raylan’s right back to his careful, quiet scrutiny, eyes sweeping over Tim like he’s searching for something the EMTs missed. Rachel, too, analyzes him closely, though the expression on her face belies more relief than anything else. Finally, Art says, “Shouldn’t you be on your way to a hospital?” in a sort of brusque attempt at casualness.
“Uh,” Tim says, grimacing in distaste. “No?”
Art snorts humorlessly and shakes his head. Tim keeps his hands behind his back, half-shoved down the waistband of his pants – it has the added benefit of keeping his bandaged wrists out of view.
“What the hell happened?” Art asks next, and Tim supposes he’s relieved that Art’s electing to just get it over with as fast as possible. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, he thinks, resolutely ignoring the sudden uncomfortable quickness of his heartbeat.
“I got here right about fifteen-hundred and there was a car in the driveway – Lauren Witt’s, recognized it from the courthouse. I didn’t notice anyone or anything out of place in the surrounding neighborhood or on the property, so I approached the door.”
His voice is steady and impassive, like he’s read the information in a file. “When I knocked, she answered. I told her I needed to talk to her, asked her if I could come inside. We went in and when she closed the door, I told her Ty Walker had escaped custody and that I’d been sent to move her to a secure location until he’d been apprehended. She agreed and asked if she could go grab a few things from her room; it’s on the second floor with one window about fifteen feet up, and I thought if it came down to it I’d probably notice Walker carrying a ladder up the driveway, so I told her to go, but hurry up. I stayed at the front of the house; I wanted a good view of the road, passing cars.”
“And she didn’t have questions about any of this?” Art interrupts.
“She had a few – mostly pertaining to Walker’s escape. ‘How the hell,’ and the like. Also wanted to know where we were going. I told her I’d be taking her somewhere she’d be safe overnight and that I’d explain more once we were on our way. I told her not to worry, keeping witnesses safe is my job. She was watching something on the television when I got there,” he continues in a sudden rush – he already regrets repeating the last part. “She didn’t turn it off before she went to her room – it was Food Network… Iron Chef. Background noise. ‘S why I didn’t hear him till he was right behind me.”
He’d been standing by the bay window in the front room, watching the road beyond. He heard the creak on the floorboards just behind him and he’d known immediately what it meant; whoever it was had been too quiet approaching him to be doing anything other than sneaking up on him, and only one person had any reason to sneak up on him in here.
The sound had come from behind him and to the right, so Tim spun blindly left. Something grazed his jacket as it flapped around him, tugging on him sharply, but whatever it was didn’t catch hold. Tim’s hand had flown to the gun on his hip as he turned, but he knew it was too little, too late. He figured it would be a knife – quiet, good in close quarters like this – slid up between his ribs into his heart, or puncturing his kidneys, or severing his spinal cord. There was always the chance that Walker would be a son of a bitch about it too, he supposed – drive it into his stomach and let him lay there, dying slow for however long it took. It’d happened too fast for him to think very much beyond the fact that he was definitely going to die, except for the strange realization that his obituary would end up reading ‘killed in the line of duty’ after all.
“Tim?”
A gentle nudge from Rachel shakes him out of the memory and he realizes he’s stopped talking.
“Uh,” Tim stammers, trying to remember the last thing he’d said. He scratches at a spot near his temple distractedly before he remembers that he’d been trying to conceal the bandages on his wrist, the glaring white cotton now peeking out treacherously from under his black shirtsleeves. He feels three pairs of eyes examining it and hastily jams his hand back into the waistband of his pants, frustrated.
“Walker got the drop on him,” Raylan pipes up, corralling Art and Rachel’s attention. Tim’s flustered and irritated, but he’s also grateful for the momentary respite, if he’s honest. “Used Lauren Witt’s stun gun.”
“She had a stun gun?” Rachel asks.
“I reckon she was feeling somewhat unsafe recently,” Raylan says, glaring up at Lauren Witt’s house like it’s done something to offend him. After a few beats his eyes flick across Tim’s face before moving back to Rachel. “Can you blame her?”
“Guess not,” Rachel answers simply and Raylan sighs, lifting his hat with one hand and running his fingers through his hair a few times with the other. When he replaces the hat he sets it so that the brim is low over his eyes, lapsing into a moody silence.
“So Walker was already in the house when you got there?” Art asks, glancing between Tim and Raylan like he’s not sure who’s going to answer this time.
“Musta been,” Tim says. “I didn’t think to ask.”
Art’s frowning, face screwed up in thought. He shakes his head. “Well, that doesn’t make any sense,” he declares, without elaborating.
“You mean Lauren Witt could’ve been long dead and Walker long gone before Tim even walked up to that door,” Rachel supplies, evidently on the same train of thought. “Which is ostensibly what he should have wanted – with the only witness to the Stevens murder dead, the case against Walker falls apart.”
Art hums an affirmative, and Rachel continues. “Which either means he’d only just got there and Tim showed up before he could make a move, which would be pretty amazing timing–“
“Almost unbelievably so,” Raylan mutters darkly, eyes still lost under the hat brim.
“–or else he was waiting for someone to show up. He had to have known we’d send someone when the word got out he’d gone on the run,” Rachel finishes, sounding unsettled.
No one speaks for a moment as they think this over. Tim had arrived at this conclusion himself at some point over the past few hours – that Walker had purposefully chosen to lie in wait for the arrival of the Marshals rather than just make the kill that he had escaped from custody to carry out, along with a clean getaway. He doesn’t have any more insight into the why of it, though, and right now he finds that he doesn’t really care about Walker’s motivations. Raylan lifts his head a tad and Tim can feel that he’s watching him again.
“It’s not the only thing that doesn’t make sense,” Tim says, and he hopes that he doesn’t sound too reluctant to continue. He just wants to be done with this. “When I came around, he was there with her… she had sense enough not to try anything stupid with a loaded gun pointed at her. He said he had some questions for me and that it’d be in my best interest to cooperate; the usual shit. I told him to go to hell and he hit her so hard she spit out a few teeth.”
He’d misread Walker there, a mistake Tim doesn't make all that often in the course of his professional duties. He thought he’d known that he’d take the hit for his obstinacy, just like he thought he’d known he was dead in that front room, and he’d been wrong about both. Walker had proven troublingly adept at keeping Tim on his heels.
“After that it was all kinds of weird questions, and when he was done with those he killed her and left… he kept his face covered too, with a hood and bandana and sunglasses,” he adds, realizing with a jolt that he hadn’t mentioned such a pertinent detail yet.
Rachel asks, “He covered his face?” at the same time Raylan demands, “What kind of weird questions?” They exchange a glance and Rachel nods, and whether she’s being polite or just doesn’t feel like dealing with Raylan’s trait impatience right now, Tim can’t really tell.
Raylan rounds on him and asks again, in that same demanding tone, “What kind of questions?”
“He wanted to know shit about… I don’t know, where I served, how many tours, how I got into the Marshals, that kind of thing.” Raylan’s eyebrows are knitted together in mounting consternation and Tim tries to head off what he’s sure is going to be the next question. “Nothing about his case, or any other case, or any Marshal business or law enforcement activity at all – and, no, I don't know why.”
Raylan is obviously unsatisfied, but he dips his head again and seems momentarily stymied, at least, and Rachel is quick to seize her opportunity. “You said he concealed his face?”
Tim nods.
“And he kept it that way the whole… the entire time he was there?” she asks, clearly trying to sound delicate about ensuing events.
Tim nods again.
Rachel frowns, but it seems like this is the answer she’s expecting. “So you never actually got a clear look at him, then?”
“I know it was him, Rachel,” Tim responds, bristling.
“I know it was, too,” she says patiently, and Tim is immediately embarrassed for snapping at her. “But it worries me that after all this we still don’t know what the hell he’s up to. I mean, what’s the endgame here? Normally we’d just assume he’s making a run for the border to go live off whatever asshole’s pension fund he’s probably put together for himself, after murdering a witness in front of a federal agent and everything, but covering his face, asking you about unrelated topics…”
“Leaving me alive,” Tim interjects, scuffing the toe of his shoe against the asphalt underfoot.
Rachel nods, “… none of it adds up if he’s planning on running. He’s making some serious moves and we don’t even know what game he’s playing.”
There’s another pause in the conversation before Art, who has been curiously silent for the past several minutes, sighs. “So what we know is that an escaped fugitive arrived at his eventual victim’s home sometime soon after making his bid for freedom, laid in wait for the arrival of the U.S. Marshals, and upon that arrival subdued a deputy marshal in order to ask him personal questions for an ultimately unknown purpose. During this interrogation the victim sustained multiple injuries…”
“When he didn’t like the answer I was giving,” Tim supplies, hollow-voiced. “If he thought I wasn’t being forthcoming enough or that there was more to the story, he’d take it out on her.”
“Culminating in the eventual death of the victim and flight of the fugitive,” Art finishes with another sigh. He stands there, lost in thought, surveying the scene around him, before turning back to Tim with his jaw set. “Right. Okay, first of all, Tim, I want you out of here. We’ll find someone to give you a ride.”
“Don’t I have to give a statement?” Tim asks tentatively.
“You just did. You’re gonna have to sit down and go over it all – numerous times, I’m sure – for various interested parties over the next few days, but I think we ought to have enough for tonight; I’ll take care of the locals and the feebs. And don’t look too pleased, because you won’t like the next part,” Art adds gruffly in response to Tim’s shoulders visibly slumping in relief. “I’m stationing a protective detail with you until we nab Walker.”
“Art,” Tim groans, but he’s cut off immediately.
“It’s that or a hospital room overnight with armed security at the doors,” he warns, and Tim falls into a grudging silence, making an effort to remind himself that it’s probably bad form to roll your eyes in the boss’s face.
While Tim is busy biting his tongue, Raylan says, “I’ll do it.” Everyone turns their attention to him once again, and he lifts his chin so that they can all see his eyes more clearly. They’re dark, and narrow, and impossible to read – this comes as a surprise to Tim, who can usually discern what Raylan is thinking just by looking at them.
It’s a skill he honed in sniper school, focusing on eyes and facial expressions – it was particularly helpful in identifying potential threats operating under the cover of larger groups of noncombatants, in urban environments or behind the walls of compounds tucked into remote mountainsides – but he thinks in most circumstances he’d probably be able to get a read on Raylan even without the Ranger training. Raylan’s pretty expressive if you know what to look for, especially around the eyes – Tim’s unsure whether Raylan’s newfound inscrutability is authentic, or if he’s just off his game tonight, though somehow he doubts the latter.
No one answers, and so Raylan continues, “You know, give him a ride home. Keep a lookout for a little while. Figure I owe him after the thing with the hitmen.”
Tim fights down a sudden ridiculous urge to laugh, because he’s not sure he knows anyone else who would describe his ex-wife’s new husband’s attempt at sending contract killers after both of them in such casual tones as, you know, the thing with the hitmen, even if it had been a while since the event itself. He succeeds insofar as it comes out a short, strangled cough, and Raylan has the nerve to shoot him a look of mild irritation.
“Avoiding a manhunt, Raylan?” Art asks skeptically.
“If KSP wants to scour the hills with bloodhounds and fine tooth combs, that’s their prerogative. Walker is smart, resourceful, and we’ve already established that he is clearly in the middle of executing a meticulously crafted plan that has kept him two steps ahead of us this entire time. You’re not gonna find him holed up in someone’s backyard the next town over,” he scoffs, and Tim can’t help but agree with him.
Art’s mouth twists into a reluctant frown, but he doesn't seem to disagree with Raylan’s assessment either. “Fine,” he relents, “Take him, stay with him, I’ll be in touch with any developments with all this.” He gestures widely to the commotion around them, nearly backhanding a passing crime scene technician clutching a camera tightly in his hands.
Tim’s mostly resentful about pulling a nanny, but once again finds that he’s not up for an argument – besides, Raylan’s an observant guy who in Tim’s experience has always known when to leave well enough alone regarding private matters. All things considered, he’s probably the least intrusive shadow Tim could hope for in this situation… well, maybe not the least intrusive, but he’s certainly not likely to ply Tim with nosy questions the way someone less familiar with him might.
A strange expression is playing across Art’s face, suggesting Tim’s quiet acquiescence is causing him unease, which seems more than a little unfair considering the flak Tim normally catches for being ‘a smartass’ about ‘absolutely everything’ – but, again, he’s not looking to argue right now. Finally Art blurts, with the air of someone trying desperately not to blurt something, “Tim, are you okay?”
Sometimes Tim wonders why people bother to ask questions when they know full well they aren’t going to get an answer – not the answer they’re looking for, anyway. Still, he figures he can’t blow Art off the way he blew off Raylan when he asked the same thing earlier, so he sticks with a curt, tried-and-true, “I’m fine, boss.”
“Okay,” Art says, raising his hands defensively like Tim had shouted. “Forget I asked.”
Raylan turns to go, and Tim nods once at Art and another time at Rachel before following. They each give him worryingly similar sympathetic looks in return, complete with weakly encouraging smiles, and then put their heads together in private conversation.
“I’m so ready to not be here,” Tim admits aloud as they trek away from the heart of the crime scene. Raylan doesn't say anything, but nods a bit in agreement. Tim gazes up at the purplish-black, starry sky – like the color of a fresh bruise – saying, “Hey, you wouldn’t happen to have a gym bag in the trunk, would you?”
“No,” Raylan replies suspiciously, “why?”
“Don’t wanna stain your interior,” Tim offers vaguely in explanation. Raylan turns suddenly on his heel – so fast that Tim comes very close to flinching – and stands over him in a way that’s almost menacing. He reaches out with his right hand and sets the tips of two fingers on Tim’s shirt, right over his heart, waiting a long moment before lifting them to examine the sticky residue left behind, gleaming on his skin in the dim light.
“Just wait here a minute,” he says, already walking away, and Tim releases a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He stands there alone in the middle of the gloomy street, because he doesn’t really have anywhere else to go; Raylan’s back in a matter of minutes, some dark cloth draped over his arm.
“Spare clothes,” he says, tossing them in Tim’s direction. “Don’t know about the fit – guy probably had six inches and fifty pounds on you.”
“Six inches, fifty pounds, and you stole his clothes,” Tim deadpans, turning the dark mass of fabric over in his hands. It’s a large blue t-shirt and black sweatpants, both marked with University of Kentucky emblems.
“Borrowed his clothes,” Raylan hums.
“Yeah. Didn’t happen to get a name, or a mailing address, or, like, a general idea of the branch or agency of law enforcement he works for, did you? So that you could un-borrow them at some point?”
“I told him if he comes on in to the Lexington courthouse, there’s a pretty good chance he’ll meet someone who may be able to point him in the direction of his requisitioned property,” Raylan explains, making it sound very matter-of-fact.
Tim tips his head back and exhales a slow, drawling laugh. Raylan glances at him as they walk down the road, one corner of his mouth turned up in something approaching the start of a grin. With the buzz of activity behind them, the air’s become still once more, though comfortably so, and the vast, star-strewn sky stretches endlessly before them over the rolling landscape. Under different circumstances, it might not be a bad night.
They reach Raylan’s car a bit further on, and Tim opens the passenger-side door, placing the ‘borrowed’ clothes on the roof. He shucks off his own overshirt and then pulls the bloody tee underneath roughly up over his head. The cool spring air raises goosebumps across his bare skin as he reaches for the new t-shirt, conspicuous white bandages on his wrists in full view. Raylan, for his part, busies himself with something or other in the driver’s seat as Tim pulls on the shirt and then changes his pants; a gentlemanly attempt to afford him whatever privacy possible as he undresses on the side of the road. Of course, several deployments across the Middle East in a unit of mostly twenty-something-year-old Rangers has pretty much sapped Tim of whatever dubious concerns about modesty he ever possessed in the first place, but he still appreciates the sentiment.
The clothes are too big in the end, but they’re dry and they smell fresh, which is a marked enough improvement that Tim’s not likely to complain about it. He signals for Raylan to pop the trunk and tosses the blood-spattered clothing in – he’d been tempted to leave it in a pile on the side of the road, but he can just imagine KSP stumbling across it at some point and spending hours investigating, believing it to be a clue to Walker’s whereabouts before someone bothered to straighten their shit out. He finally flops into the passenger seat and shuts the door as the engine hums to life, and they peel out onto the road. Less than a minute later they turn a corner, and the last traces of the flashing police lights fade into the distance behind them.
Tim sighs and rests his forehead against the window, content to sit in peace and quiet for a little bit. Raylan obliges him in this without needing to be asked, not bothering with small talk or reaching for the radio dial as he cruises along the winding roads towards the highway. From there it’s a straight shot back to Lexington, about half an hour’s ride.
Though he’s quiet, it becomes clear rather shortly that the ride is not a peaceful one for Raylan. Whatever he’s thinking but not saying is preoccupying him – he’s determinedly keeping his eyes facing forward, but Tim feels the car jerk two separate times, like Raylan realized they’d begun drifting out of their lane and had to correct suddenly.
It’s Tim who eventually breaks the silence, just after Raylan makes the turn onto the highway and they pass a sign on the roadside that tells them they have twenty miles to go. He leans away from the window – the part of his forehead that was pressed against the glass feeling a little numb – and peers at Raylan through the dark.
“You can go ahead and ask,” Tim says, because he thinks he knows what’s distracting Raylan – or, at least, he knows what would be distracting him if their positions were reversed, and he’s hazarding that Raylan’s thinking along the same lines. Raylan takes his eyes off the road to turn and give him an appraising look.
“Ask what?” he says after a beat, looking back at the road again.
“I can physically feel you thinking over there–“
“I’m not thinking about anything,” Raylan counters, huffing impatiently when he turns again and sees Tim’s wry expression.
“Listen,” Tim says, in an uncharacteristically sober way, “I’m giving you permission to ask.”
He doesn’t really want to talk about it, but he can’t blame Raylan for his… curiosity? Concern? Either way, it’s what Tim would want to know, too; the blood. On his face, on his clothes, probably still in his hair, and none of it his – having observed the crime scene Raylan can probably suss out what happened for himself, but Tim’s all too aware of the fact that guessing isn’t the same as knowing for certain.
When Raylan’s done considering this and opens his mouth to speak, though, his question isn’t about the blood at all. “Did I ever tell you about Tommy Bucks?”
A startled laugh bursts from Tim and Raylan looks at him with a raised eyebrow.
“I mean, I don’t think you ever gave me the blow-by-blow, but I’m familiar with the legend,” Tim responds uncertainly, not sure where this is heading. “Twenty-four hours to get out of town, him not getting out of town, and so on. It was kind of a watershed moment, I don’t know if you remember.”
Raylan shakes his head, “Not that part. About why I told him to run.”
“Uh,” Tim says blankly, “he was a scumbag?”
“I don’t shoot every scumbag I meet in our line of work.”
“Don’t you?”
“Tim.”
“He was a particularly scummy scumbag,” Tim tries. He’d been curious about the case when he’d seen it on the news, even more so when rumors about the cowboy marshal responsible started flying around the office. When word got out said cowboy marshal would be joining them in Eastern Kentucky it’d gotten the best of him, and he went searching for Tommy Bucks in the database. He’d found a large number of violent crimes which were rather exhaustive in their scope, all suspected to be Bucks’ handiwork, and a list of known associates that read like the Yellow Pages for organized crime in Miami – he was a genuine piece of shit, in short. This being the case, Tim hadn’t focused on any one of his many misdeeds in particular.
Raylan works his jaw, and Tim thinks he’s changing his mind about saying whatever it is he was planning to say. But then, with another quick glance in Tim’s direction, he says, “I was in Nicaragua – don’t know whether you remember Roland Pike–“
“The repo dentist,” Tim says, and Raylan nods grimly.
“We were both after him, and Bucks got the drop on me. He wanted to know where Pike was, had some other guy tied to a tree. Said he’d kill us both if I didn’t tell him what I knew, so I did.”
Tim is suddenly and uncomfortably aware of his heartbeat pounding in his ears, of goosebumps rising across his arms even though the car is perfectly warm. He shifts in his seat surreptitiously, loosening the seatbelt that now feels a bit too snug across his chest.
“Bucks listened to everything I had to say, and when I was done he walked over to that man, taped a piece of dynamite into his mouth, and lit the fuse. And I’d seen men die before that, and I’ve seen men die since, and in an array of uniquely unpleasant ways. But something about that one… maybe it was just the cruelty, though I guess I thought I’d seen enough of that, too, that I didn’t expect it to cut like it did.”
Tim’s eyes fall shut, the image of a pale, bloody face flickering through his mind. When he opens them again he sees Raylan’s jaw set in a hard line as he looks out on the road, his hands clenched tightly around the wheel. He wonders how Raylan felt at that moment, when the lingering hopes of saving that man’s life had been dashed irrevocably. And how had he felt after, knowing everything he’d tried had been in vain?
“When Walker was done asking me… when I told him everything he wanted to know,” Tim says slowly, and Raylan turns so that he can look from Tim, to where he’s driving, and back again with just a quick movement of the eyes, “she was in pretty bad shape, but he lifted her up and brought her over. She couldn’t support her own weight by that point, so he kind of propped her up so that she was standing right over me. And then he cut her throat. That’s where the blood came from.”
Raylan nods once, expression unchanging. Tim rests his head against the window once more with a dull thud, watching blurry shapes outside zip past in the darkness.
“There’s something that needs to be said here, and know that I enjoy saying it as little as you’ll enjoy hearing it, but–“ Raylan begins, but Tim cuts him off.
“Is it ‘don’t blame yourself, there’s nothing you could have done and you’re lucky to be alive’?”
“It is,” Raylan confirms in grave tones.
A mirthless smile tugs at the corners of Tim’s mouth. “Do you know something? I don’t blame myself. I did everything I could, but I knew nothing I said or did would make a difference. Killing her was what he came there to do. Even him having the drop on me – it happens. Not often, but…” He’s looking out through the window and up at the sky, but the highway is carrying them through a less rural region of the Bluegrass State, and light pollution is obstructing the view of the stars. “Blaming myself isn’t the fucking problem.”
“No kidding. I ended up shootin’ Tommy Bucks.”
The miles tick away slowly, and Tim drifts in and out of focus for the remaining duration of the ride. He feels… well, he’s not really sure how he feels. Tired, mostly, and sore – that much he does know. Only when they pull into the lot of a familiar apartment complex does Tim realize he never explicitly told Raylan where they were supposed to be going.
“Did I tell you where I live?” Tim asks, feeling pretty sure that he already knows the answer.
“You’ve made references to the general area, but I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned an exact address, no.”
“Then how–“
“I make it my business to know where some of my more amenable coworkers live, case I ever need a spot to lay low or find myself in a situation where a hospital is ill-advised,” Raylan explains conversationally. Tim starts to smirk in a ‘ha, good one’ kind of way, but Raylan merely shuts off the car and opens the door to get out.
“Wait, are you serious?” Tim scrambles out of the car after him, adding, “’Amenable’?” in what he sincerely hopes is a sufficiently offended tone. Raylan hums in reply, which is not actually an answer, and sets off across the lot towards the building, Tim hurrying in his wake.
He catches up and resumes a more leisurely pace, letting Raylan lead by about a step because he’s curious to see whether Raylan knows which apartment is his or if he just knows the building. To Tim’s mounting consternation, Raylan heads in the right direction without any input, shooting Tim a very self-satisfied look in the process. He still doesn’t know if Raylan was joking, but he has a vivid image of coming home one day to find Raylan bleeding on his couch, demanding that Tim help treat a bullet wound with a bottle of gin and a sewing kit, and he feels a dull throbbing pain around his temples.
When they reach his front door, Raylan finally steps aside to allow Tim to open it – Tim figures he’s lucky Raylan hasn’t clandestinely had a key made. Once inside, Tim makes a beeline for the kitchen; Raylan takes a few moments to familiarize himself with the surroundings before following, which is a simple enough task given the small size of the place – the room they’re in is a combined kitchen, dining, and living room area with a couple of windows that are bare with the exception of some old plastic blinds, furnished sparingly with a round, wooden table for eating and a slightly ratty couch facing a television set, with a half-open door to the left that leads to the apartment’s lone bedroom.
In the kitchen, Tim opens a cabinet and withdraws a bottle of bourbon and two mismatched glasses, pours a liberal amount of the amber liquid into each, and slides one down along the counter to where Raylan is leaning, keeping the other for himself. He lifts his glass without a word and finishes it in one go; out of the corner of his eye he sees Raylan following suit. He fills his glass again, slides the bottle down the counter in case Raylan wants to do the same (he reaches for it immediately, so it seems like he does), and polishes that off too.
“Okay,” Tim says as heat pools in his stomach, tendrils of warmth creeping through the veins in his arms and legs, “I think I need a shower, so… help yourself,” he adds, pointing to the bottle, and Raylan nods.
Tim trudges through the door to his bedroom, straight through to the only bathroom in the place, shucking off the borrowed clothes as he goes. Flicking on the bathroom light, he catches a glimpse of his face reflected in the mirror on the medicine cabinet hanging over his sink. The wet-naps from the ambulance certainly helped some, but he missed a few streaks of blood around his ears and neck, and under the fluorescent bathroom light he can see that even the areas of skin he did manage to wipe off are stained a gory reddish color.
There’s more blood matted in his hair, and dark circles under his eyes – tired of looking, he turns away from the mirror, cranks the shower knob, and gets in. He realizes as he stands there that he’d forgotten about the bandages on his wrists, which are already sodden and ruined – with a frustrated grunt he tears through the layers of wrapping and gauze, dropping them unceremoniously at his feet. The angry red grooves sting as the water washes away the EMT’s healing goop, though Tim pays them no mind.
Tim enjoys a nice hot shower – spending days at a time on Afghani mountainsides in increasingly worsening states of his own filth guaranteed that he’d never take such simple comforts for granted as long as he lived – but the water falling on him now is scalding. He doesn't move to adjust it, but reaches instead for the soap and begins scrubbing himself raw with excruciating thoroughness. The water coming off him runs sudsy and red to the drain for a little while – he waits until he sees it run clear, and then he scrubs for another ten minutes for good measure. When he’s done scouring his skin and rinsing his hair he stands under the searing stream for a bit longer, until the hot water starts to run out and is replaced with water that feels freezing cold in comparison. Even so he remains there for another few minutes before shutting the shower off.
He emerges from the bedroom several minutes later clad in his own sweatpants, undershirt, and flannel, the sleeves rolled up carefully over the uncovered rope burns to keep them from sticking. Raylan’s sitting at the table and eyeing him vigilantly, though it seems he hasn’t taken full advantage of Tim’s offer concerning the bourbon – he’s poured himself another glass, but it sits there looking mostly untouched. Tim pours himself a third, because this is his place and he’s had a night, after all, and when he raises it to his lips Raylan follows suit. Tim thinks that maybe he was waiting for him because it was the polite thing to do, and he can’t suppress a snort at the thought.
“What?” Raylan asks, eyes narrowing a little.
“Nothing. You.” Tim refills his glass again, but takes a seat at the table as well and decides to nurse this one a bit. His head swims pleasantly as a result of the first three rounds – he decides to savor the feeling for a little while, rather than go directly from zero to shitfaced, which admittedly is sort of how he envisioned the night going prior to this. Raylan moves to refill his glass as well, eyeing Tim in a rather evaluative way – in an attempt to throw him off such behavior, Tim asks, “So, how ya been?”
Raylan frowns as if Tim’s done something vaguely annoying, which lifts Tim’s spirits in itself. “How’ve I been?” Raylan repeats, like it’s something ridiculous and not a common question that human beings tend to ask one another after periods of time spent apart.
“’S what I asked.”
“I don’t know. Florida’s hot. Winona’s trying to potty train Willa.”
“Winona’s trying? And you’re…?”
“I don’t see we need to rush her into anything,” Raylan says haughtily. Tim has a sneaking suspicion it’s the verbatim explanation Raylan’s probably repeated to an exasperated Winona several times over, and sympathy swells for her in his gut.
“And what would you estimate the ratio of dirty diapers Winona’s changed to the number you’ve changed to be, if you had to hazard a guess?”
Raylan rolls his eyes exaggeratedly and mutters something about a comparison between Tim and Winona’s mother, taking a beleaguered swig of his bourbon. He lifts the hat off his head and places it carefully on the table, running his other hand through his hair wearily. Tim gazes at the spot where Raylan set the hat down, considering the black material thoughtfully.
“Don't know if I like this one as much as the last,” Tim says of the hat, and Raylan glances at it briefly before his gaze lifts to Tim.
“Well, I figured I shouldn’t walk around wearing articles of clothing riddled with bullet holes, for professional reasons.”
“Seem like overkill?”
“Little bit, yeah.”
“Coulda just bought a different one,” Tim muses. Raylan shrugs, not saying anything. Tim’s thoughts drift to a pair of sunglasses that he knows are sitting on top of his dresser in the bedroom. “Then again, I guess not,” he concedes under his breath, swallowing another burning mouthful of bourbon.
“So, what about you? How’ve you been?” Raylan asks, and the question is layered in thick irony. Tim gets the impression Raylan’s barely suppressing an eye roll.
“I don’t understand, is asking people how they are not done where you come from or something?”
“Small talk’s just a little weird for us.”
“’Small talk’,” Tim repeats with a laughing breath, lifting his glass to his mouth again. When he sets it down he says, “You mean, like, normal conversation? The kind real people have?”
“The very same,” Raylan responds simply, mouth twisted into half of a grin.
The liquor’s loosening him up, like something tightly coiled in the pit of his stomach is coming unwound, and his head feels warm and light. He admits to himself that he understands Raylan’s point, in a fashion; most normal people probably don’t have casual discussions about the personal property they’ve lifted off men they shot, at any rate.
“Well, it’s been business as usual ‘round here,” Tim says airily, answering the question anyway. “Catching fugitives, you know. Upholding the law, serving Uncle Sam and such.”
“I asked about you, not work.”
“That’s really something, coming from you,” Tim drawls flatly.
Raylan pulls a face that Tim interprets as meaning ‘fair enough’ and tips the bottle of bourbon over his glass first, then Tim’s, splitting what little remains equally between the two of them. Tim nods in thanks and Raylan sets the empty bottle down.
A certain quiet falls as Raylan sips his bourbon, Tim twisting his own glass on the table slowly between his fingertips. Memories of the day creep unbidden to the forefront of Tim’s mind, settling on him like a weight. The slightly drunken buoyancy he felt only moments ago evaporates, leaving only a tired – and still slightly drunken – heaviness in its wake, and his shoulders slump some as he exhales a long breath.
Raylan, watching Tim carefully yet again, notices the stormy expression stealing over his face and intuits what’s bothering him. “They’ll catch him,” he says, and Tim lifts his eyes from the glass to give Raylan a hard look.
“And if they don’t?”
Raylan shrugs. “Then we’ll catch him.”
Tim opens his mouth to question Raylan about this, then shuts it again when he finds that he doesn't really know what it is that he wants to ask. Working his jaw distractedly, he finally says, “I think if I caught him I’d just shoot him."
“He’s armed, dangerous – pretty good chance you’d find yourself in a situation where it went down like that,” Raylan says slowly.
Tim shakes his head vigorously, still spinning his glass slowly on the table. “You know what I mean. No matter the situation.”
Raylan is observing him so intently that Tim feels like a particularly rare specimen placed under a microscope for study. When he speaks, it’s with that same, careful slowness. “Well, that’d be your call.”
Tim throws back the rest of his drink abruptly, his expression impatient, slamming the glass back onto the table with enough force that he’s lucky not to have shattered it. Raylan’s still watching him closely, and Tim feels some of that anger, trapped inside him with no deserving outlet to unleash it upon, refocus onto him; there’s a part of Tim that knows it’s unfair, although the larger, drunker, more furious part of him shouts that logical voice down.
“Right,” Tim snarls, “because that’s what you’d do. I’ll just leave my badge on a hillside and go after him, see how it all shakes out.”
Surprise registers on Raylan’s face, but the features are smoothing themselves into a detached expression a second later. “You brought up shooting him,” he says stiffly.
“Yeah!” Tim exclaims, “And generally the response to that would be ‘I understand some fucked up shit has occurred, but do not commit murder,’ and not, ‘hey, go for it if you’re feeling in the mood.’”
“I never said to go for it,” Raylan argues hotly, “and I wasn’t tryin’ to give you the general response, either, I was telling you the truth – you’re smart enough to know that.” He throws his hands up in exasperation. “Why are we even talking about this? The only person who’s gonna get a shot at him will be the first one through the door when they track him down tonight or tomorrow, and either way it sure as shit ain’t gonna be you.”
Tim glares at him, but his energy for this fight is already slipping away; he remembers suddenly that he’s been trying all night not to argue with anyone – the EMTs, or Art, or Raylan himself – for this exact reason. He sighs irritably and scrubs a hand over his face; Raylan, whose body seemed to go rigid with tension as he grew angrier, relaxes some opposite him as he realizes Tim’s probably not going to yell at him anymore.
“Jesus,” Tim mutters, more to himself than anything, digging the heels of his palms into his eyes. His vision is blurry when he looks up again; he sees the fuzzy shape of Raylan sitting there, and the sight is nearly disorienting. Raylan Givens sitting, a little drunk, at Tim’s kitchen table, when earlier this very day he’d just been a former coworker Tim hadn’t seen in over a year.
Well, maybe ‘former coworker’ isn’t quite right; it seems somehow lacking, an incomplete way of describing what Raylan was to Tim – what he still is, even – but if those aren’t the right words for Raylan, Tim’s lost to come up with new ones. If he were a gambling man (which he is), he’d bet that Raylan feels something similar, and maybe he’s done a better job of identifying it than Tim has. After all, he’s the one who’s come a thousand miles to sit at this table – it seems like a strange thing to do without some sort of reason.
“Why are you even here, Raylan?” Tim asks, and as he says it he realizes it’s the question he’s been trying to ask all night, lingering in the recesses of his mind since Raylan came walking down that hallway what feels like a hundred years ago.
Raylan blinks at him, apparently considering his response. “Just seemed like where I should be, I guess,” he replies eventually.
Tim snorts humorlessly. So much for that. “Great,” he says, standing up and grabbing his empty glass from off the table, thinking of the unopened pint of bourbon stashed away in his sock drawer, “and I should be getting to bed, so–“
He moves toward the bedroom door, but Raylan snags his elbow and says, “Wait.” Then he’s out of the chair and standing over Tim again like he’d done in the street outside Lauren Witt’s house, too close, dark eyes boring into Tim’s own, and Tim’s heart is beating hard and fast in his chest, his head swimming in alcohol and something else, too, something–
And then Raylan’s mouth is on his, and he’s not sure whose idea it was, exactly, but he finds that it doesn’t really matter. Raylan tastes like Tim’s bourbon, and his hand is warm where it brushes lightly against the side of Tim’s face. When Tim moves, Raylan moves with him, until Tim’s back bumps against the bedroom doorjamb. Raylan is alternately sweet and greedy, ghosting his lips along Tim’s jaw before kissing him so deeply that it makes him lightheaded.
Raylan encircles one of Tim’s wrists with his hand, and Tim hisses at the same time Raylan realizes he’s not grasping smooth skin. He lets go hastily and the gouges from the ropes burn smartly where he’d touched them.
“Sorry,” Raylan says hoarsely, but Tim shakes his head to indicate that it’s nothing, taking advantage of the opportunity to push open the bedroom door and draw Raylan inside. They crash onto the bed in a disorganized pile, and Raylan clearly revels in having Tim under him – Tim can feel him grinning as they kiss, and it fills him with an almost giddy energy.
Finally, Tim breaks away from Raylan’s lips with a wet sound. Raylan leans back so he can gaze down at Tim questioningly, and Tim makes a nodding gesture to the slim bit of space between them. Raylan’s face splits into a grin again, and he’s tugging down Tim’s sweatpants while Tim reaches for the nightstand beside his bed with one hand, opening the drawer and scrabbling through it blindly until his hand closes around a slim plastic bottle. He tosses it so that it bounces lightly off Raylan’s shoulder, and Raylan snatches it up from where it lands on the bed next to him.
Tim lets his head fall back on the mattress as Raylan pushes his knees away from one another and slides in between them, making a trail with his lips from Tim’s navel to the inside of his thighs. Tim hears the faint pop as Raylan opens the plastic bottle he’d thrown to him, and moments later Tim feels a slippery, cold finger slide into him.
Raylan works the finger in and out, very slowly at first, then with a little more speed. Tim feels as if his body is melting away into the comforter, though he’s shocked out of the serene feeling occasionally when Raylan’s finger triggers shivers that run like electric currents along the length of his spine. At some point, Raylan pauses and leans back. Tim pushes himself up onto his elbows, eyeing him quizzically.
“What?”
“It’s just, after so much fanfare about your boner over the course of the years–“
“Oh my God,” Tim moans, falling onto his back again.
“–it’s nice to finally get acquainted, is all,” Raylan finishes with a flourish.
“Keep laughin’. I’ll stop this right now – jerk myself off into a sock, ruin all this fun you’re having,” Tim threatens, although Raylan plainly suspects that it’s an idle one.
“Bullshit,” Raylan says bluntly, and to punctuate this he slips two slick fingers into Tim, who realizes that Raylan’s right – he’s not going to put a stop to this any time soon.
Raylan takes his time as he opens Tim up little by little, to the point where Tim actually does start to reach down in an effort to wrap a hand around himself and rub out a little relief. Raylan swats it away and Tim groans loudly in protest.
“My dick is being neglected,” he complains with a feeble gesture, and in lieu of a response Raylan pulls his fingers out of Tim altogether.
Tim tips his head forward, meaning to explain that he’d only been joking – a bad joke, Raylan should keep going, really – just in time to see Raylan ducking his head, taking Tim into his mouth. He moves with criminal slowness, lowering himself in small increments until his lips are wrapped around the base of Tim’s certainly no-longer-neglected dick, then proceeds to pull himself back up just as slowly. Tim shuts his eyes and shudders violently. When he feels Raylan’s mouth slide over the head and release, he looks up again, bleary-eyed, to find Raylan smirking at him.
“Better?” Raylan asks, looking very much as though he already knows the answer. He’d assume it was the alcohol making Raylan so confident if he didn’t know any better.
“Uh-huh,” Tim says, dazed.
Raylan, still looking smug, draws away from where Tim is lying on the bed and moves out of sight. Tim hears the nightstand drawer open once more and the sound of Raylan rummaging through it.
“So this is why you’re here,” Tim says a little breathlessly to the ceiling, “this was your plan all along. Tell me if I’m getting warmer.”
It sounds like Raylan’s found whatever he was searching for in the drawer – Tim hears it close, followed by the crinkling of a wrapper.
“There was no plan,” he hears Raylan say, and something heavy falls onto the floor – Raylan’s jeans, if Tim were to guess.
“You know, I think I actually believe that’s true,” Tim replies honestly, smiling a bit to himself. “Or I’m just a complete sucker,” he adds as he rolls over to look at Raylan, smile faltering as he does so.
Raylan is naked, lounging languidly in a half-sitting position across some of Tim’s pillows. He’s already taken it upon himself to put on a condom – must have been what he’d pulled out of the nightstand – and Tim recognizes the unruly glint that’s currently shining in his eyes. He’s come to associate that particular look with times when Raylan’s about to do something that he knows he shouldn’t, or at least something that Art would probably take issue with him doing. Raylan doesn’t move, just lifts an eyebrow at him that’s half expectant and half a challenge, and Tim thinks he was probably right – he is definitely a sucker.
Tim draws himself up and moves toward Raylan with a calculated deliberateness. Raylan still doesn’t make to move, instead opting to watch Tim carefully as he’s done all night, though Tim doesn’t mind so much under these new circumstances. Tim slings one leg over Raylan’s body so that he’s straddling Raylan across the hips, and he leans down to give Raylan a hungry kiss. Raylan's mouth pursues Tim’s when he finally breaks it off, and this time it’s Tim’s turn to grin smugly.
With an agile little movement Tim flips himself around, now straddling Raylan’s hips with his back to Raylan’s chest. He lowers himself gradually, using his hand to guide Raylan into him, and comes to rest at the bottom, content to just sit there for a moment and enjoy the little sounds and grunts that Raylan’s making behind him. As expected, Raylan’s much better at asking for patience than giving it, and an insistent hand is grabbing at Tim’s thigh within a few seconds, pushing on it in an effort to make him move.
Tim plants one foot firmly into the mattress and lifts his body up just a little, giving them some space to work with, and Raylan makes use of it immediately, thrusting up and in to Tim. It takes Tim a few tries to balance himself in a position that’s comfortable, and when he does he turns his focus to the timing of Raylan’s movements. They find a rhythm soon after, one of Raylan’s hands still clutching at Tim’s thigh, the other grasping his waist, moving him in time with the bucking of Raylan’s hips.
Tim wraps a hand around himself, and this time Raylan’s too busy to object – Tim strokes his dick slowly at first, then increases the pace to match the established tempo. He feels Raylan’s breath hot on his back, the hand at his waist gripping tight enough to bruise, and he tips his head back, loses track of the world around him.
After a while, an uptick in Raylan’s speed brings him back to himself – he’s growing more and more urgent with every thrust. It doesn’t come as a surprise when Raylan pants, “I’m gonna finish.”
Tim nods, but apparently it’s one of those rare moments when he and Raylan aren’t on the same mental wave, because suddenly Tim’s hurtling through the air without so much as a warning. He’s stunned for a few moments after he lands on the mattress, before he realizes that Raylan has flipped him onto his back intentionally. Raylan, standing beside the bed now, wraps his arms around Tim’s legs and pulls him to the edge of the mattress, pushes his knees out to the side and up towards Tim’s elbows. Then they’re fucking again, fast and hard, the only thoughts in Tim’s mind having to do with Raylan and the feeling of their bodies together…
Raylan suddenly slows, swapping his nearly frantic pace for a series of deep, penetrating thrusts, and Tim knows that he's coming. Raylan’s making these sounds – quiet grunts and gasps escaping from between his teeth – that are sexier than they really have any right to be, and it’s these noises that Tim focuses on as he shuts his eyes and continues to jerk himself off. By the time Tim finishes, Raylan’s gone a little soft inside him, and he pulls out as Tim lays there, breathing heavy with his own come settling warm and sticky across his stomach.
Tim opens his eyes and sees Raylan still standing there between his legs, looking down at him with an odd expression on his face. Tim tries to speak but finds that his mouth is too dry to produce much more than a hoarse croak; he swallows, swipes his tongue across his lips, and tries again: “Enjoy the show?”
Raylan blinks a few times, a lazy grin spreading across his face as he says, “As a matter of fact, I did.” A few moments pass where they just kind of look at each other, Tim on the bed and Raylan standing before him – they’re a little sweaty and a little drunk, with matching wild hair and blown pupils, both still half hard.
“Well,” Tim says, “shit.”
At this Raylan shakes his head, wearing a very Raylan-ish ‘amused despite himself’ sort of expression, and falls forward onto the bed. Tim takes advantage of the opportunity to sit up quickly, reaching for the closest article of clothing he can find – a sock on the floor at his feet, which he strongly suspects does not belong to him. Regardless, he uses it to wipe at the white streaks of come across his abdomen; he does a rough job, but it’s good enough. Tim’s felt exhausted for hours, but he hasn’t approached anything close to drowsiness all night long; now, though, he feels a powerful sleepiness drawing over him, as inevitable as oncoming waves crashing onto a shore. He tosses the sock away carelessly and lies back, already feeling his mind begin to drift.
“Tim?” he hears Raylan ask, and he sounds like he might be stifling a yawn.
“Yeah, Raylan,” Tim answers, eyes falling shut.
But Raylan’s question, if he ever asks it, falls on deaf ears. Tim’s asleep before he hears another word.