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Raylan’s phone rang three hours in to what was turning out to be among the most boring stakeouts of his career. To add insult to injury, it was a Saturday. A drizzly one, so it didn’t feel too wasted, but it was the principle of the matter. The only bright spot of the past three hours was that Tim was on his way with fresh coffee and snacks.
He pressed the button to accept the call, eyes never leaving the first driveway on the adjacent street. “I remembered. Everything’s ready.”
“Aw, Raylan.”
“I got the movie. I’m on a thing right now, but I’ll be there at four like I said. We’ll do the park thing if the weather clears up, we’ll go to her favorite Chinese place and get too many eggrolls, we’ll go to the cupcake place, we’ll go home, and we’ll watch the unicorn movie while eating cupcakes and cold eggrolls.”
“It sounds perfect, Raylan, it really does.”
He heard the unspoken in Winona’s halting voice. “But…”
She sighed. “You’ll have to do it another weekend. Willa’s got a stomach bug, been sick all morning.”
“Oh.” The surge of disappointment that washed through him caught him off-guard. “It won’t be Valentine’s Day.”
“She won’t care, so long as she gets her special night out with you.”
He supposed that was true; hoped, anyway. “I can still take her tonight,” he offered, “let you guys do your thing.”
“You’re sweet,” Winona said sincerely. “Richard’s feeling a little off too, though, so we’re just going to stay in, do the quarantine thing.” She paused, and he could hear the wry smile in her voice. “Maybe you can go out instead.”
“Oh, yeah,” he glanced sideways as Tim opened the car door and ducked in, drink carrier held in one hand with a fast food bag perched precariously atop. “Last minute Valentine’s plans after being ditched by my sick daughter, every girl’s dream.” He held out his hand for a cheeseburger. “Better yet, maybe I can find someone to watch the unicorn movie with me.”
Tim raised a brow. “The Last Unicorn?”
“Yeah,” Raylan turned away from the speaker, “you wanna watch it?”
“Fuck yeah.”
“Alright, that was easy,” Raylan said back into the phone around a mouthful of cheeseburger. “Got a date.”
Winona chuckled. “Do I even want to know who you’re talking to?”
“Tim.”
“Sounds like a night to remember.”
“Good call, we’ll replace the cupcake stop with bourbon."
Tim gave a thumbs up and settled in, eyes fixed steadily on their target as he chewed his way through a bag of French fries.
Their tip didn’t pan out – it’d been a long shot anyway – so they found themselves back at the office, filling out a brief report and returning some equipment after six fruitless hours sitting in the car. Grumpy and restless, muscles stiff, Raylan shut his locker and turned to look at Tim drawing a clean shirt over his head.
“I need to go home, shower, but if you do actually want to get a drink, my night’s wide open after.”
Tim turned, expression hurt. “What about the unicorns, Raylan? You offered bourbon and unicorns. No take-backsies.”
“I’m so brain-dead, I can’t even tell if you’re fucking with me.”
Tim shuffled a bit. “Not as much as you’d hope."
“You’re in charge of bourbon, then.”
Tim showed up two hours later, a bottle in either hand. As soon as he set them down on the counter, Raylan slid a Chinese carryout and delivery menu over to him. “You eat? I kinda had my heart set on greasy eggrolls tonight.”
He eyed the menu, flipped it over. “Are we literally doing all the shit you were supposed to do with your daughter for a Valentine’s Day date?”
“Yeah, I was gonna take you to play at the park after we eat,” Raylan returned sardonically. “I did think six was a good age to introduce her to hard liquor though.”
“And how much older were you when you were stealing your daddy’s moonshine?”
Raylan pursed his lips. “Not enough. Anyway,” he pulled out his phone to make the delivery call, “I was going to take her out, watch the goddamn unicorn thing after, then drink when she went to bed. You and I are consolidating.”
“Am I not pretty enough to show off in public? I’m hurt, Raylan.”
“You’re very pretty, Tim, I just like you less. But if you’re nice, and if I drink enough, I’ll give you a goodnight kiss.”
“Moo shu.”
“…Bless you?”
Tim rolled his eyes. “Moo shu pork,” he tossed the menu back across the counter. “Extra pancakes.”
Pancakes? Raylan scanned the menu, wondering if China Garden was moonlighting as an IHOP. Tim gave an even more pronounced eye roll and snatched the menu back and fished his phone out of his pocket. “Whad’you want?”
Tim let Raylan get as far as actually opening the case of the library DVD and turning on the player before telling him to, “Put the fucking thing down, man, Jesus. Letting you give me shit about teenage fantasy novels during stakeouts in one thing but my self-respect has some practical limits.” He took a pull from a beer Raylan had produced from the fridge. “Watching trippy cartoons that are almost as old as I am with another grown-ass man is apparently one such limit.”
“Thank Christ,” Raylan sighed and chucked the movie back onto the shelf. “You’re kind of a dick.”
“You were totally gonna watch that with me.”
“You said you wanted to!”
Tim grinned around the mouth of his bottle. “Fatherhood has ruined you. Ruined.”
Raylan flopped down into the chair, propped his feet on the coffee table. “I know. But she’s worth it.”
“Willa is remarkably tolerable, as small humans go,” Tim conceded, and Raylan decided that was one of the nicest things he’d ever said about anyone. “I imagine Winona’s mostly responsible for that.”
“Mm,” Raylan considered, “Yep. You’re a dick.”
While Raylan was downstairs paying the delivery guy, Tim took it upon himself to surf Netflix. Laden down with a heavy bag of food, Raylan squinted at the TV from the kitchen and scowled. “Thought we weren’t watching cartoons.”
“S’a cartoon for big people,” Tim promised. “There’s like, secret agents and shit.”
There were enough explosions and flying bullets in the first few minutes to convince Raylan. And some half-naked animated women, which prompted a conversation over Chinese about the relative merits of cartoon nudity and the absurd body proportions of a classic Barbie doll, until Tim turned the show off with a groan. “You ruin everything that is fun in my life.”
“I’m just saying, it’s not very realistic.”
“It ain’t supposed to be realistic, s’why it’s a goddamn cartoon. You watch Finding Nemo with your kid, get to the end, and say hmm, but fish don’t talk so this is ridiculous?”
“Well…” He groaned again. “I prefer more hands-on activities with Willa. Park. Zoo, aquarium. Ice cream.” Tim snorted. “I let Winona and Richard navigate the complexities of cinematic entertainment and dolls and shit.”
Tim grinned down at his tray of food on the coffee table (“eggrolls with a side of nourishment,” he preferred) and shrugged at Raylan’s questioning look. “I saw them. At the movie theater.”
“When?”
“Last year. I’d only been here a few weeks. Saw Willa with some strange guy in line for popcorn, and then Winona saw me and dragged me over and introduced me, and I’m fumbling like an idiot because I’d entirely missed the memo that you two weren’t still… you know.”
Raylan choked on an eggroll. “What?”
“Would it shock you to learn that gossip of your doomed love life did not continue to pervade the Lexington office in your absence?”
A bit, actually, but he supposed that did seem rather egotistical in retrospect. There was an instinctive urge to explain, like he had to defend the third and final failed attempt to make a relationship with Winona work, but he knew Tim didn’t give a shit and pretending he did would strain his patience for this little get-together.
So instead, he said, “You were totally there to watch the same movie as them, weren’t you?"
Tim threw an eggroll at his head and didn’t answer.
Raylan took to perusing Netflix again when Tim took his leftovers to the kitchen and traded the beer for bourbon. When he came back with a bottle and two glasses, Raylan was flipping through a list of predominantly war movies. Tim wrenched the remote from his hand, scrolled down randomly to a different category, threw it back at Raylan, and Raylan got that memo pretty loud and clear.
And he made a mental note to maybe give Tim a little less shit for being a man in his mid-thirties who watched kids’ movies and read young adult fantasy books. He’d have to wean off slowly, or Tim would get suspicious.
Suddenly second-guessing every potential movie suggestion though, he was reminded that, long as they’d known each other, this just really wasn’t something they did; Tim continued to be something of a social recluse in the office, reliably tagging along for post-work drinks but resisting most further efforts to draw him into any plans. Raylan wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when Tim showed up at the office almost a year ago, wondered why he’d sort of automatically figured it would be something different.
That answer came pretty easily though – for all that Tim kept his private life away from work, and considering that bare weeks before Raylan had left Kentucky he’d referred to himself as the poster-boy for sexual repression, he’d very matter-of-factly established that he was gay or, rather, let the rumor mill do it for him, immediately after his arrival. Raylan wasn’t sure anyone besides him in the Lexington office had known, and it was information he’d more or less blundered into.
The subject of his scrutiny glanced over when Raylan stopped mindlessly scrolling through titles, and then frowned a bit to realize Raylan was watching him. “Why’d you come to Miami?” It wasn’t the first time he’d asked that question; so far, he’d received any number of flippant jokes in response.
“So you and I could watch Netflix and chill,” Tim deadpanned, continuing the tradition, “with a side of deep, meaningful conversation.”
“This is your joke gone too far,” Raylan pointed out. “I was happy to go to a bar, you demanded fucking unicorns.”
Tim blinked, unsure. “I can go.”
Raylan passed a tired hand over his eyes. “That ain’t what I meant.”
Tim pursed his lips, threw back a mouthful of bourbon, seemed to grudgingly agree that he owed Raylan some explanation after all this time and all the jokes. “The fella who replaced Art, finally… he was pretty good for the gig, bit of a stickler, type of guy Vasquez was just praying for,” Raylan snorted. “But we got on well enough. Wasn’t really meant to be a long post for him, he was in the queue for bigger and better things. So they’re thinking about a few people to replace him, bring this lady down from Indianapolis… ex-Marine officer, real hard-ass, probably spent a career compensating for being surrounded by men by being the toughest son-of-a-bitch in the room.”
“And your charming ways did not sit well?”
Tim hesitated. “She came down on a Friday afternoon a couple months earlier to check the place out, have a couple of sit-downs, see if the fit seemed good. Afterwards, my boss, couple of others, took her out for dinner, and then for a drink. SOP, you know, courtin’ the new folks.” Raylan nodded. “But… they picked the bar I was in.”
His brow furrowed. “And… you were sloshed?” Tim shook his head slowly, eyes wide, expectant, until Raylan got it. “You were… not alone.”
Tim tilted his cup in acknowledgement. “S’not like we were blowin’ each other in a corner or anything, but… it was a low-key kinda place, quiet, not the sorta place you go to get rowdy and watch the game, you know? See two fellas a bit too cozied up in a booth, it was obvious enough.” He sighed. “Anyway. Not like I could ever prove that was the particular stick up her ass,” or that he’d have wanted to if he could, Raylan suspected, “but given her background... I don’t know. It was the vibe I got.”
“So how’s that land you in Miami?”
“Ah… after a few months, she wanted to knock me down to one of the regional offices, Ashland. No way I was putting up with that shit, but my boss before her, he’d have been wary of pissing in someone’s sandbox like that, albeit one he’d just vacated, to try getting me a transfer over her head.”
Raylan smiled. “You went to Art.”
“And he and Dan had that sort of understanding about getting problem children shuffled around, so.” He smiled wryly. “They seemed to concur that the potential waste of a good career slightly outweighed the bad influence you are on me.”
“Was she pissed?”
Tim poured himself a new drink. “Don’t know, don’t care. Dan requested me specifically through the district marshal, said he could use some tactical muscle down here, he processed the transfer in like, three days.”
“You tell Art why you wanted the move?”
“Just that my career was going to get torpedoed by a personality conflict.” He lifted his glass, paused, and set it back down without taking a sip. “Told Dan, though. Didn’t want to feel like I was looking over my shoulder, after that.”
And then he’d found an opening with one of his new coworkers to mention it, knew it’d make its way around fast enough, and managed to get by without talking about it any further. Crafty. “It’s Miami,” Raylan shrugged. “Open-minded and versatile place. Supposedly. I mostly hang out with criminals.” Tim grunted noncommittally. “So, you leave a boyfriend back in Kentucky?”
“What? No.”
Raylan quirked his eyebrows suggestively. “You bring him with you to Miami? And then ditch him on Valentine’s Day to hang out with me? That’s harsh, Tim.”
Tim fixed him with a very stern glare, debating how to respond, and then settled for attempting to shut Raylan up with brutal honesty. “We met at a bar, he bought me a drink, and ten minutes later we sucked each other off in his car. It wasn’t really the foundations of a lifetime commitment.” He raised his drink in a mock toast, voice all false cheer, gave an exaggerated wink. “Got a few good rides in though.”
“Well, good for you,” Raylan toasted back, undaunted by Tim’s discomfited overshare. “Seeing anyone down here, then?”
If possible, Tim’s lips compressed into an even thinner line. “No. I don’t… What are you after here, Raylan? ‘Cause I gotta say, if you’re gonna start offering some manner of advice on dating or getting laid, I’m laughin’ my ass straight out that door and I’m takin’ the bourbon with me.”
Tim’s defensive tone reminds Raylan that there’s a reason they don’t really do this. “It’s just friendly curiosity, Tim. Jesus. Look at the year – you can ask and you can tell these days, and what happened in Lexington was bullshit.”
It was quiet for a few minutes after that. Raylan gathered up the empty beer bottles and trash from the carryout, Tim slipped away to find the bathroom. When he returned, Raylan had put on a basketball game, the remote perched in the middle of the couch like an offering of here, find something better or don’t complain.
He didn’t change it, or complain, but he did turn the volume down on a commercial and start talking quietly, glare fixed down at his lap. “I ran cross country.” Raylan blinked at him, uncomprehending. “Good sport. Good excuse to disappear for long periods of time. Don’t need a team to practice, don’t need to rely on anyone else for anything.”
Raylan roughly translated that as: home was shitty, and Tim was already a loner in high school.
“This coach o’mine – he was an asshole. Had a son who was a big competitive swimmer. Few years older than me, I didn’t know him, graduated the year I was a freshman, went to college on an athletic scholarship he later lost for being high all the time or some shit, but he’d come home on breaks and run with the team, just for the workout. And I guess it takes one to know one, but he cornered me one day after practice, just said that… shit gets better, if you can find a way out. Keep your head down and your grades up. I was fifteen.”
Raylan watched him, frown playing across his face.
“Well, I’d never known another one before,” Tim smiled wryly. “Like finding a goddamn unicorn, ‘round those parts. I pretended not to know what the fuck he was talking about, avoided him at all costs whenever he showed up that year. Then he was home all summer, and it wasn’t that big a town, so we were destined to cross paths eventually. Told me he ran this path along the river every morning, if I wanted to join him.”
Raylan wasn’t sure he liked the sound of where this was going, but Tim just huffed a soft laugh at the wide-eyed wary stare on his face, when he glanced up. “He was a good guy. I was young and awkward and he was older and exotic if only for the fact that he was a college boy, and he dealt with a bit of hero worship gracefully as anyone can at that age, I expect. But,” he sighed, “that hero worship inevitably turned to something more smitten, and I got a little older and a little less awkward, and the next summer, before my senior year, we’d bookend our runs by… finding a quiet spot, making out. Somewhere in there, he got into the pot, so we’d sneak off some nights and get high, and fumble around a bit.” He paused and then offered drily, “I was legal by then, so it could’a gone worse.”
Raylan grimaced. “You got caught?” Tim nodded slowly. “Your father?”
“His.”
“The asshole.”
“None other than. And you know what the prick did?” Raylan shook his head. “Told my father he’d seen me with some kid from the team, but couldn’t be sure which. Didn’t have the balls to say it was his own son.”
“Wow. Asshole.”
“Yup.” He threw back a drink. “And it wasn’t so big a deal for him. He got to run off back to school a week later. My old man beat the shit out of me – which, I mean, was nothing special by that point, minus the addition of some charming new threats and slurs. But then just to be spiteful, he pulled me off the team that last year, like maybe I was somehow acquiring the queerness through osmosis.”
He brooded silently for a long moment, then seemed to remember Raylan’s presence suddenly, flushed a bit and ran his hands over his face. “The point of this drunken reminiscence, regarding your crack about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – the Army didn’t do,” he gestured at himself vaguely, “this. Certainly didn’t help, either, but. It did me some good with some other things.”
“Like learning how to kill someone from half a mile away?”
Tim stared dully. “Like learning how to trust people, asshole.”
“Do you? Trust people?” Raylan’s tone was just shy of incredulous.
“I mean, not as a general rule, you gotta earn it some.”
“Hm, yeah, that’s the part usually trips me up.”
A deep frown settled over Tim’s face. “I trust you.”
Slightly more incredulous: “Do you?”
“You fishin’ for a fucking compliment, man?” Tim leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees, and glared across the coffee table to where Raylan was suddenly sitting up a little straighter in his chair at Tim’s tone. “You think I’d be here?”
“Doesn’t sound like you had much choice in th-”
“In your apartment,” Tim corrected. “Tellin’ you… any of this shit.” He climbed to his feet and Raylan watched him approach slowly, bourbon glass in one hand, eyes narrowed. “I trust you,” he set the glass down. “I don’t get you, sometimes. Lot o’ times, maybe. But despite all evidence suggesting that doing so will come back to burn me some day…” bracing a hand on either arm of the chair, he leaned down so their faces were nearly level, boxing Raylan in, and his voice dropped to a low, slow drawl, “…or maybe because of it, since you know my sins, and I know yours, and how very thoroughly we might damn one another, Raylan…” he tilted his head sideways, contemplative, blinked slowly. “Yeah, I trust you.”
There was a long, heavy pause. Tim was still, breathing evenly, shallowly, as controlled and focused as Raylan imagined him to be at the scope of his rifle, watching, waiting, endlessly patient. “Didn’t think you one to dwell much on a man’s sins, Tim,” he finally offered quietly.
The corner of Tim’s mouth turned up. “When the occasion calls.”
Raylan searched his face, found that sort of automatic confrontation that tended to set in when Tim delved into personal matters, but there was also some uncertainty and a fair dose of challenge. He didn’t have the slightest clue what to do with the uncertainty, but always found meeting challenges head-on to be the best policy, so he snaked a hand around the back of Tim’s neck and pulled him down the rest of the way.
The kiss was slow, methodic, thorough, tasting of warm bourbon, and Tim withdrew as Raylan splayed his fingers into his hair at the base of his skull, hovering back as far as the reach of Raylan’s arm would let him. “Well, then.” Pupils blown, eyes hooded, what could only be described as a satisfied smirk played across his lips. “That’s probably my cue to leave.”
Raylan swallowed thickly, lost for words – any words, the entire English language (and some conversational Spanish) had apparently vacated him – and stared blankly until Tim reached up and gently removed the hand from the back of his head. He was straightening, turning away, when Raylan managed to catch hold of his wrist. “Ah, you,” he cleared his throat, suddenly dry, “you don’t have to.”
Tim blinked thoughtfully down at him.
“Stay.” His fingers pressed a bit into the soft flesh of Tim’s inner arm, felt his quickening pulse.
Tongue darting out to nervously wet his lips, Tim murmured, “You sure about that?”
“Not really,” Raylan confessed, and then added sardonically, “but I’ll be sure to holler if things get uncomfortable.”
“Well if that ain’t the most half-assed propos -”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Raylan tugged his wrist and pulled him back down, weaving the same hand back behind his head and snagging a fistful of hair to hold him in place. Tim’s eyes widened in surprise, but Raylan cut him off with a low growl, “All these years listening to you go on about your boner, it better be something pretty fucking special.”
Mildly aggressive (and suddenly, somewhat surprisingly in context, very forward) Raylan, staring at him like he couldn’t decide if he wanted to kick his ass or rock his world – both? – was not what Tim had been expecting. “Goddamn,” he croaked a laugh, and Raylan cracked a smile, killing the effect a bit.
“Too easy,” Raylan smirked, the cocky bastard, tugging lightly at his hair to tilt his head back, baring his throat, which he promptly set upon with lips and tongue and teeth until Tim fell awkwardly into his lap, scrambling for precarious purchase with his knees on the edge of the cushion, crowded on the armchair that wasn’t exactly designed for this purpose. “Jesus Christ,” Raylan mumbled around sloppy kisses, “if I’d known this is all it took to shut you up…” He trailed off and reoccupied his mouth with other matters.
“Ah ha,” Tim gasped when he could get a word in edgewise, “kinda thought you’d offer to beat me down.”
“And listen to you give me shit for presuming I could?” He had a point there. “But you like the illusion.”
A low whine built up in Tim’s throat when Raylan forced his head back again and resumed attacking his neck. “Maybe,” he ground out, trying to decide if Raylan liked the idea of having control or was waiting for him to start pushing back and fighting for the upper hand.
Normally Tim would be inclined to jump straight for the latter option, but he was feeling drunk and lazy, and given that the part of his brain that was still functional was fairly sure this was the first time Raylan had gone at it with another man since he was a teenager, giving him the reins seemed like the best bet towards mutual satisfaction.
“You’re so fucking cold,” Raylan muttered almost angrily. Tim started to pull away, brows raised, but then Raylan used the space to work his hands under the hem of Tim’s shirt and draw it up over his head, and he forgot his objections. “All harsh and unforgiving and so goddamn contained.” He bit his way from the tattoo on the right side of Tim’s chest, back up his neck, nipped at an earlobe. “I want to see you fall apart, hot and eager and a desperate mess, and I want to know – want you to know – that I did that to you.”
Jesus. Heat rose in Tim’s face, could feel the flush spreading up the same path Raylan was working relentlessly. “Egomaniacal son-of-a-bitch,” he grumbled, voice low and rough, as he finished undoing the buttons on Raylan’s shirt and then flipped his own belt open.
Raylan, eyes gleaming mischievously, demanded his attention back up, stayed him with a hand wrapped along his jawline, fingers curling into the back of his neck, thumb brushing his lower lip; Tim resisted the urge to bite it. “That fuckin’ mouth o’yours good for anything besides windin’ me up?”
Tim bit his lip on the grin that threatened and shook his head slowly. “Nope.”
X---X
“You’re not freakin’ out, are you?” Raylan took a deep breath and glanced sidelong at Tim’s dry tone and nonplussed expression as they got in the car late Monday morning, headed out on a new lead. “Jesus Christ, you’re freakin’ out.”
“I’m -”
Tim cut him off. “I figure you’ve got three options, here.” He ticked them off his fingers. “One – we were drunk and stupid.”
“I’m not-”
“Two – you were drunk and I took advantage of you. Though how that one works, I’m not sure, because you were pretty fucking demanding.”
“Tim, I’m-”
“Three, you finally had that midlife heteronormativity crisis, have gotten it out of your system, and may resume regularly scheduled activities as usual.” He paused. “I’d prefer option one, if I get a say, s’true enough.”
“Tim, I ain’t freakin’ out.”
That earned him an incredulous stare. “So you avoiding me all morning and gettin’ all flustered whenever I did manage to get a word in was just you being coy?”
Raylan shot him a glare and focused on driving a minute, collecting his thoughts. Tim was looking out the window, expression blank, giving no more away than he ever did. “Willa called me just before I got to work, she was about to leave for school.”
A beat passed, Tim clearly thrown by the non sequitur. “She feelin’ better?”
“She is. And she apologized for missing the fun night we had planned, said she hoped my night wasn’t completely ruined.” A grin started to creep onto Tim’s face. “And Jesus Christ, there are some things you just don’t want to be reminded about talkin’ to your kid; she’s detailing her plans to make up for our missed date and I can’t even look sideways at the fucking unicorn movie now.”
Tim scowled. “We didn’t even watch the unicorn movie.”
“Don’t matter. It was something of an instigator.”
Neither of them mentioned the part where Tim had watched it alone after Raylan passed out, waiting to sober up enough to drive - which Raylan knew, because he’d woken up and heard it in the next room, and Tim knew Raylan knew, because he’d belatedly realized that he never put the movie back in its case.
Tim huffed a laugh and settled back into his seat, posture more relaxed. “We’re good, then?”
Raylan nodded. “We’re good.” Hesitated. “But, you know…” Tim blinked over at him, “I was thinking we could do that some more. If you wanted.” Tim got very still and quiet. “Or… not?” he corrected haltingly.
Warring with himself a long moment, not sure he really wanted the answer, Tim let out a noisy breath and asked, “What the hell was all that about, anyway?”
Raylan had the good grace not to feign ignorance or purposefully misinterpret the question, but he fidgeted, adjusted his hat, considering his answer, and then let out something akin to a nervous chuckle at being caught out. “I was always that kid you couldn’t tell not to stick his finger in the light socket, ‘cause then it’d be all I wanted to do, no matter how much I knew I’d regret it.” He laughed again at Tim’s perplexed head-shake. “That last Thanksgiving I was in Lexington, when you and I got into it. Put another hand on me and we’re gonna have some serious goddamn problems.” He jabbed a quick finger into Tim’s side under his ribs and had it smacked away with a glare. “May as well’ve mailed an invite to push your buttons.” Tim snorted. “I thought I exercised admirable restraint; even apologized.”
“Yeah, ‘cause you didn’t want your ass kicked.”
Raylan nodded, conceding that point readily. “But then you, in my face, going on about our sins – and Jesus, Tim, what the hell? – it sorta brought that front and center.”
Tim worked his jaw, torn between bafflement and amusement, finally understanding Raylan’s abrupt shift in temperament. “So, basically… you gettin’ all handsy and bossy was just you tryin’ to win a fight from five years ago, is what you’re tellin’ me?”
Raylan shrugged, unabashed. “I will grant you the circumstances were not what I envisioned way back then.” He glanced over and grinned, full of trouble. “But the shock weren’t half-bad.”
He rolled his eyes. “And, what? You didn’t get your fill of manhandling me the other night?”
“I enjoyed myself, Tim,” Raylan returned easily. “Pretty confident you did, too. Was just a thought.” His sly grin crept back onto his lips. “Might could be nicer next time. Not sure you want me to, though.”
“Jesus,” Tim groaned and ran a hand through his hair. “S’a terrible idea, you realize?”
“I do realize that, yes. Almost as terrible as doing it in the first place.”
Tim smiled faintly down at his lap. “So long as that’s settled.”
“…Is that a yes?”
A shorter pause that time. “It ain’t a no.”
“Well, that’s something.”
They rode in silence for a few minutes, until Raylan turned into the neighborhood they were looking for and Tim murmured quietly, “I meant what I said; I trust you. But sometimes I really don’t get you.” Raylan shrugged, resigned, as though to say join the club. “I don’t cuddle. I don’t bask in the afterglow. Sleepovers are for when no one’s fit to drive, and I’ll probably take the couch in any case. Commentary on my shitty sleep habits is not necessary, or wanted at all, for that matter. Handcuffs are fine, but I draw the line at riding crops.” Raylan choked, nearly swerved into a stop sign. “Just makin’ sure you’re still payin’ attention.”
“You’re in it to get off, I got it.”
Tim gave him a thumbs-up, and then pointed at the address they were scouting out. Raylan pulled up to the curb. “And you’re in it until the next bikini-clad blonde catches your eye. Which is fine, but you gotta let me know ‘cause I don’t get in the middle of shit. There will be no dramatics. It is what it is and when it’s done, it’s done.”
“You got a contract you want me to sign or something?”
“Oh,” Tim ignored him, “and this here’s the first, last, and only time this comes into work.” Raylan sketched a wry salute. “But if you want to get together one night this week, I got some notes for you, you’re a little rusty in your old age.”
“Fuck you, Gutterson.”
Tim grinned, all sly mischief. “Think you can handle that?”
Raylan sighed as he climbed out of the car and followed Tim up to the door, wondering how long until this would be relegated to one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time. Except, o’course, for the part where it really kinda didn’t.