Chapter Text
Art calls him at the office at seven-thirty on a Friday night, two days before Christmas.
“Gutterson, I’m glad I caught you,” he says hurriedly, the sound of family chatter in the background and hints of North Carolina in his accent. “I need to get in touch with Deputy Givens and get him to sign something he should have signed back in August, so I can fax it back to the DC office and avoid the substantial fine we’re gonna get if he doesn’t.”
Art’s annoyance with Raylan comes across more like an afterthought than anything. Which tells Tim he’s the one who forgot to get Raylan to sign the form in the first place.
“Did you try forwarding it to him in his email?”
“You can do that?”
Tim casts his eyes upwards and decides not to point out the time Art asked one of the admins to make a copy of something before they faxed it for him. “Hasn’t checked his email, I take it.”
“Now it is good to hear that the holiday season hasn’t affected that penetrating analysis of yours, Gutterson. No, he hasn’t, and I can’t reach him by cell, either. I have the address where he’s at -- I just need you to find it, see if you can locate a land line or some number where I can reach him.”
“Sure thing, boss.” He minimizes the eBay site he’s been browsing and opens up their database to enter the address, which is somewhere in Gatlinburg. That surprises him; for some reason he thought Raylan was in Harlan. “It looks like these are vacation rentals.”
“You mean he didn’t move there? There goes my one and only Christmas wish. You got a number?”
Tim finds a rental number listed on the property. “You want me to call him?”
“Nah, I’ll do it. But thanks. And Tim?”
“Yes, sir?”
“What the hell are you doing in that office on a Friday night? It’s almost Christmas, son.”
Tim leans back in his chair, looking around at the empty office. Most of his colleagues are on leave for the holiday, and it’s just him and two new marshals who were recently assigned to Lexington. Sanderson and Hawkins were still on their initial six month probation, meaning they’d be working holidays until they gained a little more seniority, but they were both already home for the evening.
He and Rachel were technically both on-call, and while at least one of them had to be within so many miles of the office in case of emergency, neither one of them were physically required to be in the office. Rachel had taken the day off to finish her holiday shopping. Tim didn’t relish the idea of sitting at home in his apartment with back issues of Guns and Ammo and a few Netflix movies -- he had to save something for the weekend -- so he was here, at work. But he couldn’t exactly tell Art that.
“The Internet is faster here.”
Art doesn’t miss a beat. “Fine, but if you’re looking at porn, make sure you delete the cupcakes or whatever the hell. I don’t even want to know what the fine for that and Raylan’s non-disclosure penalty is going to be. Now get the hell out of there and have a goddamn merry Christmas, all right?”
Tim can hear the sounds of someone calling for Art in the background, asking if he wants iced tea or wine with dinner and to hurry up and get off the phone. “Will do, sir. You, too.”
When Art hangs up, Tim thinks about leaving. He also thinks about how he’s probably going to be eating dinner at the Skyline Chili two blocks from his apartment, under the harsh fluorescent lighting, with all the other lonely people who didn’t have anywhere else to be.
Would you rather your old man still be alive so you could have dinner with him? Sometimes it’s good to remember that this is actually an improvement over holidays when he was growing up. He’ll take Skyline Chili over that, any day. Hell, he’d take Afghanistan over that.
It occurs to him that, seeing as how he’s single with no family obligations to speak of, he could have taken a trip somewhere. A resort in Jamaica, a cruise, a tour of someplace exotic like China or Thailand -- the latter as long as he didn’t go on one of those trips he’d have to arrest himself for when he got back.
Or, hey. Gatlinburg.
“Who the hell goes to Gatlinburg?” Tim asks his empty office, and startles when the phone rings again. “It was a hypothetical question,” he says, eyeing the phone before answering it. “Deputy Gutterson.”
“Didn’t I tell you to leave?”
“I was just on my way, sir,” Tim lies. “Was there something else you needed?”
Art sounds a lot more annoyed than last time, and there is a distinct lack of chatter in the background. “The number you gave me, it was a land line that went straight to voice mail. The message said if you were calling about the rental cabin in Gatlinburg, leave a message with your date request and someone would get back to you next Thursday. I’m guessing it was the owners, and they’re out of town, too. Thought there might be a number for a neighbor or something.”
Tim calls up the database and inputs the address again. “Sorry, sir, it’s a pretty secluded area. Looks like it’s actually up in the mountains, so there’s nothing really around for about forty miles.”
Art swears under his breath. “How come any other time I want Raylan to take a vacation somewhere I can’t find him, he just shoots a guy or ends up involved in a hillbilly mob war? Can you answer that question for me, Deputy Gutterson?”
“Ah...no, sir, I’m afraid I can’t. You want me to find a local law enforcement agency or something? Maybe they could send someone out there.”
“Hell, no,” Art says hastily. He sounds a little embarrassed, which suggests the oversight really was Art’s fault in the first place. If it were Raylan’s, he’d totally tell Tim to call out the police and interrupt Raylan’s vacation. Tim’s sure of it. “I guess my only option is to rent a car and drive to Gatlinburg, so I can tell Raylan to check his email in person.”
Tim clears his throat. “I’d probably take the form with you, sir. It sounds like he’s too far out of range to access any wireless services.”
“I am not too irritated at Raylan that I can’t be pissed at you for being a smart ass, Gutterson. Don’t suppose you could Mapquest me the directions from Raleigh to wherever the hell Raylan’s holed up, could you? Something tells me when I tell Sheila what I’m doing, I won’t have a lot of time if I want to get out of this house without her decapitating me with a butter knife.”
Tim opens his Internet browser again, navigates to Google Maps and puts in the address where Raylan’s staying in the destination field, with Raleigh as the starting point. “Looks like it’s about a five-and-a-half hour drive from Raleigh.”
“All right, I guess if I left now I could be back sometime Christmas Eve. Hang on,” Art says hastily, and Tim listens uncomfortably as Art tries to muffle the sound of an obvious argument with his wife. He clearly doesn’t know where the microphone on his cell phone is, though, because Tim can still hear him.
Art is trying to tell her that it’s not that long, just a few hours and he’ll be back. Sheila’s voice is a bit muffled, but Tim can tell what her objections are from Art’s responses. Yes, Art knows how long this family get-together has been planned. Yes, she’s always been very supportive about his job throughout the years. No, he can’t call anyone in DC about the form and no, there’s no one else he can ask to do it.
Tim thinks about the movies on his counter, the upcoming weekend where he’ll more than likely spend it at the office. He erases the starting location and puts in Lexington instead of Raleigh.
Three hours and forty-eight minutes. Barely anything. Tim can hear the tension in Art’s voice, thinks about the happy chatter and the family dinner that’s no doubt being help up so Art can make his phone call. Tim clears his throat. “Sir?”
“Just a second, Gutterson --”
“I can go.” Tim clicks open his work email program. “It’s not a problem. Email me the form and I’ll print it off, take it to Raylan to sign and fax it back.”
“I can’t ask you to do that, son.” Art’s voice is firm. “Maybe my subtle indications haven’t clued you in, but this was my fuck up, not Raylan’s.”
“I won’t tell you if you won’t,” Tim intones seriously, settling back in his chair. “Look at it this way. It’ll give me a reason to get out of the office, like you wanted. And you can still be happy about Raylan on vacation where no one can find him. It’s like I saved Christmas.”
“If I come back and you start calling me the Grinch, you’re fired.”
Tim laughs. “I don’t have any plans. Rachel invited me to have dinner with her family on Sunday, but I should be back by then and if I’m not, she’ll understand. She’ll be in on-call range, though, so it’s fine. Go spend time with your family.”
Art’s quiet for a moment. “I owe you one, Tim. Thank you.”
Tim doesn’t know how to tell Art that really, it’s the other way around.
Art tells him to take a company car, which TIm was already planning on doing anyway. While he waits for the email, he programs the address into his phone’s GPS and searches for a hotel on Expedia. Because he fully plans on being reimbursed, he splurges for a Hampton Inn with three stars instead of the Econolodge.
Maybe he’ll stay in Gatlinburg Saturday night and spend Christmas in the Smoky Mountains. It’ll be like a John Denver song, only with different mountains.
Tim prints off the email and forwards it to his personal account just in case, tucks the papers in a folder and grabs his coat. He takes the nicest car they have, because what the hell. It’s Christmas.
* * *
He stops at Skyline Chili after he stops at home to pack a bag, and eats dinner while flipping through his issue of Guns and Ammo. The lighting seems cheerful instead of harsh, and he feels purposeful instead of lonely.
It’s probably not a good sign that his entire outlook on life just brightened considerably because he has to work, but it’s better than watching Act of Valour and eating a turkey sandwich with a six-pack of Shiner Bock, his one concession to home for the holidays.
Why’d they make a movie starring SEALs, anyway? They’ve got enough of an ego problem as it is, and besides, isn’t that what actors are for? All the Rangers had was one of those fundraising calendars, with socially awkward sharp-shooters positioned on barrels and leaning against tanks (which doesn’t make any sense, but whatever), bare-chested and looking uncomfortable.
Speaking of uncomfortable, he should remember not to bring the Guns and Ammo magazine in a restaurant with table service. The waitress looks at him warily and asks him four times if he’s all right or if he needs anything else. No wonder he can’t get a date, Jesus.
Maybe he should get a subscription to Soldier of Fortune. The title sounds a lot more exciting.
* * *
Tim tries calling Raylan twice -- once, before he leaves the office, and again before he leaves his house. The first time he leaves a message, the second, he doesn’t.
As he heads towards the hotel, he turns off his phone. He tells himself it’s to save batteries, but he knows the real reason. He doesn’t want Raylan to call and tell him not to come.
Right around the time he passes London, Kentucky, it starts to snow.
* * *
He gets to the hotel two hours later, leaving him with less than two hours to drive in the morning. The snow is coming down harder, and he’s glad he decided to stop.
Tim’s from Texas. Snow is a mythical, strange thing and driving in it is a skill he doesn’t yet possess. He checks in at the desk, where a pretty, friendly girl with blonde hair and green eyes smiles at him and tells him the room comes with free cable.
“That’s great,” Tim says, sincerely, handing her back the form with his vehicle make and model.
Something like irritation flashes in her eyes at his tone. “Yeah, well, a lot of places only give you free HBO,” she tells him, her earlier friendliness replaced by the sort of professionalism that suggests you are being an irritating customer.
Tim realizes she mistook his appreciation as sarcasm, which happens him to a lot. Maybe it’s not his choice in magazines that ruins his chances with girls. “No, I mean it -- that’s great. Really.”
She pushes the keycard towards him. “You’re in three sixteen,” she says, and turns away. “Have a nice stay.”
The room is nice and clean, with something called “premium bedding” that involves a very fluffy comforter and more pillows than seem reasonable. Tim kicks off his shoes and plugs in his phone, expelling a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding when he notices he doesn’t have any messages.
It’s late but he doesn’t feel like sleeping, so he turns on the television -- as if enjoying the free cable will make up for his perceived indifference. There’s a show about guns on the Discovery Channel and a soft-core porn movie on Cinemax.
Tim watches the porn, which is even worse than real porn because the actors aren’t having real, actual sex to pretend to enjoy. So it’s a lot of moaning and posturing and simulated blow-jobs, women grinding on men’s laps and on each other, and no one is really getting off. He wonders how they know when to stop.
Tim gets a hand on himself and watches, waiting for it to get him at least a little hard. He’s a young, healthy adult male and the girls are topless and moaning, this should really be enough. It takes a little while but eventually it is, and his breathing gets a little faster, heat pooling in his stomach. He’s thinking about the girl from the front desk, about the pretty waitress from Skyline. Both of them, together. Both of them together with him.
That thought is particularly nice. It’s been awhile since anyone’s touched him, and the thought of all those hands and soft curves gets his eyes closing, his hips pushing up into his hand. Maybe this time it’s going to be all right.
As soon as he thinks that, it happens -- that thing that has been happening with increasing frequency since he got out of the Rangers. Behind his closed eyes he sees guns and blood and bullets -- a gruesome parade of men he’s killed from across the street, men who never even knew he was there. The more he tries to ignore the images, the more insistent they become -- now featuring people he knows.
First it’s the waitress from Skyline, and then the girl at the front desk. Terrified and screaming and he tries to make the images go back to the hot things but they won’t, all he can see is death, blood, faces and skulls obliterated from bullets. Moans turn into screams, desperate pleas for him not to kill them.
Tim opens his eyes, frustrated and sickened and annoyed with himself for thinking it would be any different in some Hampton Inn than in his own bed. Lately, every time he’s tried to get off it goes just about the same way. Sometimes, like now, he can stop himself. Other times, physical necessity takes over and he can’t. Those are the worst.
It only happened every so often at first, but it was enough to end his last relationship with a girl he’d met at the gym. She was graduate student, two years older than him and a few years older than her fellow students. Emily left a well-paying but miserable job to pursue a Ph.D. in Medieval History, and was nearly finished when he met her. She was happy and fun and lively, and Tim liked her very much.
She was also very hot and into sex, which he also liked very much. Until those disturbing images started filtering in and he couldn’t stop them, no matter how hard he tried. He started avoiding sex, and then he started avoiding anything physical at all because it was just making him want what his brain apparently wouldn’t let him have.
Eventually she started avoiding him and stopped taking his calls. He heard that she finished her PhD and moved to Michigan. He never told her about the disturbing thoughts he’d had, because he’d never told her what he did in the Army. So she probably left thinking she’d done something, which she hadn’t. Tim wasn’t good with words or expressing his emotions, qualities that were taken and honed by the Rangers so he could do his job. You didn’t want emotional snipers. The problem was when he came home he wasn’t a sniper anymore, but there was no off button for being emotionally repressed.
A few times he tried dating again, but it always ended the same way. For a while after he was assigned to Lexington, he had a few successful one-night stands or casual encounters, but even those stopped being possible a few months ago. So he did what he was trained to do and locked it all down and away, didn’t think about it and hoped it would go away.
It isn’t going away.
Tim takes a few breaths until his heart calms down and turns on the Discovery Channel. The show about guns is telling him how rifles were manufactured in Russia during the first World War. He falls asleep somewhere in the middle of it, and when he wakes up, the world is covered in snow.
* * *
His two hour drive to Gatlinburg becomes a nightmarish, six-hour trek up the Smoky Mountains.
Raylan still hasn’t called, but Tim can understand why -- he loses cell phone reception the further he gets into the mountains. It’s nerve-wracking and stressful, but luckily those are two things Tim knows how to deal with. He concentrates on the slow methodical pace and keeping himself from being snow hypnotized, focusing not on getting to Raylan’s but on getting around the next curve, the next mile of roadway.
He stops three times to help stranded motorists, once to change a tire and twice to help pull them out of ditches. The roadways become steadily less traveled as he continues, and his only moment of true frustration comes when he’s in Cherokee, Tennessee -- a small town built around Native American stereotypes, apparently -- and the man at the gas station says he should probably find a room and wait out the storm.
“When is it supposed to stop?” Tim asks, buying a Coke and some coffee and, though he doesn’t usually smoke, a pack of cigarettes. And a Milky Way. This is how he always imagined college students ate.
“Don’t rightly know. But not soon.”
That’s not really an answer, but Tim thanks him anyway and takes his purchases out to the SUV. It’s all gassed up and ready to go, and he’s got food, water, and this is a US Marshal vehicle so it has a roadside safety kit, including a warm blanket and road flares. Tim is a soldier, he’s been to war.
He can drive through Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, goddamn it.
At the last minute, Tim goes inside and gets a turkey sandwich and a six pack of beer. It’s not Shiner but that’s all right, it counts.
If he ends up eating turkey sandwiches and having a beer while snowed in on the highway and sleeping in his SUV --
That’s less a John Denver song, a more a Hank Williams one. Hank Williams the Second, that is. The one that sucks.
* * *
Tim learns one important lesson about driving in a blizzard, which is don’t.
And if you really insist on it, definitely don’t do it at night.
He’s fairly sure he’s going to be spending the night in the car, an opportunity that he both relishes for the adventurousness of it and dreads because it’s fucking cold. This is the South, why is it snowing like this?
He’d reached Gatlinburg, which in itself was a miracle. But instead of stopping and getting a place to stay like a sensible person, Tim kept driving -- out of the small city, away from the warmth and the lights, on the dark roads that lead further into the mountains. He can sleep in the car if he needs to, it’s fine.
But the roads are winding and he quickly realizes there’s nowhere to pull over because there’s no shoulder, and while he hasn’t passed a car for miles and miles, he can’t just stop in the middle of the road and sleep.
He hopes Art’s I owe you one will cover the fact he’s smoking in the SUV. He’ll claim he needed to do it to keep from freezing to death, maybe.
Just when he’s starting to think through how he could fashion a tent out of his duffel bag, the rough blanket and the folder and papers on the passenger seat (sorry, Art), he sees a road sign and realizes, with some degree of shock, that it says Birds Creek Road.
His phone doesn’t get any service but Tim is very, very good at remembering directions and this is the road where Raylan’s cabin is located. Sure, it’s a good two miles down the road which takes him close to an hour, but he’s still almost there.
Raylan better have some food. He’s regretting not buying two of those turkey sandwiches at the gas station, he’s fucking starving and he ate the other one an hour ago. So much for Christmas dinner.
He has no idea if the cabin is nice or not. All he cares is that it’s not the SUV, and it’s not on the road, and there’s maybe a bathroom and something for dinner that doesn’t come out of a package. Tim throws the duffel over his shoulder, grabs the folder and his six pack of beer (untouched, he’s a federal marshal, thank you) and trudges through the snow to the front door.
He wonders how much snow there is. Probably sixteen feet -- it can’t be any less than that, surely. He knocks on the door and for the first time, he wonders if Raylan’s even there. Maybe he’s in Harlan, playing town sheriff and fighting bad guys and giving false addresses to his boss, because his boss wanted him to get lost over the holiday.
Shit. Shit. If that’s true, Tim is going to get in the SUV, drive to Harlan, and beat Raylan to death with the goddamn folder. He knocks again, louder, and this time he yells sharply, “Open up, US Marshals,” because goddamn it, it’s the truth and he is really, really cold.
The door opens and there’s Raylan, in jeans and an undershirt -- what the actual hell, is he not human, it’s freezing -- and his hair’s messy, and he looks like maybe Tim’s unexpected appearance interrupted him from something.
It never occurred to Tim that Raylan might not be here alone. So much for that -- what did Art call it, penetrating analysis? Yeah.
“Gutterson?” At any other time, Tim would have cracked the fuck up at the look on Raylan’s face. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Evening, Raylan,” Tim drawls, or tries to -- it’s not easy with all the teeth-chattering. “I was in the neighborhood and I thought I’d stop by. Can I come in, or...?”
Raylan is still staring at him, blocking the doorway with his ridiculously tall frame. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Freezing to death,” Tim snaps, and decides to stop being polite, shouldering past him into the cabin and the blessed, blessed warmth. “I’m here because Art needs you to sign something or else our whole office gets fined, I don’t know, I didn’t ask the particulars and I didn’t read the papers because they were boring.”
He drops the duffel on the floor and sets the beer down gently, and starts taking off his shoes. “We called you about seventeen, eighteen thousand times and Art sent you email after email, but we didn’t hear from you.”
Raylan’s mouth quirks. “I bet the emails are in all caps, huh.”
“It’s like he doesn’t know that you can type emails without pressing that key.” Tim shakes his head, finishes with his boots and stands up with the beer in one hand and the folder in another. “He’s in North Carolina, so I volunteered to drive up here and find you. It was only supposed to take three, four hours.”
“I’m on vacation,” Rylan snaps, and Tim doesn’t have much of a temper but that riles up whatever he’s got and a little extra.
“Gee, Raylan, I am so sorry that I volunteered my time to come up here and bring you this form --” He raises the hand with the folder, waves it at him, “-- so we don’t get penalized, drove through a blizzard and brought you some beer.” He raises the beer and waves it, too, somewhat more gently.
Predictably, Rayan grabs the beer and ignores the folder. “Why do you care if we get a fine, you gotta pay it personally? And there had to have been places for you to stop when it was obvious there was a blizzard, or did you think all this snow was normal?”
“The point is that I’m here,” he tells Raylan, shouldering his duffel. “And I’m going to change clothes and have a shower and you’re going to let me rummage for something to eat because I’m starving, then I’ll catch a few hours of sleep on your couch and head back into Gatlinburg and leave you to your horrible, isolated, mountain cabin of doom vacation.”
He turns and starts walking, not sure where he’s going but he’s not standing in the foyer. The door’s shut but he can feel the cold out there, and he wants to be as far away from it as possible.
“Tim? I ain’t exactly here alone,” Raylan tells him, hurrying past him so he’s blocking Tim’s way again.
“Okay, I’m really tired of you doing that and I’m also really tired, so whatever you and your mystery date are getting up to here I guarantee you I’ll sleep through it. You want me to sleep really well, give me some dinner and hey, if you’ve got any bourbon around here that’ll keep my virgin ears free from corruption by your kinky sex life, promise.”
“Tim --”
Ignoring him, Tim ducks around him and follows the heat, ending up in a large, spacious living area. There’s a large fireplace with a roaring blaze, an adjacent small kitchen, and comfortable furniture scattered throughout. It’s probably a very nice cabin, but Tim’s not able to focus on much of anything because he’s just noticed the man on the couch, pulling on his shirt and smiling at him.
Behind him, Raylan sighs loudly. Tim just stands there staring, unable to believe what he’s seeing as Boyd Crowder throws his head back and starts to laugh.
“Deputy Gutterson, what an unexpected surprise. Raylan didn’t tell me you were coming.”
Tim ignores Crowder for the moment and turns to Raylan, rapidly processing the facts as they’re presented to him. Raylan is here with Crowder. Tim interrupted something. Something Raylan was doing with Crowder. Shirtless things.
Raylan is meeting his gaze, steady and even, his chin tilted slightly in defiance. He’s waiting, Tim can tell, for some kind of conflict. Raylan is vastly underestimating how tired Tim is of being in the SUV.
“I think I’ll take that bourbon now,” Tim says. “And on second thought, make it a double.”