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You say, I love you boy.
But I know you lie.
I trust you all the same.
I don't know why.
'Cause when my back is turned,
My bruises shine.
Our broken fairytale,
So hard to hide
- Many of Horror, Biffy Clyro
When We Collide.
"I'm not sure what I wanna do yet, but - don't laugh - I'm thinking of politics."
Tyra chanced a sideways look at him, aware that she was half holding her breath, waiting for the inevitable put down. The discouragement. The 'be more realistic, honey' or 'don'cha wanna set your sights on something a little more achievable?' She was prepared for it, ready to tear him a new one because of all people, Tim Riggins ought to know better than to underestimate Tyra Collette.
But he was just wearing that secret smile of his, and who the hell knew what that meant these days?
"Are you laughing right now?"
"No." He denied instantly.
"Inside?" She guessed. Trying to get a read on that man was impossible at times, particularly when he was two-and-a-half steps ahead of her, head slightly bowed as he reached the top of the hill, lawn chair in one hand, a cool-box full of beer in the other as evidenced by the strain in his biceps. Not that she was looking, particularly. But it was hard not to notice that if anything, Big Timmy Riggins had only gotten more built since the end of his football career. No. Focus, Tyra.
She glared needlessly at the back of Tim's head. "You're laughing on the inside."
"Nope."
"Yes, yes Tim Riggins you are." She insisted, forcing out half a laugh. Because it was better to be in on the joke than to be the joke. "You're laughing."
"No, I'm not." He insisted. Time looked around, back down to the truck and paused. This was the place. He tore his eyes of the skyline - still half unable to believe that this was his land, his view, his future wrapped between the sunset and the rolling hills - and looked back at her. "I'm not laughing inside."
"You're lying to me right now." A hint of mutiny creeping into her voice, and Tim knew that tone. He'd been on the receiving end enough times to know when Tyra Collette was about to lay into someone.
He set the cool-box down and turned towards her, unfolding the chair as she did the same. He tried to school his features into something serious, knowing he'd failed when he spotted the righteous indignation on her face. God, she was beautiful when she got up on that high horse of hers. Why hadn't he appreciated her earlier? Maybe if he had let Tyra put him in his place a little sooner, then everything wouldn't have gone to hell. Tim pushed aside the maudlin thoughts, God knows he'd spent enough time dwelling on the 'might have beens' lately, and returned his attention to the present; to her future.
"Okay, so when you say politics, do you mean like Sarah Palin kind of stuff or..."
"No, Tim, you ass. Her of all people, really?" She rolled her eyes, falling into her own chair with a little more force than necessary. "No, I was thinking more along the lines of Mrs T. Except bigger."
He nodded slowly. "I can see that."
Tyra looked at him closely, for any sign that he was making fun of her or humouring her. There wasn't any. If there was one good thing she could say about Tim Riggins, it was that in all the time she had known him, he never stopped believing in bigger and brighter things for the people around him. Whether it was his unfailing certainty in Jason's NFL career, or even his blind faith in Lyla Gerrity, Tim had always let the people around him shine.
Even on the football field, Tyra might not obsess about the game like the rest of Dillon, but she could still tell that Tim was a real talent, but he left the showboating to Smash. And yeah, he might have relished the attention from the empty-headed rally girls and the taken advantage of the easy ride being a high school football star in small town Texas afforded him, but there was something quiet and self-depreciating about Tim that most of the town took for indifference.
He had even had her fooled, for a while. When she'd been broken-hearted and bitter and most of all, so disappointed that he hadn't been the boy she thought he was. Caught up in thinking that if he didn't give a damn about his own life, then why should she? Caught up in needing to protect herself from him, using that anger like a shield and knowing that if she let him in again, that he could break her heart once more.
In spite of everything, she'd really been caught up in Tim Riggins's orbit since the first time they'd met. Goddamit all, but there was no breaking out of it now and she'd be a fool to think otherwise.
Tyra Collette was many things, but she was no fool. And with that realisation, sat on the hill with the boy she'd always found herself drawn back to no matter how much she fought it, she made her decision.
"Tim, I've been in love with you since I was five years old." Tyra said quickly, the words tumbling out before she had the chance to think herself out of it. "And being here with you, it's the greatest feeling I've had in a really long time."
"Me too." Tim admitted freely, and for a second she envied his easy acceptance of the fact. That despite him spending most of their high school relationship in a drunken stupor with all the communication skills of, well, a teenage boy who'd learned his worth was better measured in tackles and touchdowns than anything he could do off that damned football field. Despite all that, despite the times she'd turned him down or pushed him aside, he still had no problem putting his cards on the table for her.
"It scares the hell outta me. I have dreams, Tim." The 'and I won't give them up for you' going unsaid, but not unheard.
Rather than going quiet and losing his thoughts in his bottle of beer as he once would have, Tim smiled softly, gazing out over the land he had bought and looking more at peace than she had ever seen him.
"I know you do. I have dreams too. I'm gonna build a house exactly where we're sitting." Tim said, the picture in his mind as clear as anything, from the wrap around porch to the tall windows upstairs so he could sit here like this all year round. He could see her expression out of the corner of his eye, caught somewhere between pride and doubt, but he pushed onwards. He'd earned a certain amount of cynicism over the years, but this time he was determined to do things right. "I'll get a job. And I'm never gonna do anything illegal for the rest of my life. Guaranteed." He added, like a promise.
For the first time in a long time, Tim could see a future. The pursuit of this land had ended up costing him ten months of his freedom, but now he was out and over the identity crisis which had made him consider travelling to the pipelines of Alaska (and that was possibly almost as ridiculous as the thought of him in college, now he thought about it). Now he could see clearly the house he would build; the future he would build and the people he wanted to build it with him.
"Maybe one day our dreams can merge together."
How did he do that? In college, Tyra had met a lot of men arguably smarter and more worldly than Tim Riggins; men who had read literature and poetry and knew how to string a sentence together. But still, with just one line, Tim could make her forget all of their fancy words and flowery promises. She clinked her bottle against his, toasting to a future that, hell, even yesterday she would have never imagined but right now seemed kind of inevitable.
Tyra could feel his eyes on her, even as she looked in the opposite direction. Felt him just looking at her, and it made her not uncomfortable exactly, but hyper-aware. Of him. Of herself. Of the two of them.
"You're staring, Riggins."
"You're avoiding, Collette."
"I'm right here, aren't I?" She challenged, turning to face him finally.
"Yeah." He agreed. "For now."
"For now." She conceded with a nod, looking away again at the weight of his gaze.
"I know you don't believe me right now. Or maybe you do, but don't want to." He started sincerely. "I know I've never given you, or anyone really, a reason to believe in me. But it's going to be different this time. Better. I'm going to be better."
"Tim..." she started, not really sure where she was going with this. "Tim, you're an idiot."
Wait, that didn't come out right. She needed a do over before he withdrew into that thick, brooding skull of his.
"You don't need to be better, Tim." She tried again, wishing she knew the words to undo a lifetime's worth of hearing otherwise. "You never needed to be better. Maybe stop and think with your brain instead of your, ya know, every once in a while. But you're doing okay. You're okay, Tim."
"Oh yeah. I'm an ex-con and a barman. I'm doing just great." He snorted in self-loathing. He knew his mistakes, and knew what it looked like. He didn't need to shy away from that.
"You gave up everything so my nephew could keep his daddy around, and then got a job straight outta prison." She said firmly.
"Yeah, at Buddy's. 'cause he felt sorry for me."
"You think many businessmen would take on their daughter's jailbird ex-boyfriend?" Tyra rolled her eyes, not quite believing that she was speaking up for Buddy Gerrity, of all people. "You got people rooting for you, Tim. For you, not this person you seem to think you have to be."
He was quiet for a moment, turning over her words in his head. For so long, people had been trying to - not change him exactly - but to mould him in some way so that he would fit in better at Street family dinners, measure up to Lyla's expectations, and hell, even Billy had tried to get him to go to college and the less said on that disaster the better. Tyra hadn't tried to shape him into someone else.
"And what about you?"
"Me? Well I've been rooting for you since elementary school." Tyra admitted easily, and it was true. She'd watched that quiet boy dressed in old hand-me-downs and new bruises. She'd seen him grow hard and disillusioned, yet saw him be kind, smart, optimistic, but only when he thought no one was watching as if he expected the world to blindside him the minute he lowered his guard and showed his softer side. She had known that boy was in there all along, and it was hard not to root for him...especially when he gave up on himself.
"I never stopped rooting for you, Tim. I've just been waiting for you to get on board."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, Riggins. Why do you think I wrote to you in prison? Why did I hike up here with you? Why haven't I strangled you in your sleep yet? Lord knows you've given me enough reasons to."
He paused. Taking a long drink from his beer before smirking, the old devil-may-care Tim making a long-overdue appearance. "I think you kinda like me, Collette."
She rolled her eyes, seeing through the bravado as always. "No shit, Riggins."
He was quiet for a long time and she might have thought that he'd decided to let it drop. But she should have known better that just because Tim was quiet, it didn't mean he wasn't still thinking.
"So you're gonna go out and conquer the world; change it for the better. Show them what you're capable of and how far you've come when no one thought you could." He said with surprising insight. But then, they had both been written off by their neighbours before they were old enough to know anything of social class or status. Just because Tim hadn't fought back against it the way she had, it didn't mean he didn't know what it felt like to have the world think you would amount to nothing.
The thought brought a lump to her throat and suddenly she was grateful to her Mama who never stopped trying, and Mrs T who wouldn't take no for an answer. Without them...well. Without them, she'd have been in Tim's shoes. "I'm gonna try."
"You will." He said with a quiet certainty. "And I'll be here, building my house."
"Showing them what you're capable of." She interjected softly. Because she wasn't the only one with something to prove to the people of Dillon, whether Tim admitted it to himself or not.
"And then," he continued without pause, "when you're some hotshot politician in the city or whatever, and Billy an' Mindy are onto, shit, their sixth or seventh kid, and you start thinking about home...then they'll always be a place for you here. In the house I built."
"As part of your harem?" She quipped reflexively, deflecting as always.
"Just you, Collette." He promised, refusing to be drawn in to the banter. He might have not taken their relationship seriously first time around, but he had grown up a lot since then and knew a good thing when he saw it. "Only you."
"Tim..."
"I'm not asking anything of you right now...I'm not asking you to stay. You gotta do your thing. I know that and I want that for you." He interrupted, more serious than he'd been in a long time. "But I have this feeling about you and me. And somehow, I think we're gonna find our way back here one day."
"Dreams coming together." She murmured, echoing his earlier statement.
He smiled at her, a real smile. One very few people got to see these days. "Damn straight."
He leaned over and kissed her. Not as frantic as when they were in school, not filled with desperation like he had in the parking lot outside Buddy's a few nights before. This was filled with a new kind of promise.
Tim held his breath for the half-second it took for Tyra's lips to move against his own. You could never totally predict Tyra Collette, which was one of the things he liked best about her, but this time she hadn't pushed him away. This time she was kissing him back and God, but he wished he had appreciated this more when they were kids rather than rushing everything, the sensations muted by drink and ignorance. He shifted closer, bringing a hand to cup her jaw and immediately she clasped onto his wrist, not letting him control the kiss completely, making him smile against her lips as she refused to let him have his own way entirely, even in this.
"What?" She whispered slightly breathlessly, eyes opening as he rested his forehead against hers for a moment.
He leaned back slightly, not so far that she couldn't tell that the kiss had affected him just as much as her, judging by the way his breath stuttered over her skin. Tim kept his eyes on hers and she felt the full weight of his stare - how was it possible that even after all these years, after all they had been through, all he had to do was pin her with those infamous Tim Riggins puppy dog eyes and it was like she was the only girl in the world. More than that even; like the rest of the world didn't exist and could be burning down in flames all around them and she'd be none the wiser.
Tim reached out to tuck a strand of hair behind her eye. "Did I tell you, I like the brunette?"
Her eyes narrowed slightly. That sounded like a line. "No..."
"It suits you." He said, a little too sincerely, peering out from behind too-long hair that had no right to look both slightly grimey and too damn tempting.
Worst of all, he knew exactly what he was doing and the effect it had. Ass.
"So you've been in love with me since you were five years old, huh?" He said, smirking around his beer bottle as he took another sip, face still a couple of inches from hers.
She rolled her eyes, the moment broken and back in familiar territory. She shoved him away from her, still smiling as she smacked his arm.
"Shut up, Riggins."
"Yes Ma'am." He laughed easily.
She glared at him as sternly as one can, when they are fighting a smile. "I mean it."
"Oh, I know you do." He countered swiftly, looking at her with unmasked fondness.
They fell into an easy silence, sipping their beers and watching the sunset. How far they'd come, these two that their town had thought would be going nowhere. And they'd had their highs and the lowest of lows, but they were here now, together. That counted for something.
"We'll get there in the end, Collette." Tim drawled some time later, looking out to where the afternoon sun was starting to dip behind the hills. "You'll see."
She believed him.
I still believe
It's you and me 'til the end of time.
When we collide we come together,
If we don't we'll always be apart
I'll take a bruise, I know you're worth it
When you hit me, hit me hard.
- Many of Horror, Biffy Clyro