Chapter Text
Tim and Rachel were each a minute late to work, having both stressed too long over putting on their typical marshal attire while thinking of the people they would see that evening.
“Good morning,” Rachel said as they entered the elevator.
“Morning. Your alarm not go off on time?”
“Yeah, just about. What about you?” Rachel looked over at Tim as she tried to think of a new topic to avoid the lie being challenged.
“Yup.” Tim hoped that Rachel wouldn’t remember the multiple times he had boasted about how he woke up every morning at six on the dot with or without an alarm.
“Is that a new jacket?” Rachel found her topic.
“Yeah. Does it compliment my figure?”
Rachel nodded, the clearly safer guess. “It’s a good color.”
Tim glanced down at the plain black garment. “Thanks I was thinking about getting one in magenta.”
The elevator opened and Rachel got out first with a parting shot to slow Tim down. “Maybe you should have, it would distract from your figure at least.”
Tim followed Rachel after a quick check of his figure. He wasn’t in the shape he’d been in while serving, but he confirmed that he was still more or less the badass ranger that Mark had liked.
They settled at their desks with nervous glances into Art’s office to see if he was in the mood to complain about their tardiness. His office was empty for the moment though.
Rachel got herself a cup of coffee and started in on her email. She was just beginning to think she was safe when Dunlop walked by on his way to the kitchen. “New earrings? Nice!” he said over his shoulder. Tim turned towards her with a silent ‘is that so?’ look. Rachel ignored him, focusing completely on the screen in front of her.
Dunlop stopped in front of her on his way back to his desk with a cup of coffee as Art took his place in the kitchenette. “Hey a, uh, friend of mine was wondering where she should go around here for earrings, so do you have any store recommendations, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Rachel looked up as she ran down her options. She could tell him that she did mind him asking, but Dunlop was a nice guy and willing to do favors for people who treated him with some respect. She could answer the question honestly, but she had bought the earrings at a store well outside of her price range. That might require an explanation and she was not going to tell anyone that immediately after asking a girl on a date she had gone on a panic shopping spree while oscillating between thinking she wouldn’t look gay enough and that she was going to look gay. The third and seemingly best option was to tell a simple white lie.
She reached a hand up to her ear as if she had forgotten which pair she was wearing. “Oh these one’s? I got them at Macy’s a few months back.”
“Cool, thanks for the tip.” Dunlop didn’t sense any of the deception and just headed to his desk where he jotted down a note on his phone and then got to work.
Tim smelled the deception and nervousness. “So what’s so special about today that has you busting out the new jewelry?”
“I have a dentist’s appointment.” A snarky joke was the best chance of getting him to drop it, but it didn’t work this time.
“Uhuh, and is this your first ‘dentist appointment’ since the divorce?” The comment was more friendly than prodding, not at all what Rachel had expected.
“Yup, good thing I never got on his insurance.”
“So if the dentist is code for a date, what’s insurance code for?”
Rachel flicked a glare over to Tim. “If you’re assuming that I’m going on a date because of my earrings, I get to assume you’re going on a date because of your jacket.”
Tim shut up for a bit after that. Before he could find a way to keep bothering her without talking about his personal life, Art stopped just outside his office and turned to them.
“Tim, Rachel.” He waved them over and then stepped inside.
Rachel and Tim shared a look as they headed in, silently stating their intention to not be the one who had to drive down to Harlan this time.
“Ok so it seems that Raylan found himself a foot and now he’s looking for the person previously attached to that foot who might have a lead on Drew Thompson. He’s getting help from local PD so neither of you need to head down there.” Tim and Rachel breathed a sigh of relief.
“But,” Art continued. “That means that he won’t be around for the protection detail he was supposed to be on from 2 to 8 today.” The silent groans at that revelation were terribly hidden. “It seems you know where this is going, so figure it out and let me know who’s going before lunch.”
Once the office door was closed behind them Tim and Rachel turned to each other and commenced their typical decision making process.
“I’m not doing it.” Rachel said.
“Well I’m definitely not.”
“I already told you I have a dentist’s appointment.” The lie and its implication seemed easier than verbally admitting to her date.
“Uh, huh. Well I’m sure your date can reschedule. I got a text from a friend to meet him at the VA, and I ain’t gonna miss that.”
“Given how you’re dressed up, you sure he’s just a friend?” It was a risky thing to say given the glass house she was in. She wasn’t sure about the etiquette of talking to other gays, but it seemed improper to push like that.
“No, he’s my ex-boyfriend.” It was meant as a joke, but the honesty messed up Tim’s delivery.
“Ok.” Rachel couldn’t read Tim’s meaning for certain. That wasn’t the sort of thing that people just said in their office, but there was real pain in Tim’s voice that couldn’t be ignored. “I’ll do it. Let me just call my dentist to reschedule.”
Rachel wandered the court house halls in search of empty space and words to say to Gina. They had shared one phone call two nights before. Rachel had barely managed to mumble-ramble through an introduction, but Gina had somehow managed to sound like she was glad to hear from her. Rachel had stumbled into more words that had somehow gotten to the point of Gina saying she’d pick her up at seven thirty for an unspecified date.
Eventually she found an empty stretch of hallway, at which point she had gone over the words to say enough to maybe hold onto them when she started to panic. She found Gina’s contact and hit the call button a moment before her nerves froze her.
With each ring her throat seemed to tighten more and her hand clutching the phone grew damper. The sound of Gina’s voice sent a shock through her and she almost dropped the phone. Thankfully Gina’s mailbox message didn’t seem to notice.
She struggled out a long breath before the beep sounded and then launched into her script. “Hey, Gina, it’s Rachel, um, I hope you're doing well, uh, I just had something come up at work. One of my coworkers found a foot and now he has to find the fugitive that it was previously attached to, I guess the details of that weren’t overly important, but so I’ll be filling in for him until eight tonight.”
Rachel stopped talking once that information was shared, before she realized that she had also planned to talk about rescheduling. “Um, so I don’t how late whatever you had planned can go, but I can be around by 8:30, if that works, or we could, you know, reschedule if you want, just uh let me know, if you want to call back, or text, I don’t know if you do the texting, but I just got on a plan that does that, so yeah if that works, but um calling works too, whatever. Um anyway, yeah, talk to you soon.” Rachel hung up with a wince.
She drew a long breath and then leaned her head against a nearby window. The glass cooled her head as she catalogued every stupid word she had just said. In a few minutes she settled enough to focus back on her job. During the walk back to her desk she tried to remember the things on her to do list, but found herself unable to get by the possibility of her phone ringing.
Tim looked up when she sat down at her desk. “Hey you know I was joking when I said…” Tim trailed off with a meaningless gesture to express the words he wouldn’t say.
“Huh?” Rachel put her phone on her desk where she was sure she’d hear if it went off.
“It seemed like you thought I was serious when I made that joke about my friend.”
“Oh, right.” Her pre-phone call conversation came back to her. Her first instinct was to say exactly what Tim wanted her to say. She was stopped by the now near certainty that while it may have been a joke, it was also completely honest. It would be far too easy to say something wrong or hurtful and ruin her relationship with Tim, but she felt a need to acknowledge it as she was coming to terms with her own identity. Raylan would have a better sense of the sort of things you were supposed to say, but he was also a dick.
“No I don’t think you’re…” Rachel matched Tim’s gesture, realized she might be being dismissive and then overcorrected. “But I don’t think you’re not…” Rachel made the same gesture, this time realizing that that might be seen as an insult or an acquisition. “Look I just don’t care and if you ever feel like saying feel free, but like whatever…” Rachel trailed off.
“Ok, then,” Tim said. “You practice that speech while you were gone?”
“Yeah,” Rachel laughed, glad to be back on solid footing. “That and some questions to ask if you told me you were a furry.”
“Which ones are those?”
“They dress up in costumes I think?” Rachel’s research into gayness had recently led her to skimming a list of different kinds of ‘ungodly sexual deviants.’
“Ok, that sounds like more Art’s thing than mine.”
Rachel snickered, with a guilty glance to Art’s closed office door.
They got back to work, in their typical silence. An hour later Rachel’s phone buzzed. After a flinch and panicked glance to confirm that everyone had seen the flinch, Rachel grabbed her phone. I'll pick you up at 8:30 talk to you then :-) read the text from Gina.
Rachel smiled out a sigh of relief.
“So is this just a really hot guy, or are you just out of practice?” Tim asked.
Rachel glared and then headed to Art’s office to tell him she would do the protection detail. When she returned Tim glanced up at her and then stared at his computer screen. “Thanks, for doing that,” he said. Rachel just nodded. It was already weird that he’d said that. She wasn’t going to push it by responding.