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Later, after they’ve moved on from Kentucky and times have changed enough that they’re comfortable talking about it in front of other people, Raylan will claim he always had a feeling about it. Maybe not the full recollection, but — something. A faint glimmer of recognition. A tickle at the back of his mind.
Tim, if he’s in earshot, will scoff and call him a liar, but there’ll be laughter in his voice. The sound of an argument gone fond across years of repetition.
“Tell ‘em the real story, cowboy,” he’ll tease with a smug grin.
Raylan, caught, will set his jaw the way he always does when he can’t decide if he wants to kiss Tim or hit him, fidget with his hat, and come clean.
Some twenty-odd years after his momma puts him and his broken heart on a bus back to Harlan, Raylan Givens walks into the US Marshal Service office in Lexington, Kentucky, and meets Tim Gutterson for the second time.
He just doesn’t realize it at the time.
He honestly doesn’t think much of Tim, those first few days. He’s distracted, fresh off the killing of Tommy Bucks, exiled to a place he swore he’d never go back to. And none of that’s even touching the gut punch it is to be confronted with what’s become of Boyd Crowder in the years since Raylan put Harlan in his rear-view mirror all those years ago.
So, no, Raylan doesn’t give Tim much thought. Not at first.
Things change after the Cooper case. Raylan’s already starting to develop a cautious respect for him and Rachel after Art shares the relevant details about his new coworkers over drinks that first week. Tim shows an impressive aptitude for the job despite having less than a year under his belt; Raylan can respect that level of adaptability.
And then there’s the moment: standing in the Lawlor house, bracing himself as the lights go off and then on again unexpectedly; hearing the glass shatter, the sound of cousin Dupree hitting the floor—
Realizing he’s still alive when he really shouldn’t be. The split-second understanding that Tim took the shot.
There’s something attractive about that level of competence. Raylan can admit that much.
If that were all there were to him, it wouldn’t be an issue. But being good with a rifle is apparently the least interesting thing about Tim Gutterson. He’s got a sharp tongue, sharper eyes, and rarely says what he means. He’ll call Raylan an idiot to his face, and then turn around and stick himself out on a limb to cover for him not ten minutes later. He’s funny, and an asshole, and somehow those two things never get in each other’s way.
Raylan feels safe with Tim at his back, which is more than he can say about most of the people he’s worked with.
With all that taken into consideration, it’s maybe not all that much of a surprise they end up falling into bed together.
There’s nothing special about the night it happens. They’re on the tail end of a boring day spent on a long and ultimately fruitless stakeout down in Hopkinsville. It’s late afternoon when they finally call it quits, which means it’s a little after nine by the time they pull into the Lexington Courthouse parking lot.
The office is deserted at this hour, but it’s pleasantly cool and quiet after a long day in the buzzing heat on a noisy highway. Raylan takes his time at his desk wrapping up, keeping an eye on Tim across the divider.
There’s a charge in the air between them tonight. There’s no particular reason for it; just the natural boiling point of a pressure that’s been building unacknowledged for a while now.
Tim finishes first. He could leave, but he waits for Raylan instead.
When they’re in the elevator, he finally speaks up. “You’re not subtle, you know that?”
Raylan shrugs and adjusts his hat. “Never claimed to be.” He watches Tim out of the corner of his eye. “Am I reading you wrong?”
A tense moment passes, stretching on long enough Raylan starts to worry he actually has.
“No,” Tim says finally. It’s almost a sigh, like he’s disappointed with himself over it.
Raylan’d be irked if he wasn’t on the brink of getting something he’s wanted for months now.
The elevator dings. Ground floor.
Tim motions him out first, then trails after him into the parking lot.
“I’ll follow you,” he says, slipping into the driver’s seat of his truck without waiting for an answer.
It’s good. Better than.
In rare moments, Raylan has let himself imagine what it might be like to hold Tim’s full attention, all that intense focus and precise skill zeroed in completely on him. It turns out to be pretty fucking amazing.
What’s better are all the little things he couldn’t have predicted.
The look on Tim’s face when Raylan gets his hands on him; the sound of his voice, all breathy and sweet, as Raylan works out all the ways he likes to be touched and kissed. The way he starts off all bark and bite, acting like he’s ready for a fight until Raylan’s grip on his hips turns bruising enough that he goes pliant, eyes fluttering shut at the feel of Raylan’s fingers digging into his skin.
And this, too: the feel of him in the aftermath, not pulling away when Raylan deliberately slows them down and gentles his touch into something soothing. Melting into it instead, like it’s all he really wanted in the first place.
Tim sticks around, after. Doesn’t fuss when Raylan throws an arm around his waist.
He’s still there when Raylan drops off to sleep, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm under Raylan’s palm.
Raylan’s pulled awake sometime later to the feel of Tim disentangling himself. He lifts his head enough to blearily register that it’s still dark out, then drops it back onto the pillow.
He mumbles, barely coherent, “Time’sit?”
“Little after six,” Tim answers.
Raylan turns his face into his pillow and groans. He drifts back off to the sound of Tim chuckling at him.
The next time he wakes up, it’s to the sensation of fingers carding steadily through his hair. There’s at least sunlight in the room this time, edging into proper people hours rather than whatever Ranger nonsense Tim operates off of.
Tim is sitting on the edge of the bed beside him, already showered and dressed. He smiles, small but affectionate, when Raylan blinks at him sleepily.
“Headin’ out,” he says by way of explanation, pulling back.
It warms something in Raylan, that Tim waited long enough to tell him rather than sneak off in the middle of the night. Still half-asleep, Raylan hooks a hand around the back of Tim’s neck and pulls. He’s delighted when Tim comes willingly.
Raylan gets his good morning kiss and then some, until Tim lets out an amusement huff against his mouth and pushes him away.
“You’re not making me late, cowboy. Some of us have standards to adhere to.”
“Eight a.m. is not late, Tim, goddamn,” Raylan grouses, but lets him go.
“You ain’t been in earlier than ten since you got to Kentucky, don’t even try.”
Raylan takes his razzing with a good-natured, self-deprecating smile. It’s comforting, in a way, that nothing’s changed since yesterday. Tim’s apparently still going to heckle him mercilessly, and Raylan’s going to keep on being reluctantly amused by it even at his own expense.
The difference is, now, when Raylan gets the impulse to reach out and brush a stray curl off Tim’s forehead, he can. Tim even leans into it for a moment before he pulls away, the bed creaking as he stands.
“Don’t forget it’s your day to pick up the good coffee,” he reminds Raylan, fiddling with his watch.
Raylan waves him off, rolling over with every intention of falling back asleep for a while. It goes quiet. For a minute, Raylan wonders if Tim didn’t somehow slip out without him hearing it.
Then, “If you get there before eleven, I’ll blow you in the bathroom after everyone else leaves for lunch.”
Raylan jolts in place so fast he nearly bangs his head against the headboard. “Jesus fucking Christ, Tim!”
Tim’s already halfway out the door, laughing, by the time Raylan gets hold of one of his pillows and launches it at him. Left hanging, Raylan flops back against the bed and realizes he’s not going to be able to get back to sleep. Not with that mental image bouncing around in his head.
He can’t even work up the proper level of aggravation about it.
“Goddamn it, Tim,” he mutters, and drags himself out of the bed to start getting ready for the day.
If Raylan were a smart man, he’d leave it be. Let it go. A couple rounds of fantastic sex, a pleasant morning after. Anything more than that would be greedy at best, outright foolish at worst. Workplace relationships are a terrible idea. Even he knows that.
Raylan picks up the coffee that morning and shows up five minutes before ten.
Tim waits until everyone else has wandered by before getting up to collect the one marked with his name. He takes a long drink right in front of Raylan’s desk.
Smirks at him from over the top of his cup.
Raylan throws a pen at him.
Two hours later, when most of the office has emptied out, Tim snags a hand into his shirt and yanks him into the lesser used bathroom on the third floor to make good on his promise.
Two days after that, he follows Raylan home again.
So maybe Raylan isn’t a smart man.
At least he’s a satisfied one.
It goes on like that for six months. Half a year of working side-by-side with Tim during the day, tumbling in and out of bed with him at night. They always go to Raylan’s. Raylan doesn’t think much of it at first. Figures it’s just a matter of convenience.
After the second month creeps by, the two of them settling into something he’d tentatively call a relationship if he wasn’t worried about scaring Tim off, he starts to prod.
“You got something you don’t want me to see?” He cajoles one evening. They’re on the bed in his motel room, still all tangled up and catching their breath. It’s the best time to pull honest answers out of Tim, Raylan has found. “A jealous boyfriend waiting up for you, maybe?”
“His name is Dennis and he’s protective, thank you,” Tim snarks. Raylan pinches his hip for it, gets a nip to his shoulder in return. Stretching languidly, Tim says, “Nah. Just some shitty neighbors and a neon sign right outside the window.” He pauses, then adds, softer, “I sleep better here.”
“You think that might have something to do with the company, rather than the location?” Raylan posits.
He’s expecting Tim to come back with a smartass comment.
Tim, instead, presses in close and admits, “Maybe.”
And goddamn if that doesn’t knock the breath right out of Raylan’s lungs.
A month or two later, they’re driving around the farthest edge of Lexington, reluctantly offering assistance to their good friends in the local FBI field office. It’s sometime after four in the morning and Raylan’s so tired his vision is swimming when they get the call that the felon they’ve been hunting after has been apprehend in a completely different city some three hours north.
“I hate them,” Raylan groans, head against the steering wheel, as Tim relays this information to him.
“Raylan gives his best to our brothers in the fancy suits,” Tim translates, mouth quirking up when Raylan flips him off for it. He makes a few more noises into the phone, hangs up, and rubs a hand across his jaw. With just the two of them in the car, his face is more honest, the exhaustion showing through in ways it wouldn’t around anyone else. Raylan’s not sure he’ll ever get over how goddamn special that makes him feel, knowing he gets to see the soft parts Tim usually keeps so carefully protected. “Art says we can come in late tomorrow, as a reward for ‘contributing to positive interdepartmental relationships.’ Think he’s just happy we didn’t shoot anyone.”
“Night’s still young,” Raylan offers, just to enjoy the huff of laughter it earns him.
He flips on the turn signal and is fighting back a yawn hard enough it makes his ear pop, so he almost misses it when Tim says, “My place is closer.”
Raylan pauses, the words catching up with him. “Yeah?”
Tim rolls his eyes. “Don’t make a big deal out of it,” he says, slouching in his seat, “or I’ll make you drive us all the way back to the motel instead.”
Raylan lifts his hands from the steering wheel, a quick little I’m harmless gesture that makes Tim snort. He’s got no inclination to kick up a fuss, anyway. Partially because Tim doesn’t believe in bluffing and absolutely will send them driving for an extra half hour just to make a point.
Mostly, though, because of the way he phrased it.
Drive us.
Like it’s a given that, wherever they end up, it’ll be together.
“Only thing I’m making a big deal about is finding a bed to crawl into,” Raylan assures him biting back a grin. “Where we headed?”
Tim’s place turns out to be a small apartment block right on the edge of being uninhabitable.
“Jesus, Tim,” Raylan comments as he parks the car. He’s a little worried about leaving it unattended; he can just imagine the look on Art’s face if it gets stolen. “I know they don’t pay us much, but I’m pretty sure you can afford something better than this.”
Tim shrugs. “It was the first place with a vacancy I came across when I got here. Never saw much need to move.”
Considering that Raylan picked his own accommodations off of similar logic, he can’t say much. Glass houses and all that. He grabs his hat from the backseat before climbing out and following Tim inside, into the elevator and up to the fourth floor. Tim’s apartment is a studio, approximately the size of a shoe box, and would be dark if not for the glowing red sign belonging to the business across the alley, just level with the window. It’s furnished, surprisingly lived in, but Raylan really only has eyes for the bed.
He follows Tim’s lead: drops his hat, weapon, and the contents of his pockets onto the bedside table not covered in a stack of books, sheds his clothes until he’s down to his underwear, and then just about faceplants himself onto the mattress.
Tim joins him a second later. There’s some shuffling, the two of them figuring out how to fit together in a smaller bed than they’re used to sharing.
Raylan gets his arms around Tim, shoves his nose into the junction between his shoulder and neck, and drops off to sleep between one breath and the next, soothed by the familiar feel and scent of Tim all around him.
Tim, it turns out, was not joking about the shitty neighbors. Raylan’s only asleep for two, two and half hours before the sound of muffled yelling yanks him awake with a startled snort. He lays there squinting at the far wall for several seconds as it processes that it’s a real sound, rather than just something filtering in from his dreams.
Tim’s still and quiet beside him, but tense enough Raylan knows he’s awake too.
The yelling gets louder. Raylan can almost make out the specific curse words the woman is throwing around.
He runs a tired hand down his face. “Fuck’s sake,” he mutters. “Who the hell has a domestic at—“ he cranes his head to look at the alarm clock on the bedside table on Tim’s side. “—7:15 in the morning?”
“Belinda and Frederick Carter,” Tim supplies dryly. “And no, neither one of ‘em has any outstanding warrants, federal or otherwise. I checked.”
Raylan chuckles, amused by the thought of Tim looking for an excuse to get his noisy neighbors arrested. Tim rolls away from him to stretch out onto his stomach, hooking his arms under the pillow and burrowing deeper into it. It leaves the long expanse of his naked back on display, and Raylan’s tempted to take advantage.
The pressure in his bladder convinces him to handle other matters first.
He trips his way to the bathroom to relieve himself and scrub some of last night off his face and hands, and it’s on the way back to the bed that he spots it.
He almost misses it, innocuous as it is. He’s not even sure what it is that catches his attention. Some distant flicker of memory in the back of his mind, maybe. Or maybe it just looks out of place among the rest of Tim’s cluttered-but-neat space.
There’s a desk pushed against one wall with a laptop and a lamp taking up most of the space, a hat tossed over the lamp. A baseball cap, old and well-loved. Scuffing around the brim, the threads holding the K logo badly frayed. The color is dull and faded.
Raylan reaches for it unthinkingly, brown furrowed. He rubs the fabric between his thumb and forefinger and thinks idly, instinctively, that it’s softer than he remembers.
There’s a beat where he’s confused by that.
The click in his head feels audible. A light bulb going off.
Tim. Tim Gutterson.
“Son of a bitch,” he says.
“Hm?” Rustling behind him. When Raylan turns, he finds Tim sitting up, scratching a hand through his hair. He spots the hat still clutched in Raylan’s hands and says, mildly, “Oh.”
“’Oh’?” Raylan echoes, incredulous. “That’s all you got to say? ’Oh’?”
Tim shrugs, so casual it’s blatantly deliberate. “Well, hell, Raylan. It took you long enough to put it together.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Tim.”
Raylan returns to the bed and sits on the edge. He feels dizzy, shellshocked, as a whole host of memories he forgot he ever had come flooding back. He looks at Tim and tries to overlay the image of him now with the fuzzy and faded recollections he has of a goofy-looking kid he knew for a couple of months over twenty years earlier.
He reaches over and fits the hat over Tim’s head.
“Guess you did grow into it,” he says.
Tim grabs it by the brim and fixes it so it’s sitting proper.
It looks better on him than it ever did Raylan.
“When’d you realize?” He asks.
“’Bout the minute Art mentioned who our new transfer was.” At Raylan’s look, Tim adds, “Raylan Givens ain’t exactly a common name.”
“And you never said anything?”
“Eh, I wanted to see how long it took you to figure it out.” Tim pauses. “And I thought it’d be funny, seein’ the look on your face when you did.”
“Fucking—” Raylan stops himself. Runs a hand down his face, then over his hair. He’s not even all that upset. Mildly irritated, maybe, but that’s standard for around half of his interactions with Tim. Tiredly, he asks, “Was it?”
“What? Funny?” Tim grins. “Yeah.”
Raylan huffs a laugh through his nose and says, more affection than bite, “Asshole.” He reaches over to the flick the hat. “I can’t believe you kept that thing.”
“Still got that copy of The Hobbit, too. Can’t read it, though; half the pages don’t stick to the binding anymore.” Tim tugs the hat off and looks down at it, thoughtful. He says, distantly, “Think I can count on one hand the number of presents I got back then. Had to keep ‘em safe. It mattered, you know?” Expression sobering, voice gone firmer, pointed with emphasis, “It mattered, Raylan.”
Something in Raylan loosens, hearing that. A knot of guilt he’s been unknowingly carrying for decades beginning to unravel.
“Did it get any better? After I left?” Tim, his mouth set in a grim line, just shakes his head, letting Raylan fill in the gaps himself. Raylan exhales, wishing for just a moment that Tim’s daddy was still alive so he could acquaint the man’s ribs with something heavy and hard. It’s a cathartic thought. He flops back onto the bed. “Christ. I shoulda just taken you and run.”
Tim sets the hat on the table, then lays down beside him. His eyes are bright when he looks at Raylan. “A seventeen year old half-assed handyman and a seven year old misanthrope,” he says. “Doubt we’d have gotten very far.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Raylan offers. “Between your wits and my charm? I think we could have made it.”
Tim chuckles. Stretches one hand out to settle against Raylan’s chest, just over his heart, and works the skin there with his thumb. When he speaks next, it’s softer, more serious. “Wouldn’t have ended up here, though.”
“No,” Raylan agrees. He finds Tim’s hand with his. “No, likely not.”
It’s a surprisingly miserable thought. At some point in the last half-year, Tim burrowed himself so deep beneath Raylan’s skin that Raylan can hardly remember what it felt like to not have him there.
He’s not particularly keen to find out.
He tugs at Tim’s hand, eager, suddenly, to be closer. To have as much of Tim as close as possible for as long as he can get away with. Tim lets him, bemused as Raylan rearranges the two of them until he’s content: his back to Tim’s front, head resting against his chest, one of Tim’s arms pulled tight around him.
He tries, again, laying there, to conjure up a picture of Tim as he was, back then. It’s difficult. Raylan’s spent a long time trying to forget that summer ever happened. It still stings, even all these years later, the way it all turned out. Frances pops into his head; Raylan thinks about maybe asking Tim what happened with her. If she was still in that trailer park when Tim shipped off for Basic. If she was even still alive.
He discards it almost immediately. She was dead to him the minute he boarded that bus. He made sure of that a few days after he’d gotten back to Harlan when, still smarting from Arlo’s vicious welcoming home, he’d snuck some shitty liquor out of the house, parked himself in the lawn in front of her gravestone, and had his own little wake for the version of her that loved him.
That whole goddamn summer is a black mark in Raylan’s memory, a painful reminder of something he should have never had to lose once, let alone twice over. The one good part of it, weighed down by guilt as it may have been, was—
Tim.
And now he’s got him here, two decades later, grown into the kind of man Raylan can not only respect, but also love with his whole heart. It’s enough to boggle the mind.
He picks up Tim’s hand where it rests on his chest. Traces the lines of the tattoo on his wrist. Raylan knows it well enough by now he could probably draw it with his eyes closed, still fascinated by the way the dark ink, fuzzy from age, stands out against the pale expanse of Tim’s inner arm.
“What do you think the odds are of something like this?” He asks, mostly rhetorical.
Tim makes a noise of protest. “Aw, hell, Raylan, don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Start talkin’ like it’s fate or some shit.”
“And why not?” Raylan tips his head back far enough he can see Tim’s face. “Maybe I like the idea it had some kind of purpose. All that shit being worth something, in the long run.”
Tim’s mouth twists like he can’t decide if he’s irritated or amused. “And what does that make me? The crappy toy at the bottom of the equally crappy Cracker Jack box of life?”
“Happy Meal toy,” Raylan volleys back immediately. “Give yourself some credit, son.”
Tim laughs like Raylan’s startled it out of him, his chest shaking under Raylan’s head, and Raylan smirks. Tim liking that he’s a smartass, finding it funny, is one of Raylan’s favorite things about him. It always makes him proud, knowing he can pull that kind of reaction out of him when no one else can.
He quits playing, threading Tim’s fingers over top of his, and lays their joined hands against his sternum.
“You realize this means I gotta keep you.”
Tim hums. “Does it?”
“Mmhm.” With his free hand, he reaches for Tim’s wrist, wrapping his fingers around it. One more tether to keep him there. “You know we’re a superstitious lot, we Harlan folk. God, the universe, whatever — it clearly has its sights set on the two of us together; wouldn’t wanna run afoul of that.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Tim says, agreeable in a way he only ever gets what it’s just the two of them shooting the shit, content to yes, and Raylan’s nonsense if only because he thinks it’ll be good for a laugh.
Raylan’s happy he’s playing along, because he’s only half-joking.
“To that end,” he continues, bracing himself. “How would you feel about moving in with me?”
Tim goes still beneath him. “How long you been thinkin’ about that?”
Raylan knows him well enough by now to hear what he’s actually asking: whether he means it or if it’s just an impulse brought on by this morning’s revelations. He’s pleased that, for once, he thinks he has the right answer in his pocket. And it’s even true.
“Long enough that you’d make fun of me if I told when you I first had the thought,” he says. Knows he got it right from the way Tim relaxes, and presses on, “The thing is, Tim. I’m kind of gone for you. Have been for a while now. And, well. I like the idea of having you around all the time.” He brushes his thumb along the prominent vein running down Tim’s wrist. “If you’ll have me, that is.”
“…it’d be a tight fit, the two of us crammed into your motel room all the time.”
“You say that like you ain’t already spending five nights a week there.” Raylan squeezes his hand. “But no. I was thinking, whenever your lease is up — or, hell, sooner, if you want — we could look for a place together. Bet we’d be able to afford something nice, between the two of us.”
Tim doesn’t say anything for a while, and Raylan’s content to give him the space to think it through. He’s oddly not concerned about the outcome; even if Tim says no, he gets the feeling it’ll be more not yet, and he’s okay with that.
Tim’s worth waiting for, he figures.
Finally, Tim says, thoughtful, “It would be nice to have a proper kitchen again.”
Raylan grins. Sweetens the pot. “Maybe an office. Some place we could put up some proper shelves.” He nods at Tim’s books, currently living in a series of cardboard boxes stacked into one corner of the room, lacking the space for anything better.
“Now you’re just playing dirty.”
“Well, you know me, honey. Anything to get what I want.”
“And this is what you want, huh?”
Raylan rolls over so he can look Tim in the eyes as he says, “Darlin’, I’m hard pressed to think of anything I want more.”
Laying like this, chest to chest, one of his hands splayed over Tim’s ribs, he feels the way Tim inhales at that. Feels, too, the way he lets that breath out, slow and deliberate. Surprised but not panicked. Maybe even content.
Tim tilts his head. One of his arms drapes across Raylan’s shoulder, pressing him closer.
“Yeah,” he says finally.
Raylan perks up. “Yeah?”
“Well, we gotta, right?” Tim’s tone dips into teasing. “Wouldn’t wanna disappoint ‘God, the universe, or whatever.’”
Raylan surges up to kiss him, so in love he thinks he might burst from it. Thinks, a little nonsensically as Tim nips at his lips and starts tugging him up by the hips, I’m gonna marry this man, someday.
It feels, perhaps unsurprisingly, a long time coming.
END