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EXT. SHIRLEY’S TRAILER
Raylan: You don't think they're cousins?
Tim: Maybe, maybe not. Either way she's banging him...That's gotta suck. Break out of prison, expecting a blissful marital reunion. Cos I gotta think no matter how long you been divorced, seeing your old lady shack up with someone else? Is gon' annoy the shit out of ya.
It’s only when his door is closed and Raylan’s still unopened that he realises. Shit. Part of him had made the connection to Winona or he wouldn’t have been monologuing at all. Certainly not about something he has so very little experience with, and none that he wants to be reminded of.
So it was a play. He can recognise that even if he wasn’t conscious in the making of it. And if he’s truly honest with himself—which he doesn’t particularly feel like being right now, but the thought is already forming in his mind—he had noticed the game was afoot. Heard the cards dealt when Raylan asked about his focus and Tim’s oh so focussed mind had taken his tale from the man’s milk glass to his jerking off. Had felt giddy picturing himself licking a milk moustache from his own lips.
Raylan’s.
Even now he feels the corner of his mouth twitch. Is saved, he hopes, by the click of the door handle. At last.
Tim keeps his eyes front, wanting to give no hint that his comments might have been about more than just Shirley and her convict ex-husband. Of course it would never have even occurred to him that anyone might possibly connect his comments to the life of Raylan Givens. So there’s no need whatsoever for him to be waiting to see Raylan’s facial expression. That would be suspicious as all hell.
His eyes list leftwards. Fuck sake, Tim. Reins them back in.
The door has closed and the keys have made it to the ignition but the silence stretches until Tim, who can spend literally hours in stillness, adjusts position in his seat. Twice.
A little glance won’t hurt.
Tim recalls hour 41 of a 42 hour scouting drop. Mark had seen it first; Tim picking up the infinitesimal shift in his breathing with the prickling of his hairs. Tim’d packed himself back into his body —relinquished the expanded consciousness of a life not his own— and allowed his eyes to leave the target. And even though in that light, having spent so long tuned to the scope, his vision was ill-equipped for it, he could make out the shape of the leopard. His imagination had filled in the pale greys of a rarely seen ghost of those mountains, the black rimmed eyes piercing. He’d stared until it turned away, under no illusion that it had been anything so civilised as a staring contest.
The fear that unspooled in him that night was something unfamiliar but not unknown. A tendril of black and blue and purple, tentative under the sudden attention. It had been a forgotten thing. A childish —child’s— thing. He’d not understood it as just plain good sense till that moment.
Raylan is more cheetah-sleek but Tim didn’t meet one of those, them being practically extinct in Afghanistan, so it is the leopard that comes to mind when Tim finds Raylan waiting.
It’s not fear that unspools now.
Raylan is staring at him with the kind of knowing look that could undo a man’s top button and three more besides. Tim doesn’t know which kind of trouble he’s in but he feels a muddled fluttering of moths and mischief.
He catches the smile in his hand, like he so often does when his mouth is about to fall over the slim to non-existent line on inappropriate glee.
Raylan — apparently satisfied now he has been witnessed — turns front, “‘Annoy the shit out of you’ huh? Well, you’d know something about that.” And turns the engine over.
The way Raylan drives is a dichotomy. Nonchalant, indifferent. And yet Tim struggles to catch air amidst the suffocating rage that rolls off this tight-folded loose-limbed contradiction of a man. Shook up champagne.
Tim shrinks in his seat to let the fizz settle. Waits to hear what will bubble from Raylan’s mind when it does.
“So did that ever happen to you?” Raylan asks as they turn onto the main road.
“Sure, my old lady moved on so fast she didn’t even wait for me to hit puberty.”
It’s the kind of deadpan soldier fuckery about mothers that Tim knows unsteadies civilians. And in Tim’s case, soldiers too. Sends their minds spinning for a loop. Like old Dupree and his beer. But this is worse. This has a hint of the true and that is not something Tim intended to drip feed to a bloodhound like Raylan Givens no matter how well his jeans hang.
Tim realises Raylan is on an entirely different conversation. Before they even met Cousin Dupree.
“No.”
“No, you never had your old lady move on a little too fast, or no, you’ve never had trouble on the pull?”
“Oh I occasionally have trouble on the pull,” He pauses long enough for Raylan to look across in search of whatever grand reveal is approaching, “but I never had a problem shooting people.”
It was worth waiting, so Tim could be sure Raylan got it, and from the way Raylan’s eyes don their lashes he knows he did. He tingles at Raylan’s soft huff. It lands so much better than the one Raylan hung off that ‘three days’ waiting reaction. Like Raylan wasn’t sure just how much of a response three days staring down a scope might merit for a Ranger Sniper. Whether it was impressive or ordinary. Tim believes Raylan the kind of man who must appear all knowing, right up till the moment he chooses to play dumb.
Like now.
“So which one of them stories gave you trouble?”
Tim knows Raylan picked up what he was putting down. He can feel that it’s true the same way he can feel his tongue getting thick in his mouth as he works it against the inside of his lips trying to form a smart ass reply. But there’s a distracting warmth building in the tips of his ears.
Tim does not consider himself a blusher, it’s his mouth that usually gives him away.
”Weren’t the story.” He mutters, flat. It comes out sounding like he really did fail to fire and that has him sinking down a little in the seat, pouting, petulant. Pissed at the possibility of Raylan thinking he ever could.
He’s never failed a shot. Never hesitated. No matter how far beyond trips to the movies or eating takeout his stories went. And by day three they sure as hell weren’t still on first date terms.
Tim bounces a knee and scratches at the dark grey denim of his jeans. Thinks Raylan catches the movement, thinks he sees — at the edge of his vision which is much more focussed inside his own head just now — Raylan’s lower lip pulled back as if by teeth or tongue.
If he owns to never having any doubts will he come off cold? Giving rise to those ‘Patrick Kearney’ serial killer comments he occasionally got tagged with in high school. Seen as quiet but respectful —respectable— till that lanky hooper, Travis Lynch, made a crack about Tim being a good little wife and Tim had left bruises either side of his windpipe.
Patrick Kearney shot his victims. But kids and governments both were as satisfied with carpet bombing as a precision strike.
Tim had crossed paths with Travis after Basic. The mixture of lust and fear in his eyes turning Tim hard and open. Ready to make amends. But their dynamic was all bent out of shape and neither of them got what they’d hoped. Two idiot boys looking for their daddy.
And if he does come off like that —dangerous, deadly— how will this quick draw cowboy who thinks himself the hero of every piece, react? Will Raylan put him in some glass cabinet to be admired from a safe distance? Top shelf, bottom drawer, for the occasional high risk pour after a difficult day?
Tim pictures Raylan’s long fingers wrapping around smooth glass. A paperweight plucked from his desk. Turning it over while he talks into the phone tucked beneath his chin. Passing it from hand to hand. Rolling it across palms and fingers. Back and forth it rocks, never untouched.
Tim swallows.
”When word came down to fire it didn’t matter what the story was, I never ‘declined’ to follow an order.”
Raylan doesn’t take his eyes off the road. Doesn’t check to see the truth of it in Tim’s face so Tim gets to watch unobserved as Raylan just nods like he knew that already. Like he’s pleased Tim knows it about himself.
And then there’s a second nod and this one comes with a tightening of lips and cheek to something like a smile. Like Raylan has asked and answered a question in his own mind and is pleased with the outcome.
Tim feels like he’s passed a test and there might be a certificate somewhere with his name on it.
EXT. HOSTAGE HOUSE
Raylan: You got a story for Cousin Dupree?
Tim: Yeah, but it’s pretty simple. If he does anything out of line, I get to shoot him.
Raylan: That’s a good story.
Tim breathes deep and turns his insides slippery so the sensation of Raylan’s approval won’t stick. Tim cannot allow that cowboy’s lopsided tumbleweed of moral relativism to take root in his carefully crafted garden of rules. The Art of Right and Wrong for Government-Sanctioned Killers is all clipped hedges and concrete paths. Fewer pages than the Ranger handbook but even harder fought for. It needs no wide open spaces and ‘keep off the (blue)grass’ signs to tempt him.
He waits for his unit —his team— to get in position. Looks past the back door right through to the front. What a safe and secure life that architect must have led to never consider the dangers of such a sightline.
He keeps Dupree in his sights, but the rest of him waits for Raylan.
And doesn’t really see him at first. He notes the deputy, of course, braced at the front door and then slipping through to cover. Sees his head peeking back out into Tim’s field. But it takes a moment for the skittering insects of his insides to make the connection that the man is also Raylan.
Raylan without the hat.
Why didn’t he leave the hat on?
Tim swallows the desire to study Raylan and keeps his eyes on Cousin Dupree, somewhat glad he has no talent for lip reading to lessen the temptation.
He wishes they had earpieces.
Later, when Art has Rachel re-tell it three times over, he will be glad they didn’t. Cousin Dupree’s story would never cause him any issue, but Raylan Givens might.
When the light goes off Tim is already going to take the shot. Has read Dupree’s intent in the line of his shoulders, and in the slightest flicker of Raylan’s expression. Why you looking there? Jesus, Tim.
The return to brightness only assures him the round won’t hit Shirley first. The part of him that lives outside the scope and rifle is surprised to notice some mild relief over this. But he had the shot even in dark. Dupree is not so quick he merits a headshot. Tim had already lined up a trajectory to finish in the wall and not risk contaminating Raylan with any part of the late Dupree’s passing. The range is so short it's not exactly difficult.
Still, Tim stares down that corridor for a year between the pull and the body dropping, and another as Raylan and Rachel secure the room.
Raylan doesn’t look out the back door towards Tim’s position where he still covers by the car. Gives no nod of thanks or even an acknowledgement in Tim’s direction. He is wholly consumed by the goings on in the room and Tim has never seen that expression on Raylan’s face before. Or anyone’s really. Does not know what it means.
He reminds himself that he doen’t need — or want — Raylan’s approval. Rolls his eyes at himself for slipping into old behaviours with some trigger-happy local boy playing cowboys and outlaws.
And he tries not to worry that he read it wrong. That Raylan’s eyes ordered no such shot. That Raylan wanted to take Dupree himself.
“Rachel…Rachel, tell me again what he said.” Art demands with a grin, and plants his hands on the conference table, braced and looking ready to bust out confetti.
Tim catches her glance his way so he gives her his usual heavy-lidded half shrug. This will be the third time, more if you count how many times Art repeated it himself in disbelief.
At least he knows now he didn’t read it wrong.
“OK, but this is the last time, Art.” Rachel declares, serious but in good humour and Tim feels a wash of gratitude for her presence in this group. “Tonight, Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens over there…” she holds, a hand tilted towards Raylan. A higher commitment to comedy than Tim had expected, and Art strains at the seams so hard Tim can hear it. Meanwhile Tim is torn between staring down at his own hands in prideful embarrassment, or trying to get an angle on Raylan’s reaction to this running theme of their debrief.
“Deputy Givens said….” She repeats, labouring the vowels and then dropping her chin and her voice to get not-even-close-to the Givens gruff, ”’It ain’t about me’.”
Art bursts, slamming his hands on the table and howling into a ‘Well ain’t that a dang first’ as Rachel continues, quieter and back in her own voice, “It’s about Deputy Tim Gutterson.”
She throws a respectful look to Tim who nods an acknowledgement and lowers his eyes, humble, even as he smirks out the side in Raylan’s direction. He shoves his chair back a little further so he can see Raylan’s face better.
Raylan, who is once more wearing his hat, is leaning as far back in the conference room chair as he can, legs stretched out ahead like he’s napping. The slow nodding of his head ripples through his body and makes the chair bounce gently. His wry smile at Art is that of old friends teasing.
Tim would enjoy a smile like that but his mind is caught up in the hat. He has not yet seen Raylan take it off for much more than a greeting. He half assumed Raylan slept in that hat and he’s damn well certain he’s fucked in it.
But no hat for a high stakes hostage situation with Cousin Dupree.
Tim wonders if that’s why Raylan couldn’t smooth things over and talk the guy down.
Maybe the magic’s in the hat.
Which seems like even more reason for Raylan to have kept it on his head. He might flirt with danger but he’s not deathwish kind of stupid.
“Penny for your thoughts, Deputy Tim Gutterson?” Raylan asks, leaning in, the vocalisation of his name doing strange things to Tim’s insides and making him realise he’d been staring. Not exactly at Raylan, but certainly in his general direction.
“That’s enough for me tonight.” Art declares, interrupting, across the table. He pushes himself up, looking to Rachel like it was a question.
“I can wrap up when these two knuckle draggers are done signing.” Art nods acceptance, as assured of her ability to get the job done as ever.
“Oh you go on ahead, Rachel,” Raylan chips in, “I can help Tim finish up.” He turns that charming half-smirk on Art. “I got plenty of practice in paperwork when it comes to justified shootings.”
That sends both Art’s and Rachel’s eyes rolling but they can hardly dispute it. There’s a few words back and forth as they pack up, a few reminders for the morrow, particularly to Tim that he take 24 hours to decompress. A waiting period. See if this kill is the straw to break the camel’s back. His indifference hums in his teeth.
Tim throws a few deadpan ‘yes, sir’s around and says good night.
“Well?” Raylan presses once they’re alone. Both of them leant forward and Raylan tucked in close like he’s helping Tim with his homework. As if it’s Tim’s first time. Tim hits him with a confused look so Raylan continues, “I offered up a whole shiny penny to know what’s spiralling round in that crack shot head o’ yours, had you looking my way with a ten thousand mile stare.”
Tim’s eyes slide to the empty glass on the table and back to Raylan who seems to be choosing to ignore that appraisal of his vernacular.
“You weren’t wearing the hat.” Tim shrugs. “Inside.”
“It’s polite to remove one’s hat in a person’s home. A sign of respect.”
“You had it on at Shirley’s.”
“Maybe I wasn’t feeling so respectful just then.” Tim squints at Raylan, ready to let it go, but after a beat Raylan continues. “I didn’t want to cover my eyes.”
“And usually you do?” Tim collects his pen, twirls it in his fingers.
“Yeah,” Raylan reaches for the glass to find it empty. Tim sets the pen down and extends a finger to nudge his own unfinished bourbon over. He thinks Raylan might be looking at the finger more than the glass as he scoops it up. Raylan stays leant in as he sips, the hat tipped back a little so Tim can certainly see his eyes now. “If they think they read the draw in my eyes the way I do in theirs, that don’t seem quite right. Not sure it’d count as them pulling first.”
Tim signs the last of the papers, thoughtful. He stands to collect Rachel’s too and gives Raylan a little side eye as he says, “I’m pretty sure the instructors at Glynco teach us Marshals to unholster afore it gets to that point of tension.” Taps the papers on the table to straighten the edges. “You know, before the clock ticks round to high noon.”
Raylan shrugs and stands too, getting in close and reaching across in front of Tim to take the file folder in a move that would have been much more easily accomplished by walking the extra two steps around him.
“I like to give folk a sporting chance.” Tim can only see the back of Raylan as he reaches.
"You mean you like—“
“Besides, how could you follow my orders if you couldn’t read my eyes.”
“—that 0 to 60 rush—"
The words overlap. Tim already slinging the fast answer at Raylan’s leaning form. So as Raylan pulls back to vertical and their eyes meet, Tim‘s brain is only just catching up and he’s sure the realisation must be written across his face. And since he’d just stood there while Raylan leaned in, made no effort to increase the distance between, he notices it now as practically non-existent.
Raylan takes the papers from Tim’s unprotesting hands without looking at them. Tim’s periphery is vaguely aware of him tucking them into the folder.
"I'm not averse to the slow build on occasion." He says, his eyes sliding molasses slow down Tim's body, only getting so far as his crotch where they linger too long to leave Tim in any kind of uncertainty as to what Raylan means by that. He is treated to the glacial blink of a cat and suddenly Tim is a hologram. A glitching, flickering, shadow of himself. Unable to find anchor in reality.
He digs his nails into his palm. Could read something sci-fi next. Condenses back into his skin.
He wonders how long it’s been. A New York second? The flap of a butterfly's wings? The time it takes for Raylan Givens to pull once he reads the draw in a man’s eyes?
Tim can feel his mouth pursed forward like it so often seems to be around this man. He slides a hand across it, checking it’s still there. Checking it’s still his and that it hasn’t given him away. Yet.
Raylan locks onto that new focal point, tracks the hand even as it drops back to Tim’s belt. In that split second of Raylan’s attention being off his face, Tim can't stop himself from wetting his lips, but the hunter’s gaze is too quick for such an invitation to go unseen.
Raylan takes a hard step forward. The arm of a chair presses into Tim’s thighs, sends heat upwards so Tim feels his attention pooling. Purring. Raylan’s head tilts. He’s coiled tight and Tim mirrors him, for the most part. Tilts his chin up even though it feels like baring his throat. Tim’s lips loosen, his tongue presses to the back of his teeth and the inches separating them are simultaneously not enough and far, far too many.
"You got a story for me?" Raylan drawls, his breath warm, but where it meets Tim’s moistened lips, it chills.
And for a second Tim doesn't know what Raylan means; has to flip a switch to turn his brain back on. And his scrambling mind — ever helpful, ever on his side — summons the crosshairs of his rifle scope. His own personal HUD overlaid on Raylan, and really, that kind of thing could send him either way on the Bug Out or Bang Meter.
Apparently it can also ring the Bad Idea Bell and so
—with the choppy, disconnected hologram version of himself screaming ‘take what’s fucking offered’ from both over his shoulder and somewhere inside his head—
calm, collected Deputy Tim Gutterson, while still vaguely resident somewhere in the region of control, makes a choice.
"How'd you mean?" He breaks their staring contest. Turns to pull the chair out, creating a little more space which he steps into before turning back to Raylan and lets that first hesitant confusion about ‘a story for me’ spread across his face.
A normal, human expression.
As if he hasn’t just opened a door into the abyss and witnessed the dawning of a universe, only to slam it shut just seconds later.
Raylan does not immediately back pedal the way Tim, if he’d considered Raylan’s response at all, would have imagined. Instead, time holds its breath. Tim feels a shiver threaten the edges of his weakening grip on reality and pulls every muscle in his body taught to shut it down.
Raylan is predator-still but Tim sees the tiny movements rippling beneath the skin of his jaw and the tornado in his eyes, his gaze fixed on a point not of this world.
Tim sees whole towns torn up in that gaze.
Perhaps there’s a door Raylan opens too.
Tim has spent many hours learning to use his breath and his rifle in concert with mind and body. And whilst he might lack control over his smart mouth or the hands he can’t help but let talk for him on the regular, he has absolute mastery over his breath. Can play dead on the bottom of a pool long after someone thought him out of air.
That is why he continues to breathe now. It is the only reason.
And with that well-oxygenated brain of his, he wonders if an office fling with this disaster of a man might actually be fine.
Raylan surely won’t stick around that long, hating his home state as he does, so even if Tim has to navigate the ‘it won’t happen again’ dance for a few weeks at least he’d have enjoyed the fit of that long, languid body poured over his own lines.
It might be a little ambitious to hope Tim’s articulate hands could keep Raylan in just enough trouble that he wouldn’t go hunting for more but it’d be fun to at least try. Save Art from losing whatever a man loses once his hair is already gone.
Maybe there are worse things than slipping into the orbit of Raylan Givens. Tim thinks he could trust Raylan to keep his secret. Could give just enough of himself to enjoy the ride.
The weight of Tim’s foot has shifted imperceptibly when Raylan finally reboots.
No, not reboots, nothing so modern for this old time cowboy.
Raylan reloads.
"I certainly hope we never have cause to find out if my speed beats your accuracy." He fires, his face slipping into the charming, playful hate-to-love-him Raylan Givens that Tim is already growing familiar with. Has seen it infuriate people who can tell they’re going to give into him and are powerless to do anything about it.
The smouldering posture that moments ago held possibility now holds only the perilous restraint of The Lawman. A potential for casual violence bound in straps and chains so worn down they’re more promise than threat. It is all swagger and machismo even though, as far as Tim has noticed —and he would, certainly, notice— Raylan has not moved.
Tim doesn’t —can’t?— stop the shiver this time so it’s a relief that Raylan is shifting to the side and doesn’t see. Moves to pass him as he tucks the folder —Tim had entirely forgotten the folder— beneath his arm, pausing shoulder to shoulder to add, "Mainly 'cause I reckon you'd win that fight so I wouldn't be around to discover if it's cos you were quicker or better or both."
As if it had just been a pissing contest. Posturing over who would win in a fight. Because that is what men talk about with other men.
As Raylan heads out through the open doors Tim forces an audible scoff, looks over his shoulder to send his retort after Raylan’s retreating back, "You know it's both, Raylan."
He tries not to feel the taste of that name across his tongue. Tries not to hear the smoke in how he says it.
And he thinks, from the way his step hitches, Raylan might be trying not to hear it too.