Chapter Text
“Where’s your boyfriend?” Art asked as Ava was led clear of the cabin and its mess.
She rubbed her wrist absent-mindedly. “Which one?” Finished with her statement, she looked for all the world like she just wanted to go home and sleep. She walked past Raylan without a glance in his direction.
Art was still chuckling at that when Raylan joined him. “Well, this ought to be a good story, Raylan, why don’t you start from the top? Once upon a time, there was a shootout at a cabin...” he motioned for Raylan to pick up where he left off.
And Raylan would have, he definitely would have, but he was distracted by the unfamiliar truck parked just outside the police perimeter. “Huh.”
Art followed his gaze, and they watched as Ava approached the truck, not even hesitating to get in. “And which boyfriend is that, I wonder.”
Raylan spared an annoyed glance at his boss. “Isn’t.”
Art grinned, unrepentant. “Then who is it? Someone in Boyd’s crew?”
“Nope,” Raylan eyed the truck, wishing it would turn already so he could see the license plate. “I know of everyone in his crew. This kid’s a wildcard.”
“Kid?” Art looked at Raylan, intrigued. “You know him?”
He shook his head. “Saw him at the VFW recently,” was all he felt like saying. Had, in fact, seen this twenty-something talk down another vet with a grenade, stop him from blowing up the VFW, Arlo, and everyone else within a close radius. Raylan had tried to talk to him then, but this guy had taken one look at his badge and left. And maybe now Raylan knew why.
“Well then,” Art did that pre-sigh tone of his. “Let’s get back to the dead bodies at hand.”
***
Tim kept his face smooth, blank, eyes straight ahead as Ava got in. They were both silent for a minute. Literally, sixty seconds. Tim counted. “Okay,” she finally said, quiet, almost unsure.
He nodded, pulling the truck away from the madness in front of them. “Boyd went after the shooter?”
She glanced sideways at him. “How’d you know that?”
“Magic.”
“Tim.”
He almost smiled. Almost. “He called me this morning.” It wouldn’t have been a happy smile anyway.
She eyed him some more, recognizing his tone, his knuckles white against the steering wheel. “Is there any chance your rifle is in the back?”
“Missing a few rounds, maybe.”
Ava closed her eyes. “Boyd had you playing backup,” she guessed. “He didn’t shoot that last guy by the car. You did.” More guesses. “Does Raylan know?”
“Deputy Tombstone?” Tim raised an eyebrow, shook his head. “Doubt it.”
She shook her head too, a scolding tone creeping into her voice. “I thought you weren’t doing that anymore, Tim. Not for anyone named Crowder. You-”
“You think I did it for him?” he tried to keep the anger out of his words. It didn’t work.
She turned fully to face him, eyes scrutinizing. “Are you mad at me for something?”
He gripped the steering wheel tighter. Silent for a bit, then he spoke. “You should’ve called me.”
“Well, I was a hostage,” she reminded him. “And unconscious for most of it. I don’t rightly know when I was supposed to pick up the ph-”
“I found a sawed-off at your place,” he kept at it. “Never seen that before.”
“I got it from Helen,” she started to grow defensive.
Good, she should be defensive. That meant she knew she’d done something wrong. “Which means someone was giving you trouble before today. You should’ve called me.”
“And how do I do that? I don’t know where you are half the time you leave the house,” she pointed out. And then she did that thing he hated, that thing where she smiled warmly at him. Like she liked him. “I didn’t want to drag you anymore into it, honey. You’d already pissed Bo off enough. And I needed to show him I could protect myself.”
“Oh, yeah, great job there,” he grumbled.
She squeezed his arm. “I don’t know exactly when you got it in your head that it’s your job to protect me, but it ain’t. I appreciate it, but no.”
Thing was, Tim could pinpoint the moment he’d made it his job.
A few weeks after his honorable discharge (which is basically the Army's way of saying, "it's not you, it's me"), aimlessly wandering from bar to bar and nightmare to nightmare in Little Rock, a contact from Afghanistan had sent him a phone number. Of course, the area code had been Kentucky, so Tim had tried to send it right the fuck back. But the guy insisted- an old Gulf War buddy of his could use Tim’s kind of expertise.
Tim had needed something to take his mind away from... himself, really, from the things he saw every time he closed his eyes, so the next morning he got his meager duffel of belongings and his rifle into a truck and drove out to meet Boyd Crowder.
Miraculously, they hadn’t hated each other.
Tim appreciated Boyd’s ability to fill silences without asking him to do the same. Boyd appreciated Tim’s ability to understand the words he was using when he did. Add in their mutual ability to keep calm under pressure, their mutual ability to make a joke at the worst time, and Tim’s eagle eye behind a gun, and the freelance position Tim took up worked out nicely.
Boyd’s father Bo, something of a Harlan ‘Godfather’ best Tim could guess, ended up in prison not long after Tim arrived, for which he was kinda grateful. For one, he was never comfortable around fathers of any type. And for another, Bo was an asshole. Boyd might’ve been on the wrong side of the law, but there was a... morality? A something, a code maybe, that Tim could appreciate if not totally agree with. Bo was just a criminal. A villain. (Most fathers were, though. Weren’t they?)
Tim worked with Boyd and his crew without ever fully being a part of it- the ‘white power’ bullshit wasn’t for him, and there's no way he could trust being part of a team that wasn't his unit overseas. Boyd let that go, probably knowing that Tim saw more of him- more behind his 'white power' bullshit- than most others did. And Boyd never questioned Tim when he declined a particular job or disappeared for a few days at a time. They understood each other; Tim was his own man, and somehow he always found his way back to Harlan.
Then one night he helped Boyd get his drunk asshole of a brother home from a bar. And he’d met Bowman’s wife. And Tim, who’d been dealing with flashbacks and half-remembered nightmares from the last nine years of service, was suddenly remembering farther back. His mama, the way she moved stiffly sometimes, eye contact dashing here and there.
Tim’s hands had stayed permanently curled into fists the whole time he was there. The one time he and Ava had actually met eyelines, they’d held it too long. Somehow recognized the bruises inside each other.
Growing up, Tim had never been able to do anything about his father, never been able to stop him. But this night, he could do something. Kept himself between Bowman and Ava at all times, silently but purposefully directing him away whenever he got too close. When Boyd finally pulled Bowman up the stairs to pour him into bed, Ava (probably without realizing it) let out a breath, shoulders relaxing.
She looked at Tim standing awkwardly at the foot of the stairs. “Help me wash these dishes,” she ordered, woman of the house once more. He’d paused, listened to make sure Bowman was really down for the count, then obeyed.
They worked mostly in silence, Ava occasionally directing him where a dry dish should go. “You’re not one of the white-power-raging freaks, are you?” she asked, sounding like she already knew the answer.
He shook his head, drying the plate she handed him. “Don’t much care for it.” He’d fought side by side with too many guys to judge by skin color. How they reacted to bullets flying at their heads, how well they learned not to piss him off, sure, but not race.
“Where you staying?” she asked, curious, handing him another plate.
He shrugged. “Here and there.” He liked sleeping outdoors when the weather was nice. And there were enough dirt-poor, aimless people in Harlan that crashing on an empty couch wasn’t unusual to most.
“Well,” she had regarded him all seriously. “If you need a place tonight, ‘here’ can be... well, here.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think we-”
Ava had laughed then, the first time he’d heard it. “No ‘we’, kid, I swear. I’m married after all,” the laugh turned dark for a second. “But if Boyd trusts you this much, I’m guessing you won’t run off with our silver in the middle of the night. And I-” she’d stopped, started again. “I think you and I understand some situations.”
He nodded without meaning to. Then stopped himself from revealing anything more. “You have that much silver to worry about?” he asked instead.
She laughed again. “We have a guest room you can sleep in, I’ll-”
“No,” Tim got firm, insistent. “You sleep in the guest room. I can take the couch.”
Ava smiled sadly, knowingly. “One night won’t change him, son.”
He stayed firm. “I’m homeless a lot.”
She squinted at him, smile still in place. “What’d you say your name was?”
He fidgeted. He hadn’t done that in years. “Tim. Gutterson.” He suddenly felt stupid, awkward, years younger than he was.
She squeezed his hand for a second when he handed back the dishtowel. “Let me get you a pillow for the couch, Tim.”
Boyd hadn’t said a thing about the arrangement, and part of Tim always wondered if he’d wanted it this way- unable to go against his own brother but supplying Ava with someone who could.
And Tim definitely tried.
He couldn’t be there every night, couldn’t stop every beating, but he ran interference whenever he could, sometimes coming to blows with Bowman himself. Or sometimes Tim and Ava would leave the house, get in Tim’s truck and just drive, passing the time until they knew Bowman would be asleep or passed out.
It was on one of these drives that Tim realized his purpose there, his job. Nothing particularly different about this drive, really. Just... Ava had turned off some country song she knew Tim hated and switched the radio to the one classic rock station Harlan got. She never cared much for AC/DC herself, but knew Tim did.
It had hit him then- nobody else knew that about him. Nobody else knew his mama’s name, the names of his still-living friends in the service (he didn’t talk about the dead ones). He knew the way Ava liked her coffee, how much she dreaded someday having to go back to hairdressing, but that she absolutely would if it meant getting away from Bowman. How she thought Boyd was creepy, but didn’t hate him like she did everyone else in that family.
Ava had somehow become something like family to him, not that he’d ever admit it to her, Boyd, or anyone else on this earth. But, he also had to admit it was nice. Comforting, maybe? And so he had to protect it.
It was during that drive that he’d offered to teach Ava how to shoot a gun.
And now, here they were. Bowman dead. Bo (probably? Tim hadn’t looked too hard) dead. Boyd in the wind. U.S. Marshals most likely knew his license plate number. Tim with another kill on his list (but not his conscience). Ava with another harrowingly stupid story to tell. Like sand through the hourglass... yadda yadda yadda.
They spent the ride back to Ava’s mostly silent, Tim not sure if he was more angry at having to be involved or at not being involved sooner. He pulled up to her house, sat there quietly, not getting out. Not even turning the truck off.
Ava didn’t get out either, somewhat wary now. Tim had really never been mad at her before. “You coming in?” she ventured.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “I- I’m pissed, Ava.”
“I know,” she said it apologetically, maybe so she wouldn’t actually have to apologize. “It’s over now, though, okay? And you did your part. Come inside, I’ll cook some dinner. Don’t know about you, but I’m starving.” She fished a pack of cigarettes out of his glove compartment. He didn’t smoke but had taken to leaving some there for her. “Fried chicken?”
He could feel himself giving in and tried to hold out just a little longer. “You got some psychological issue that says you have to cook fried chicken when people get shot?” he asked with more bite than was necessary.
“Maybe,” she deliberately lit the cigarette with a flourish, but at least blew the smoke out the window. “Can’t tell me you’re not hungry, kid. I know you are.”
“Ava,” he said quietly. No. He wanted to be angry for a little longer.
She just smiled, overly sweet. “Maybe some fried okra, too?”
“I’m not helping either of you next time,” he warned. “Gonna let you both die, bulldoze this house down, and build a gun range over it. With a hair salon.”
She laughed, and he was a little relieved to see some nervous energy leave her. Her hands had been shaking since she got in the truck, but now they were steady. “Hit me where it hurts, Timmy.”
He turned the truck off and followed her into the house.
***
Maybe she was too exhausted to actually sleep. That’s what Ava told herself, anyway. She tossed and turned for an hour or two, bedside lamp on, then off. Blanket on, then off. Nothing worked. Finally, about three in the morning, she huffed angrily and sat up. Throwing a robe on over her nightgown, she mentally catalogued the cupboards in her kitchen. Coffee, hot cocoa, bourbon...
Something had to help, right?
She crept past the guest room, not wanting to wake up Tim, and eased down the stairs, proud of herself for remembering to step past the third creaky one. Of course, that plan went all to shit when she reached the bottom of the stairs and nearly jumped out of her skin at the quiet sound in her living room, calming only once her eyes adjusted to the darkness.
Oh, of course. Tim was asleep on the couch.
She leaned in the doorway, studied him for a moment. He was absolutely still, curled up a little, one hand lying a few inches from the shotgun he had confiscated from her. Face smoothed of its normal tension, he looked... young. As young as he actually was, the kind of young she sometimes forgot he actually was.
He rarely slept in the guest room, no matter how many times she offered or insisted. It was like that was too nice for him, or too real. He could leave so much easier if he was just on the couch.
Ava’d never say it out loud, but she was always relieved when she woke up in the morning and he was still there. She worried about him otherwise. In the year or so that she’d gotten to know Tim, she’d definitely grown fond of him. Despite his too-bitter, too-sarcastic, too-military exterior, there was still a kid underneath. She was sure of it. And maybe she’d taken it upon herself to look after that kid.
In a way, she was actually grateful Tim had been in the middle of one of his disappearing acts when she killed Bowman. He would’ve been the one to do it if he’d been there. Ava knew Tim would’ve shot him to protect her. And with what happened with Bo after... He hadn’t been unscathed as it was, but it could’ve been worse. At least that’s what she’d told herself the next time she saw him again, the black eye, the stitches...
Besides, if Tim had been around, he would’ve given her all kinds of shit for getting involved with Raylan. She wondered sometimes whether Tim reminded her more of him or of-
She was brought out of her thoughts quickly and sharply- footsteps on the front porch. In the span of her eyes blinking closed and open again, Tim had rolled off the couch, shotgun pointed at the door. Without a word he moved closer to it, ticking his head to the side to tell her to get behind him.
They were both silent for a moment, waiting, and then Ava’s breath was nearly pulled out of her when whoever it was actually knocked on the door. She exchanged a confused look with Tim, and he inched forward, trying to peer through the window without being seen. His shoulders dropped, relaxed, at the exact moment a soft voice called out, “Ava?”
“Oh for the love of-” she pushed past Tim and opened the door. “What the hell are you doing here, Boyd?”
He was leaning in the doorway, exhausted, drooping against the frame. His arm in a sling. His eyes half-open. Looking just how she felt. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Tim lower the gun, backing up.
“I’m sorry to call upon you so late,” Boyd was speaking quietly, slowly. Almost dazed, maybe. “But I wanted to see how you were faring.” He looked past her to Tim, nodding... something? to him. Thanks maybe, or an okay, a reassurance, Ava wasn’t sure. But she heard Tim’s footsteps, knew he was heading for the kitchen.
“I’ll make some coffee,” he murmured over his shoulder to them.
Ava pulled the door back farther, gesturing for Boyd to come in. “You go to the hospital?” she asked, eyeing the sling.
“I did,” he moved carefully, contained. Reminding her of Tim after he’d wake up from a nightmare, when he was still trying to keep everything inside.
She led him over to the couch. “Did you get that woman?”
“Raylan did.” He spoke just as controlled.
She let that part go, studying him instead. He wasn’t the Boyd she thought she knew, he wasn’t brash and swaggering, spiteful, weaselly. He was beaten down. Ava sighed, cursing the pity tugging at her heart. “You have a place to stay tonight?” she asked, almost against her will.
Boyd blinked at her, surprised. “Ava, truly, that isn’t why I’m here.”
“And it isn’t why I let you in the house. But here we are,” she joined him on the couch, keeping a good amount of space between them. “You saved my life today. And you-” You saw your daddy die almost came out of her mouth. But then, he apparently had planned to kill Bo today, so she wasn’t exactly sure how touchy of a subject that was. “You look like you need a safe place for the night.”
Tim appeared in the doorway with three mugs, passing them around. He took up the seat across from them silently, eyes straying to the door every once in awhile, like he was preparing for someone else to show up. The shotgun was propped up next to him, but Tim seem unconcerned besides that, sipping on his coffee.
Ava looked at him, smiled, then turned back to Boyd. “You can sleep on the couch-”
“Guest room,” Tim corrected.
She huffed. “You allergic to that room or something?” she half-snapped. “He’s roughed up, Tim, why make him climb the stairs for-”
“Better him pulling a muscle climbing the stairs than being our first line of defense if any leftovers of Bo’s men or the damn Mexican cartel show up,” Tim half-snapped right back.
That shut her up. “Oh.”
Boyd set aside his coffee mug. “I think, just this once, I’ll have to agree with young Timothy here.” Ava appreciated that for the affronted glare Tim sent his way. It was nice to think that someone else in this world could annoy Tim like she could. She wasn’t sure yet if she appreciated that it was Boyd, but still.
Another sigh. “Well luckily, the bed’s already made-” another pointed look at Tim that was purposefully ignored. “And you’re familiar with where it is, so...” she waved a hand around vaguely.
Boyd just nodded, still rather stiff. “I wanted to thank you- both of you- for today. And apologize.” He held Ava’s gaze. “Ava, I didn’t know his plan was to-”
“That was because of Raylan, Boyd,” she cut him off. “Not you.”
“It was still my daddy who perpetrated the crime,” he shook his head. “And I can only assure you it won’t happen again. I promise you that.” He glanced over at Tim. “I won’t get either of you involved like that again.”
Tim just shrugged, brushing it away like he did everything (or filing it away for later thought, Ava was never sure). Ava, though, continued to study Boyd. “What are you going to do now?” she asked softly, surprised by how curious she was.
Boyd was quiet for awhile, looking down at his hands. “I don’t rightly know just yet.” It seemed to be the most truthful thing he’d ever said.
“Well...” she was almost at a loss. This wasn’t the same Boyd, she thought again. “Maybe things will look better in the morning. Go on up and get some rest now.”
Boyd blinked at her, a hint of surprise in the look, but obeyed, setting his mug down on the coffee table. He stood and made his way unsteadily up the stairs.
They waited until they heard the guest room door open and shut before looking at each other. Ava held up a finger warningly. “Don’t you start.”
Tim shrugged, smiling a little. “Didn’t say nothing.”
“You’re saying ‘nothing’ real loud, Timmy,” she glared, smiling too. “It’s just for tonight.”
“Mmhmm,” Tim made a show of being placating. “Sure.”
“Tim,” she protested. “I mean it. Just for tonight.”
“Yeah,” he said right back, finishing his own coffee, setting it aside. “That’s what you said about me, isn’t it?”
She gathered the mugs to take back into the kitchen, ruffling his hair as she walked by. “And if I ever get you past the damn couch, I’ll actually be proven wrong.” She felt his glare even with her back turned, and counted it as a victory.
Of course, Tim was right.
‘Just for tonight’ became a few nights, a week, then longer. Then it just became, well, life. The boys would get up early, and Boyd would already be out at the mines by the time Ava woke up. (He really was going; Tim confided in Ava one day that he had followed Boyd to make sure.) By the time Ava would get back from her job (God, she hated the beauty parlor), it would be almost dinner time. If Tim was around that week, he’d help her cook, Boyd joining them if he wasn’t working a night shift.
Sometimes.
Maybe a few weeks into their arrangement, Boyd started coming back to the house later and later, smelling of alcohol and blood, face blackened from bruises and coal dust.
“Damn it, Boyd,” she sighed, yanking him into the bathroom to find the first aid kit. “We had a deal.”
“We still do,” he murmured. His voice was still so dazed and passive, slow-moving like molasses. “I’m keeping the alcohol out of your house.”
“And taking up some new after-school activities?” she accused, unsure of what was making her more upset- that Boyd had broken a rule or that she had been so hopeful he wouldn’t. She’d gotten... used to him lately. Handing him an ice pack for his eye, she grabbed antiseptic wipes to deal with his bloody knuckles.
“I promise you, Ava, I haven’t returned to my former ways,” he managed to sound convincing even with that weird new voice.
“Then why are you coming home every night looking like this?”
“Because some other patrons of Audrey’s don’t seem to understand our agreement,” he barely winced when she rubbed alcohol on the cuts, maybe a little harder than necessary.
“Audrey’s?!” she hissed, unsure of why she was so affronted by that.
Tim chose that moment to appear, eyed them both, then sighed. Resigned, like he’d expected them both to be right there, doing just that. “I’ll get dinner started.” Then he was gone from the doorway, back down the stairs.
They were quiet for a second, momentum broken. “When did he reappear?” Boyd asked, smiling just a little.
Tim had been gone for six days this time. She didn’t sigh. She absolutely didn’t. “Some time this morning after you left.”
“Any idea where he was on this particular sojourn?”
Ava glared, slapping a bandaid on his hand. “Tim’s business is his own. You know that.”
Boyd looked genuinely surprised. “I always assumed his little vacations were his way of avoiding a job from me or my daddy. I thought you knew-”
“Tim’s business is his own,” she repeated firmly. “I trust him enough to leave that alone.” And almost enough to know he’ll come back here every time.
Boyd seemed to hear her thoughts, nodding along. “You’re doing too fine a thing, Ava, looking after both of us.”
She sighed, fought back a smile, not wanting to give in to the complement (Tim was rubbing off on her). “Well, he helps me look after you some. Maybe you could return the favor.”
She’d meant it as a joke, but Boyd nodded, genuine. “I’ll see what I can do.”
***
Boyd found it puzzling sometimes that the two people he currently trusted most in this world were the woman who killed his brother (and almost him) and the strange young man who slept on her couch. Even though neither of them trusted him half as much.
Tim was most definitely a puzzle to Boyd. Intriguing. Not in the way Tim was confusing to most people, he got that. The contained, seemingly secretive way Tim held himself had a lot to do with the things he’d seen and done overseas. While Boyd’s service had not been any sort of picnic, it had been a hell of a lot better than Tim’s. Boyd knew enough to leave Tim be in that respect.
But he was constantly surprised by Tim’s personality, his quirks, the code he seemed to live by that even Boyd’s brain couldn’t quite crack. And, funny enough, his taste in literature. It came up one night on the front porch, sitting in the quiet, listening through an open window as Ava washed dishes in the kitchen.
“‘Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing,’” Boyd gave a sigh of contentment, stretching sore muscles as he leaned back in one of the chairs.
Tim was at his normal spot, sitting on the porch rail, one leg dangling down almost childishly. “Roosevelt.”
Boyd leaned his chair back almost too far, snapping back upright to smile at him. Tim just shrugged, looking like he wanted to kick himself for saying anything at all. “Why Timothy, I am impressed.”
Another shrug, another glare. (Tim always got so annoyed when Boyd used his full name. It was why Boyd did it so often.) “I know how to read.”
“Well, you’re from Arkansas. I couldn’t be too sure of that,” he kept on grinning.
Tim raised an eyebrow. Really? “You’re from Harlan.”
He thought that over for half a second. “Touché.” Settling back in the chair again, “You a fan of ol’ Theodore?”
“Used to be,” Tim looked the other way, out across the yard, towards the mountains.
“Not anymore?” Boyd prompted.
Tim’s hands kept busy, zipping and unzipping his jacket. “Can’t really get behind anyone who would romanticize war after going through it.”
Boyd let that sit between them quietly, giving the words and history behind them the respect they deserved. “Kerouac?” he asked after a bit.
An actual, honest-to-the-high-Lord smile appeared on Tim’s face. Not a smirk, a smile. It was small but it was there. “Him, I like. Leary too.”
“I thought as much,” Boyd matched the smile. “Different type of romanticism.”
Tim cocked his head to the side, acknowledging that. “But because their reality sucked, not because of ill-conceived notions. Not like Roosevelt or- or McCarthy?”
“Ah,” Boyd nodded sagely. “McCarthy. An outsider view of our south, masquerading as inside.”
“And of traveling through, of-” Tim hesitated, then ploughed on through his original thought. “Of fathers and sons.”
Boyd nodded again, knowing better than to pick at that thread. Especially not when his own was still too frayed. But it did very much explain why Tim had attached himself to Ava, and why she had so easily reciprocated. “How about Faulkner?”
Tim shrugged, and Boyd was pleased to note he was turned a little more towards the porch- and Boyd. “Couldn’t ever really sit still long enough to get through most of his stuff.”
Boyd found that hard to believe, as un-stirred as Tim usually seemed to be. “But you could get through Cormac McCarthy?”
The smile went a little dark. “Mostly out of spite.”
He chuckled, enjoying this side of Tim. He wished he’d known about it earlier, back when he’d used him as not much more than a hired gun. He opened his mouth to throw out another name- another test- but a throat clearing next to him interrupted.
Ava stood there, eyeing them both a bit strangely. “Coffee could use some making,” she said. “Is book club over, or are you waiting for Oprah to show up?”
Tim rolled his eyes, sliding off the porch rail and going inside without another word. Between the three of them, he made the best coffee and they all knew it. Boyd lingered for a moment, smiling at Ava. “I forgot how much I like having Timothy around.”
“Oh, and I’m sure he feels the same way,” she bantered back with a real smile of her own. She had a truly beautiful smile, Boyd realized. He didn’t see it nearly often enough. And he liked it.
And he was truly in trouble.