"Raylan…" Tim knelt next to his friend's seemingly unconscious body, "Ray… c'mon." The sniper reached out and gently patted the cowboy's cheek. "Do not do this to me. Ray…"
Raylan muttered something and turned his head, his cheek resting against Tim's hand. Shit. Tim checked around the room. Bottle of Maker's Mark up on the table, glass next to Raylan. The bottle was nearly full, a rough guestimate of the contents said that Raylan had had maybe two fingers' worth in the glass.
Tim reached into his back pocket, pulled out a latex glove and very carefully picked up the glass. Took a very cautious sniff. It smelled of bourbon. No possibility that a single glass would lay Raylan out like this, but something in the bourbon?
Raylan was, after all, a Kentucky boy… Tim was fairly certain that bourbon actually ran through his veins. It had to be something in the bourbon. He wasn't unconscious, no signs of any lumps or bumps, he was simply asleep.
It made absolutely no sense to Tim, and what was worse, he had been trying to wake Raylan for nearly ten minutes.
Footsteps returning behind him caused Tim to turn his head.
"Nelson. Where's the bus?"
Nelson Dunlop stared down at his sometime partner, "Bus is on it's way, the rest of it…" he trailed off for a second. Tim frowned impatiently, and Nelson put his hands up in that universal gesture of don't shoot the messenger. "You ain't gonna like it. There's a dead man in the bath, and a beautiful woman in the bed, asleep… and our witness is nowhere in sight." He finished on a depressed-sounding sigh.
Tim closed his eyes, well Raylan was really in the shit now and no mistake. Knowing Raylan the way Tim did, the younger man knew this was not Raylan's fault, but likely a combination of the chaos that Raylan's presence in Harlan always set off backed up with Raylan's own stubborn inability to stay out of trouble.
Raylan Givens simply didn't ever back down from a fight.
Tim couldn't deny his partner's courage, or his quick draw skills, or even his intuition. He just wished that occasionally Raylan would listen to his instinct of self-preservation that was probably screaming at him, and actually take the less messy, complicated and chaotic solution.
"Dammit, Ray… what the hell have you gotten yourself mixed up in now?" Tim sighed irritably. Raylan turned his head a little, pressing his cheek into Tim's palm. Tim closed his eyes and sighed. Raylan Givens was a pain in the ass, but he was Tim's best pain in the ass friend, like Rachel and Tim would do anything for his friends.
Nelson reappeared to announce that the ambulance had arrived, together with the Chief, and Tim took a moment to pull himself together. Whatever was happening here, Raylan needed Tim's A game.
But first they needed to wake Raylan up.