Hey, guys. First fic I've written/posted in ages, so I hope you guys like it. It's my effort to throw out a little Tim fandom into the Justified section. This is sort of just a series of short stories I'm writing in my spare time, when I can't sleep and need a break from work and school. Also, as we know very little about Tim at this point in the series (you know, beyond the whole wise ass ex-ranger thing), I've taken the liberty of writing some of his backstory. Because I'm awesome like that... and really, really tired... Enjoy! (yawns)
Disclaimer: I do not own and am not affiliated with FX, Elmore Leonard or anything related to Justified. I am not obsessed with the show and the character of Tim Gutterson. I do not have Jacob Pitts handcuffed to my bed and completely at my mercy... that I'll publicly admit. Olivia is mine, though.
If Olivia had been given a choice as to where exactly she was to be relocated, she would not have picked Kentucky. Not that there were a whole hell of a lot of places that she was dying to see, but whenever she'd thought of Kentucky before, she'd always had a clear picture in her mind as to what the place would be like. There would be endless country, bad accents that would make her want to rip her own hair out – and she rather liked her chin length strawberry red bob – and everyone would have bad teeth and wear ugly clothes. It was, perhaps, an unfair generalization of what many considered to be beautiful and welcoming country territory, but it was an opinion that had been formed when she was six years old and stayed up past her bedtime, watching a movie where a group of girls had been kidnapped by hillbillies on the highway and held captive, eventually escaping only to be slashed into tiny little bits, while a brooding detective stumbled repeatedly as he attempted to solve the case. So she didn't see a problem in a mistaken assumption or two.
Besides, she had learned two things from that late night slasher movie marathon on the horror channel. The first was that gore was laughably bad during the 70s, when the film had been made. The second lesson she had taken away from the girls' ill fated road trip was that cops are incompetent jackholes and if you ever find yourself in a scrape, you better be ready to claw your way out for dear life because there's no one you can really rely on.
No, she would never have chosen Kentucky. But then again... "So, tell me Deputy Gutterson. Where in Kentucky are you from?" ...she hadn't expected to find a specimen such as the good deputy. He stood half a foot taller than she and when he'd taken her arm and escorted her from the train to the black SUV in the parking lot, she'd had ample opportunity to examine him carefully and take in every detail of his light brown hair that sometimes looked blond in the right light, his deep blue eyes that guarded more about him than they revealed and his perfectly formed muscles, which were defined but not overly so. She had no illusions that he was any different from any other man she'd ever met and, in the end, didn't and would never really give a damn about her or her safety, but it'd been a while since she'd spotted anyone she found at all pleasing to the eye and so she couldn't resist a friendly question or two when she would otherwise have kept to herself in the backseat.
And, she thought in annoyance and a hint of sadness, the good deputy was acting with nothing but professionalism. If she weren't sick of being a whore, she might have taken it personally.
Tim drove from the Lexington train station toward the courthouse, his mind half focused on looking out for any danger and the other half focused on the girl in the backseat. He wasn't expecting any trouble, of course, but if he'd learned anything during his time in Afghanistan, it was that nothing was to be taken for granted. And that, he thought, included her questions about him. He glanced back at her in the rearview mirror and reluctantly admitted to himself that she was indeed pretty. Her features weren't classic and she looked pale and thin enough to perhaps be or have been anorexic, but there was something in her eyes that hinted at a past that had seen too much and a hope to be a part of something better. It was probably what he'd found the most appealing about her, he thought, why he'd had to force himself to be just a little more distant, a little more cold than usual. It was the same expression he'd seen in his own eyes when he'd looked in the mirror during his final months as a ranger and sometime after he'd returned home. Hell, he still saw it sometimes.
But he was leaving those days behind him now and Olivia Mason was strictly off limits. "I'm from Louisville, Ma'am." he answered her simply and offered nothing more. Relationships between witnesses and marshals were a strange thing to manage; on the one hand, he had to keep Olivia at a distance from himself and stay unattached, for both her safety and his own, but he also had to gain her trust and reassure her of her safety, which inherently meant that Tim also had to be willing to offer up just a little bit of himself for Olivia to put her faith in. Even if, Tim reminded himself quietly, she wasn't going to be in Kentucky long before she was to give her testimony and then be moved to a new location. In just a few months, she would be somewhere else and he would just be a distant memory, a stepping stone, toward her new life.
The thought gave him a strange kind of comfort. "Any brothers or sisters?" Olivia asked. She'd always wanted an older brother, someone to look out for her. Protect her. God knows her father had done a damned shitty job of it. She'd thought about her status as an only child a lot since she'd gotten into her line of work and had quickly added it to the list of things she blamed on her father. Tim let out a quiet sigh.
"Older sister." he answered. He bit back the thoughts that immediately followed the mention of her; he hadn't heard from her in the past few days. He wondered if things were all right, if she'd worked things out with Jack after all or if they were having the lawyers argue out a new custody agreement. He saw Olivia smile in the mirror.
"Lucky. Are you two close?" she asked with interest. She would never have guessed that he'd had an older sister. He seemed so goddamned distant that she'd assumed he was an only child as well. In her vast experience of men with sisters, they were usually warm toward the opposite sex. They'd been trained to be from a young age at the risk of their sisters getting their asses in trouble. She wondered briefly if she was making him uncomfortable with her questions, then wondered why she'd even considered it when she didn't really care.
Tim debated the question. He didn't usually discuss his family with anyone, let alone witnesses. Shit, no one had really even asked before and Tim wasn't the type to invite questions about himself. He thought that it was probably a line of questioning that he should try to avoid, but the traffic was so goddamned slow and he was still a good fifteen minutes from the courthouse, and she was staring at him from the backseat with those chocolate brown eyes that were practically begging for a conversation that didn't revolve around her testimony or the fact that she'd just left everything she'd ever known behind her. And Tim... had been taught to take care of a woman, give her what she needed. A lesson he'd learned early on in life, he reflected, courtesy of his sister. "We try to be." he answered her. He resisted the frown that tugged at his lips when he saw her make that same motion at his words. She sighed unhappily.
"Sounds complicated." Olivia said, wondering what exactly 'we try to be' meant. How did one 'try' to be close to someone else? You were either close to that person or you wished they would be run over by a bus. Well, all right, she thought. Maybe that was a tad extreme, but still...she supposed it could explain the distance. He had mommy issues. Or sister issues. Whatever the fuck those intellectual mind readers called it. "How does your wife feel about it?" she asked, not too subtly. She was half hoping to make him squirm, just to get some kind of reaction out of him. Annoyingly, it didn't work and she guessed the deputy knew full well that she hadn't missed the lack of a wedding band on his left hand ring finger.
Actually, Tim had never really thought of marriage in his life. He'd never had the time for it. "I'm not married." he told her. Hell, he'd never even been close.
"Girlfriend, then." Olivia corrected herself, her thoughts drifting from the conversation to the smell of fried chicken as they drove past a restaurant. Damn, she was starving. How long had it been since she'd eaten? What had she eaten? It probably wasn't a good sign that she couldn't even remember. Her shift in focus wasn't lost on Tim and he made a quick mental note that she'd need food of some kind once they reached the courthouse.
"No girlfriend." Tim replied. Olivia returned her attention to the man in the driver's seat. So, he was single? She found that hard to believe. He was the classic strong, silent type, and he was definitely nice to look at. Then again, the longest phrase he'd said to her since her arrival in Lexington had been 'Good morning, Miss Mason. I'm Deputy Gutterson. I'm here to take you to the courthouse.' before exchanging far more words that she couldn't quite catch with the marshal who'd escorted her there on the train. No asking how her day was – not that it was some kind of big mystery that her day had been complete shit so far, what with the all night train ride – or what the trip had been like, what she thought about Kentucky, what she was expecting. If she hadn't been asking him questions, they'd probably be sitting in a silent stupor as he drove through mid-afternoon traffic. She couldn't resist the next question.
"Boyfriend?" she asked curiously, one eyebrow raised ever so slightly as she waited for his reaction. She was satisfied when he immediately glanced back at her in the mirror again. His face held no sign of shock or annoyance at her questioning, but she noticed him shift slightly in his seat and had to bite back her smile at having finally gotten a reaction out of him. Not that she had Tim fooled, anyhow. He was well aware that even as he had noticed right away that she was pretty, she had also made her own assessment of his figure and judging by how often she looked him over and the questions she was asking him, he figured she probably liked the view.
Which is why, he thought, he would maintain distance and focus his attentions on the road and getting her safely to the courthouse. "No." he answered simply, refusing to say anymore on the subject. He was there to transport Olivia Mason, not tell her all about his personal life.
…not that he had a personal life…. but if he did, he was damned sure that he wouldn't be talking about it to a witness. Dear God, why was that statement so goddamned depressing? He didn't want to think about the answer.
"Too bad." Olivia said airily as she leaned back in her seat and closed her tired eyes. "You seem like the kind of guy a girl would be lucky to have." Not her, of course, because that was wholly impossible, but some leggy, petite damsel who couldn't count past ten without taking off her shoes and a vocabulary equally as minimal would be lucky to land a catch such as the next unabomber in the front seat. She wondered what kind of woman she'd be, to catch the deputy's attention. Soft or sturdy? Did he prefer strong women, who knew how to handle themselves, or women who preferred to be handled? Would they be the type of couple who talked about everything or would they just understand, simply by looking at each other, what the other was thinking or needed in that moment? …what must it be like, she thought…to be so connected to someone?
Tim could tell when she shifted from simply leaning back with closed eyes to having drifted off into sleep. Her breathing pattern changed and her face softened, relaxed, as her body tried to recover some of the strength it had inevitably lost during the hard trip there. He determined not to think on her words, although they still hung in the air. Not at that moment, at least. It wasn't the time, he thought, and in his car with a federally protected witness of a violent crime in his backseat was hardly the place. But still, he knew, when he returned home from work later that day, to his empty house with the television he barely watched and the six pack he didn't find appealing beyond the need for a drink after a long day, he'd crack open a bottle of beer and sit down on his overstuffed couch and his mind would drift back to these moments, this somewhat inconsequential conversation and that sleeping girl in the backseat who gave him the impression of both giving up and fighting tooth and nail at the same time. He couldn't get her to that courthouse fast enough.
So why, when the thought slowly entered his mind as he glanced back at her resting form once more, the silent wish that traffic might never move again, did the idea seem so appealing?