Title: Gravitation Is Not Responsible For People Falling In Love
Disclaimer: I own nothing. This is just for fun. Title is a quote from Albert Einstein.
Rating: M. For language, I guess.
Warnings: Nah. Or well, they do curse, like a lot.
Summary: Absolutely gracious and self indulgent slashy schmoop with little, if any, plot and sloppy characterization (sorry). Raylan has a scare, Tim´s too angry to notice. Tim/Raylan SLASH.
Author´s note: I´d rather read than write, but I was getting desperate for MORE Tim/Raylan fic, so this happened… Also… I´m counting on suspension of disbelief for everything.
He is the perfect image of calm and professional when he steps out of the car. No one will see that he drove here speeding like a madman or hear how loud his pulse is hammering through him as he walks over to the suit and tie that´s in charge. If they did, it would be deafening enough to stop the chaotic scene - FBI and Police scurrying around like ants - right in its tracks. Raylan watches it all pass by in slow motion, sounds filtering in as if under water. Something was wrong. Art had called and his voice had sounded...well… Art had called and he was worried about Tim. Something was very wrong.
The suit tries to dismiss him, says something about a timetable and it´s unbelievably irritating but Raylan knows how to play his part well enough to get what he wants. Information registers like a check-list. The suit sighs. Check. Backwoods, inbred and arms dealing Old Testament type cult spotted the police too early. Check. They proved to be smarter than expected and had anticipated FBI game plan in advance. Check. People had died. Check. An agent had a bullet in her right lung. A local cop went missing somewhere between the barn and the chapel. A sniper had gotten shot in the back. As in shot dead. Shit.
Raylan has just about enough time to think about shooting someone´s face off, then think about passing out cold, before he sees Tim come barreling down the hillside, rifle across his back and Glock in his left hand, shirt and arms smeared with something dark red – blood - it´s blood, but he´s walking just fine so he can´t be... Raylan breathes slowly, blinks a couple of times, and decides against sitting down on the ground on account of it being sort of wet. Tim is very much alive, and he is angry. Rabidly furious, even.
He stalks right up to the suit and punches him in jaw. There´s a sickly, flapping kind of a snap as his fist connects, followed by a healthy gush of blood and part of a tooth tumbling to the ground. Raylan might be feeling a bit off at the moment, but he gets in between quick enough, eyes fixed on the suit, palm flat against Tim´s Kevlar covered chest - too thick to feel a heartbeat through - the thought isn´t rational, he knows, but it makes his usually unshakable footing waver. He manages a semi-composed "Hey now, let´s not have too much fun here today…" before Tim steps out in front of him, as if he´s not even there. It´s a spectacular diss, really.
"What exactly do you think you´re doing, marshal!" The suit sounds lispy and congested, holding his heavily bleeding face. Tim snarls, which might have been funny, had it not been absolutely terrifying.
"I told you it was a bad plan. I goddamn told you they´d figure it out and come at us from behind. I barely had time to pull my sidearm…"
"Oh you are out of line, kid. It wasn´t your call and I strongly suggest you back off, before I…"
"Fuck out of line. Your guy on the other side of the compound is dead. That´s on you."
He walks away before there´s time for any kind of reply. Raylan ogles his back. Tim´s not likely to piss off authority. He´s polite enough when he needs to be and he always chooses his words carefully, even when he´s joking around. He´d stay calm and collected as ever in the middle of a freaking zombie apocalypse. Reliable and steady, says yes sir and no sir, follows rules and orders almost too well and old Baywatch reruns makes him giggle like a little girl. Sometimes it´s easy to forget that Tim thrives in danger, that he´s at his best when he´s fighting some war or another and that he´s killed more people than he cares to think about. It´s easy to forget that Tim is absolutely relentless, in every possible way.
He´s wiping a dead man's blood from his hands when Raylan catches up with him a few minutes later, expression still frozen in anger.
"Tim… what the hell happened?" He glances over, shakes his head and frees himself from the bulletproof vest, harshly, like it´s strangling him.
"I don´t wanna talk about it."
Tim´s hands are steady as ever, but Raylan can see the slight shiver in his stance. He looks down at his own boots, vision spinning for a second or two, shit, he´d thought…
"Come on, I´ll take you back to Lexington." His voice cracks, more than a little bit; it gets him some attention.
"Raylan, you alright there?" The son of a bitch manages to sound perfectly sarcastic. Raylan is dying to smack him over the head or punch him in the face, anything to get his hands on him, really, because Jesus Christ he could be dead now and he isn´t. He´s standing just a few short feet away being his usually annoying self.
"Get in the goddamn car, Tim."
He throws the now almost completely blood red towel away and gets into the front seat, all the demeanor of an irate child. A dangerous child… eyes still dark with adrenaline. They drive for about half an hour before he seems to let go and relaxes into the seat, sliding down enough to rest his head against the window. Raylan needs something from him though, anything, that's not this closed off and distant, trapping him in a false sense of loss.
"I can already see the immense stacks of paperwork in your very near future. And you know you´re in a for a shit storm of trouble for breaking an FBI agents teeth, right?" It comes out prissier than he´d intended. There´s about minute of silence in which Tim rubs his eyes and clenches his jaw so hard it´s kinda hard to make out the words that follow. "I really don´t wanna talk about it."
Raylan´s eye twitches. "Well, that´s just tough cause you´re gonna need to explain this, Tim!"
"He wouldn´t listen to simple fucking reason and now people are dead because of it! Why the hell are you on my case about this?"
The car speeds up; Raylans knuckles turn white around the steering wheel. They´ve been fucking for the better part of a year. It started real simple; too much whiskey and not enough conversational topics that didn´t involve the events of a particularly brutal week at the office. Rachel had left the bar early and countless drinks later Tim had leaned back and looked at him with that smirk, way too self aware for someone that drunk, and they´d ended up naked on his hallway carpet. It had been awkward for a while, until they did it again and then it became practical. No demands or excuses, no commitment, just… sex. Mind blowing, rough and no-strings-attached. Then shit had happened. Scars with painful memories attached to them had been revealed, along with nightmares and cold sweats and the dangerous bloody life they led had them learning each other in ways that had nothing to do with getting off, but felt just as addictive. They didn´t talk about it. Tim apparently had a knack for being ignorant as hell about these things and Raylan, well… he was aggravated enough with himself for letting it happen in the first place, that pretending nothing had changed worked just freaking fine for him. Until it clearly didn´t.
"You´re driving crazy, gonna get us killed."
He´s pulled off the road, tires screeching, and got out of the car before he´s had a chance to think about what he´s doing. He barely even hears the other door slam shut and Tim´s footsteps approaching then stopping. He´s leaning against the hood, arms crossed over his chest. Raylan can´t look at him.
"What is it, Raylan? You wanna fight, is that it?"
"If that´s what it´s gonna fucking take, then yeah, Tim. I´ll fight!"
"Why?"
" I just… I… Art was worried and I came here and they said… Shit… they said one of the snipers got killed and I didn´t fucking know, alright! I thought… Jesus fuck… I thought I´d lost you." He wipes his face, embarrassed that he´s not even realized his eyes are leaking a little bit, voice feeling tilted and off, still refusing to look. "So yeah I´ll fight you cause I´m goddamn annoyed and scared and I need to… just… I don´tknow… feel something…"
He flinches at the warm hand covering his neck and turns right into Tim´s arms, grabbing hold of his sweat damp t-shirt and his back, hard enough to hurt. Tim´s stepping in close though, tangling a hand in the hair at the back of his head. Raylan presses his nose into the crook of Tim´s neck and there it is… the scent, the heat and pulse. This is it, this is what he needs, to feel him alive and strong and not cold and broken on some muddy hillside. He chokes on a few miserably awkward sobs before pulling back. Tim doesn't let him go far, keeping a hold on his face and leaning in, foreheads touching. "I´m sorry." He says. This kind of honesty between them is difficult, rare and usually reserved for nighttime darkness behind closed doors. It feels all kinds of wrong out here in the open, late afternoon daylight, but still so good Raylan is practically giddy with it.
The first time he´d seen the effects of one of Tim´s nightmares, they´d been sleeping together for more than a month. He´d thought he had him all figured out by then, so he was surprised that the sheer terror and violence of it actually took him by surprise. It had been obvious enough; he´d grown up with a war veteran for crying out loud. He´d never seen Tim lose his cool before though and it was agonizing to watch. He´d screamed and shook and clocked Raylan in the face when he´d tried to touch his soaked shoulder. They´d ended up huddled together on the floor, a complete mess from Raylan´s bloody nose and Tim´s tears. He hadn´t been embarrassed the morning after, just resigned. Already dressed for work and halfway through his coffee when Raylan had woken up, thinking that he would stutter some lame excuse and run for the door, like countless others apparently had. But unlike all the previous girlfriends and boyfriends and fuck buddies and one night stands, Raylan didn´t scare that easy and he never ran. He´d poured himself a cup and sat down. He´d stayed. Tim had worn a constant frown for weeks, trying to figure it out. He´s wearing that same frown now.
Raylan wants to offer some sort of explanation, untangle all the mess and leave this ugly roadside with some measure of resolution but they don´t do this kind of thing, they don´t talk, like emotionally healthy human beings do, so the words kinda sounds like a foreign language when he finally finds them…
"I ain´t used to this… I don't know how to do it." He chokes, feels pathetic which just does not sit very well with him so he grinds his teeth together and ponders taking a really, really fucking long walk home to get his shit together. Not that he´d ever get off a hook like this that easy.
"Do what?"
"With Winona… with every person I´ve ever… They´ve been mostly out of harm's way, you know? working in an office or whatever, waiting up for me at night and I never got it. God, I´m such a dick for not getting it!"
"Starting to know that feeling here, Raylan… you´re not making much sense."
"She told me over and over and in the end she just couldn't do it anymore, and I was angry because never freaking got it! This… this… shit… this fear. The constant goddamn painful fear to lose someone…"
"Yeah okay… but I kinda know how to take care of myself… and well… living in general is risky business, you know that. That was true for Winona and Ava and whoever else you´re talking about as well…"
"Not like this."
"What do you want me to do then, huh? This is my life… and yours."
"I want you to stay the fuck alive, Tim! I want you safe!"
"Why?"
"Cause I fucking love you, that´s why! I love you so goddamn much I don´t even know how to breathe through it sometimes! "
Tim is struck back, eyes wide like a deer in headlights, but the expression melts and turns into some kind of mix between a smirk and something gentle. Raylan realizes what he´s said and recoils, scrubbing his face and looking down on his boots again. He´s losing it. Where the hell did that even come from?
"I´m sorry. Shit… I didn´t mean for it to sound that way… I mean I didn´t… just… I´m sorry."
He´s caught off guard by the kiss, soft and warm and damn this to hell it makes his stomach flip so hard he gasps stupidly into Tim´s mouth and a leftover tear tumbles down his cheek before he can pull himself back together from it. Tim catches it with his thumb then pulls back smiling, almost shyly. Well, shit, this is new. He´s sort of horrified but still too relieved to bother making an effort to hide it away.
"Let´s just go home, yeah?" Tim´s voice is low, gravel-thick and raw, he must be really tired. Raylan nods and moves back into the driver seat. They won´t be able to go back to any kind of simple after this, he thinks. It bothers him less than he´d expected. Tim falls asleep as soon as they´re on the interstate, wakes up with ruffled hair and a stiff neck as they pull into his driveway, mumbling something about Tylenol and coffee.
He tells Raylan about the events of the day, only halfway awake, poking at a microwave dinner by the kitchen table. The plan had been sloppy, too easy. A scrawny, barely more than teenage boy had come up at him from behind with shaky hands and a sawed off shotgun. He´d shot the kid - who had landed half on top of him, pimply face eerily caught in an expression of surprise – right between the eyes. Tim moves a piece of broccoli around the plate with his finger and chews on his fork. He doesn´t seem too miserable about it, nor particularly remorseful. He´s just having a hard time letting go of the fact that all of it might have been avoided with a different strategy, had the suit not only been incompetent but power-horny as well. Raylan is still shook up, lost in some pseudo-reality where he´s planning a funeral, but he´s had more than enough talk for the day. He means to drag Tim through the shower and into the bed to start something hard and fast and loud enough to wake the neighbors. Somehow, it ends up slow and heavy instead, all muddled up and needy. He is okay with that. He´ll take all he can get while he can get it. Besides, they can be quick and dirty before work tomorrow.
Later, Raylan is so close to falling asleep the contours of the room´s started to blur, but he still feels everything, clear and needle-sharp. Tim´s head is resting on his chest, warm breath and eyelashes tickling his skin. He smoothes a hand down his naked back, across the map of scars there, the expanse of muscles and bends awkwardly to kiss his temple. He´s not sure he´s meant to hear it, Tim might be half dreaming, but his muffled drawl is somehow clear enough anyway.
"I love you too."