A/N: I am watching Season 4 and rewatching Season 1: The Tim Riggins edition (where I just skip to Riggins' scenes). Such indulgence results in little snippets like this.
He knows there's more to the whole father thing than postcards.
He knows he's been left, screwed over. Billy just doesn't know that he knows. Billy thinks he needs advice—don't get drunk together, don't let him steal your lunch money, on and on—but he doesn't.
He's never hated their father like Billy does. Maybe he should, but he isn't ever quite sure if he has the right to. After all, he's two for two on the whole parents-skipping-town thing. It suggests something about him, maybe, more than them.
Tim won't lie; he was an annoying little cuss as a kid. Still is, probably.
It's a wonder Billy sticks around.
He tips his head back, one hand on the wheel. Sometimes Texas can be flatter than a pool table, stripes of tired field and sky and Tim is just one more little grub on this aching earth, trying to spin himself a new fortune.
A new father, or at least, a new shot at it.
He knows there's more to the whole father thing than a signature on a ticket. He knows that he misses his father in a way that hurts almost as much as the thought that his father must not miss him.
He knows there's more.
There has to be.