*Prompt? 2 am. From Livejournal's 64 Damn Prompts. Friday Night Lights? Not mine. If it was, Tim Riggins would live here with me.
"Here's to God, and football, and 10 years from now Street, good friends living large in Texas. Texas Forever." - Tim Riggins, Pilot 1x1
The clock on the bedside table flashes 2 am, as Tim climbs out from the covers and pads away from the bed. Who knows what time it really is, if the alarm clock's blinking, but he'd guess about 5-something as he looks out the window. The sun, not yet risen, has just started to tint the horizon purple and red.
The view out the window always makes Tim pause. He's never been one for nostalgia – there are trucks to be fixed, and teams to be coached, and, now, babies to be fed – but it's something about this view that makes Tim look back and think about how far he's come.
He still has God, and football, and he's certainly living large in Texas, if not how his 17 year old self had imagined. Streeter is in New York, and he's here, and Coach is all the way in Pennsylvania. He doesn't admit it much, but he misses them both, and Mrs. Coach too.
Tim slips out the bedroom door and clicks it shut quietly in an attempt not to wake his wife. He pops his head into his daughter's room to find her sitting up, wide-eyed and thumb in mouth.
"Hey there baby girl. You couldn't sleep either?" He croons at her as he lifts her from the crib. His feet carry them out the screen door and deposit them in one of the rocking chairs on the wrap-around porch. The sky is brighter now, a touch of orange peeking over the trees at the top of the hill. Tim takes it all in, savoring the moment.
The screen door creaks open, and Julie rests on the arm chair of the rocker. Tim reaches to caress her belly, and then snakes his hand up the back of her neck t pull her down for a kiss.
"How're y'all doing out here? I heard you slip out."
"We're doin' fine sweetheart," he says, glancing down at Lizzie cradled in his other arm. She has fallen back asleep, a handful of his Panther blue grasped in a tight little fist.
Yeah, he still wonders sometimes, what it would've been like. If Street hadn't broken his back. If he'd gone up north to Notre Dame and become a football star. But he shakes it off, because his reality? His reality is so much better.