Tim wakes up alone with cold feet and a hundred dwarves with pickaxes digging for gold in his head. When did only three quarters of a bottle start giving him hangovers? And this bad? Fuck, he feels old. For a fleeting moment he wishes he were seven years younger and back in the barracks so that he could wheedle a banana bag out of Clark. God, those were magic. But then he remembers why he drank that three quarters bottle of bourbon and why he's not in the barracks and thinks maybe the best cure for a hangover is more.
He contemplates dragging himself off the couch, weighing the pros (aspirin and a glass of water) and cons (moving), but can't quite gather the energy or motivation to do so. The house is quiet, so Lena must've gone and there's no one to entertain, no need to move. Eventually the need to take a piss becomes urgent enough that he peels himself up and shuffles to the bathroom. There's no aspirin in the downstairs medicine cabinet and climbing the stairs sounds about as appealing as hiking Everest with the flu, so he picks the next best thing – the kitchen and more liquor. He'll just have to gargle a lot of mouthwash and limit himself to two glasses so he can drive.
Given the complete silence he'd woken up to, it's a surprise to find Lena parked at the table with a laptop…his laptop. Tim frowns, uneasy. Last time a woman looked at his computer screen with that much intensity she'd been planning an ambush. It had been an attack based on faulty intel and, like all such attacks, the fight had been nasty. He doesn't understand why she's poking where she doesn't belong, doesn't really wanna fight about it either, but another part of him needs a distraction from worse things, so Tim latches onto that angry little coil in his chest and holds on, determined to drag himself out of a darker hole. Between that and the hangover he can has a chance at squeezing out the dregs of last night.
"What are you doing?"
Lena ignores his hostility with a breezy, "Something only slightly illegal."
"Thought I turned that off."
"You did."
"…It has a password."
"And I have a PhD in computer science. Passwords are weak." She's obviously pulled herself back together again.
"You could've asked."
"You were sleeping," she says, reasonable in a way he doesn't want to accept. Lena turns around to face him, searching, gaze even the as the keel of a becalmed ship. "Does it bother you I didn't ask or because you think I'm snooping?"
Well now that she says it like that, all calm and rational, he feels like an idiot, like a dog barking through a window at the cat outside, but the cat's just enjoying the sun and doesn't give a shit about his barking or whose yard it is.
"Tim, I'm not snooping. Well, only through the prison system, not your stuff. Cross my heart."
It's her voice, he realizes. That's her trick. Maybe it's her job, the need to always be in conversational control, that's forged that even keel. It's an obstinate calm only broken in the extremities of fear or passion. He once likened it to the rocks at the bottom of a river, unmoving and uncaring of the raging force of water flowing over them. Now he likens it more to the river, wide and slow, but strong, and the current tugs at him, pulling him away from the frothing edges at the bank and into the quiet center. It's hard to have a fight when you're the only one doing the fighting. It's a good trick.
"The midget porn belongs to a friend. I'm just holding onto it for a few days."
"So the Hungarian Jesus stuff is yours then?"
"Beats going to church."
He wanders past and pulls out a mostly full bottle of Jameson and a glass.
"You haven't even had breakfast."
"In ancient Egypt this was breakfast. And lunch and dinner."
"Nice try. That was beer."
"Got some of that too."
Lena's eyes narrow, serious. "I will drink you under the table." She'll drink herself under the table.
Tim stares back and pours himself a glass. Her intentions may have been pure when she opened his laptop, but this is his home and his space, and he needs to put his flag on it. When he tosses back the glass she stands up, ready to make good on her threat, but Tim just smirks and screws the cap back on the bottle and puts it back on the shelf.
"Are those the security tapes from KSP?" He gets himself a glass of water and drags a chair over next to her.
"Yup."
"The FBI can't just ask?"
"You know I'm not in the FBI, Tim. This is easier anyways." Eyes on the screen, she holds up a finger to forestall his follow up to that statement. "Also, there had to be a guard in on this. These guys get searched after every visit, so someone let him keep that knife. I want the untampered footage."
"The guard's name is Gerald Duane."
Lena's head whips around, and Tim savors the moment, the smug shit-eating grin that always annoyed his instructors plastered unabashedly across his face. "Rachel went through the tapes yesterday and talked to him."
"Oh. Dang."
"Well I'd tell you all about how interdepartmental cooperation solves cases, but I don't know if you're with a department."
"Nope, you don't."
Tim lays his head across the keyboard where she was typing and squints up at her with exaggerated suspicion. "You're in the KGB, aren't you?"
Lena rolls her eyes and nudges him off the keyboard, and even if the latter jostles a bit too much because of the hangover, he likes her hand on his shoulder. "I'm not in the KGB, Tim."
"That's exactly what someone in the KGB would say."
"Ty poymal menya."
"I knew it."
"Vive la révolution."
o.O.o
"Tim, Raylan."
"Yeah, Art?"
"My doctor informed me last week that my blood pressure is too high, and now my wife doesn't let me eat bacon in the morning. I have to eat turkey bacon. Turkey bacon. That's a bleak existence."
"Cryin' shame," Tim says, wondering why his boss has wandered outside his office to discuss his health problems but sure it's a trap.
"Shame," Raylan echoes uncertainly.
"I want you think about what your lives might be like if my blood pressure never went back down and I never got to eat real bacon again."
This morning Art's heavily laden looks are directed just as much at Tim as they are at Raylan. He's positioned himself in front of them at the midpoint between their desks, and Art fancies their positions are not dissimilar to a principal counseling two miscreants. Given that Tim's eyes are scrunched like the light bothers him and obviously hungover and Raylan's still Raylan, it's an apt analogy.
"Awful?"
"I'm guessing pretty bad."
Neither miscreant seems to be properly cowed, so Art decides to spell it out in bright neon letters for them.
"If either of you do something monumentally stupid, I'll take you out back and shoot you both."
"What if just he does?" Raylan points a finger at Tim.
An unladylike snort comes from Rachel's desk.
"I don't think they serve bacon in jail, Art. Jail is where you go when you murder your employees by the way."
"Hey," Tim snaps his fingers, "I learned that at Glynco."
"Funny you say that, I taught that at Glynco."
Art gazes heavenward. "Maybe I'll just save myself and the District of Columbia the time and trouble and shoot you both now."
"Maybe you and Boyd Crowder can share a cell. You can swap stories about Raylan, compare notes on who he was more of a pain in the ass to."
"Oh I won't go to jail. Rachel will cover for me." He turns to Rachel. "Won't you Rachel." She hums an affirmative without even looking up from her paperwork, like she's been in on this plan for a while. "See? I'll be fine. Now go do your job."
"Traitor," Tim grumbles across Raylan's desk once Art's disappeared back to his office.
"Go make me some coffee."
"Yes, ma'am."
o.O.o
"No dumbass, with a 'C', W-i-c-k-e-t, like in the sport." Tim scribbles out the first line and rewrites the name under it. Lena may find it easier to break into others' computers to get what she wants, but he finds that the FBI is pretty effective at getting what they ask for.
"What fuckin' sport?"
"Cricket."
"That's a bug not a sport."
"Just cause you can't even throw a basketball –"
"It's like shitty baseball. Or really complicated golf."
"Whatever, do you want the name of the firm?"
"Yeah, shoot."
"It's Chadwick and Thompson, and since you're an illiterate hillbilly, that's Thompson with a Th.'"
"Shit, is there a C in Chadwick?"
The first time Tim met Kelsey was in the middle of a bar fight she'd started. It was his first day back on leave during his second deployment, and she was some POG ass comms lieutenant who'd never been deployed. But despite being a POG and an officer, she had a mean right hook that had knocked out some dude and then that same dude into Tim, who lost half his drink all over the bar. For Tim, it had been lust at first sight. As the beer bottle in her hand had been broken in half, he'd gallantly offered to buy a replacement. She introduced him pointedly to her girlfriend. Turns out the whole fight had started over some guy making heavy handed passes at the girlfriend, Vera, and Kelsey, who has a temper and has never once passed up an opportunity to hit someone asking for it, decked the guy. Tim bought both of them drinks, and then a few more, and a few more after that he was drunk enough to ask Kelsey and Vera if they were 'like lesbian lesbian' or if they'd ever experimented with men before. Kelsey had poured Tim's own drink over his head just to make a point and then bought him another one to show there were no hard feelings. They'd been friends ever since.
"And since you don't like hillbillies, I can always give that bottle of Kentucky bourbon to someone else and bring you a nice rosé."
"I can always murder you."
"That's the second time today someone's said that to me."
"Have you tried not being an asshole?"
Tim hangs up and plugs the law firm of Chadwick and Thompson into google. In addition to the guard letting prisoners sneak in knives, Rachel had managed to get a still frame of the lawyer who supposedly brought the knife. The name in the log was Joseph McAddy, but after running the frame through facial recognition, Kelsey and informed him that the lawyer was actually Joseph Wicket, a junior partner at Chadwick and Thompson. Given that Chadwick and Thompson is a D.C. law firm, Tim is justifiably curious as to what Wicket was doing in Kentucky. It'll be something to ask about when they're in Washington in between guarding Sayeed and giving Kelsey her finder's fee. Maybe they'll like Raylan's had and feel inclined to talk.
o.O.o
This time Tim is home before the pair of heels shows up on his front porch and has time to put all the plates on his coffee table in the dishwasher. Lena kicks her shoes off by the door and Tim pulls a couple beers out of the fridge. When he shuts the door, Lena's taken down one of his photos to look at.
"Huh, I don't recognize these three." She says it absently, like she's remarking on an outdated company photo with employees who've since moved elsewhere. She starts to hold it out, about to ask him to tell her who the three men are, but aborts the motion, suddenly contrite, and tucks the photo back under its magnet. "Sorry." She looks around at the rest of the kitchen, finds a towel to pick at. "Still too used to being a nosy bitch. I forget to not be sometimes."
Tim looks at Lena fidgeting with the towel, looks at the ring on her finger, the one with a roman numeral seven carved into it. He could have made her leave the night she showed up to his house uninvited and drank herself sick. It wasn't that he was trying to be polite or spare her feelings – god knows he's been an asshole plenty of times just to get people to fuck off. He'd tried to give her a good shove on a couple of occasions, not because he wanted her to leave, but 'cause he expected it. But that was the difference with her – she has that ring, empathy, not sympathy. They've cleaned blood off each other. She'd smiled her calm smile, took his punches, and then just bulldozed right over them. She never blinked.
The girl before her, someone he'd stayed with right up until the deployment goggles and sexual privation had worn off, had laughed at the six tired, unwashed rangers grinning from the nose of a helicopter. "Didn't y'all have showers over there?" Tim had thrown a half smile that was all mouth and no eyes and pretended to think she was funny. She'd liked his tattoos and his uniform. He'd liked her willingness to put out.
Lena saw the uniform at work, and she likes the man wearing it and his morbid yet juvenile sense of humor. He likes the woman who wears a piece of Humvee door as a ring and her unapologetica ridiculous streak.
"Here." Tim hands Lena his beer bottle, and when he's sure she's got a good grip on it, picks her up and sets her on the counter. Then he takes back the bottle and the photograph back off the fridge and jumps up next to her. She picked an easier photo; everyone in it is still alive. It was taken just before they all went home. He asks for her story next, the whole one this time, about her ring and how she got it. Lena's told it before but not so many times that it runs smooth. Her fingers tense, and her voice goes a little tight, but he waits. Then he asks her about Meyer, and she grins, so goddamn happy that he cared to ask, and she tells him all about SOCM and how he passed Airborne School, and then with less enthusiasm about his upcoming deployment.
"Who's he with? I mean what battalion?" he clarifies.
"Second."
Tim snorts, and Lena looks affronted. "Don't worry those guys are a pack of yahoos, but they're solid." He doesn't say 'he'll be fine.' That's a fuckin' stupid thing to say.
From there they tell each other stories of idiot childhood friends, full of affectionate memory. It turns into stories of her college friends, one who worked her way through a masters in physics as an escort; his army buddies, Caleb who couldn't find Afghanistan on a map but who could make anything with an engine run as long as he had duct tape and a wrench.
Lena giggles at that, nudges him with her shoulder and steals his beer. "Oh my gosh, one of my friends from back in D.C. is like that. He –" she keeps talking, but his brain stopped listening four words back. He realizes he's been standing in quicksand this whole time, hadn't paid attention and now it's got ahold and is dragging him down. 'One of my friends from back in D.C.' She'd unwittingly sprung it on him, as gently as dumping a bucket of frigid water over his head, reminded him that this moment here with her on the counter all cozied up and drinking his beer, that all his time with her is impermanent. She left once, his brain reminds him, only difference is now he can see it coming.
But he's only human, and he's thought about her and a moment like this for too long, and now here she is leaning against his shoulder, and maybe if he can have just a taste it will be enough and he can find his way out of the sand in the morning, and it won't really be a mistake. The warmth of her body pressed to his is a siren's call, and Tim ignores the wet sand trying to pull him under.
He slides off the counter to stand between her legs, takes the bottle from her hand and, with one last swig for courage, takes her face between his hands and kisses her firmly and with intent. Lena doesn't seem to mind the abrupt end of conversation, just runs her fingers up his waist and around his shoulders and pulls him closer. There's no danger here, just lust and need, but he can hear that clock ticking, so he presses in, gets her right up against the kitchen cabinets, and loses himself in taste and touch.
"I didn't look at your porn," Lena says between kisses, grinning into his mouth. "It was tempting though."
"Oh yeah?"
"I wanted to see what you liked."
"I could've just told you."
Her tongue slips across his lips. "I was thinking you might show instead of tell."
"I don't know where we're going to find a midget at this hour."
She sticks her hand down his pants, and he forgets to be funny.
Tim has one last coherent thought as he undoes the buttons of her shirt and slips it off her and onto the floor. He finds he does like the way she dresses after all, how she's always squared away and starched and ironed, everything in its place. He even likes how she watches her language and says dang instead of damn and fudge instead of fuck even though it's silly. He likes all of that because he's the only one who gets to take it apart and mess it about. He's the only one who will hear her breath catch at the feel of his tongue between her breasts, hear her cuss when he bites. He's the one who gets to take off her clothes and throw them in a messy pile on his kitchen floor. And when his fingers smooth up over her thighs and under the edge of her skirt, he's the only one who gets to see the calm crack and fall away.
And when she takes his hand to lead him up to the bedroom but she's too wound up on him and they end up falling onto the couch in a messy tangle instead, when he looks down at her mouth sucking around his cock, her lipstick no longer colored between the lines but all over both of them, when she climbs up on his lap and down on to him, loud and wild with everything else peeled away, that's all his.