Achilles Heel - Givenson
oooookay!! This is the second chapter of this work. If you missed the first chapter, this chapter probably won't make sense, and if you'd prefer to read it on ao3 here's the link!
fic type - this is, once again, like if hurt/comfort and fluff had a weird child of neutrality
warnings - just like the last chapter--alcoholism and it's adverse effects are discussed (heart attack is mentioned a lot in this one and once is used for a dark humour-y kind of joke, the root cause for it is revealed and specified a bit more, and the seizure is mentioned at least once) tims time in the military is discussed a little, PTSD manifests as an anxiety attack and a bit like a flashback at the same time. Tims childhood trauma is discussed so physical abuse, as well as mental and verbal abuse are mentioned. There are a few mentions of guns in correlation to said trauma and a lot of talk about booze in the general sense.
“Well,” Rachel says as she enters Tims apartment a week later, having gotten in using the spare key he’d surrendered to her seven weeks beforehand. “That explains the kitten formula in your truck.”
He’s lounging on his couch wearing an old pair of cargo pants and a shirt that he’d gotten when he first joined infantry two and a half decades back—it's one with the military logo on it as well as his unit number from those days. It's one of the only things he got from his military days apart from the PTSD and it's only something he wears when there's just about nothing else, but it's laundry day in the Gutterson manor so he's decided to give himself a pass.
“Found her in the engine of my truck,” Tim says. “After my last appointment with Alexander. Any new leads?”
“WIth the Boyd case? Nah,” she says, objecting to sit on the floor in the space between Tims couch and his coffee table because Tim has sprawled out over his couch and has the kitten on his chest. “Figured I’d get Raylan’n we’d come and bug you for a while, try to get inside Boyds head a little bit.”
“There in lies the reason you left the door unlocked,” Tim nods, having noticed she left it unlocked after she came in. “Are Dunlop, Stevens and Marino invited to this meetin’ of ours?”
“They don’t know Boyd as well as we do,” Rachel shrugs. “What’s the furballs name?”
“Her name is Roulette,” Tim answers. “Found her in the engine of my truck so I figured it would be funny if I named her after a transformer, and she was almost named Megatron, so I feel like I could’ve done worse.”
Roulette is a cat of five weeks old who’s got a calico pattern of primarily orange and black with some white on her chin, stomach, and paws. She meows at pretty much all hours of the day and has given Tim’s heart a few jumpstarts since he’d found her in the engine of his truck, as well as having costed him nearly $600 in vet bills across four appointments.
“You could’ve,” Rachel shrugs again. “She’s cute, for what it’s worth.”
“Yeah, and she keeps me off the booze,” he says. “You told Raylan the full story yet?”
“No,” she says. “Figured I’d leave that to you. Has he stopped trying to get details?”
“Mostly,” Tim shrugs, rapidly opening and closing his fist in lieu of enrichment for Roulette so that he doesn’t have to think about Raylan more than he already has been.
“You gonna tell him anything, ever?”
“The way I see it, he doesn’t know right now and he can go on blissful in his ignorance. If I tell him, he’ll just get mad nobody told him when it happened. Act like he woulda been on a plane down here with the drop of that stupid fuckin’ stetson had you or anyone else called.”
“You don’t think he woulda meant it, had he said it?”
“Not really, no,” it kind of hurts to admit, but it’s the truth. Tim doubts that Raylan would’ve been at his bedside had Rachel called him, doesn’t even think he’d pick up the damn phone had Rachel gone against Tims wish and called him anyway. “I think that he’d say he would’ve, but I also think that if I looked him in the eye when he spoke, I’d see that he wouldn’t mean it.”
“You’re only sayin’ that because of that weird little affair you two had goin’ on on and off while he was around,” Rachel says. “I notice things, Tim, and it was damn near impossible not to notice that.”
Tim smiles, his chest slightly aching. “Careful, Rachel,” he says cautiously. “Don’t need my heart givin’ out at the reminder of that whole mess.” He says it with a clear intent in his head—get Rachel the fuck away from talking about their relationship, even if it means they talk about The Incident again,
“Don’t make jokes like that,” Rachel says. She grabs one of the stupid decorative magazines Tim keeps on his coffee table for appearances sake and thwacks him over the head with it before she sets it back down and Tim finds himself celebrating it silently. Talking about the attack and the seizure is, for some reason, better than talking about Raylan. “Your heart attack wasn’t funny, neither was seein’ you in the middle of a damn seizure covered in your own fuckin’ vomit. I know you like a bit of dark humour, but—you gotta understand my perspective. You lived, sure, but when I walked into that bathroom, I thought you were gonna die on me. I can’t have that.”
“I know,” he says, letting his voice take on a gentle tone as Roulette the kitten bites his finger. It’s a tone reserved for Rachel and Roulette alike, something that Raylan Givens has never heard a day in his life. “I’m sorry.”
Waking up from the heart attack was scary enough—he couldn’t remember much about before he’d passed out apart from the drinking and the chest pain he’d thought nothing of, figuring it was a harmless side effect of the booze. Then he turned his head to the right and saw Rachel and guilt opened it’s gnarly mouth and damn near swallowed him whole.
He doesn’t think about it much—can't unless he wants to go down a spiral that'll induce a second heart attack—but Rachels perspective of the events of that night were chronicalized so that Tim could try and jog his memory and try as he might, seven weeks gone from the day he woke up in the hospital and he has yet to forget the words she wrote on that piece of paper.
He remembers the way her hand shook as she wrote in the notepad, remembers the steeled, determined expression on her face, completely and totally determined not to show weakness despite it all.
“It was terrifying,” Rachel says. “Don’t you ever put me through that again.”
Roulette the cat curls up on his chest and starts purring up a storm, and Tim reaches out, gives Rachels shoulder a squeeze.
“You and I have spent the last eleven years since Raylan left saying that the only way we’d ever leave Kentucky was if we were transferred out by force, or we were shufflin’ out the same way we’d shuffle off’a this mortal coil, in a body bag,” Rachel says. “You promised me that once, that you’d stop being reckless.”
“I didn’t keep that promise,” Tim says. “I know. I’m an ass at my best, Rachel. You know that.”
“I like that about you, usually,” Rachel shrugs. “I can’t shake it, though. Every time I walk in here I get scared I’m gonna see you in the bathtub again, vomit all over your chin and your heart having gave out. I’m sorry to be a burdensome chief and friend, but I can’t deal with that alone anymore.”
“You’re not burdensome,” Tim says. “Do you—would it—you need me to tell Raylan, for your sake, don’t you?”
Rachel smiles. “If you wanna tell him, you can.”
“If he wants to tell me what?” Rachel and Tim both flinch at the sound of his voice, and the sound of the door closing behind him wakes up Roulette, who protests the sleep disruption by getting on her feet and meowing as loud as her little lungs will let her.
Tim sits up. Raylan sits across from Rachel, his gorgeous brown eyes piercing Tims in a way that makes the ache in his chest intensify.
Tim looks at Rachel silently. Please don’t make me tell him.
Rachel looks back at Tim. I don't think you have another option.
Tim takes a deep breath in, tries to will himself into some version of less irritated.
“You need to do a better job of making your presence known when you’re entering someones goddamn home,” Tim says, tone a bit angrier than he means for it to be. “You--it’s not—you are not allowed to freak out. No yelling, no glaring—if I see your nostrils flare or one hand gesture while you talk at me, you are picking your ass up off my floor and getting the fuck out of my apartment.”
Roulette settles in Tims lap. Tim takes a breath in, and Raylan nods.
“Must be serious,” Raylan says. “You have a deal.”
“Seven weeks ago I had a heart attack,” Tim says. He watches Raylans face contort in shock, then disbelief, then anger all the space of thirty total seconds. “Rachels the one that found me, and if it weren’t for her, I’d probably be dead.”
“And--what--” Raylans lips form an angry line and he directs the anger at Rachel first. “He had a heart attack and—seven weeks! Seven weeks and neither of you called?”
Tim immediately takes the defense. “Hey! Don’t do that,” he says. “Don’t. If you’re gonna be angry at anyone, be angry at me. Rachel isn’t the one at fault here, and neither of us called because we didn’t see the point. You have a life in Miami, Raylan, forgive me for not calling because you have a kid and a job and a thousand different reasons as to why you wouldn’t’ve been able to drop everything and visit a coworker you haven’t worked with in more than a decade.” By the time Tim finishes, he’s out of breath but he decides it’s worth it.
He can see that his words touch a nerve, too. “You know that’s bullshit,” Raylan says. “I would’ve come running the minute Rachel asked, or the minute you did. You had a heart attack, Tim. That’s not just anything. You could’ve died.”
“He didn’t,” Rachel says. “Calm your ass down, Raylan. I need you to focus on Boyd right now—he could be headin’ this way and we need at least an outline of a game plan to take to Mariano, Stevens and Dunlop in the morning. You know him best, so you’re at least in charge of ideas.”
Raylan turns his glare to Tim. "I want details about this, the second you get a chance," he says. "You don't get to tell me you had a heart attack like it's as simple as asking me about the damn weather."
Tims lips form a line. He bites the inside corner of his mouth in silent protest and hates how every single emotion Raylan feels or has ever felt is displayed in his eyes. As he gives a begrudging, mildly aggressive, singular nod, he sees care that goes back a decade and anguish lingering somewhere in Raylans eyes and almost hates him for still caring after so long.
“Fine,” he says. “Now--let’s do our jobs for an hour or two, why don’t we?”
Rachel reaches up, scoops Roulette out from Tims lap and tucks her into the space under her chin. “I like that idea,” she intones, looking pointedly at Raylan.
-
That night, they do manage to get somewhere and the following day, Tim wakes up feeling refreshed and optimistic.
Rachel does the mean thing, though. She sends him and Raylan down to Harlan to interrogate witnesses as a few have come forward with having seen Boyd down at what used to be Johnny Crowders bar, before Boyd had him killed across state lines.
The drive to Harlan starts out silent, but Tim can tell Raylan has things he wants or needs to say, so half an hour in, he breaks the silence of his own volition.
“All right,” he says, putting his hands up in mock surrender and glancing at Raylan, who’s sitting in the drivers seat. “That’s it—I'm done dealin’ with this. You say what you need to say to me while we’re in this damn car, and when we get to Harlan and have to step out, we get real civil with each other real quick because I spent a decade in the damn military. I can handle silences, Raylan, just as well as I can handle havin’ to sleep on a freezin’ mountain in Afghanistan or sitting in the scorching heat in Iraq, but I can’t handle ‘em when it’s clear you have shit to say and you expect me to listen but you ain’t sayin’ none of it.”
“Why didn’t you call?” Raylan asks.
“I didn’t think you’d come if I did,” he answers. “You say that you woulda but—it's like I said last night. You have a job, a kid, and a thousand other things keepin’ you in Miami. I didn’t think you’d come, didn’t wanna risk gettin’ my heart broken again, and didn’t wanna waste your time when I came out the other end just fine.”
“What triggered it?”
“Got home at midnight, drank my way through three entire bottles of Jack Daniels, a sixer of beer and an entire bottle of peach wine that my sister had sent along last Christmas,” he answers. “Guessin’ that was too much. My BAC was 0.38.”
Raylan glances at Tim. Tim returns the gesture and their gazes meet.
“You should’ve called,” he says. “Knowing you how I do--”
“How you used to,” Tim cuts. “Knowing me how you used to know me—what? What are you gonna say, Raylan. You best make it believable because if you know me as well as you think you do, you know I’m gonna be able to see right through it if you’re lyin’ to me. Don’t do that.”
“Knowin’ you how I used to to—the Tim that I knew woulda called in a heartbeat,” Raylan says. “That guy—he knew I’d drop everythin’ to get to him, no matter how far away I was.”
Tim leans back in his seat, looks at Raylan through a lense more skeptical than he ever thought himself capable.
“Yeah?” He asks, voice even, tone practically showing off the fact that he’s looking for a fight. “I don’t think you knew the guy I was back then, either. If you think I thought that way for longer than half a second before I came to my senses, you’re as dumb as I was goin’ into the fuckin’ military thinking it’d fix all of my issues instead of load me up with more of ‘em. I was eighteen then, Raylan. I have an excuse. What excuse do you have at 56?”
It’s a low blow, and Tim knows that. It hurting as much as it does is the intention, and the hurt is, just like all of his other emotions, clearest in Raylans eyes.
“That’s hardly fair,” Raylan says. “I would’ve--”
“You keep saying that,” Tim cuts. “You’re saying it like you’re trying to make yourself believe it. I’ve got a decade of military experience under my belt and sixteen years total with the Marshals, Raylan. I pick up on that shit. Half of the sentences you’ve spoken have begun with ‘I would’ve’ like this is some sort of hypothetical. It’s not.”
Raylan goes to defend himself, but Tim cuts him off again.
“It’s not a hypothetical. I drank myself into a heart attack, had a seizure amidst that mess, and then when I woke up in the hospital after almost dying with Rachel sitting at my bedside as the one and only person who has consistently stuck by me whether or not I wanted her to, I told her not to call,” he says. “That--that is the reality. I don’t give a damn what you think you would’ve done had I called, whether you’re telling me that you would’ve dropped everything so that you can eventually get to a point where you believe the shit you’re spewin’ or if you actually mean it. I’m done with this conversation, Raylan. I had a heart attack, I didn’t want you there, and that’s that.”
He’s lying, but at least he acknowledges that with himself.
He’d told Rachel not to call Raylan and when she could see that Tim wanted him there, she offered to do it anyway. He said no again, insisted that she go home so she didn’t have to deal with the mess he’d made of himself by drinking himself into heart failure. When she refused and pretty much put her foot down, Tim had known he had no choice. He was in bed for the following few days recovering, a big part of him yearning for Raylan more than he’d ever admit to anyone, let alone Raylan himself.
“Just--let me have this one thing,” Raylan says. “If you’d called, or if you asked Rachel to, what do you think would’ve happened?”
Tim glares at Raylan for a second but gives in nonetheless. “All right,” he says. “Fine. I’ll play your game, but we’re doing this my way. Had Rachel been the one to call you after the ambulance had carted me off, she’d’ve called you at about quarter to seven in the morning. It’s pretty much obligation to have your ringer on in our line of work, but would you have picked up the phone that early?”
“Yep,” Raylan says. Tim searches his face and finds he’s telling the truth.
“All right,” he shrugs. “Would you have, our history with or notwithstanding, called Dan to tell him you wouldn’t be able to make it to work that day and gotten on the earliest flight you could get?”
“Absolutely,” Raylan says, even nodding that time. If he’s trying to convince Tim, he’s doing too good a job at it. “Without hesitation.”
“And--would you have stayed for at least a week, if not two, had I asked?”
“Yeah,” Raylan gets this really sincere look in his eye when he meets Tims gaze again, and Tim swallows thickly. It’s shit like that that got his heart broken a decade past, and he’s not about to let anything like that go down again, especially not when Raylans only in Kentucky because of Boyd and would otherwise be content in avoiding it for the rest of his life. “You done?”
“Yeah,” he says. “All right—let's play it your way. Ask me your question again.”
“If you’d called or asked Rachel to do it, what do you think would’ve happened?”
“Well--the Raylan I knew a decade ago would probably take at least a few minutes to answer the phone especially if he were asleep and even more so if he’d taken the day off,” Tim answers. “I don’t think you woulda picked up and I think Rachel would get tired of dialin’ your number after the fourth time, which is being generous as to her patience as I know it. I think, despite the fact that I’d had a heart attack and wasn’t picked up til about quarter to seven, even if Rachel called, when you missed the call and woke up about two hours later, you’d be in my hospital room for four thirty just like she was.”
“Four-thirty ain’t bad.”
“I had a heart attack and was carried away at almost seven. Had Rachel called when the ambulance came and you failed to call her back until about nine then you didn’t get into Kentucky til 4:30, it’s still bullshit. Gate to gate, Miami to Lexington is two and a half hours. What exactly coulda been more important than flyin’ in to see me that leads you to wait about four hours to catch a plane?”
“Callin’ Dan, first off,”
“Takes fifteen, tops. Provided you don’t shower, you can do it while you get dressed.”
“Then Winona--”
“That is another fifteen minutes,” Tim says. “Half an hour if it’s your week with Willa. Adding in that time, ten to two o’clock is still three hours.”
“You’re being pedantic,” Raylan says, exasperated.
“You used to love that about me,” Tim says, and he knows it’s the truth. Raylan had said it a few times back in the day and it's because of how odd it was that the compliment had stuck with him.
“Didn’t particularly like being your partner for a year and a half, then two years later being the rebound to your rebound.”
“Our--” love affair? Relationship? Those words to describe it feel juvenile because he knows it was more but can’t find the word to describe ir, and partner doesn’t feel right, either. “--Thing had ended eight months before I even so much as thought about Mark like that. Do me a favour and either shut up or avoid making this into something it’s not.”
“I’m not--” Raylan shrugs. “I just—you shot Colt over it, Tim.”
“My motivations for shooting someone who was pointin’ a gun at me are absolutely none of your concern,” Tim rebuts. “And--it wasn’t like that.”
“What was it like, then?”
“It was—damnit, Raylan,” Tim laughs. He and Raylan began a weird friends-with-benefits type deal around the tail end of his first year in the Marshals service. That lasted all of a year and a half, give or take, and eight months later after they'd stopped, into his fourth year, Mark had called him for something unrelated to the debts he owed from his days of active addiction.
He and Mark had only really fooled around a bit but in true Tim Gutterson, unwaiveringly loyal to anyone who he thinks deserves it style, he felt something real and true. It was there, and it lingered for far longer than Tim was comfortable with, and when Tim had shown up to the scene where Mark and his dealers body were both dead, that feeling evaporated without choice but simultaneously without incident.
“How long after you shot him were you on my doorstep, just barely sober enough to make the drive over?”
“Almost eight months,” Tim grits his teeth.
“And--what you two had—the grief you felt, it was gone by then?”
“You and Mark are two different people,” Tim says. “I’ve never spent much time on grief, Raylan, so yeah.”
“Did the military teach you that?”
“Bein’ raised in southern Indiana with siblings who ain’t spent a day in their lives worth their salt and parents who are somehow worse taught me that,” Tim rebuts. “I grieved Mark once, now shut up before I shoot you and have to grieve you twice.”
Raylan, at least, does as Tim asks. He stops talking and the car stays quiet for the rest of the trip down to Harlan.
-
Raylan does the nice thing and lets Tim deliver the news, citing a need for coffee and telling him he’d bring one back around for Tims sake because they’ve finally gotten somewhere.
Tim knocks on Rachels door with a big, stupid smile, and when she lets him come in, her expression remains neutral.
“You get a lead?” She asks.
“We did,” Tim nods. “A few, actually. Locals at what used to Johnnys Bar but is now a veterans bar named Kingstons gave us leads that put Boyd near Louisville but comin’ in hot.”
“You said you had a few,” she says. “Please tell me you got one better than that or that someone elaborated with specifics as to Boyds current whereabouts even though the initial lead already put him in Harlan?”
Tim sits down in the chair opposite her desk, grin big and wide and stupid—he's gotten himself a victory. It’ll be something positive to bring up with Alexander, who asks him for something positive at the beginning of every single Friday session.
“Other lead puts Boyd a little more’n four hours outta Harlan,” Tim says. “Holed up in a pay-by-the-hour style motel called Charlies out in an Indiana spot called Crawford. The first lead I gave you was elaborated by someone—that lead says Boyds in Louisville but will be sniffin’ around Lexington in a couple’a days, when it becomes safer to do so, and he’ll only stay around Lexington for half a day before he heads down to Harlan, gets in touch with a few old contacts he used to have and waits it out.”
“What’s Crowder got to wait for?”
“More’n a decade gone and he still wants Raylan dead,” Tim shrugs. “Says the good patrons at Kingstons, anyway. Raylan and Ava are his biggest targets and try as he might, he apparently can’t find any leads as to Avas whereabouts. I say we put Nelson, Marino and Stevens on the Crawford lead.”
“’N you, Raylan and I go check out Louisville? I like that brain of yours even when I know it’s primary objective is avoiding Indiana in it’s entire,” Rachel laughs. “Only took two weeks’n we managed to get somewheres good. Did the Louisville lead get you anywhere else?”
“A few of his local haunts, all of which are primarily way out in the country,” Tim says. “It’s not a lot, but it’s good. More than we’ve had the last two weeks, at least.”
Rachel nods. “You’n Raylan managed not to kill each other,” she says. “That’s good too. You two have it out?”
“Yeah,” Tim nods. “We did, kind of.”
“Kind of?”
“He said his piece, I said mine,” Tim shrugs. “It’s not—we're not—it's not like it was. No hard feelings or let downs or—well—I fuckin’ hate it when you put me on the spot.”
“Yeah, you do,” Rachel nods. “But Raylan texted asking me to make sure you don’t leave til he comes back with your coffee, so I’m doin’ it for his sake. You got an appointment with Alexander tonight?”
“Eight through nine,” Tim says. “Or nine thirty, or ten, depending on how long I need to talk for. Raylans gonna come over once I’m done with it, and we’re going do the thing we would’ve done had the—thing—never happened. We’re gonna catch up for a bit, and the only Corona I’m having tonight is nonalcoholic.”
“Nonalcoholic booze and pizza from—let me guess—Antonios? You lucky, lucky bastard,” Rachel smiles.
“Yeah,” Tim nods. “How much longer do you think Raylan is going to take?”
“The VFW is like—it's closer to the office than your apartment is,” Rachel says, tone skeptical. “What is it? Does coffee still make your chest hurt?”
“Only if I drink it right after a run or right before or right after I’ve eaten,” Tim says. “Or if I drink too much. Just kind of—wantin' to get there, you know? They do have free decaf.”
Rachel laughs. “What is it, really? Don’t lie to me and tell me you miss Roulette.”
“Is a guy not allowed to miss the kitten he finds in the engine of his truck?”
“Who, Roulette?” Raylans voice comes through the room as he enters and Tim jumps.
“Damn it, Raylan!” He curses. “I had a heart attack seven weeks ago. You are not allowed to do that to me.”
“Yeah,” Rachel says. “Roulette the kitten.”
“She’s cute,” Raylan smiles. “Was always more of a dog person, but cats are the self sufficent type so I always debated gettin’ one.”
“I didn’t pick her,” Tim says. “Found her in the engine of my truck after therapy.”
Raylan sets down a drink tray and passes them out accordingly, giving Rachel hers first and then passing Tims to him.
“You said coffee makes your chest hurt—I did decaf,” Raylan says. “Dunno if it’ll make much of a difference, but I figured I’d try anyway.”
“What would—what would thirty-four year old Tim Gutterson say if he learned that forty-five year old Tim Gutterson couldn’t drink coffee without chest pain?” Rachel asks, tone teasing.
“He’d make fun of me, no doubt,” Tim shakes his head. “Probably do the smart thing’n assume it wasn’t just age and then lose his shit at me upon learnin’ I drank us into a heart attack at forty-five years old. Then again—that dumbass has still been out of the military less time than he was in it for and he has no fuckin’ clue what’s comin’.”
Raylan laughs and sits down to Tims right. Tim takes a sip of his coffee and hates how perfect it is.
“Time check?” Tim asks. Raylan glances at the clock.
“Quarter to eight,” he says. “We’ve got you for what—five more minutes, if not eight, am I right?”
“I never went to the VFW while you were kickin’ shit up here through the beginning to the middle of the twenty-fuckin'-tens, how the fuck do you know that?”
Raylan shrugs, smirking gently. “Guessed,” he says. “Not my fault I got it right.”
“Bullshit,” Tim sing-songs. “Nope. No way. Did Art call? He knows I’ve been goin’.”
“You still talk to Art?” Rachel asks. “I mean—more than once or twice very few months?”
“He calls me every other week,” Tim shrugs. “Found out I was booze free and just about demanded he be my sponsor. I think he’s discovered how boring retirement is in the last decade since his age forced him out of the service, and now he’s projecting that onto me.”
“You tell him about ‘The Incident’?” Raylan asks.
“No,” Tim answers. “With how big your goddamned mouth is, I was hopin’ you’d do it.”
“Whys he think you’re sober, then?”
“I dunno,” Tim shrugs again. “Haven’t asked and don’t intend to.”
Rachel laughs. “What’re you gonna do, if Raylan does tell him? Say Raylan assumes your accusation and insult are open season on tellin’ Art everything he knows, and then Art calls you all pissed off?”
“I’m going to be dodgin’ those calls like Avas managed to dodge the US Marshals service’ locatin’ her for the past eleven goddamned years,” Tim says. “Not for eleven years, though. Eleven days, at most.”
Rachel laughs a bit more, and Tim checks the clock before getting up in a manner that’s almost too excited.
“Ah, it would be time,” Rachel says. “You meet Raylan and I back here for seven, all right? Louisville is only an hour and some change away, but we need as much daylight as we can get if we wanna get Boyd before he does some serious damage.”
Tim smiles, nods, grips his to-go cup of coffee just a tad tighter than usual, and heads out.
He makes it to the VFW with a minute to spare, is walking through Alexanders open door for eight on the dot.
“Something positive,” Alexander says in a voice that’s almost singsonging it but not quite there.
“We got a break in the case we’ve been workin’,” Tim says, closing the door behind him before he plops down onto Alexanders couch. “Two weeks of nothin’ and finally—we got somewhere! I’m so happy right now I could just—I could pour all of the booze in my fridge out like I’ve been meaning to do for seven weeks now.”
“I really hope you’ll do that once you get home,” Alexander says. “Now for the heavy stuff. You been thinkin’ much about your time in the military in recent?”
“Not since Wednesday,” Tim smiles, tight lipped, and moves into a laying down position so he can stare at the ceiling because doing that, oddly, always helps. “Bet I’m about to start, though, aren’t I?”
Alexander gives a hearty laugh. “Monday and Wednesday we focused on your time in the infantry,” he says. “We’re not doing this structured in any particular way and you’ve had a rough few weeks and I thought we’d hit infantry first, child and teenhood trauma second, then rangers trauma last. Today is child and teenhood trauma day, likely much to your chagrin.”
Tim takes a deep breath in. A full hour spent talking about all the ways in which his father failed him? He can handle that. Totally.
“Okay,” Tim nods.
“All right,” Alexander says. “First and foremost, when did you get the idea to take the ASVAB?”
“I was—it was January of my senior year,” Tim says. “I’d grown up in an awful environment and joinin’ the military seemed like the only way out. I figured I’d take the test, join on the day I hit eighteen and then be set to go from there.”
“How bad was your life at home?”
“My father drank almost all the time,” Tim says. “Every single day, unless my grandparents came around.”
“How did your mother feel about the drinking?”
“She hated it,” Tim says it earnestly, almost hates admitting that he’d been around his family long enough to make that observation because that—by default, that means the eighteen years he’d spent under their roof were absolute shit instead of just inherently bad or difficult. “She and my old man used to get into fights over it all the time.”
“Did those fights ever become physical?”
“No--my father always told my brother and I traditional shit like ‘boys don’t cry’ and ‘don’t ever hit a woman!’,” Tim sighs. “My brother turned out to be worse about the alcohol than my father was, and I turned out gay, so my hitting a woman has become something of very little concern over the years, but that’s besides the point. My father never laid a hand on her; verbal and psychological abuse suited his needs just fine.”
“And you thought that joining the military was your golden ticket?”
“Yeah,” Tim nods. He clenches and unclenches his fists, needing something to do to distract his mind, even if that distraction is momentary. “I did. I was seventeen when I took the test, barely more than eighteen when I joined up.”
He’d joined the week after he’d graduated, four days after his birthday. He could operate a gun and knew the precise mechanisms and tools required for cleaning one before he could legally drink in the very USA that he spent a decade serving.
“How did your family feel about it?”
“I left my childhood home the night before I was due in Georgia for basic,” Tim answers. “I’d told my mother—she was scared shitless but she knew there was nothing that’d stop me. My father tried by attempting to barricade me into my bedroom from the outside in, but I just climbed out the window. Neither of them liked it, but they had different reasons.”
“What are those reasons?”
“My mother didn’t want me to go because the idea of me dyin' scared her shitless,” Tim laughs. “She didn’t wanna lose me to the military, and no matter how much I reassured her, nothing did the trick.”
He sits up, slides his hands down his face and plants his elbows on his knees.
“My father hated it because it meant he couldn’t control me anymore, and he didn’t realize that until he saw what little of my life I cared to bring along tucked into a suitcase, the rest of it sold or donated.”
“Did you ever see your dad again after you left?”
“He died before I got back from Basic,” Tim shrugs, leans back, tries to force himself to relax even though nothing does the trick. “I wasn’t even there for the funeral.”
“Do you wish you had been?”
“Not even a little,” Tim admits, laughing a bit, fighting the anxiety that’s creeping up on him just like it always does when he talks about his childhood or his parents, or those last very tepid few days before he joined the military. “My mother played the grieving widow and my siblings and I grieved in our own ways—Keith took to the very menial amount of booze that my father had left behind, I went to the shooting range everyday until my anger subsided and Lisa poured herself into her degree. My mother inherited the house, I inherited a few of the guns he’d wave around to scare us as kids, my brother claimed his booze collection and my sister claimed the law school textbooks he kept in his study.”
“All right,” Alexander smiles. “Seems like we’re getting somewhere and we’ve barely been here fifteen minutes! Nice.”
Tim knows it’s a ploy to get him to relax—he can feel the tension in his shoulders, the way that his teeth are clenched and his jaw is set.
“Yeah,” Tim nods. “I don’t wanna lose momentum and I’d rather just get this out in the open so I don’t have to think about it—so—next thing.”
“Tell me more about your families structure,” Alexander says. “As a start.”
“Lisas the oldest—she's five years older than I am so she’d be fifty by now, if not close to it,” Tim says. “She sends booze at Christmas in a bid to win me over so I give her the house but we don’t talk so I can’t really remember her birthday anymore. Keith is forty-seven.”
“Do you and Keith talk?”
“He calls me once every few months,” Tim shrugs. “I should really stop pickin’ up the phone, but—he's my brother, you know?”
“It can be hard to let go of family ties,” Alexander nods. “How did your siblings feel about you bein’ in the military?”
“Keith thought it was cool. He joked a few times that I’d be the only one in our family to ever make it out of Indiana. He was right and sometimes I hate him for it a little bit, you know?” Tim says. “If Lisa felt anything, she didn’t show it—the opposite of love is indifference, and sometimes I think that's all she's ever felt."
Alexander laughs a little. Tim, absently, finds that he'd rather shrivel up and die than divulge more of his childhood or teenage years, but he does it anyway for his own sake.
Alexander asks him more about his family, and Tim tells him everything he wants to know, dissociating his way through the process because of how mentally draining it gets.
He talks about his first ever time seeing a gun—he was seven, his father was pissed, and he was threatening to kill everyone in the kitchen a la murder suicide—and then the first time he ever watched his father get so angry over something he felt the need to scream—he'd been nine, it was because a candle his mother had lit had been left to burn til the wick was put out by being submerged under the wax—and then went on further to talk about the explosive reactions his father had to every academic failing during his middle and high school years, the way that his father used to smile when Tim would flinch and how by the time he was seventeen, he stopped flinching and learned that just staring straight ahead was the best option because eventually, his father would get bored of his torments and either go locate his mother or go to his study.
When he’s done, it’s 9:30 and he’s drank the coffee Raylan had gotten him in it’s entire. He leaves the VFW with a certain kind of weight in his chest, the kind he’d’ve drank away if he could still drink without fearing one sip would send his heart into overdrive.
-
Fourteen hours later, they have a lead at last. Raylan and Tim are cooperating with each other and despite the fact that Raylan, ever one to enjoy the front passengers seat, has been booted to the middle back seat of Tims truck, things are going decently.
After spending a good three or so hours in Louisville, they have a concrete lead that will place Boyd in or around Harlan come nightfall. He’ll be at Kingstons bar and Rachel has decided to have Tim and Raylan there while she waits posted with Dunlop, Stevens and Marino just down the road from Avas old place, just in case Boyd swings by on the off chance the lead was wrong.
What used to be known as Johnny Crowders bar among the locals is now Kingstons, a spot not too unlike the VFW: only vets and their guests are permitted entry.
He and Raylan linger at a table near the back, Tim nursing a nonalcoholic modelo—which, having drank the alcoholic version of the same, he will never understand Rachels preference for Modelo over Corona or just about any other beer on the market—and Raylan is drinking a bourbon.
They’re in a spot just hidden enough to not be visible from the door but visible if you take a seat at the bar and decide to look around a little bit. Raylan isn’t wearing his hat, thankfully, and Tim is dressed as nondescript as he can be, wearing a pair of black jeans, the same green carhartt he’d decided to wear upon going back to the VFW for therapy, and a black leather jacket because it’s fuckin’ mid-October in Kentucky and therefore, cold.
He’s deep in thought like he always is whenever he’s surrounded by people who’ve had experiences similar to his own, and Raylan is quick to pick up on that.
“Relax,” Raylan says, his voice gentle. “I can see the cogs turning in your fried veteran brain.”
“My brain’s not fried, my heart is,” Tim rebuts. “And--there are no cogs to turn anyway. I’m fine.”
“Are you?” He’s thinking about his time in the rangers after hearing a few guys his age talk about their time only a table or two away, so he’s not, but he’s not going to tell Raylan that.
“Yes,” Tim says, albeit a little forcefully. “I’m good. You don’t need to worry about me—I'm asking you not to worry about me.”
In truth, his mind is on his second tour in Afghanistan and his second-last tour with the military as a whole. He’s somewhere between the glint of the scope on his rifle and laughing with Mark on base, feeling his shoulder touch Marks as he finally eases up enough to be capable of sleeping through the night.
Raylan shrugs. “You seem jumpy,” he says. Tim picks up the Modelo, takes a sip and fights his grimace. He’s going to finish it no matter how much he dislikes the damn thing—it costed him too much not to drink it entire.
“I’m not,” Tim denies. He has half a mind to tell Raylan the truth but he doesn’t. Raylans not a vet, he wouldn’t understand, he works in law enforcement. but he’s always lived a civilian lifestyle--or at least these are the excuses Tim uses to justify it. Raylan has spent his entire life a civilian, never gone a decade without it like Tim had done willingly when he thought the military was his only way out of a crappy home and a crappy city in Indiana.
“Okay,” Raylan says. “Just--talk. You look to me like you’re three seconds away from wanderin’ off on me entirely and I would really rather not have that happen. We’re going to talk about The Incident.”
“I thought we were done with that,” Tim realises that Raylans doing this because he can sense that something is off, and even as his mind runs through active zones of combat from his days working infantry, he’s grateful for it.
“I told Art,” Raylan confesses, the words whispered and the guilt evident in his tone.
“Well,” Tim laughs, grips the Modelo like his life depends on it as he tries to remember what Alexander had told him to do when his trauma was manifesting in the form of brutal flashbacks and anxiety. "I’ll be avoiding his calls for the next several days.”
“Are you havin’ a panic attack?” Raylan asks, voice calm and even. “It looks to me like you’re havin’ a panic attack.”
He takes a deep breath in, his mind somehow trapped in three separate places all at once.
“I dunno,” Tim says. He takes another sip of the Modelo, tries to calm his mind again, only to find it doesn’t work. He takes in another deep breath, and then he feels the rough but still sort of soft skin of Raylans palm against the top of his left hand, and that—it just—fuck.
It snaps him right back to reality, works better than any deep breathing ever has, and he snaps his hand away despite wanting that contact. Raylan, he decides, does not get to touch him like that. Not given their history coupled with the fact that he'd never have come back to Kentucky if not for a case or the fact that it'd been Rachel who'd asked him back around.
“Okay,” Raylan says. “I told Art about the heart attack.”
“How’d he react?”
“He was angry you hadn’t told him,” Raylan says. “He said he’d mention it eventually, but only if you didn’t first and he got sick of waitin’. He was shocked Rachel didn’t call either, but that doesn’t surprise me at all. I suspect she ran the necessary channels by you, and you vetoed everyone except her and maybe Dunlops presence in the—what, three, four days you spent in the hospital recoverin’?”
Tim takes his lip between his teeth, the sound of Marks laughter and the smell of gunpowder fading just to a point where they’re tolerable.
“Just Rachel,” he says. “No Dunlop. Just her.”
“You two have been workin’ together since—well, forever,” Raylan snorts. “And neither of you have transferred out?”
“Contrary to what you believe, Kentucky is not a universally hated state,” Tim laughs. “I’ve lived here for sixteen years and I like it just as much as I did my first week. Rachel and I have had a running joke since before you came around—only way either of us is leavin’ Kentucky is if we’re transferred out and forced, or if we go at the same time we shuffle off this side of the ground.”
Raylan laughs in turn, and Tim sighs. It, really, doesn’t feel like Boyd’s gonna come in. Maybe the lead they had had fed them bullshit?
“Where abouts did you grow up, anyhow?” Raylan asks.
“Indiana,” Tim shrugs. “Small town about ninety miles outside of Corydon. Smaller than Corydon, too.”
“How much smaller?”
“Corydon has more than three thousand people,” Tim says. “My town has barely enough to breakeven with 1000, and that’s on a good day.”
Raylan snorts, and of course, their conversation somewhat slows. Raylan gets up to piss and Tim heads out to smoke the last cigarette in his pack, sticks close to his truck in the process. He idly checks his phone, sees that Rachels found nothing while waiting at Avas. He reports back that he and Raylan have yet to hit the jackpot, finishes his smoke down to the last puff and puts it out with his foot.
Instead of going back in, searching for a trashcan, he objects to put the empty cigarette carton back in his truck. He stores it in the center console, figuring he’ll just throw it out once he’s home and the only person who can judge him for smoking at all is himself.
As soon as he closes the door of his truck, he’s knocked out cold.
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