Archive of Our Own

“Holy shit, this room.”

Raylan ignored the finely-furnished living area of the suite, even bypassed a well-stocked mini-bar. “This bed.”

“It’s huge.”

He sat down and bounced lightly a couple times. “So’s the bed.”

“I don’t even know what we’ll do with all this space.”

“I know what we’ll do with all this bed.”

Tim grinned and set his eyes on Raylan’s poorly-affected innocent expression. “Bit one-track minded over there, hm?”

“Just thinking about how we’re going to get our money’s worth.”

He snorted. “We probably paid like, less than half what this fuckin’ place would normally cost. I wonder how stupid expensive the reception was. Goddammit, is Rachel marrying into money? I bet she bagged Seattle’s most eligible bachelor or some shit.”

Raylan shrugged. Tim’s exchange with Rachel on the subject had lasted all of about fifteen seconds.

I’m getting married again. Having another wedding feels tacky as shit, but it’s his first and his mother is a nightmare, so send me your goddamn address so I can mail you a goddamn invitation. And get Raylan’s too. Goddammit.

Tim threw his bag on the sofa and started peeling off his jacket. Raylan’s eyes brightened in interest, and Tim rolled his in turn. “I need a shower. Planes are gross.” Raylan sank back in disappointment, until Tim called from the bathroom, “Jesus Christ, this shower,” and then figured he may as well check it out, too.

The mirror was already steamed over by the time they even made it into the shower, Raylan clearly having no qualms about the grossness Tim felt after sitting for several hours on two flights. He crowded Tim up against the sink as he pulled his shirt over his head, and proceeded to kiss him lazily and demanding by turns, fingers tracing down his neck, over his tattoo, trailing down the muscles of his chest and stomach until he found the button of his jeans and deftly undid it.

And then in a flurry of movement, Raylan was on his knees on the hard tile floor, pulling Tim’s pants down off his hips as he went, before he recaptured his hands, pinned them against the counter, and began working him relentlessly while Tim swore and struggled against his grip.

“Jesus, Raylan,” he gasped, as Raylan licked a torturously slow path from the base of his cock, swirled his tongue around the head, and took him deep once more. “You got a hotel fetish you never told me about?”

“Hm,” Raylan hummed low in his throat, and Tim dropped his head back and stopped fighting the hold on his hands. He pulled off and released one hand to work Tim slowly, teasing, “Just really,” he stood, still slowly stroking, “excited,” he bit at the tattoo on Tim’s chest lightly and then worked his way up from there, “to see you,” a short but brutal kiss left him breathless, “naked and eager,” he sank back down, “in that big fucking bed.” And he took him back in his mouth, Tim fisted a hand in his hair, hard, groaning, and he didn’t last long after that.

And because Raylan was sort of a decent person, he gave him a few minutes to collect himself under the hot spray, only touched him to rub lightly at his back, took his time getting clean as well.

And because he was basically a horrible person, once he apparently decided that was enough of playing nice, he snagged a bottle he’d secreted in to the shower with them and turned Tim around, roughly shoving him against one wall.

Tim let his forehead drop against the slick stone wall as Raylan popped the cap open. “You’re going to kill me.” A single finger probed at his ass gently, spreading some lubrication. Raylan wrapped his other arm around Tim’s shoulder and pressed his hand to the side of his face, turning it so he could capture his lips in a kiss that was heated but slow, thorough, and entirely at odds with the abrupt presence of two fingers sliding up into him fast, demanding, stretching him on the verge of discomfort so soon after his orgasm. “Fuck.”

He bit Raylan’s lip until he tasted blood. “That’s the spirit,” the older man murmured against his mouth, setting an unforgiving pace as he slid two, then three fingers in and out, until Tim’s cock began to demonstrate its renewed interest in the goings-on. So then he worked that, too, until Tim was a helpless mess slumped against the wall.

Raylan withdrew his hand, and they both had a last cursory rinse before turning off the water. As they toweled off, Tim mildly dazed and Raylan looking wild in his arousal, Tim eyed what had to be a painfully hard erection and smirked lightly. “You need some help over there?”

“Nope, I still got plans for that bed.”

For all the buildup, once he got him there, Raylan fucked him slowly and leisurely, probably so worked up that he didn’t want to get off too quickly. Which worked fine for Tim, slowly building up to his second orgasm, until eventually he started pursuing it with more fervor, rocking back to meet Raylan’s measured thrusts, at which point Raylan pulled out and took him by a shoulder, urged him over onto his stomach.

He dragged Tim up by the hips and pushed insistently back in. Tim hissed a quiet “Fuck…” at the changed angle, more determined pace, but then Raylan was reaching around and stroking him in time, and that was pretty much that for them both.

They collapsed in a heap, Raylan settling in pressed against Tim’s back, his forehead resting against a sweaty shoulder. “Well, you were right about one thing.”

Tim grunted. “What’s that?”

“We need a shower.”

A soft snort escaped him, and he drew Raylan’s arm up over his waist, clearly not intending to go anywhere for the moment. “Well, you were right about one thing, too.”

“Oh yeah?”

“This bed, man. This bed.”

X---X

“You’re sure you’re good with this?" 

Tim watched Raylan get dressed, an enjoyable pastime that he was in no hurry to end as he sprawled lazily, naked, on a chair that probably cost more than his rent. “With not using Rachel’s wedding as a platform to announce oh hey by the way, you might not have known either of us liked dudes, but we’re like, totes in love? Yeah, I’m good.”

Raylan grinned. “She’d probably enjoy the attention deflection.”

“And so would you, because you’re an attention whore.” Tim stood and reluctantly pulled his garment bag from the closet. “But no. We had a window, we did not use it. We’ll do it later, when we’re in the opposite corner of the country from Rachel’s small but effectual fists.”

They lapsed into a distracted silence as Tim shuffled through his bag and Raylan concentrated on buttoning up his shirt. Tim was looping his belt when warm hands dropped on his bare shoulders and Raylan spoke in a low rumble, mouth pressed against the back of his neck. “Hey Tim…”

“No. We do not have time. Stop.”

“…Will you fix my tie?”

He sighed and turned to face Raylan, and of course found roaming hands and a greedy mouth, but somewhere in there he did manage to get the tie straightened. “Remind me never to go on vacation with you,” Tim slapped the hands away and shrugged on his own shirt. “I think it’d kill me.”

“Maybe like, a cruise…”

Tim snorted. “Jesus Christ, a cruise? A floating petri dish, no thanks. Have you seen the news when one of those goes sideways? Norovirus and jacked up plumbing and shit. Literal shit.”

“Winona and Richard enjoyed theirs a few months back.”

“I enjoyed it too, Willa and I were finally able to get through The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. On dry land.”

It had been fairly soon after the Daddy and Tim are more than just coworkers conversation and Tim’s apprehension over Winona’s suggestion that he spend more time with Raylan while she was around that week, get her more accustomed to the reality of them together, ended up being completely baseless. She’d fit Tim right into her expanding family picture, demanded reading time together before bed, an audience for her feats of gymnastics at the playground, and left him generally dumbfounded at how easily she’d adapted to the situation.

“Could take Willa to Disneyworld.” Tim perked up at that. “You can ride all the spinning stuff with her, I can’t handle that shit.”

“Harry Potter World, too?”

“Which one’s that?”

Tim stared dully. “The wizard. She’s reading the first book right now.”

“Oh! The funny-lookin’ kid.”

Shaking his head mournfully, Tim draped his own tie about his neck. “We’ll leave you in a bar and I’ll take her to that one.”

They made it to the elevator just as it was opening, and then four people stood face-to-face, staring dumbstruck, until Leslie Mullen laughed delightedly and pulled each of them down for a quick hug in turn. “Well don’t you boys look nice?”

 “Raylan looks old,” Tim countered.

“And you haven’t killed each other yet,” Art commended, looking them over with a keen gaze. “I’m impressed.”

“This trip might do us in, according to Tim,” Raylan smiled sweetly when Art and Leslie moved past them out of the elevator, and Tim fought to keep his expression neutral. “But it’s a big room.”

Tim had to turn away subtly at that. “Jesus Christ, you’re bunking together?”

“Yeah,” Tim lamented, but then assured Art, “We made a deal though, Raylan’s not allowed to bring any bridesmaids home -”

“So long as Tim doesn’t bring any groomsmen home,” Raylan finished, and Tim flipped him off, earning a light smack apiece from Leslie and a dry chuckle from Art.

When he stopped laughing though, he fixed Tim with a pointed look that read somewhere along the lines of that joke’s up, and he figured Art had sussed out the deeper story behind his departure from the Lexington office at some point. Tim shrugged, didn’t linger on the point. “You coming to dinner?”

“We are,” Leslie assured them as she led the way partway back down the hallway of guest rooms. “I just need to stop by our room.”

Art held the door for the three of them and they walked in a room that mirrored their own on the other side of the hallway. As he walked past though, Art took Raylan by the elbow and spoke to him quietly by the door, heads together. “So, Raylan.”

“…Art…”

“As you might imagine, I have a lot of acquaintances I regard with varying degrees of affection still left in the Marshals Service.”

Raylan raised his brows, curious. “I ain’t even gonna ask where I fall on that scale.”

“The bottom,” Art answered anyway. “Because a lot of these folks, they tell me things.”

“Uh-huh…”

“Surprising things.”

“…Yeah…”

“About you.”

Raylan frowned, caught Tim glancing over curiously, cautiously, while Leslie was digging through a suitcase. “That sounds ominous.”

“Why don’t you want Dan’s job?” Raylan blinked rapidly a few times, caught off-guard. “I heard they asked you to interview as a formality, and then had to scramble for an alternative option when you shot them down.”

“I, ah…” he frowned, rubbed at his forehead. “It just wasn’t a role I could see myself in.” Kind of true. “And I got a good thing going with splitting time with Willa, don’t wanna find myself suddenly breaking a bunch of dates for work shit; did enough o’that with her mother.” Slightly more true.

Leslie smiled at him from across the room. “Look at you, Raylan, all grown up.”

“I did say he was old,” Tim reminded her.

Of course, then there was a third reason: Tim. They could get away with an office affair as colleagues, but not if one of them was in a position of authority over the other.

He’d had to downplay the weight that factor had on his decision, Tim had looked about ready to kick his ass for declining in the first place.

Art’s expression remained just shy of suspicious, like he could sense there was something unspoken. “Nothing to do with things in Kentucky ending the way they did?”

“No,” Raylan assured him easily. “I’m not harboring some deep, dark feelings of inadequacy over the one that got away.”

“How about getting outdrawn and shot in the head?”

“I am harboring some inadequacies about that.”

X---X

Rachel and her soon-to-be husband were waiting on them in the lobby, along with a tall, lanky young man that Raylan was horrified to realize was Nick, and he made a mental note to forbid Willa from growing up, ever.

 “Dude, what the hell,” Tim stared, nonplussed, up at Rachel’s grinning nephew, who had an inch or two on Raylan even.

“Tim, Raylan,” Rachel pointed to them in turn, and her tone matched her expression which said I am so over this shit. The man at her side just looked faintly amused, and Raylan had the immediate impression that this was more on the opposites attract end of relationships. “Deacon.”

They shook hands dutifully, and Raylan supposed Art and Leslie were already acquainted. “What’d you do to deserve her?” Tim asked skeptically, and Rachel punched him in the shoulder while her fiancée laughed heartily.

“I’m pissed at you,” she warned Tim. “I cannot believe you didn’t tell me!”

He stared blankly. “Huh?”

Apoplectic was never a word for which Raylan had found much use, until now. “Huh,” Rachel echoed. “Huh. Tim, are we friends?”

“Yeah…”

“Do friends tell each other things?”

Raylan leaned in. “Have you met Tim?” and then backed away quickly when it looked like she might throw another punch.

“I tell you things,” Rachel continued, mockingly sweet.

“Uh-huh…”

“Things like… Tim, I got a promotion. Tim, I’m engaged.”

“Congratulations on both of those things, by the way.” Deacon turned away and stifled a laugh, and Raylan decided that Deacon was good people.

Her voice was slowly rising in volume, and Raylan glanced around the hotel lobby nervously before realizing the number of badges they could flash if need be. “There are certain important life events you tell your friends, Tim.” His eyes widened to something just shy of panic. “Those emails we send every couple weeks are ideal times to share such important life events.”

“How do you even know?” he blurted.

“Art told me!”

His brows furrowed. “Does Art know?”

Art leaned in. “Dan told me.” He slapped Raylan a little too hard on the back. “S’not just Raylan I’ve got informants on.”

“Well when did Dan tell you?” Tim asked, encroaching on the closest to hysterical Raylan had ever seen him which, to be fair, was still pretty dry comparatively.

Art frowned deeply. “While you were in the hospital, Tim, Christ.”

“You sent me an email while you were in the hospital with a bullet in your shoulder!” Rachel exclaimed. “And you neglected to mention that you were in the hospital with a bullet in your shoulder.”

He blinked once, twice, shot a subtly betrayed look at the grin Raylan was hiding behind a hand. “Think they’d removed the bullet by the time I sent that.”

“Argh!” Rachel threw up her hands and stalked away.

Deacon lingered to assure them, “She’s just fed up from all the rehearsal nonsense and… well… my mother. Let me just…”

Tim waved him off. “I’ll talk to her.” And he trotted off after her quickly disappearing form, leaving the other five of them standing in the middle of the ornate lobby.

Raylan went back to sizing up the object of Rachel’s affections. Deacon was tall, dark skin a shade lighter than Rachel’s, had an open, good-natured face, and a mischief in his eyes that Raylan just couldn’t see with the serious marshal. “So, how’d you two meet?” Then added drily, “Rachel doesn’t actually tell us things, either.”

“I work in the US Attorney’s office.”

He blinked. “Jesus, are you an AUSA? Was it love at first investigation?”

Deacon grinned. “Her first month in the office, she brought in the number three. And about two years later, she finally agreed to go on a date.”

“Gave you the runaround?”

“Still is,” he admitted.

Deacon’s mother was dealing with a crisis “involving flowers or some useless shit” and Rachel’s was tired and had retired to her room, so they canceled their reservation at the snooty hotel restaurant and went across the street to a grill where Rachel announced her intention to “get drunk and eat all the shit Lorraine told me not to eat before tomorrow” and that suited all parties involved just fine. 

Tim and Rachel seemed to have made up, and Tim hinted that there were some vague promises about covering a couple rounds of drinks by way of apology.

“Isn’t this the night you’re supposed to like, go see strippers, drink tequila, and eat a cake in the shape of a penis?” Raylan asked over the first round.

Rachel met his eyes with a level stare. “Feel free to take your clothes off, if you’re that concerned.”

Raylan winked and took off his tie, feeling overdressed anyway, shoved it into his pocket. Rachel leaned across the table to remove Tim’s as well, and draped it about her own neck.

“Get me drunk enough, I’ll show you my scar,” Tim offered, and Rachel leaned back across, punched his shoulder again, and then summoned their server back for the next round.

Nick mumbled at his aunt to behave; Art and Leslie just sat back and enjoyed the show.

“So, Raylan,” Rachel mused sometime later around a mouthful of bacon cheeseburger. “That lead we thought we might’a had on Ava has gone deader than a doornail, according to SoCal. If it was even her.”

 Raylan rubbed at his jaw, shrugged. “I think it was. But she’d hid that long, probably too smart to linger.”

Tim leaned in, interested, brow furrowed.

“Never did turn up any more of Markham’s money,” Art tipped his beer at Rachel and Raylan in turn. “If she found some way to get it out of Harlan… shit,” he laughed. “I know you’re good, Raylan, but nine million dollars could hide Ava from God himself.”

“And God’s wrath is nothing compared to Boyd Crowder’s, so I’m not holding my breath.”

Art grinned. “Heard he’s preachin’ again.”

“Huh,” Raylan offered noncommittally. “Probably the only way he thought he’d survive his time among his former Aryan kinsmen.”

Deacon had obviously become at least passingly familiar with the Boyd Crowder fiasco. “Rachel says you knew this guy growing up?”

Raylan smiled tightly. “We dug coal together.”

Rachel abruptly burst into laughter and pushed a shot over to her fiancé. “Told you he’d say it,” and Deacon threw back the shot. Raylan took a long pull of his beer, suddenly aware of Tim’s narrowed gaze fixed calculatingly on his face.

X---X

Tim’s low drawl broke into Raylan’s thoughts of that delightfully giant bed and sleep – jet lag was a bitch – as he was unbuttoning his shirt. “What did you do?” Raylan tensed and shot Tim an expression that was meant to convey curiosity, confusion, but Tim saw right through his bullshit and let out a groan, ran his hands over his face. “Jesus fucking Christ." 

“Tim…”

“I know you too well; which says a lot about me, I suppose.” Raylan frowned deeply at that. “What did you do?”

“Rachel sent me a news clipping,” Raylan snapped. “Before you even came to Miami. I followed up on it.”

Tim stared expectantly, but Raylan wasn’t in an elaborating mood. “And you found her?”

“You really want me to answer that?”

Raylan was ready for Tim to be pissed off, but the flash of deep, sincere hurt across the younger man’s face caught him by surprise and sent a jolt of guilt through his own gut. “What the fuck are we even doing? Jesus,” he passed his hands over his face again. “Jesus. I’m an idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot.”

“Yeah,” Tim replied bluntly, “I am. ‘Cause I knew what you’re like, and somehow still let myself believe I wouldn’t find myself here with you. Despite all goddamn evidence to the contrary.”

“Tim, c’mon.” Raylan crossed over to him and put his hands on his waist. “It ain’t so simple.” 

Tim shoved his arms away roughly. “Fuck you. It is simple. ‘Cause I don’t know what the fuck we’re doing, when you’re holding on to secrets you’ll stagnate your career for while letting me feel like that’s my fault.”

Raylan scowled. “I’m happier where I am now if I got you there, too and that’s my goddamn decision. You do what you like when they offer you your own office.”

“Well that’s an optimistic outlook on things between us, wouldn’t you say?” Tim bit cruelly. “And are you honestly going to try to tell me that between all the bullshit about less time with Willa, and not wanting to see me forced to transfer up to Pensacola or someplace equally terrible, the first fucking thought through your head wasn’t the disaster the office would never walk back from if it came out that a chief deputy found a fugitive with whom he’d had a questionable past, a fugitive who had somehow disappeared nine million dollars, and he let her go?”

“She doesn’t have the money.”

“Oh,” Tim shot snidely, “she tell you that?”

“But,” he continued quietly, “she does have a kid.” Tim pulled back slightly, frown deepening. “She has Boyd’s son.”

“You sure it ain’t yours?”

Raylan worked his jaw a moment, and then offered mildly, “Go fuck yourself.” 

“Yeah,” Tim huffed, “I’m pretty good at that, turns out.”

Rachel caught sight of him in the hotel bar as she was leaving the room her mother and Nick were sharing. He had a drink in hand but didn’t pick it up off the counter, just ran his thumb along the rim of the glass as he stared sullenly down at the amber liquid. She changed course and sidled into the space between him and the empty chair to his right, leaning her back against the bar and crossing her arms as she looked him over. “You puke at my wedding, I’ll be pissed.”

“No, you won’t,” he took a sip. “You’ll be delighted that your horrible mother-in-law has somewhere else to focus her displeasure.”

“Yeah, okay,” she admitted, hopping up into the neighboring stool but waving off the approaching bartender. “What’s up, though?” her tone softened. “Thought you’d be beat by now.”

He held up his glass in a joyless cheer. “Second wave.”

“Tim.” He hadn’t actually had that much to drink over dinner, but she did look faintly concerned at his melancholy drunkenness. “Are you gonna make me guess?”

The corner of his mouth turned up. “No. Please. Just…” he frowned, swirled what was left of his drink in a hypnotic circle. “Getting too old to be so fucking clueless.”

“About what?”

“Life? Love? Friends? Shit, I don’t know. Anything. Everything.”

Rachel smiled wryly. “Tim, it’s the bridesmaids who are supposed to get insecure about still being single while their friend’s getting married.”

“’m not single,” he muttered almost inaudibly, and she cocked a brow in interest. “Just confused.” Threw back the remnants of his drink. “See, there’s all kinds of shit I don’t tell you.”

“You’re not in here drinking yourself silly because of the shit I gave you about getting shot, are you?”

That drew a huff of laughter. “No. And I am sorry about that, really. But you’d have called and asked what happened and… it was a bit contentious.”

She leaned in, trying to get a better look at his face. “I can’t tell if that was an invitation to ask or a warning not to.” He shrugged, so she probed a bit further. “Art said you took a bullet for Raylan.”

“And therein lies the rub.”

It fell quiet for a long moment. “I don’t understand.”

“I ignored an order. Knew I was exposed, made myself a target. Perched up on this warehouse roof, this terrible spot, because a bunch of gun-runners were supposed to be making a drop there later that night, according to Raylan’s CI who was supposed to be meeting him to go over how it was going to go down.” He caught the bartender’s eye, signaled for another. “No one in their right mind would’a picked that spot. And these men showed up, instead of our CI, and it could’a been unhappy coincidence, one of the crews setting up early to have insurance against getting fucked over… but it was just wrong. No one would’a picked that spot.”

The bartender set a new glass down in front of him, and he resumed the ritual of swirling the liquid around without actually drinking it, staring sullenly down at it. “You get these moments of clarity, watching the world through a scope. Time sorta compresses around itself. You been running all these hypotheticals and then one last variable steps into the scene and you can pick at the threads that weave together into a final, gruesome picture. Where’s the distraction; who’s wearing the bomb; what’s his target and can you pick him off before he gets there? Will he be in a crowd of civilians when you do? Is your authorization to pull going to come through in time to do anything at all?”

“And your moment of clarity told you Raylan’s life depended on you taking that shot.”

“Hm,” he took a small sip. “His CI got burned, strong-armed into setting Raylan up. But we didn’t know that for sure until a couple weeks later, when they finally got tired of torturing him and dumped the body in a car outside the courthouse. And in those couple weeks…” he sighed, rubbed harshly at his face. “Our boss kept putting me off when I’d try to explain, and I later realized he was wondering the same thing I knew Raylan was wondering, but couldn’t bring himself to say to my face, because we’d both been stupid enough to think it wouldn’t matter.”

Rachel blinked. “What wouldn’t matter?”

His voice was a low murmur around his glass. “Working in the field, in life or death situations, alongside someone you’re sleeping with.”

Something close to a minute passed before he could bring himself to look at Rachel’s face. At the movement, she snapped out of her wide-eyed, shocked reverie, reached over, seized the glass out of his hand, and downed the remnants of the bourbon in one mouthful.

“Jesus, Tim,” she croaked. “Forget the fucking emails, I need a goddamn newsletter.” She summoned the bartender back over and asked for two more. “How long was that going on?”

“’Bout five months, before I got shot. And I was in the hospital a couple weeks, and out of work about another month, and somewhere in there I started to wonder if Dan and Raylan were right, if I’d been reckless for the wrong reasons, and I tried to break it off.”

“Tried,” Rachel echoed dully, before realization gleamed in her eyes. “You’re not single. You’re dating Raylan goddamn Givens.”

“Been nearly a year now.”

“Oh my God. Oh my God – does Art know?”

He shot her a quelling look. “No. And we don’t want to make it a thing, here and now.”

She just stared, shook her head in something like wonderment as two new drinks were set in front of them. “I just… I thought you might be gay,” she confessed, “even though you never tell me anything.” She at least resisted the urge to land anymore punches. “But Jesus… has Raylan ever… been with men before?”

Tim smiled drily. “Just one, a long time ago. I’d give you three guesses to who, but you’ll only need one.”

“Oh my God.”

“Right?”

“I feel like such an idiot.”

Tim snorted. “Don’t we all?”

She must have heard something deeper in his tone, because she frowned and reached a hand over to rest gently on his forearm as he moved to reach for the latest round. “Hey. What’s wrong? Why isn’t he down here giving you a run for your money on that bourbon?”

Tim didn’t answer for a long time, but he left the drink on the bar as he mulled over his own thoughts, weighed his answer which, naturally, had nothing and everything to do with the short spat they’d had upstairs. “Raylan… he said something to me, when we were struggling to sort things out after the shooting… said I treat my life like it’s something less. But Raylan… his life, all his choices, for good or bad, the places he’s been, the things he’s done… some of it he wears like his goddamn hat, and the rest of it follows around after him.

“Me though?” he frowned. “I don’t have family feuds back home; didn’t even have a family to speak of, by the age of eighteen, and that barely counted anyway. The Army taught me not to get attached to people or places, and that I was little more than an anonymous cog serving as a highly-trained, deadly extension of someone’s will, sitting comfy back in Washington. Mission first, and all that shit.

“And for a long time, we kept things quiet, rather than deal with figuring out how to handle it with work, or how to slot me into the chaos that can be Raylan’s life. But then Winona found out back in February, and she thought Willa oughta know, goin’ on as long as it had. And now, four months later, I’m…” he rubbed at his jaw, smiled bemusedly. “I’m readin’ books with her, and takin’ her to the park. Got my fuckin’ name and number down on the emergency contact list at her school. The whole goddamn office knows, and most of ‘em didn’t even blink twice, had guessed well enough when Dan split us up for field work. I’m… happy with all that, except I sometimes feel like an imposter in my own life and an intruder in someone else’s, and I get one of those little flashes of complete fucking clarity except I’m the one trying to sabotage myself, because I think somewhere along the way, I just forgot how to be happy.”

Rachel gave him a cut the bullshit look that pulled him out of his melancholy funk all too effectively. “Sounds to me like you’re just afraid to be happy. Jesus Christ, Tim.” He scowled down at an untouched drink. “Go sort out whatever argument brought you down here alone, and enjoy yourselves. You’re away from work and any real responsibilities, spending two nights in an obscenely over-the-top luxury hotel. Goddamn.”

“Yes ma’am,” he replied dutifully.

“And you should really tell Art and Leslie, you know. Before you go home.”

“We’ll see.”

Raylan wasn’t asleep when Tim walked back into the suite, but he was nice enough to give Tim the choice of whether or not to pretend he was. And the frustrated part of Tim let him stew while he hung up his shirt and slacks, disappeared into the bathroom for a few minutes, and took a cursory glance at his work email on his phone.

But then he stripped down the rest of the way and climbed into the huge bed, slid under the covers, and sidled across to where Raylan was turned on his side near the far edge, facing away. He put his mouth close to Raylan’s ear and murmured, “Rachel wants to know if we’ll have a threesome with her in lieu of the bachelorette party.”

Raylan craned his neck around and cocked an intrigued brow. “Now there’s a missed opportunity in Lexington.” Tim bit his shoulder, and Raylan – being Raylan – took that as an invitation to turn the rest of the way and kiss him, but it was restrained, laden with curiosity and apology.

Tim withdrew and met his eyes steadily, gleaming slightly in low glare of city lights through the window in the otherwise darkened room. “Would you have brought her in, if it weren’t for the kid?”

Raylan huffed a laugh and ran a hand through his mussed hair. “Honestly? I don’t know. I ran through so many scenarios in my head before I got there, if she was even there, and more of ‘em than not had her shootin’ me or tryin’ to and nowhere in any of those pictures was a little boy with his shirt buttoned to the collar and just so innocent but also so Boyd and… fuck.” He smiled sadly. “I don’t expect you to understand, really. Just… I could only think of Willa in that moment and the idea that…after all the bullshit between us, maybe we did manage to give something better to them. Outta Harlan. Outta Kentucky. I wanted him to have that chance.”

“Do you know where they are now?”

“Not the slightest clue.”

Tim nodded and mulled that over for a minute, settling down by Raylan’s side, not touching, but close enough to feel the heat radiating off of him. “I, ah… was downstairs thinking. And drinking some more. And talking to Rachel, who then started drinking when we got to the part about me and you-”

Raylan turned his face towards him, surprised. “Jesus, you actually told her? What’d she say?”

“She asked how the sex was.”

“She did not.”

Tim held up a hand to shut Raylan up a moment more. “And I was pissed, maybe less that you’d done it and more that you never told me, but I gotta harbor some hope that had it happened when we were together, you would have, or I really don’t know what the fucking point is. And if I allow myself that, I’m just left with the part where you did it in the first place. But if I think back on your past with Ava, and even with Crowder, and realize you must feel some connection to their kid, even finding out about him like that, it forces me to admit… well, even if things between me and you go by the wayside, I can’t imagine a time I wouldn’t help hide a body, if it somehow kept Willa safe. So…” He shifted over onto his side and rested his forehead against Raylan’s shoulder. “Yeah. I do get it.” 

Raylan lay quiet for short while, contemplating Tim’s little speech. “That might be the most touching thing I’ve ever heard from you,” he mused at last. “Though I can’t help but wonder what mischief you think Willa’s going to get up to in her life that will necessitate hiding a body.”

X---X

“I didn’t realize,” Raylan leaned over to Leslie as they watched Art lead Rachel through a few simple steps on the dance floor, “that Art was here for father-of-the-bride duties.”

“Brought a tear to my eye,” Tim added as he returned to the table with a round for them all. “Just there,” he pointed. “Held it in, though, the program didn’t indicate whether crying was permitted.”

Leslie tried to keep the grin off her face, turning to watch Deacon and his mother moving gracefully, if a bit stiffly, on the other side of the dance floor. “Lorraine does take herself very seriously, doesn’t she?”

“Prob’ly why Rachel can’t stand her, s’like looking at herself in a mirror thirty years on.” Tim looked to where she was laughing at something Art said. “Without the whole socialite thing going on, though, Rachel only cares about important stuff. Like arresting Bad Guys.”

Raylan raised his glass in a cheers to that. “And sometimes beating up Very Bad Guys.”

“Hear hear.”

Art and Rachel wound their way around to the table a minute later. Art pulled Leslie to her feet for an obligatory spin around the room, and Rachel eyed Raylan with a narrow gleam that set him on edge. “I don’t really know how to dance,” he confessed as she dragged him away.

“Me either,” Rachel commiserated, “I’m just faking it for Deacon tonight.” She grinned over his shoulder and Raylan craned his head around to see the groom huffing a soft laugh, shoulders shaking, and his mother scowling disapprovingly. “So. You and Tim seem to have made up.”

“Maybe we’re just faking that, too.”

She shot him a look that quickly brought his jesting to an end. “I know you. I know Tim. He’s settled whatever was bothering him last night.” Raylan shrugged a shoulder and declined to comment. “Why didn’t you want anyone to know?”

“Plenty of people know,” Raylan corrected mildly. “In Miami. We’re here for you, as your friends; whether or not Tim and I are sleeping together has no bearing on that.”

“But it’s more than that.”

Raylan held her gaze a moment, and nodded. “Yes, it’s more than that.”

Rachel glanced sideways to where Tim was chatting with one of their other tablemates. “I’m glad. I think. He seems different; more open. Miami might be doing you both some good. You seem… settled, in a way Kentucky could never do for you.”

“It does beg the question of where my life would be had I never made the move in the first place,” Raylan said, tone dry and sardonic but then he softened, smiled lightly. “But I suppose I got a daughter and a boyfriend out of it, so there were perks.”

“I’m just going to say it once, and then I’ll shut up, but you and the boyfriend could be here as exactly that. The party won’t stop, and Lorraine will recover, if the two of you decided to dance. Just don’t go hooking up in the coat closet.”

Raylan grinned, and then turned to peer around through the increasingly crowded dance floor. “Not sure Art would recover. And – holy shit,” he caught sight of him and Leslie back over at the table already, “is that Nelson?”

It was, indeed. Rachel and Raylan reached the table as none other than Nelson Dunlop was explaining to Tim, Leslie, and Art about his drive up from Portland getting delayed, “But it’s good to see you all made it.” He turned to Tim. “Did Raylan come with you up from Miami?”

“Yeah, but we couldn’t decide who should wear the corsage.” Tim gestured with his drink and Nelson turned, shook Raylan’s hand and clasped his arm fondly, and gave Rachel a quick hug.

Rachel freed Deacon from his mother, ignored her objections to their abandonment of the dance floor and requests for more pictures, and brought him back over to the table that had been commandeered by the former Lexington marshals. They shared war stories from their respective new posts (Seattle, Portland, Miami, and retirement, as it were), but Nelson turned his attention back to Tim and Raylan before too long, eyeing them bemusedly.

“You know, I’ve got a deputy who’s got a classmate from Glynco with a friend in the courthouse down there and -”

“And she saw Ferris pass out at Thirty-One Flavors?” Tim asked.

Nelson blinked once and smiled unsurely. “Just surprised to hear the news about you two, is all.”

“Ah,” Raylan leaned back, “Which part?” He nodded towards Art. “The part where I turned down the chance to be Chief Deputy at last?”

Tim piped in, tipping his glass towards Rachel and Raylan in turn. “Or the part where I got shot for this sonuva bitch last year?”

“What?” Nelson blinked, eyes wide. “No. The part where you two just up and announced that you’re dating a few months ago. You really got shot?”

A dead silence fell over the table for several seconds while Tim and Raylan blinked dumbly at Nelson and everyone else stared blankly at the two of them. Then Rachel started giggling in a very un-Rachel-like manner, and Raylan sighed, slumped, and rubbed tiredly at his eyes. “Goddammit, Nelson.”

Rachel downed a glass of someone else’s champagne and stood, taking Nelson by the arm and pulling him to his feet after her. “Come on, Dunlop, let’s dance. Tim and Raylan can join us once they’ve figured out how to explain this one to Art.” And she led Nelson away, him fumbling his words and lost as to the trouble he’d caused.

It seemed some things, no matter the time or distance put between, never changed.

“I don’t… really?” Art looked between them suspiciously. “But you never… really?”

Raylan shrugged and draped an arm around Tim’s shoulders. Tim offered an obligatory scowl at the demonstration, but didn’t throw him off. Leslie hid a grin behind her hand and asked wryly, “How’d Winona take that?”

“With far more grace than I took to her new beau,” Raylan assured her. “Now if you’ll excuse us.” He pushed his chair back and pulled Tim up with him. “We have a disgruntled mother-in-law to mortify.”

They made it three steps before Art’s voice halted them with a sharp, “Son of a bitch!” Raylan turned, wide-eyed. “Dug coal together, my ass. You slept with Crowder, didn’t you?”