polyfacetious asked: Tim still wakes up in a pocket of quiet, before the sun rises, before traffic blares through the window. Before he remembers the when and the where of right now. Before he remembers Raylan won’t be sleeping behind him, a warm weight at his back after a night of whispered plans for their future. Before he remembers the ache in his chest is absence and icy grief.
In another world, in another life, Raylan Givens wakes up in a room full of sunlight. He’s never been an early riser, never been a morning person. He blames growing up where he did for it, but it’s just not in his system.
The room is clean, like the night before has been washed away. But no amount of tables turned right again can replace the broken plaster in the wall. Raylan stares at it until his eyes feel gritty and heavy.
His dress greens are folded neatly over the back of the chair at the small table, his shoes shined up and sitting next to a coffee cup. By this time, even the cardboard sleeve and the styrofoam can’t keep it warm.
That’s fine. Raylan hasn’t been warm since he got off the plane.
He dresses on autopilot, refuses to stop in front of the mirror to fix his hair or his tie. He knows the others will get it for him if it’s bad.
Frank is sitting on the rocking chair outside of the hotel room, on its “porch”. He runs a hand over short shorn hair and doesn’t say a word. Raylan’s glad for it. He’s all out of words, all out of thoughts. Everything in his head is just polaroid snapshots, stacked together and quick like a flipbook.
It’s just the two of them here.
The drive across town feels like the blink of an eye. Just the world spinning on past them. A blur of colors, just like Raylan’s thoughts. He doesn’t look at the sign outside of the building, refuses to let himself read the words.
Inside, it’s quiet. There’s some kind of music in the background, unobtrusive and wordless. Raylan stops in the doorway to the room, counting each and every white wooden folding chair set up in neat rows.
Forty five. They would only need five. Tim’s parents were dead. He had no siblings. No leftover friends from high school. No one but them.
Frank is a shadow darkening the doorway but not moving. Raylan can’t bring himself to raise his eyes, so he brings his fingers to his lips again. He presses in hard against his split bottom lip and remembers Logan’s vicious, fathomless eyes.
This is your fault! You did this!
Jacob took him to another hotel after that, Wade like a duckling in his wake. They were fractured now, not a cohesive unit. They never would be again.
“Ray.” The first word he’s heard spoken today, Frank’s voice a gravelly balm against the waves of pain washing over him, but whatever was coming next is lost in the gunshot crack of the door slamming open and hitting the wall.
Wade catches Logan by the elbow before he can throw himself at Raylan, dark eyes bloodshot. He must not have stopped drinking, Raylan can smell the Wild Turkey in the air around him, seeping out of his pores.
Jacob is hot on Wade’s heels, but he’s not looking at Logan. He’s following Raylan up along the path of the runner of carpet, up to the side of a rich brown coffin, the satin inside making Tim’s skin look like alabaster.
His brother’s grip on his shoulder is too tight. It’d break the skin if Raylan didn’t have so many starched layers on.
“If you kill yourself, he’ll never forgive you.” Jacob has always seen right through him, has always known every vicious and miserable thought in Raylan’s head, called them clouds passing over the sun.
There was no more sun now, just a yellow tornado sky turned black with the coming storm. All Raylan has heard in his ears since the shots stopped firing is the freight train wail of a tornado building inside of him.
He didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. Life wasn’t a movie and Tim didn’t linger. He died with the same pragmaticism and perfunctory grace he did everything else. He was gone before Raylan ever put hands on him, shot right between the eyes.
Raylan looks down at his hands, like he’s still expecting to see blood and bone there, like he’ll ever be able to wash away the spongey feeling of Tim’s brain seeping out of the hole in the back of his skull from his hands.
“Then he can flip me the bird from Heaven while I roast in Hell.” Raylan’s voice sounds unfamiliar to his own ears, flat and raspy and useless. Jacob’s grip tightens somehow.
“You tell me I have a life to live, that he’d want me to live it, I’ll shoot you in the fucking foot, Jacob.” Because maybe it was true. Maybe Tim was a better man than Raylan would ever be.
Raylan wouldn’t wish this pain on anybody, but he can’t pretend he’d be magnanimous enough to wish Tim another love and another life after him. But Raylan has always been a selfish son of a bitch.
“Fine.” His brother’s voice is choked. “Then do it for me. Live for me, because I can’t do this without you.”
That’s a low blow and it lands, just like Jacob knew it would.
“He don’t look like he’s sleeping.” Raylan didn’t know why everybody fucking said that. Tim didn’t look like he was sleeping.
Tim looked like he was dead.
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