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Art tells him to keep an eye on Tim.Not like Raylan needs telling.He doesn’t know how deep it might’ve cut, losing an old Army buddy. Knows even less how Tim felt pulling the trigger and bringing down the guy who did it.He knows how he’d feel: righteous, vindicated, a little disappointed the guy won’t do time but not sorry to see him under the dirt.Tim, though? He’s harder to read; a green sky on the horizon, a voice in the woods at night. Unassuming, if folks don’t know better.Raylan knows better. Whatever Tim has going on under the surface, it ain’t nothing. And damn him, Raylan never could leave a scabbed-over hurt well enough alone.So here he is, ass o’clock in the evening, knocking on Tim’s door with a bottle of whiskey and no idea what he might want to say.The Tim Raylan sees every day is buttoned down and sharp-eyed, all of him clenched carefully around whatever it is he keeps buried inside. The Tim who answers the door, Raylan’s only glimpsed a couple of times before.He’s rumpled around the edges, not quite three sheets to the wind but certainly one or two. He doesn’t ask why Raylan’s here. Just eyes the bottle in his hand and juts his chin up at him, curling his mouth into a questioning frown.“Figured you might need a drink,” Raylan says instead of hello. A beat, while he looks Tim up and down—work shirt half tucked in but unbuttoned all the way down, belt loose around his hips. There’s a few empty beer bottles (Raylan refuses to think of them as dead soldiers) on the coffee table, just visible behind Tim’s shoulder. “Looks like I’m a little late,” he adds, and tries on a smile.Tim doesn’t return it, but there’s a vague sort of humor in his heavy-lidded gaze. “I can take care of myself.” He says it slow. Soft. Still getting the measure of Raylan, of what he’s doing here on his doorstep.Raylan says, “Shouldn’t drink alone. Read somewhere that leads to bad decisions.”“That Art talking, or you?” Tim snorts. “‘Cause it’d be real rich, you worrying about my decision making.”“You get meaner when you’re drunk.”“Was kinda hoping you’d get less annoying when I’m drunk, but today just ain’t my day.” His tone is cutting, but the lines of his face are still soft, his eyes a little glassy. The tip of his tongue touches his lower lip when he talks. Raylan doesn’t let himself notice this.Tim lets him waver on the porch another minute, and then he steps back, leaving the doorway clear. “Better come in, I guess. Can’t have the neighbors wondering why I got a gentleman caller on my stoop so late at night.”That makes Raylan pause. Turn over the words in his head. Decide they mean shit all, like half the things Tim says.He goes inside.§Tim drinks like a professional.There’s a word for that, but Raylan’s not about to throw it around right now, not about to bring up interventions and twelve step programs when Tim’s got something big and ugly in need of drowning.So when Tim gives them each a heavy-handed pour of the whiskey, Raylan only raises his eyebrows a little.Tim catches it anyway, eyes still sharp even when the rest of him’s gone bleary. “You got some catching up to do,” he says.He raises his own glass. Tosses it back, neat. Raylan watches his throat work and sips his slower.“You wanna talk about it?” he asks, and Tim makes a sound too liquid to be a laugh.“Jesus, no.” He pours himself another, tops Raylan’s off, then sets the bottle on the table and drops onto the sofa. “If Art’s just trying to protect his assets, you can tell him I’ll be fit for duty tomorrow.”“Protect his assets,” Raylan echoes, and his smile is bitter. “That’s a funny way of saying somebody gives a shit how you’re doing.”Tim waves a hand at him. “Save it. I didn’t come pissing and moaning at your door over in East Jesus Nowhere. You came here at Art’s behest to make sure I’m not about to swallow my service weapon. That about the size of it?”“You’re a real goddamn piece of work, you know that?”“Pot, kettle,” says Tim, gesturing between them with his glass.Raylan opens his mouth. Closes it again. He isn’t even sure what it is he wants to say.Christ, you’re infuriating fits the bill, but he’s got the distinct feeling Tim’s ruffling his feathers on purpose, angling for a fight. God knows Raylan’s bloodied his own knuckles once or twice by way of quieting his mind.Maybe I was coming anyway, even without Art saying so. That’s also true, but likely to make Tim ask questions Raylan doesn’t feel like answering.The way Raylan’s doing now, he supposes.He sucks his teeth and sighs hard through his nose. Tim’s watching him sidelong, eyes following him as Raylan crosses to the coffee table, flicks the cap off the whiskey, and takes a pull direct from the bottle. Just to soothe his nerves some.Then he offers the bottle to Tim.Tim looks at it. Drags his gaze up the length of Raylan’s arm to look at his face.Something twitches in the corner of his mouth. It’s not amusement, and it’s not disgust. Some hybrid cousin of both, maybe.Something that sees itself in him, or knows he’s seeing himself in it, and neither of them are very nice to look at, underneath it all.Tim takes the bottle, and he drinks straight from it, too. Meets Raylan’s eyes the whole time—waiting, maybe, to see if Raylan flinches first.But Raylan doesn’t flinch.Instead, he sits beside him, and their knees bump against each other as they pass the bottle back and forth.They don’t say anything at all, for awhile.§He can’t say, later, where the line gets crossed.Maybe it got crossed months ago, the first time he gave Tim the slip and Tim caught like a fuse, burned slow and steady toward something dangerous.Maybe it gets crossed when Raylan takes the bottle from Tim’s hand and holds his gaze while he sets it on the table.Maybe when Tim says his name real soft, like a warning. Like a whisper in the nighttime woods, like a scratch at the window. Raylan would be a fool to answer to anything that said his name like that.And he is. Oh Christ, he’s more fool than he even knew he could be, the back of his head already trying to blame it on the whiskey, like the whiskey isn’t molten courage in his veins, like the smell of it on Tim’s breath doesn’t make him crazy.He kisses him, and Tim goes still, just for a moment. Raylan pulls back just enough to look at him, and Tim’s eyes are on his mouth.“Jesus,” Tim says. “You come here for a pity fuck?” He’s reaching for his earlier mean, but it’s slippery on his tongue, slides into something a little stretched and open, something that makes Raylan ache.So he says, “That depends. You feeling sorry for me?”A real smile, there and gone on Tim’s lips. “Not just yet,” he says. “Keep trying.”This time, it’s Tim that closes the distance.§A powderkeg, Art called Tim once. Something looking for a spark, something set to blow.Raylan isn’t sure still what exactly the match was—Tim’s dead friend, or Colt, or himself—but here and now, Tim boils over under his hands, erupts in slow motion.He pushes into Raylan like it’s a fight after all, gets his fists in Raylan’s shirt and tugs it free of his jeans, kisses him too rough, uses too many teeth.Christ, it shouldn’t turn Raylan on, the destruction in Tim’s touch.But it does. He bites back, drags his teeth over Tim’s neck and gets a growling sort of moan for his trouble, something Tim tries to swallow and can’t quite manage.“Don’t do that,” he says to sweat sheen on Tim’s skin. “Don’t be quiet for my sake.”“For your sake?” Tim pants. “I got neighbors, you arrogant sumbitch.”Raylan smiles, moves to kiss him again. Puts his hands against the front of Tim’s jeans and presses hard just as he sinks his teeth into Tim’s lower lip, tasting the booze on his sharp exhale.“Shit, Raylan—!”Raylan doesn’t relent. He rubs him hard through the denim, stops only to pop the button on Tim’s fly and give his dick room to fit a little nicer against Raylan’s palm.Tim’s got his teeth gritted, his forehead pressed against Raylan’s cheek. “Fuck. Jesus,” he says. “We gonna do this like middle schoolers or you gonna fuck me right?”All the venom in the words is spoiled by the flush rising up his neck, by the halting delivery between heavy breaths.Raylan puts a hand in Tim’s hair and pulls it sideways, wrenches his head over so he can mouth at his neck some more, eases the pressure of his hand just to feel Tim’s hips try to chase it.“Think you like it no matter what I do, son,” he says, and the noise Tim makes this time is higher, broken halfway through by a hitch in his throat, something half strangled and all the way wrecked.He goes a little lax in Raylan’s grip, his hands still caught on Raylan’s shirt, his mouth hot against Raylan’s ear.Raylan rewards this by unzipping his pants fully, by reaching in and pulling his dick out so he can touch him proper. There’s another half-whispered, “Fuck,” a brief spasm of Tim’s fingers.Raylan lets go of Tim’s hair, moves his hand to Tim’s throat. “There you go,” he says, and feels Tim swallow hard against his palm. “You play nice, and I can play nice, too.”“How nice I gotta play to skip the goddamn foreplay?”A flex of Raylan’s fingers, and Tim’s eyes lose their focus briefly. Raylan gives him a tight smile and moves his thumb up to stroke along his jaw. Tim tosses his head but settles again almost immediately.“Don’t lie to me when I’ve got your dick in my hand, son.” Tim shivers, and Raylan leans in close to kiss him again. No teeth from Tim this time, just his tongue, desperate and wary at once. “Tell me the truth,” Raylan presses. “Tell me you like it.”“Christ, Raylan,” Tim says, no real fight in it.“Tell me you like it, and I’ll give you what you want.” Raylan shuffles a little closer so he can slot his knee between Tim’s legs. Tim’s hands in his shirt come loose, find purchase underneath the fabric instead, sweaty palms against Raylan’s skin. “Tell me you like it,” Raylan says, “and I’ll fuck you so hard you’ll feel it for days.”Tim’s eyes squeeze shut, and when Raylan strokes his jaw this time, Tim turns into the pressure.“Please,” he says, low and rasping. “Please.”“Tell me,” Raylan prompts, his tone a warning. “Tell me like I asked. Tell me you want whatever I got to give you.”“Jesus. Raylan, yeah. Fuck. Whatever you want.”“And if I want to hear the sounds you make?”“Yeah. Fuck, yes, okay.”“There you go.” Raylan kisses him again, gives him a slow stroke with a tight fist, and this time Tim all but whimpers against his lips. “There you go. That’s real good.”After that, it’s easy.They never quite make it out of their clothes. Raylan sucks Tim right there on the sofa, sucks him until Tim is begging for him to fuck him or finish him, until Tim’s hands in his hair are claws, until he’s saying Raylan’s name like it’s a goddamn benediction.Then he turns him over and opens him up with his tongue and his fingers, and if Raylan had known what kind of noises that would draw out of Tim, he might have started there.By the time he slides into him, Tim’s gone almost boneless on the cushions, and at the first press he curls back against Raylan so sweetly Raylan has to pull out just so he can do it again.“Tim, Christ. You feel—” but he doesn’t finish, just presses his mouth against Tim’s shoulder, accepts the awkward, sloppy kiss that Tim cranes his neck to give.“Do it,” Tim says against his mouth. “Want to feel it, like you said.”“Feel it for days?” Raylan asks, and huffs a laugh. “You think you earned it?”Tim reaches behind him, gets his fingers around Raylan’s thigh and pulls halfheartedly, trying to push himself backward as he does, to urge Raylan deeper.“Please,” he says. He bows his head against the arm of the sofa. “Need it. Fucking—please.”And there’s enough honesty in it that Raylan doesn’t press him farther, just plants one foot on the floor and wraps a hand around Tim’s hip, fucks him exactly the way Tim wants, hard and fast and dirty.He can do that for him, at least.For his part, Tim makes good on his promise. He lets Raylan hear every moan, every half-formed curse that fumbles its way up from his throat. He doesn’t hold back, so Raylan doesn’t either. Tim will have bruises in the morning.Raylan—well, Raylan will carry his own reminders of this. The heat of Tim under and around him, the way his name sounds in that hushed haint voice. He already knows he’s gonna want it again, is already wondering what Tim tastes like when he doesn’t taste like whiskey.He has enough of his wits about him to pull out before he finishes. Tim’s already gone, spent himself on his own couch cushion, and shit, Raylan probably shouldn’t like that, either. Probably shouldn’t jerk himself off over Tim’s back, thinking about careful and clenched-tight Tim Gutterson losing his goddamn control and coming all over his own furniture.But he does, God help him.He does the right thing, after. Cleans Tim up—and his sofa, too. Gets him in bed and makes sure there’s a glass of water and a couple of aspirin on the nightstand for the morning. Doesn’t kiss him goodbye, because that feels intimate in a way that fucking him wasn’t. Feels too gentle, maybe, for the way Tim touches.But he thinks about it anyway, driving home in the dark. About the booze-soaked mess of Tim in Raylan’s arms, about the sweet arch of his spine, about the livid green sky warning of him that any fool ought to know spells trouble.But shit, Raylan never minded trouble before. He doesn’t see much reason to start minding it now.He drives on, and when passing headlights wash bright over his face, he’s smiling.§