67. (fnl) we burn our hands. (2/6)
title. we burn our hands. (2/6)
fandom. friday night lights.
pairings/characters. julie taylor. tim riggins. (tim/julie; tim/lyla, matt/julie.)
warnings. au; future fic. post-fnl.
disclaimer. not mine.
words. 9817.
rating. r.
for. liquid_garnet for fnl_santa. requested: A long(ish) Tim/Julie fanfiction (relationship fic, can be smutty).
summary. new york pisses rain. julie moves on -- baggage follows.
notes. sexual situations in this one. :p can i say this is rather frightening? XP as always, thanks goes to ladymacbeth922 for the beta and iluisaaa for the arm pulling and death threats. feedback is ♥.
After their conversation in Starbucks, Julie’s fingers linger on the phone. She keeps coming back to it, running in a cycle where she’ll do something to occupy her mind and she’ll end up here, at the phone. She’s in her bedroom, sitting on her bed, with the portable phone curled in her palm.
Before this, she used to think about calling Lyla. Things transitioned between them from mere acquaintances to something liken to friends. (Lyla didn’t like leaving for college without having some friendship support, Julie figures, since she’s all alone and Tyra’s not going to offer Garrity anything but snark.) So Lyla sort of pushed herself into Julie’s life, came to family dinners, sometimes accompanied with Tim, and when she left, they emailed. The emails had an on-off relationship; sometimes Lyla would email with small updates Julie pretended she understood and Julie would reply back with the same thing. Dance was good, the pay was great, I miss you.
She has to give Lyla credit, though. She was there when Tyra wasn’t.
She thinks about calling Lyla now, pressing unfamiliar numbers into her phone and watching for that hitch of breath, the politeness of a sweet voice and awkwardness to ensue before she spits out the whereabouts of Tim and wait for that breath, the pregnant pause where Lyla will play it off like Tyra sometimes does.
Playing matchmaker has never been something she’s ever been fond of. Lois is to blame for that. But she’s starting to rethink it, ever since the second bowl of ice-cream Tim insisted she have before he claimed her television to watch a Jessica Alba movie.
She sits the phone in its cradle.
*
Watching movies until 2AM becomes a thing for them. Julie doesn’t wish to acknowledge it, the fact that they have a ‘thing’ and that it involves a word that suggests something plural. But - and, against her better judgement, she doesn’t want to admit this - Lois is stuck in her head and this becomes a thing between the two of them. It’s a thing, by definition and fact, and she knows Lois will agree because it’s what she dreamed about in the cafeteria or library or in Julie’s room after the tornado incident.
He’s curled up on the couch, like usual, and he’s becoming typecast as Couch Boy in the movie she’s writing a script for in her head. She’s sitting on the floor, back leaning against the couch and she tries so desperately to not let her head flop backwards and just fall asleep, prepared for that kink in her neck from passing out in such a stupid position. Tim shifts on the couch, arm hanging dead against the side, and it’s coming closer to her, sort of like how dark shadows in nightmares do. She eyes it, watches it in her peripheral and he’s sighing, yawning loudly occasionally. It pisses her off because this is a movie she wanted to watch and he’s ruining it.
They’ve been watching a Molly Ringwald marathon, and Tim’s all in for it because Molly Ringwald is hot and she thinks that maybe he’s one of those boys who has had some sort of Alyssa Milano fantasy about her. She doesn’t want to know.
But he’s been sighing for the past hour, shifting every few minutes, and she has to rethink her whole status on him and his secret passion for Molly Ringwald. He agreed in that bored tone around six, and he’s been verbally silent ever since.
Shifting again, Julie tries to block him out, eyebrows clenching tightly as if this will help her ignore him. His legs breathe against the back of her head and his hand is so close to her shoulder she really wants to cut it off.
He does it again, just when it’s getting to the scene she always finds herself so invested in. However, tonight, it’s different, and all she can focus on is Tim’s dangling limb and how his fingers brush over her shoulder so casually. She glances at him, his head resting on pillows she told him he needed propped up on the arm of the couch unless he wanted a neck that didn’t quite agree with him tomorrow; he’s watching the movie, blinking occasionally, breathing as quietly as he usually does.
Except his mouth opens and he sighs.
“You know, whenever you watch Angelina Jolie movies, I don’t make as much noise as you,” she presses her lips into a line, crosses her arms over her chest, and she’s missing out on what brings her into the movie and leaves her breathless at the end. It also doesn’t matter that she’s sort of lying, because while Angelina was running across the screen in some leotard thing while shooting at some hot guy, she’d been huffing and puffing and slamming doors as though it’d make him stop and ask her, nicely, if she wanted to watch that Sally Fields movie. “It’s like living next to a train track.”
Tim seems to grin, “Sorry.”
Her eyes assess him with a flicker; the pull of her mouth loosens as she directs her attention to him. “Tired?”
Shaking his head, he glances at her, that stupid pull of his mouth that is the foreshadowing of the shit-eating grin she doesn’t like; she looks back to the screen. “Not even close.”
“Okay,” she bites her lip, sighing herself (and it’s like some common cold he’s passing around, because now she feels restless and just wants to fuss about), and her crossed arms go languid against her chest. “Just shut up, okay? You made me miss my favourite part.”
He chuckles air, his fingertips being pushed by the vibrations of the movement against her shoulder. He’s still after that; every time his mouth opens, she seizes with fear, drawing herself out of the scene and the desire to quote the lines as they’re spoken. He doesn’t speak, stays silent, just blinking. Soon, and it’s like five minutes later, just when she’s getting into the movie, his fingers settle in her hair.
She doesn’t remember when he got so close.
*
She wakes up around five. There’s no reason she can think of as she stumbles down the stairs, hands rubbing at her eyes as the sun is starting to slowly ascend in the New York sky.
There’s movement on the couch and she pauses, heart starting to race at a million miles per hour, and she wonders, briefly, what Jamie Kennedy would do.
He definitely wouldn’t be approaching the noise.
Standing at the back of the leather couch, she sees Tim lying on his back, arm over his head while the other dangles off the couch and the blankets are a mess over him, tangled with limbs and cushions.
She glares, turning on her heel and moving towards the sink, grabbing a glass and filling it with water. There’s a magazine she left on the table that she decides to read in spite as time slowly ticks by. She’s not willing to elaborate on why she’s doing this.
Julie goes through five half-filled glasses of water before Tim wakes up. It takes him a bit, with the sheets wrapped around his legs like a second skin, for him to rise and rub at his eyes, stretch, and run a hand down his bare chest. He starts moving towards her before he stops, finally seeing her. She grins, the cat having caught the mouse, presses her chin tightly to her shoulder, “There a problem with the bed?”
He shakes his head, fingers scratching a spot in the centre of his chest, “No.”
Breathing in out in out, she licks her lips, surveying him. He’s tired; hair sprayed everywhere, half of it covering his eyes thickly and his fingers move sluggishly over his skin when she decides to pay attention. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he shrugs, shuffles towards the sink to splash water over his face. “Just used to the couch.”
“Oh,” she flips a page of the magazine without looking at it.
“Plus it has a great view,” he smirks, that Tim Riggins grin he tosses at the rally girls and she glares, her fingers pinch the corner of the magazine tightly, marring the glossy paper. He wipes his face with the dish towel and she has to remind herself to shove it in Martha’s washing later in the day.
She colours furiously and ducks her head to read Britney’s latest scandal.
*
The first time Dad calls her, it’s about Buddy Garrity. Somehow he’s gotten it into his head that she’s a willing ear to listen to him bitch and moan about the man.
Julie blames her mother.
She sits at the kitchen table, magazine laid out in front of her so she has something of interest to focus on. She doesn’t understand what her father’s going on about; she only remembers ever seeing Buddy Garrity half-naked, wrapped in a towel, in her bathroom way back when she was way too innocent for this garbage. She doesn’t want to hear about Buddy’s intimate spilling of woe about his long, lost wife and darling daughter.
“I’m not his ‘B.F.F.’, or whatever you girls call it,” Dad says, phone shifting in his hand as Mom’s somewhere in the background, correcting him. “Anyway, he keeps coming up to me. I don’t know what to do.”
“Uh huh,” she sighs, parroting the words she’s been repeating for over ten minutes now. Flicking the magazine page, she stares at a crossword featuring Hollywood productions and products as Dad keeps yapping on like she’s said something useful.
Eric pauses, licks his lips and seems to hum something to Tami before she hears his hand cup the phone, his voice hushed and desperate and it reminds her of that wild animal look he gets in his eye sometimes when it comes to female things and Grace. “I don’t know how to make him go away.”
Julie shrugs, “Wish upon a star.”
“Don’t give me cheek, Julie. I’m being serious. Why aren’t you concerned about the sanity of your father?”
She sighs, smacks her own lips together and tries to summon up something from the snippets of what he’s said that stick to her mind like gum to the bottoms of desks. “Just avoid him.”
“Okay,” Eric smiles, and he says the usual things, like he misses her and that love phrase Julie only parrots because she sort of wants Buddy Garrity naked in her bathroom shoved out of her mind.
Her mother is the one who gives him the useful advice.
*
They seem to lay down a law. (Tim seems to, but Julie’s not going to admit that.)
Speaking about Lyla Garrity is the equivalent to saying Voldemort. She thinks it’d be common courtesy for him to not bring up Matt, but he does. She doesn’t know why she expected any better. However, and she has to grin at this, he tries.
Trying does not mean succeeding.
He usually does this when they’re watching a movie. It occurs more and more when it’s a Bill Murray one. Stifling the urge to sing the tune to Ghostbusters, Tim has to sigh, shift slightly as he seems to curl more into the couch. “So, Seven -”
“Are you infatuated with him, Tim?” she pulls her knee closer to her, the couch groaning under the slide of her bare foot. She furrows her eyebrows, mouth setting into a line as Tim’s sitting sluggishly, arms folded over his chest and he throws her a lazy look.
He shrugs, shaking his head, “No.” He turns back to the television; saying in that lazy drawl of his Julie’s starting to find grating her skin, “Just making conversation.”
In retaliation “Well, let’s talk about Lyla, then” in different forms is brought up with an ugly smirk she doesn’t like. It seems to get worse each time Tim decides he likes playing the Groundhog Day game.
He flinches.
*
Tim suggests they go out. He’s on a lets-be-healthy high and he presumes fresh air would do her good. “You’re lookin’ quite pale, Julie. Texan women are never pale.” Apparently the sun is also a part of his wannabe-Jenny-Craig plan.
She shrugs, spoon swirling in her bowl, “I’m not a Texan woman.” She yawns, trying to smack some cereal bits into the milk and have them sink like the Titanic. They keep floating up, and her minor irritation floats erratically through her small movements.
“Dillon through and through,” he mutters to himself, slamming the cupboard and getting a bowl of whatever’s left of the cereal. He tends to mix them up, Lucky Charms with Cornflakes and something else that completes the combo. She cocks her eyebrow, mouth full, and he gets this look on his face, like as if he’s glowing or something, she’s not sure what it is but he gives off signals when he’s about to be crude. “Like a threesome,” there it is with a grin. He looks up at her with a tilt of his head as he moves towards the fridge.
She rolls her eyes, swallows, “It’s nine in the morning.” Her spoon makes the rounds again, her cereal experiencing its fifth whirlpool for the morning.
Looking over his shoulder, he grabs the milk carton and leaves the door open; she hates it when he does that. He’s at the sink, bowl perched on the counter beside it, “So?”
“It’s like alcohol,” she plays with her cereal, spooning some of it up to have it drop back down into the bowl, causing some droplets to splatter on the kitchen table. Grabbing a tissue, she wipes at it absently, “Wait until it’s noon or something.”
Tim’s back at the fridge, seconds before it’ll start beeping about staying open for too long, and he moves away from it, kicking the door closed as he grabs a spoon from a drawer and reaches for his bowl that’s filled to the brim. “It’s bound to be noon somewhere.”
Some habits don’t change.
*
He takes her out, kicking and screaming. She’s sluggish at first, his hand wrapped tightly around her wrist as he pulls her along like it’s nothing, some normal thing that’s in his daily schedule. Her arm is so small compared to his large palm. She feels inadequate, like an unknown island to his internationally famed continent.
“You should get a striped shirt,” he says, hotdog in hand coated with everything. He’s not a picky eater, she learns, and she takes a bite of her own hotdog. “You know, to keep up with the persona.”
“There is no persona. I have no persona.” He slows, drops the curled up napkin into a bin and dusts his hands off, licking at his fingers, “Why don’t you wear shirts with 33 printed on the back?”
“Can’t find none.”
She shrugs, wipes her top lip with the side of her hand, “There’s the internet.”
“I’m not allowed on the internet,” he grins, palms sliding over his jeans and tuck his fingers into his pockets.
She rolls her eyes. “This is why we can’t have nice things. I let you do things and you throw this back at me.”
He grins, laughing at her, “You sure are a real ball of nerves around me, Stripes.” He’s resisting the urge to ruffle her hair like she’s some kid, that Bo or Bradley or something who Tyra sometimes talks about. Tim doesn’t know what to do with his hands, sliding them in and out of his pockets and wringing them together, cracking bones and stretching them above his head as they walk slowly.
Glaring, she curls her hand into a fist and tries to punch him into the buildings, “No nerves here, Pig.”
Tim’s laughter grows louder as he runs his knuckles over the patch of skin beneath the sleeve she attempted to pound into the mismatched brick buildings. “Your fists are tiny.”
“So is your head.”
He shrugs, “Better that then something else.”
*
Lois sends her too much spam mail that she sometimes deletes the actual emails. It’s an accident. She never does it on purpose. Julie thinks the guilt would suffocate her. (Or Lois’ phone calls.)
Today, however, is not one of those days. Though Julie really wishes it was.
Sitting on her bed, she checks her emails. (Tyra called earlier to tell her to get her ‘bony little ass on the computer and write her back’ because phones are a little too hard and Tyra Collette’s never one to repeat herself.)
Lois blabs on about herself, as expected, and Julie usually doesn’t mind, but today she’s tired. She’s been going over the pros and cons of scratching that itch in regards to Lyla and dressing up as cupid. She talks a little about things Julie cares about, like how Matt’s working at the same place again, Smash Williams visits his mother like the good boy he is, and how Tim Riggins has disappeared off the face of the planet.
What makes Julie roll her eyes is the fact that Lois can never resist not throwing in a few clichéd romance plots, saying she thinks he’s off to end it with Lyla so he can be with her because he finally realised she existed and was the true love of his life. It’s a bunch of sentences littered with run-ons and acronyms neither Julie nor Google can decipher. She gossips a little too much, throws in her own fantasies mixed in with the actual facts, and a long time ago Julie stopped attempting to draw out what was fact and what was fiction.
She presses an icon so she can reply, however the cursor blinks back at her, all innocent in that way that Grace started out, and she knows what its thinking. Her fingers hover over letters that, when pressed one after another, won’t add up to make a proper word.
Siting in silence, she shifts until the leg propped underneath her is comfortable and those tingles she’s not quite fond of approach her bent knee as if summoned by some unknown entity. Her leg becomes numb as she stares at her computer screen.
Julie deletes the email.
*
“You should eat more fruit,” Tim says before biting into his red apple.
Julie cocks her brow, digging deep into the fridge for the leftover pasta she didn’t eat last night. “Yeah?” she peeks out from the depths of her clean fridge that’s starting to pile up with water bottles and food products she knows she doesn’t take a liking to.
He perches himself against the table, bouncing the apple in his palm before biting, “Yeah.” Tim waits until he swallows; Jason Street’s perfect manners seem embedded into him today, “Being the Coach’s daughter and all, I thought you’d be eating like a Panther.”
She laughs, head back in the fridge, and she hears it echo back to her, a bitter sound she doesn’t think she’d pick up on if she was facing him, “I’d want to be far from that.” Licking her lips, Julie wonders if that was the wrong thing to say, as silence spills across every corner of her apartment and she wants to stay hunched, face in the fridge, until the end of time. Clearing her throat, she tries to make amends, “Rebellion was such a fascinating phase, Tim.” She bites her tongue, pushing the sarcasm back, closing her eyes to help with the force. Her attempts at rebellion are still a sore spot; a wound that liquor keeps melting over. “I liked not doing what others expected.”
She hears the crunch of his teeth sinking into the apple. “Yeah, I get that.”
Sighing, she slams the fridge shut, perching her hands on her hips as she examines the kitchen. Spotless as usual, a magazine lays on the kitchen table with a pen hidden between the pages as she’s taken a liking to crosswords and Hollywood’s test on how much she knows about its gossip.
Nothing seems out of place.
Now, if she’s honest with herself, she’ll start understanding that that lost sense niggling at the walls of her mind, like how she thought her particular cup was in the cupboard closest to the window but was in the freezer, and she swore she had put it in the cupboard, is her swimming in the river of denial. Julie likes hiding from facts, sometimes, and this one is one in particular she likes being blind to. The niggling turns into minor thumping and it is her seeming out of place.
“You okay?” he says, apple paused in front of his face.
When she looks at him, snapping out of her stupor seconds after he speaks, she sees this look on his face. It’s like he knows what she’s thinking and is biting back the smirk with the you lost? remark that’ll cut her deeper than she’d like because of the lost look etched upon her features like she’s woken up in a year she doesn’t remember ever being in. She blinks, “Yeah. Just - did you eat the pasta?”
Pressing his lips together, he bites the apple, the red disappearing quickly to be replaced with a yellow-cream, “No.”
“Oh.” She feels stupid, real stupid, like when she let her father think Tim tried to take advantage of her drunken state back when she was a stupid sixteen year old aiming to please by doing all the wrong things. Julie stands, stumped.
Tim moves, opens up a door under the sink and tosses the apple core in. “I think you may have thrown it out,” he shrugs, as if he’s trying to hide the underlying intention of making her feel better.
He’s giving her a compass and she’s sort of grateful for that.
*
A tune is knocked into the wood of her door, an incessant banging that interrupts her reading as she tries to ignore it, willing it away. Tim’s too busy watching football to move. “Don’t worry, I’ll get it.”
“I was hoping you would,” he grins, and she glares at his feet hanging over the top of the couch.
Pulling the door open, Martha’s standing there, smile lighting up her face and she smacks a piece of paper into Julie’s chest. So much restraint must’ve gone into that, she thinks, as Martha’s always hitting her in the head with her mail she finds in her slot. “Fifth Floor Fred,” she grins around the dim nickname, “is having a party. Gonna be a blast. Biggest bash of the year, blah blah blah. That’s how high schoolers speak these days, right?”
Julie shrugs, hearing the leather couch groan underneath Tim’s shifting, the volume turning down as the loud commentary and cheering from a pre-taped audience becomes a hum. “Wouldn’t know.”
Martha rubs at her eyes, “Well, it’s tonight. I sort of forgot to give it to you?” She winces at this, though her grin barricades any sympathy Julie feels towards her. Martha likes snooping through her mail. She’s convinced she’ll find a love letter of the Atonement kind from some boyfriend Julie’s obviously keeping hidden. “Anyway, you free to be there?”
She nods, “Yeah, I guess.” Her fingers play with the knob of her door. It whines a little, and she presses her palm against it to stop her fingers from trying to pull it from it’s hole in the wood.
Standing on her tiptoes, Martha grins, pointing over Julie’s shoulder, mouthing “Is that him?” while Julie tries to push her away.
“Bye Martha,” she shuts the door on her laughing face.
*
“Fred’s having a party -”
“Fred?”
She rolls her eyes, “Fifth floor.” He cocks his eyebrow and she huffs, hands pushing hard against her hips, “You borrowed his stupid Nirvana cds or something.” She pushes her bangs off her forehead, breathing in as her patience wears thin and Tim’s looking back at the television again, stupid football on the screen. She tries to pick up as if he hadn’t needed the reminder, “And I thought I’d extend an invitation to you so you wouldn’t do something stupid like turn up and try to pull me away from a very civilised, normal party.”
He pushes himself up on the couch a little, his legs bending at the knee as he tries to look at her from over it. “Why would I come in and pull you away?”
On their own accord her eyebrows pull up slowly, her bangs moving a little as though it’s dancing with a light breeze. She bites the you’ve got to be kidding and plasters her palm on the side of her leg to keep it from smoothing the tension in her forehead and the desire to crease the skin there. “You and I don’t have a good reputation at parties.”
His eyebrow is cocked and she tries to go for a Tami Taylor stance, hands on her hips and her leg jutted out, bent, eyebrow cocked sharply and she’s counting the breaths until he caves, declines politely and passes out on the couch. “Okay.”
She frowns. “What?”
“I said okay,” he says to the television, a Billy Riggins tone (exasperation, an underlying message of piss off hidden between the letters) she’s heard Tyra bitch about before coating his voice.
“Oh-okay,” she stutters, smoothes her hand on her leg. “It’s at seven.”
“Okay.”
“And it’ll be boring.”
“That’s fine.”
“I’m serious. Knowing these people, it’ll probably end at eight. Seven-thirty if they’re super boring.”
Looking at her from over the couch, he’s pushes himself up further now, nose visible and the cool smile, one of reassurance, so unfamiliar to her, pulls at his face, “I said okay, Jules.”
She nods, a bit too much, but it’s a nod and it has him chuckling out bits of air and he’s getting off the couch, arms thrown over his head as he moves into the kitchen. With her eyes following, she feels like a high school kid, one of those rally girls (and she never wants to be one of them) as she breathes out “Okay.”
*
She spends too much time fussing.
He calls from down the stairs, legs pressed against the sides, for her to hurry up. Two hours early.
Julie sort of wishes she had listened to him. Two hours and thirty minutes later, she’s trying to find her other earring. Trying to look in the bottom cupboards without getting on her knees, she gives up after Tim’s third holler.
She wears a red dress. Bright in shade, a v cut exposing her collarbone, and it ends halfway down her thighs. It reminds her of a summer dress, the kind her mother liked to suggest she buy whenever she graced her parents with her presence. She doesn’t try to make an entrance, fussing for her handbag her mother gave her for her twenty-first, and tosses her shoes down the stairs.
“You could’ve heeled me to death, Taylor,” Tim grins, running a hand through his hair from his spot at the bottom. It’s like he hasn’t moved, though the television has changed, projecting music and pop starlets into her living room. Tim wears his usual get-up; jeans and a grey t-shirt with some catchphrase printed on it in block letters instead of his plaid button-up.
She shrugs, sitting on the second last step, he hands her her shoes. She places her foot in, pulling the strap around her ankle. “Wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world.”
He stands before her, eyes watching her press her leg to the floor, shifting in her shoe so she’s sure she won’t trip out of them or lose blood flow to her toes. “You really don’t care what happens to me, do you?”
Looking up at him through her bangs that are on the verge of needing an emergency trim, she presses her lips together, hand running over the tip of the shoe as her toes flex. She should’ve worn them in before tonight. “No, not really.”
“Nice,” he’s grinning, “real nice.”
She shrugs, “Never claimed to be.”
With both of her shoes strapped on, she presses her palms into the steps, pushing herself up. Tim’s hand is floating in the air, and she grabs it as he pulls her off the stair. “You look nice.”
She shifts, “Thanks. You -” he grins as her eyebrow rises at his boots, stained with Texas, “- don’t look all that different.”
“Enigma,” he grins. She rolls her eyes, walking by him and running her fingers through her hair as she grabs her keys from the kitchen table, pushing her feet awkwardly to the door. Tim bolts after her, spitting out “It’s the look that’s in” when they’re in the hallway, her door slamming behind them.
Pulling at the strap on her shoulder, she grins, “Conforming, Riggins?”
He grins, “Never. I’m setting the trend.”
She nods, walking towards the elevator, “And I’m marrying Brad Pitt.”
Her finger moves to press the button, looking dead with its half-scratched arrow pointing down. Tim punches it with a stupid grin instead.
*
Fred’s party isn’t half bad; considering he’s bordering on twenty-eight and he watches too many American Pie movies. Pies with cream sit on a few tables around the place with “Do not touch” signs planted in them like the flags on the moon, and the cardboard cut-outs she remembers getting a glimpse of at the Riggins’ house. There’s probably a virginity bet going on here, too.
Tim strays to the kitchen as she spends some time doing the rounds, talking to tenants she only sees once in a blue moon. Martha’s there, in the corner, and waves at her like she’s a kid in high school and sometimes Julie thinks she’s Lois in disguise. That is until she grabs a cardboard cut-out of some woman in a bikini and makes obscene gestures at it - that’s when she morphs into Tyra.
The party reminds her of the few she attended at Dillon. Crowded, though there’s breathing room, and plastic cups and dancing; lots of dancing with old, cheesy songs from the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Deciding then and there, she only wants to stay for an hour. She doesn’t deserve this kind of torment until a little later in life.
She stands in an open spot, listening as bands she remembers decently liking as a little kid play loudly in her ears. A headache’s going to be her punishment later. Tim’s beside her, cup in hand, and it’s an image she’s always had in her mind whenever she thinks of Tim Riggins.
He takes a sip, “Having fun?” He has to yell over the pop music of Mya.
She shrugs, “Beats Louis’ party.”
“What was that like?” he looks down at her, cup held high as he takes another drink. His eyebrows are furrowed and she wants to laugh at his curious expression. He thinks these parties are like the Dillon high school ones, the celebrations of Panther victory every Friday night.
She grins, “Mummies and coffins; mind you it was large cardboard boxes painted black.”
Tim’s eyebrows rise, his hand pauses at moving his cup to his lips as he regains his footing, “Halloween?”
“Birthday party.”
He smirks, blinking a couple of times before taking another drink, “Of course.” The cup disappears from his hand and he’s wiping his hands together. Julie runs her hands over the side of her dress so her hands have something to do.
Her mouth slants as Mya finishes up and Spice Girls comes on. She laughs, “Great music.”
Tim grins, leaning down towards her, hands clasped behind his back, “Wanna dance?” He looks a bit awkward, although his eyes sparkle cockily and she knows that this is a challenge of some sort.
She glances at him, watches the tug of his lips and the amusement sparkle in her eyes. Her foot taps against the beat and she knows, sooner than later, she’ll start singing. “Sure,” she shrugs, and she follows him towards what people have claimed to be the dance floor.
He keeps his distance, slightly swaying as Julie finds herself reliving her repressed teenage daydreams of dancing on her bed while singing into a hairbrush. Tim laughs at her as she starts to mouth the words. “Isn’t there a movie for this?” he has to lean in close to her so she can hear him over the music and her own singing that’s getting louder.
She laughs, her eyes settling on him as she breaks into a sway, catching her breath, “Spice Girls? Seriously?”
“Guess I’ll have to get cultured on this one.”
She raises her eyebrows as her answer and she closes her eyes, smiling at the thought of Tim Riggins watching the Spice World movie. She’ll have to buy herself a video camera so she can upload it to Youtube.
Julie feels hot, has been feeling it all night, and her furious movements have only intensified it. The air in Fred’s apartment is stuffy and the dance floor is worse than her original spot near the kitchen. Her legs feel hot from the movement and the familiarity of moving somewhat awkwardly like this, and her neck feels heat at embarrassment as she knows she’ll never live this down for the rest of her interaction with him.
There’s warmth against her mouth and its Tim kissing her.
*
Julie slams the door, walking frantically as she tries to unbuckle her shoes’ sudden tight grasp from around her ankles. Tim’s right behind her, shutting the door much more quietly, hands in his pockets and this is the Tim she remembers, the one who seems so nonchalant that nothing is running hysterically through his mind on fast-forward like hers.
She glares, but not for too long. She can’t even look at him.
It takes a few angry moves of her fingers, her nail getting stuck underneath the little buckle, to get her shoes off so she can kick them towards the couch. (She was going to kick them at him, hit him straight in the jaw, but for safety reasons - and how bad her kicking aim is, her blood is football not soccer - she goes for a place that can be known as another limb of Tim Riggins.)
“Why’d you do that?” she finds herself saying quickly, “Why’d you do that in front of all those people?” Julie turns, hands on her hips and she’s glaring, jumping to conclusions as she sees a slight shift in his face. He’s a bit flabbergasted, mouth open and eyebrows furrowed slightly, and he’s sort of swaying from approaching her and staying put. “Do you think this is some joke? That you can just kiss me and there’d be no repercussions? Because if so, you obviously don’t know me.”
“Jules -” he tries to approach her, but she moves back, finding those hysterical tears that are supposed to be on her cheeks swirling slowly in front of her eyes.
“Is that why you came here?” her eyes narrow even further, and to a point all she can see is darkness, “You playing with me, Tim Riggins? Are you taking back what you said when I took you into my house several weeks ago?”
He smirks, “It’s not a house.”
She narrows her eyes, hips jutted out as her hands fit into the grooves.
Tim’s hand attacks his neck and he sighs, looking everywhere around the apartment for something. Dillon provided an escape and New York lacks the familiarity and personal touch of home. “I just wanted to kiss you,” he shrugs out, hand fallen forlornly by his side. “Why is it such a big deal?”
“It’s a big deal, Tim,” she presses the name out like a slap, “you just can’t kiss me -”
“Why not?”
She stumbles, losing her pacing, the words she feels that have been in her head for years suddenly gone. “Because - of Tyra.”
“Tyra?” he smirks, laughter edged into his voice as his hand runs through his hair. “Because of Tyra? That’s weak, Julie, real weak.”
She licks her lips, “Fine then. My father.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Seriously?” He pauses, “Right, of course. Bringing in the parents when you feel insecure. Look, Jules, if you don’t want me around, just say so. I’m a big boy.”
Her hand curls around the fabric of her dress. She can’t think of anything better to do. With her mouth having gone dry and that nagging voice inside her head that she’s convinced belongs to Tyra has gone, pissed off when she needed it most, and she’s left gaping at him - literally gaping - like a fish as he watches her, eyebrows raised and hands by his sides. She’s trying to swallow words from the air so she can spit something at him, anything.
Tim just grins, shit-eating and Texas and she wants to tell him to get it off his face. Better yet, she wants to slap it; have her hand personally wipe that stupid grin off his stupid face and go down in the history of some equally stupid textbook. The rally girls will have her assassinated for hitting his pretty little face, but she thinks it’ll be more than worth it. At least Tyra would be proud.
Instead, he approaches her, and she’s stiff as a board, stiff as a statue, stiff as anything - and her mind wanders and she’s disgusted, thinking she’ll call Lyla tomorrow and ask her to pray for her if she’s still into that stuff - and he’s in front of her, his shadow swallowing her whole. He’s leaning down and his hands are on her wrists, sliding up her arms quickly and he’s kissing her.
She thinks she’s stupid if she didn’t see this coming.
It’s a light press of the mouth, his hands settle on her cheeks and he’s pulling her in like she’s metal and he’s a magnet and her hands grip his hair, pulling him down harder onto her as she opens her mouth to him. He’s grinning, and she feels the shit-eating grin of Tim Riggins that she’s learnt to love and hate at the same time feel so good against her mouth, a betrayal of how it affects her internally. His fingers mess up her hair, drawing circles in the strands, wrapping them around his fingers real tight. Shit-eating grin (and she thinks it deserves capitals at this state, though there’s pros and cons being scribbled down in the meantime) slides into just a grin, one she thinks she remembers from Matt, however she knows it’s different, it feels different as it slides into an open mouth kiss and Tim’s pulling her up against him, arms wrapped tightly around her shoulders and his hands slinking to the small of her back.
“We don’t have to do this,” he breathes, hot air caressing her mouth and it’s her that pushes her mouth against his neck. She tries to turn his face to her so she can feel that warmth again; her lips tingle hotly without it. His stupid stubbornness to face her as his head has turned to the side, eyes watching from the corners, pisses her off more than she’d like, frustration building in her clenched fists pulling the tight fabric of his shirt. Letting go, she allows the fabric to breathe, her frustration to dissipate. Only for a moment; it’s only fair, she reasons, as he doesn’t try to quench her irritation. She sucks at his neck, hands trailing over his chest, fingertips pulling at the fabric of his shirt, “I didn’t come here for this.”
She nods, figuring it’s the best way to bring his face to hers so she can drown out those tingles parading incessantly on her lips. The skin of his neck isn’t doing anything to flush it away. Drawing back, she places her palms on either side of his face and pulls him towards her, “Shut up.”
Gladly, he obliges, a smile rests on his lips as he opens them underneath her, his hands settling on her back, running up and down her spine causing her to arch into him. She feels his fingers teasing the fabric of her dress, pulling at it as though it’ll cave away; all he’s succeeding at is wrinkling it.
He pulls away, sliding his hands down her back and follows her dress until it ends halfway down her thigh. Pulling at the hem, he grins, and she feels like as though he’s just discovered puppets in some pawn shop. His palms are hot on her legs as he bends down, breaking away from her. He pulls her up, her legs wrapping around his waist and he carries her over to the stairs, taking them slow as though they’re unfamiliar - and she guesses they are, considering his allergies and what she likes to call his ‘medical condition’ - and once they’re up there, in her room, she grabs his face and wraps her legs tighter around him, causing most of her dress to bunch at her waist.
They move to the bed - him walking to it while she mauls at his face; she has to give him credit for memorising the layout of her simple bedroom within the few seconds before she grabbed him like some savage whose been devoid of any water - and they’re descending, her back hitting her soft sheets and he’s on top of her, knee between her legs and hands pressing against her sides. She feels the pressure of his hands on her legs, skimming up and down. He plays with her dress, whichever part he can get his hands on, sometimes pressing hard enough that she can feel him, fingers folding the fabric like paper.
His lips move to her neck, descend down to her collarbone and he’s still so far away from her, allowing too much space to be between them. They’re like Texas and New York and she resents him for it, for memorising maps and being the mathematical brat he is by keeping away from her like some force is stopping him from pressing hard against her. However, he lets himself hover, hand over her breast, thumb starting circular motions, and then, suddenly, he traces the lines in her dress, sometimes dipping his finger hard into her skin.
In retaliation, she wraps her legs tighter around his waist with a struggle due to the gap between them. She has to lift herself up, most of her weight shifting to her shoulders as her legs skim his sides. By straddling him, she thinks, she’ll be able to squeeze out all the bullshit and make him not be such a tease, the brat that he is, and that he’ll just do what Tim Riggins does and stop frustrating her to the point of seeing stars. He moves a bit down, and she feels the pain emerging at her neck fade away as she retracts from his slow fall, still keeping breathing distance between them. Her feet push against his legs, toes trying to curl into his jeans, and he seems to grin into the skin exposed by the v cut of her dress.
Fingers fluttering over his clothed back, they find the hem of his shirt, pulling it, nails skimming against newly exposed flesh and he breaks away from her, raising his arms so she can pull it over his head. She drops it to the side and her arms wrap around his neck, pulling her up so she can kiss him, mouth open, and fingers playing with his hair. He smells of her shampoo.
His hands find her spine again, causing her to arch her back, pressing sharply into him, making it easier for his flat palm to run over her dress. His finger skims up the zipper once he finds it, and he pulls it down slowly, as though he wants to be sneaky and be unheard, a silent thief of some kind in the night, and she smiles against his mouth, her hands pulling at his hair before sliding over his hard back, the muscles moving under her palms. Once the zip reaches its end, his hands slide up her back parting her dress like the red sea, leaving heat swelling in their wake; his palms skim over her shoulders, pulling the dress down until it bunches at her waist.
Her hands travel over his back and slide against the skin near the waistband of his jeans, fiddling with the silver buckle as his lips move down between her covered breasts; he pauses at her stomach, tongue flickering and lips sucking. She arches, getting his belt undone and his hands are over hers, pushing them away as he undoes his zip and he grabs them, placing them over his pockets as he pulls them, hands gripped tightly around hers, down his legs like water.
With her dress seemingly bunched at her waist, Tim’s palm slaps against her leg, trailing slowly down her heated skin into the abyss of red, flimsy fabric. His fingers tap a slow rhythm on the inside of her thigh, the small thumps on her leg turn into skimming and he traces the outline of her underwear, the heel of his palm faintly cupping her. As if burned, he rests his palm on her stomach, dangerously low, filling her with heat as his thumb moves to design shapes into her skin.
Julie’s hands slide between them, chasing after the hard muscles of his chest. He arches up, her nails tracing the contours as they glide down towards the waistband of his boxers. He moves his palm from underneath her dress to grab her hand, bringing it back up towards his shoulder. Planting her hand somewhere near his heart, his hands follow the curve of her arms and cup her shoulders.
Tim’s hands are on her back, sliding along the edge of her bra, before settling on the clasp. A snap moves his hands to her shoulders, fingering down one strap and placing an open-mouthed hot, wet kiss on her shoulder before repeating it on the other. He kisses her on the lips, his hands cupping her face, and he presses harder into her, mouth hot on hers and his hips pressing her dress against her, making her feel itchy from the movements of the fabric.
Her hands move to her dress, fingers trying to catch a part of it so she can try to push it down her legs, planning to kick them off. Tim’s lips leave hers, trailing a path from the corner of her lip over her jaw, sucking at her neck, and tongue licking her collarbone. His hands settle on either side of her, guiding him down as he descends, kissing the valley between her breasts and trailing a wonky line down her stomach. Fingers tickling her sides, he grips the dress, pulling it down her legs, his lips pressing at the waistband of her underwear - skimpy black boy shorts - as the dress settles around her feet. His hands abandon it, allowing her to use her feet to pull it off. He smirks against her skin as it seems to tangle slightly, her toes having to pick at it like chopsticks.
Kissing his way back up to her, hot and open-mouthed that occasionally leave a popping sound as he moves on to the next patch of skin. He diverts from his original path and kisses the side of her breast, forming a slight trail around it as his finger skims a straight line between them.
Julie has enough, sighing, frustration courses through her as she digs her hands down his back, trying to burn paths in his skin without the use of her nails. She tries to will him up, to feel his mouth hot on hers and his chest pressing her into the mattress. His legs tangle with hers, looping around her knee and he uses it to pull himself up towards her, tugging slightly, as he diverts to her collarbone. Tim stays at her shoulder, the pressure of a grin being resisted burns into her skin. His teeth bite and his lips suck and she shifts her hips, feeling him through his boxers, and he shuffles back, pressing hard against her momentarily before air seeps between their lower bodies.
She groans, rolling her eyes as she tugs at his hair, trying to get him to come up to her. She arches against him, feeling his smirk increase and weigh her shoulder heavily down. Jerking it, Tim laughs, hot air puffing across her skin.
“Okay, okay,” he says, still chuckling, and he moves so slowly, as though he’s swimming through the air, to press a kiss at the corner of her lip. Flicking his tongue out, he slides his mouth over hers, licking the pillow of her lower lip as he shifts his hips down. “Ever heard of patience is a virtue?”
She pulls at his hair, hands gripping at his cheeks as she moves her hips against his, wrapping her legs around his middle and trying to get him closer to her. His chest is hard against hers, knocking the breath out of her, “Ever heard that you’re a tease?”
He chuckles against her lips, biting at her bottom one, his fingers tapping wide patterns down her side to rest at her hip. She thinks he’s going to go for it again, try to overcome some hidden dragon as he acts as though her thin underwear is a metal chastity belt.
He does. She thinks she’s momentarily stupid for thinking anything could faze Riggins.
He pulls her underwear down, fingers sliding down the sides of her legs, dragging them over her knees and she hates the way he kisses all of her; the skin on her knees, the sides of her legs. She kicks the underwear from her feet in irritation that Tim Riggins is attentive to detail at the worst of times and he swims back up towards her, stupid smirk on his face, lips trailing up her leg.
She lets her head flop back onto the covers, feeling him slowly make his way up to her to pause at her hip, and then she feels him there nose grazing before his mouth seems to cover her, licking and hot and she grips the sheets in her hands.
She feels - she doesn’t know how she feels, words slipping away for the first time she can remember - him down there, seeming to work at her, pushing buttons she didn’t know existed. She groans, his fingers brush across her hips in replacement of the smirk she usually feels. He’s good, like real good, and she’s a fool for thinking he’d be coming in this as some sort of virgin. He’s not a high school boy - which she doubts he ever was - as she bends her knees and his hands are on her thighs, warm and giving her squeezes she guesses are of reassurance; it’s not like with Matt, who’d slip his hand beneath her skirt she’d wear just for this after a few stutters of are you sure? and flushing cheeks with shaking fingers that’d hesitate and pull away and she’d never felt as frustrated in her life.
The comparisons come with the intensity of the numbness she finds flooding her hands, letting go of the sheets to clench into fists. With Matt, she’d have to do it herself, sometimes, guide his fingers everywhere because he’d be too shy to touch her in ways she didn’t even touch herself, and then she’d try to repay him, slide her hands into his own pants and that didn’t get far either. With Tim, she doesn’t know, but she’s pretty sure he doesn’t hesitate and stutter with his fingers, would let her return the favour with vigorous enthusiasm.
Tim’s hands slip underneath her thighs, seeming to pull her up a little and she thrashes at this, as sensations she’s never felt suffocate her thickly as his tongue seems to wrap around her, push further into her, she doesn’t know, but she feels him even more, like he’s telling her to get her head back to him.
He’s giving her a hint and she’d be a damned hypocrite to act oblivious to it.
Arching her back, she groans louder, feeling her body turn into water as Tim’s licking his way up her abdomen, a stupid, smug grin on his face as his hands move his boxers down. Its slick between her legs, and when he gets a hand free, he seems to stroke her lightly, teasing, before all she can feel is air and the press of his mouth against random spots over her body.
Tim’s kissing her at an awkward angle as she has to support her weight with her elbows while his hands are working on a wrapper she hears crinkle loudly between his fingers. He’s trying to be quiet, as if not to scare her; she pulls his mouth harder against hers, tongue running over the seam of his lips as she feels the slight lick of air push between them. He presses his mouth firmly down on hers as her elbows give way, attempting to push herself up near the pillow before she lands on it and his hands lightly cup her breasts before moving into her hair.
Always in her hair, she grins lightly, fingers tugging at clumps of it as if to tell her that smirk belongs on his mouth, and in a way, it is fitting against his. She presses her chest into his, trying to see if his hands will move, run across the underside of her breasts; it stays in her hair, wrapping more tightly if possible.
He slides into her like it’s nothing. Her nails dig into his shoulders as he rocks his hips gently into her. “Fuck,” she groans, and he grins against her mouth, “stop being gentle. Not fucking porcelain.”
He takes her lip between his teeth, “I like it when you talk dirty, Taylor.” He melds his mouth against hers, hot and wet and he picks up the pace, rocking his hips a little faster into her.
She presses the pads of her fingers into his scalp, bits of hair sticking to her skin as she runs her hands through his hair. Locking her legs around him, he sinks in deeper, letting out a noise in his throat as he keeps kissing her, harder, hands running along her stomach like whispers. He’s talking to her, talking into her as his mouth stays connected to hers, breathing in air while lips are sticking together; she doesn’t register any of the words he’s saying, but she knows, without a doubt, they’re dirty and she’d blush at the sound of them. His mouth feels dirty against hers in that good way Matt’s never did.
All she hears resonating through her ears is “Fuck, Jules” and she feels something flutter in her stomach despite everything else, knowing that he’s right there with her - only her - and she thinks that maybe she’s selfish for hoping for it, considering everything she’s speculates about Tim Riggins and a certain girl living somewhere in California.
She grins, feeling his own words taste something thick in her mouth as she pulls away from his, pressing her lips to the tip of his nose, “Already doing that.”
He groans at this, a smug little smirk on his lips as he pushes his mouth onto hers, teeth nipping and clashing and he seems to move faster, hips copying his mouth. The heel of her feet press hard against his back, words slipping between them she can’t even hear as Tim’s breathing is loud in her ears.
She says she sees stars, falls apart, something that means fireworks and slipping away from the controlled manner she’s used to when she comes. It’s so blunt to her, the way his nails try to dig into her skin when he’s almost there, so close that she needs to rock into him to help him along the way. She feels like liquid, wet and like she’ll drip off the bed as she buries her head in his neck, licking the skin there as her hands skim up and down his back, nails biting in the flesh.
Propping her hands against his shoulders, she tries to get him to sink deeper into her, make her feel like she’s been completed, like some stupid puzzle when she’s found the piece she’s been missing for months. Dirty words she doesn’t care to repeat coherently toss from his mouth as he pants - and she does, too, even though she feels slack and incoherent - her breath muffled with moans and “Come on” as she tries to get him to grin against her mouth at her own innuendo. Her lips form words she’s mimicking from him, and Tim slumps against her, hips motionless and still. It’s the first time she thinks she registers the feeling of him being there. She feels so full and hot, and he shifts a little, up and down, and she clenches around him to keep him there.
Pressing open-mouthed kisses to her mouth, he trails over her cheek to settle against her shoulder. She brushes hair from his sticky forehead, and he plants his hands either side of her, pushing himself up. Air brushes against her skin, her lower body feeling heated, and she doesn’t like how the chilled air plays along her flesh. Wrapping her legs tighter around his lower back, her feet feel like ice against the sun of his body; he grins down at her, kissing her nose, not making an attempt to try to extract himself from her cage. He seems to shift, enjoying it there a little, and she closes her eyes, nails biting into him as she tries to catch her breath.
“Stay,” she breathes, feeling like she hasn’t used her voice all her life, like he’s rocked her voice box out of her.
He grins, pulls out of her with a kiss to her other shoulder, and he moves behind her, chest pressing tightly against her back like he doesn’t want to part from her, be a separate entity. “Alright, Jules,” he says into her neck, lips seeming to suck lazily at her skin.
Julie rolls onto her side, her bangs askew, strands sticking to her lashes and others itching near her hairline. She feels the pillow shift, breath slightly teasing her hair, and he’s right behind her, the two of them compacted without a lick of air between them.
He presses a kiss to her hair as she shifts, legs wrapping with his. Her hands settle against her stomach, not knowing where else to go, and she feels Tim’s slide from their perch on her spine, one crawling underneath her, over the sides of her stomach to tuck themselves under her palms.
Tim wraps his fingers with hers.
one. | three.
fandom. friday night lights.
pairings/characters. julie taylor. tim riggins. (tim/julie; tim/lyla, matt/julie.)
warnings. au; future fic. post-fnl.
disclaimer. not mine.
words. 9817.
rating. r.
for. liquid_garnet for fnl_santa. requested: A long(ish) Tim/Julie fanfiction (relationship fic, can be smutty).
summary. new york pisses rain. julie moves on -- baggage follows.
notes. sexual situations in this one. :p can i say this is rather frightening? XP as always, thanks goes to ladymacbeth922 for the beta and iluisaaa for the arm pulling and death threats. feedback is ♥.
After their conversation in Starbucks, Julie’s fingers linger on the phone. She keeps coming back to it, running in a cycle where she’ll do something to occupy her mind and she’ll end up here, at the phone. She’s in her bedroom, sitting on her bed, with the portable phone curled in her palm.
Before this, she used to think about calling Lyla. Things transitioned between them from mere acquaintances to something liken to friends. (Lyla didn’t like leaving for college without having some friendship support, Julie figures, since she’s all alone and Tyra’s not going to offer Garrity anything but snark.) So Lyla sort of pushed herself into Julie’s life, came to family dinners, sometimes accompanied with Tim, and when she left, they emailed. The emails had an on-off relationship; sometimes Lyla would email with small updates Julie pretended she understood and Julie would reply back with the same thing. Dance was good, the pay was great, I miss you.
She has to give Lyla credit, though. She was there when Tyra wasn’t.
She thinks about calling Lyla now, pressing unfamiliar numbers into her phone and watching for that hitch of breath, the politeness of a sweet voice and awkwardness to ensue before she spits out the whereabouts of Tim and wait for that breath, the pregnant pause where Lyla will play it off like Tyra sometimes does.
Playing matchmaker has never been something she’s ever been fond of. Lois is to blame for that. But she’s starting to rethink it, ever since the second bowl of ice-cream Tim insisted she have before he claimed her television to watch a Jessica Alba movie.
She sits the phone in its cradle.
*
Watching movies until 2AM becomes a thing for them. Julie doesn’t wish to acknowledge it, the fact that they have a ‘thing’ and that it involves a word that suggests something plural. But - and, against her better judgement, she doesn’t want to admit this - Lois is stuck in her head and this becomes a thing between the two of them. It’s a thing, by definition and fact, and she knows Lois will agree because it’s what she dreamed about in the cafeteria or library or in Julie’s room after the tornado incident.
He’s curled up on the couch, like usual, and he’s becoming typecast as Couch Boy in the movie she’s writing a script for in her head. She’s sitting on the floor, back leaning against the couch and she tries so desperately to not let her head flop backwards and just fall asleep, prepared for that kink in her neck from passing out in such a stupid position. Tim shifts on the couch, arm hanging dead against the side, and it’s coming closer to her, sort of like how dark shadows in nightmares do. She eyes it, watches it in her peripheral and he’s sighing, yawning loudly occasionally. It pisses her off because this is a movie she wanted to watch and he’s ruining it.
They’ve been watching a Molly Ringwald marathon, and Tim’s all in for it because Molly Ringwald is hot and she thinks that maybe he’s one of those boys who has had some sort of Alyssa Milano fantasy about her. She doesn’t want to know.
But he’s been sighing for the past hour, shifting every few minutes, and she has to rethink her whole status on him and his secret passion for Molly Ringwald. He agreed in that bored tone around six, and he’s been verbally silent ever since.
Shifting again, Julie tries to block him out, eyebrows clenching tightly as if this will help her ignore him. His legs breathe against the back of her head and his hand is so close to her shoulder she really wants to cut it off.
He does it again, just when it’s getting to the scene she always finds herself so invested in. However, tonight, it’s different, and all she can focus on is Tim’s dangling limb and how his fingers brush over her shoulder so casually. She glances at him, his head resting on pillows she told him he needed propped up on the arm of the couch unless he wanted a neck that didn’t quite agree with him tomorrow; he’s watching the movie, blinking occasionally, breathing as quietly as he usually does.
Except his mouth opens and he sighs.
“You know, whenever you watch Angelina Jolie movies, I don’t make as much noise as you,” she presses her lips into a line, crosses her arms over her chest, and she’s missing out on what brings her into the movie and leaves her breathless at the end. It also doesn’t matter that she’s sort of lying, because while Angelina was running across the screen in some leotard thing while shooting at some hot guy, she’d been huffing and puffing and slamming doors as though it’d make him stop and ask her, nicely, if she wanted to watch that Sally Fields movie. “It’s like living next to a train track.”
Tim seems to grin, “Sorry.”
Her eyes assess him with a flicker; the pull of her mouth loosens as she directs her attention to him. “Tired?”
Shaking his head, he glances at her, that stupid pull of his mouth that is the foreshadowing of the shit-eating grin she doesn’t like; she looks back to the screen. “Not even close.”
“Okay,” she bites her lip, sighing herself (and it’s like some common cold he’s passing around, because now she feels restless and just wants to fuss about), and her crossed arms go languid against her chest. “Just shut up, okay? You made me miss my favourite part.”
He chuckles air, his fingertips being pushed by the vibrations of the movement against her shoulder. He’s still after that; every time his mouth opens, she seizes with fear, drawing herself out of the scene and the desire to quote the lines as they’re spoken. He doesn’t speak, stays silent, just blinking. Soon, and it’s like five minutes later, just when she’s getting into the movie, his fingers settle in her hair.
She doesn’t remember when he got so close.
*
She wakes up around five. There’s no reason she can think of as she stumbles down the stairs, hands rubbing at her eyes as the sun is starting to slowly ascend in the New York sky.
There’s movement on the couch and she pauses, heart starting to race at a million miles per hour, and she wonders, briefly, what Jamie Kennedy would do.
He definitely wouldn’t be approaching the noise.
Standing at the back of the leather couch, she sees Tim lying on his back, arm over his head while the other dangles off the couch and the blankets are a mess over him, tangled with limbs and cushions.
She glares, turning on her heel and moving towards the sink, grabbing a glass and filling it with water. There’s a magazine she left on the table that she decides to read in spite as time slowly ticks by. She’s not willing to elaborate on why she’s doing this.
Julie goes through five half-filled glasses of water before Tim wakes up. It takes him a bit, with the sheets wrapped around his legs like a second skin, for him to rise and rub at his eyes, stretch, and run a hand down his bare chest. He starts moving towards her before he stops, finally seeing her. She grins, the cat having caught the mouse, presses her chin tightly to her shoulder, “There a problem with the bed?”
He shakes his head, fingers scratching a spot in the centre of his chest, “No.”
Breathing in out in out, she licks her lips, surveying him. He’s tired; hair sprayed everywhere, half of it covering his eyes thickly and his fingers move sluggishly over his skin when she decides to pay attention. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he shrugs, shuffles towards the sink to splash water over his face. “Just used to the couch.”
“Oh,” she flips a page of the magazine without looking at it.
“Plus it has a great view,” he smirks, that Tim Riggins grin he tosses at the rally girls and she glares, her fingers pinch the corner of the magazine tightly, marring the glossy paper. He wipes his face with the dish towel and she has to remind herself to shove it in Martha’s washing later in the day.
She colours furiously and ducks her head to read Britney’s latest scandal.
*
The first time Dad calls her, it’s about Buddy Garrity. Somehow he’s gotten it into his head that she’s a willing ear to listen to him bitch and moan about the man.
Julie blames her mother.
She sits at the kitchen table, magazine laid out in front of her so she has something of interest to focus on. She doesn’t understand what her father’s going on about; she only remembers ever seeing Buddy Garrity half-naked, wrapped in a towel, in her bathroom way back when she was way too innocent for this garbage. She doesn’t want to hear about Buddy’s intimate spilling of woe about his long, lost wife and darling daughter.
“I’m not his ‘B.F.F.’, or whatever you girls call it,” Dad says, phone shifting in his hand as Mom’s somewhere in the background, correcting him. “Anyway, he keeps coming up to me. I don’t know what to do.”
“Uh huh,” she sighs, parroting the words she’s been repeating for over ten minutes now. Flicking the magazine page, she stares at a crossword featuring Hollywood productions and products as Dad keeps yapping on like she’s said something useful.
Eric pauses, licks his lips and seems to hum something to Tami before she hears his hand cup the phone, his voice hushed and desperate and it reminds her of that wild animal look he gets in his eye sometimes when it comes to female things and Grace. “I don’t know how to make him go away.”
Julie shrugs, “Wish upon a star.”
“Don’t give me cheek, Julie. I’m being serious. Why aren’t you concerned about the sanity of your father?”
She sighs, smacks her own lips together and tries to summon up something from the snippets of what he’s said that stick to her mind like gum to the bottoms of desks. “Just avoid him.”
“Okay,” Eric smiles, and he says the usual things, like he misses her and that love phrase Julie only parrots because she sort of wants Buddy Garrity naked in her bathroom shoved out of her mind.
Her mother is the one who gives him the useful advice.
*
They seem to lay down a law. (Tim seems to, but Julie’s not going to admit that.)
Speaking about Lyla Garrity is the equivalent to saying Voldemort. She thinks it’d be common courtesy for him to not bring up Matt, but he does. She doesn’t know why she expected any better. However, and she has to grin at this, he tries.
Trying does not mean succeeding.
He usually does this when they’re watching a movie. It occurs more and more when it’s a Bill Murray one. Stifling the urge to sing the tune to Ghostbusters, Tim has to sigh, shift slightly as he seems to curl more into the couch. “So, Seven -”
“Are you infatuated with him, Tim?” she pulls her knee closer to her, the couch groaning under the slide of her bare foot. She furrows her eyebrows, mouth setting into a line as Tim’s sitting sluggishly, arms folded over his chest and he throws her a lazy look.
He shrugs, shaking his head, “No.” He turns back to the television; saying in that lazy drawl of his Julie’s starting to find grating her skin, “Just making conversation.”
In retaliation “Well, let’s talk about Lyla, then” in different forms is brought up with an ugly smirk she doesn’t like. It seems to get worse each time Tim decides he likes playing the Groundhog Day game.
He flinches.
*
Tim suggests they go out. He’s on a lets-be-healthy high and he presumes fresh air would do her good. “You’re lookin’ quite pale, Julie. Texan women are never pale.” Apparently the sun is also a part of his wannabe-Jenny-Craig plan.
She shrugs, spoon swirling in her bowl, “I’m not a Texan woman.” She yawns, trying to smack some cereal bits into the milk and have them sink like the Titanic. They keep floating up, and her minor irritation floats erratically through her small movements.
“Dillon through and through,” he mutters to himself, slamming the cupboard and getting a bowl of whatever’s left of the cereal. He tends to mix them up, Lucky Charms with Cornflakes and something else that completes the combo. She cocks her eyebrow, mouth full, and he gets this look on his face, like as if he’s glowing or something, she’s not sure what it is but he gives off signals when he’s about to be crude. “Like a threesome,” there it is with a grin. He looks up at her with a tilt of his head as he moves towards the fridge.
She rolls her eyes, swallows, “It’s nine in the morning.” Her spoon makes the rounds again, her cereal experiencing its fifth whirlpool for the morning.
Looking over his shoulder, he grabs the milk carton and leaves the door open; she hates it when he does that. He’s at the sink, bowl perched on the counter beside it, “So?”
“It’s like alcohol,” she plays with her cereal, spooning some of it up to have it drop back down into the bowl, causing some droplets to splatter on the kitchen table. Grabbing a tissue, she wipes at it absently, “Wait until it’s noon or something.”
Tim’s back at the fridge, seconds before it’ll start beeping about staying open for too long, and he moves away from it, kicking the door closed as he grabs a spoon from a drawer and reaches for his bowl that’s filled to the brim. “It’s bound to be noon somewhere.”
Some habits don’t change.
*
He takes her out, kicking and screaming. She’s sluggish at first, his hand wrapped tightly around her wrist as he pulls her along like it’s nothing, some normal thing that’s in his daily schedule. Her arm is so small compared to his large palm. She feels inadequate, like an unknown island to his internationally famed continent.
“You should get a striped shirt,” he says, hotdog in hand coated with everything. He’s not a picky eater, she learns, and she takes a bite of her own hotdog. “You know, to keep up with the persona.”
“There is no persona. I have no persona.” He slows, drops the curled up napkin into a bin and dusts his hands off, licking at his fingers, “Why don’t you wear shirts with 33 printed on the back?”
“Can’t find none.”
She shrugs, wipes her top lip with the side of her hand, “There’s the internet.”
“I’m not allowed on the internet,” he grins, palms sliding over his jeans and tuck his fingers into his pockets.
She rolls her eyes. “This is why we can’t have nice things. I let you do things and you throw this back at me.”
He grins, laughing at her, “You sure are a real ball of nerves around me, Stripes.” He’s resisting the urge to ruffle her hair like she’s some kid, that Bo or Bradley or something who Tyra sometimes talks about. Tim doesn’t know what to do with his hands, sliding them in and out of his pockets and wringing them together, cracking bones and stretching them above his head as they walk slowly.
Glaring, she curls her hand into a fist and tries to punch him into the buildings, “No nerves here, Pig.”
Tim’s laughter grows louder as he runs his knuckles over the patch of skin beneath the sleeve she attempted to pound into the mismatched brick buildings. “Your fists are tiny.”
“So is your head.”
He shrugs, “Better that then something else.”
*
Lois sends her too much spam mail that she sometimes deletes the actual emails. It’s an accident. She never does it on purpose. Julie thinks the guilt would suffocate her. (Or Lois’ phone calls.)
Today, however, is not one of those days. Though Julie really wishes it was.
Sitting on her bed, she checks her emails. (Tyra called earlier to tell her to get her ‘bony little ass on the computer and write her back’ because phones are a little too hard and Tyra Collette’s never one to repeat herself.)
Lois blabs on about herself, as expected, and Julie usually doesn’t mind, but today she’s tired. She’s been going over the pros and cons of scratching that itch in regards to Lyla and dressing up as cupid. She talks a little about things Julie cares about, like how Matt’s working at the same place again, Smash Williams visits his mother like the good boy he is, and how Tim Riggins has disappeared off the face of the planet.
What makes Julie roll her eyes is the fact that Lois can never resist not throwing in a few clichéd romance plots, saying she thinks he’s off to end it with Lyla so he can be with her because he finally realised she existed and was the true love of his life. It’s a bunch of sentences littered with run-ons and acronyms neither Julie nor Google can decipher. She gossips a little too much, throws in her own fantasies mixed in with the actual facts, and a long time ago Julie stopped attempting to draw out what was fact and what was fiction.
She presses an icon so she can reply, however the cursor blinks back at her, all innocent in that way that Grace started out, and she knows what its thinking. Her fingers hover over letters that, when pressed one after another, won’t add up to make a proper word.
Siting in silence, she shifts until the leg propped underneath her is comfortable and those tingles she’s not quite fond of approach her bent knee as if summoned by some unknown entity. Her leg becomes numb as she stares at her computer screen.
Julie deletes the email.
*
“You should eat more fruit,” Tim says before biting into his red apple.
Julie cocks her brow, digging deep into the fridge for the leftover pasta she didn’t eat last night. “Yeah?” she peeks out from the depths of her clean fridge that’s starting to pile up with water bottles and food products she knows she doesn’t take a liking to.
He perches himself against the table, bouncing the apple in his palm before biting, “Yeah.” Tim waits until he swallows; Jason Street’s perfect manners seem embedded into him today, “Being the Coach’s daughter and all, I thought you’d be eating like a Panther.”
She laughs, head back in the fridge, and she hears it echo back to her, a bitter sound she doesn’t think she’d pick up on if she was facing him, “I’d want to be far from that.” Licking her lips, Julie wonders if that was the wrong thing to say, as silence spills across every corner of her apartment and she wants to stay hunched, face in the fridge, until the end of time. Clearing her throat, she tries to make amends, “Rebellion was such a fascinating phase, Tim.” She bites her tongue, pushing the sarcasm back, closing her eyes to help with the force. Her attempts at rebellion are still a sore spot; a wound that liquor keeps melting over. “I liked not doing what others expected.”
She hears the crunch of his teeth sinking into the apple. “Yeah, I get that.”
Sighing, she slams the fridge shut, perching her hands on her hips as she examines the kitchen. Spotless as usual, a magazine lays on the kitchen table with a pen hidden between the pages as she’s taken a liking to crosswords and Hollywood’s test on how much she knows about its gossip.
Nothing seems out of place.
Now, if she’s honest with herself, she’ll start understanding that that lost sense niggling at the walls of her mind, like how she thought her particular cup was in the cupboard closest to the window but was in the freezer, and she swore she had put it in the cupboard, is her swimming in the river of denial. Julie likes hiding from facts, sometimes, and this one is one in particular she likes being blind to. The niggling turns into minor thumping and it is her seeming out of place.
“You okay?” he says, apple paused in front of his face.
When she looks at him, snapping out of her stupor seconds after he speaks, she sees this look on his face. It’s like he knows what she’s thinking and is biting back the smirk with the you lost? remark that’ll cut her deeper than she’d like because of the lost look etched upon her features like she’s woken up in a year she doesn’t remember ever being in. She blinks, “Yeah. Just - did you eat the pasta?”
Pressing his lips together, he bites the apple, the red disappearing quickly to be replaced with a yellow-cream, “No.”
“Oh.” She feels stupid, real stupid, like when she let her father think Tim tried to take advantage of her drunken state back when she was a stupid sixteen year old aiming to please by doing all the wrong things. Julie stands, stumped.
Tim moves, opens up a door under the sink and tosses the apple core in. “I think you may have thrown it out,” he shrugs, as if he’s trying to hide the underlying intention of making her feel better.
He’s giving her a compass and she’s sort of grateful for that.
*
A tune is knocked into the wood of her door, an incessant banging that interrupts her reading as she tries to ignore it, willing it away. Tim’s too busy watching football to move. “Don’t worry, I’ll get it.”
“I was hoping you would,” he grins, and she glares at his feet hanging over the top of the couch.
Pulling the door open, Martha’s standing there, smile lighting up her face and she smacks a piece of paper into Julie’s chest. So much restraint must’ve gone into that, she thinks, as Martha’s always hitting her in the head with her mail she finds in her slot. “Fifth Floor Fred,” she grins around the dim nickname, “is having a party. Gonna be a blast. Biggest bash of the year, blah blah blah. That’s how high schoolers speak these days, right?”
Julie shrugs, hearing the leather couch groan underneath Tim’s shifting, the volume turning down as the loud commentary and cheering from a pre-taped audience becomes a hum. “Wouldn’t know.”
Martha rubs at her eyes, “Well, it’s tonight. I sort of forgot to give it to you?” She winces at this, though her grin barricades any sympathy Julie feels towards her. Martha likes snooping through her mail. She’s convinced she’ll find a love letter of the Atonement kind from some boyfriend Julie’s obviously keeping hidden. “Anyway, you free to be there?”
She nods, “Yeah, I guess.” Her fingers play with the knob of her door. It whines a little, and she presses her palm against it to stop her fingers from trying to pull it from it’s hole in the wood.
Standing on her tiptoes, Martha grins, pointing over Julie’s shoulder, mouthing “Is that him?” while Julie tries to push her away.
“Bye Martha,” she shuts the door on her laughing face.
*
“Fred’s having a party -”
“Fred?”
She rolls her eyes, “Fifth floor.” He cocks his eyebrow and she huffs, hands pushing hard against her hips, “You borrowed his stupid Nirvana cds or something.” She pushes her bangs off her forehead, breathing in as her patience wears thin and Tim’s looking back at the television again, stupid football on the screen. She tries to pick up as if he hadn’t needed the reminder, “And I thought I’d extend an invitation to you so you wouldn’t do something stupid like turn up and try to pull me away from a very civilised, normal party.”
He pushes himself up on the couch a little, his legs bending at the knee as he tries to look at her from over it. “Why would I come in and pull you away?”
On their own accord her eyebrows pull up slowly, her bangs moving a little as though it’s dancing with a light breeze. She bites the you’ve got to be kidding and plasters her palm on the side of her leg to keep it from smoothing the tension in her forehead and the desire to crease the skin there. “You and I don’t have a good reputation at parties.”
His eyebrow is cocked and she tries to go for a Tami Taylor stance, hands on her hips and her leg jutted out, bent, eyebrow cocked sharply and she’s counting the breaths until he caves, declines politely and passes out on the couch. “Okay.”
She frowns. “What?”
“I said okay,” he says to the television, a Billy Riggins tone (exasperation, an underlying message of piss off hidden between the letters) she’s heard Tyra bitch about before coating his voice.
“Oh-okay,” she stutters, smoothes her hand on her leg. “It’s at seven.”
“Okay.”
“And it’ll be boring.”
“That’s fine.”
“I’m serious. Knowing these people, it’ll probably end at eight. Seven-thirty if they’re super boring.”
Looking at her from over the couch, he’s pushes himself up further now, nose visible and the cool smile, one of reassurance, so unfamiliar to her, pulls at his face, “I said okay, Jules.”
She nods, a bit too much, but it’s a nod and it has him chuckling out bits of air and he’s getting off the couch, arms thrown over his head as he moves into the kitchen. With her eyes following, she feels like a high school kid, one of those rally girls (and she never wants to be one of them) as she breathes out “Okay.”
*
She spends too much time fussing.
He calls from down the stairs, legs pressed against the sides, for her to hurry up. Two hours early.
Julie sort of wishes she had listened to him. Two hours and thirty minutes later, she’s trying to find her other earring. Trying to look in the bottom cupboards without getting on her knees, she gives up after Tim’s third holler.
She wears a red dress. Bright in shade, a v cut exposing her collarbone, and it ends halfway down her thighs. It reminds her of a summer dress, the kind her mother liked to suggest she buy whenever she graced her parents with her presence. She doesn’t try to make an entrance, fussing for her handbag her mother gave her for her twenty-first, and tosses her shoes down the stairs.
“You could’ve heeled me to death, Taylor,” Tim grins, running a hand through his hair from his spot at the bottom. It’s like he hasn’t moved, though the television has changed, projecting music and pop starlets into her living room. Tim wears his usual get-up; jeans and a grey t-shirt with some catchphrase printed on it in block letters instead of his plaid button-up.
She shrugs, sitting on the second last step, he hands her her shoes. She places her foot in, pulling the strap around her ankle. “Wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world.”
He stands before her, eyes watching her press her leg to the floor, shifting in her shoe so she’s sure she won’t trip out of them or lose blood flow to her toes. “You really don’t care what happens to me, do you?”
Looking up at him through her bangs that are on the verge of needing an emergency trim, she presses her lips together, hand running over the tip of the shoe as her toes flex. She should’ve worn them in before tonight. “No, not really.”
“Nice,” he’s grinning, “real nice.”
She shrugs, “Never claimed to be.”
With both of her shoes strapped on, she presses her palms into the steps, pushing herself up. Tim’s hand is floating in the air, and she grabs it as he pulls her off the stair. “You look nice.”
She shifts, “Thanks. You -” he grins as her eyebrow rises at his boots, stained with Texas, “- don’t look all that different.”
“Enigma,” he grins. She rolls her eyes, walking by him and running her fingers through her hair as she grabs her keys from the kitchen table, pushing her feet awkwardly to the door. Tim bolts after her, spitting out “It’s the look that’s in” when they’re in the hallway, her door slamming behind them.
Pulling at the strap on her shoulder, she grins, “Conforming, Riggins?”
He grins, “Never. I’m setting the trend.”
She nods, walking towards the elevator, “And I’m marrying Brad Pitt.”
Her finger moves to press the button, looking dead with its half-scratched arrow pointing down. Tim punches it with a stupid grin instead.
*
Fred’s party isn’t half bad; considering he’s bordering on twenty-eight and he watches too many American Pie movies. Pies with cream sit on a few tables around the place with “Do not touch” signs planted in them like the flags on the moon, and the cardboard cut-outs she remembers getting a glimpse of at the Riggins’ house. There’s probably a virginity bet going on here, too.
Tim strays to the kitchen as she spends some time doing the rounds, talking to tenants she only sees once in a blue moon. Martha’s there, in the corner, and waves at her like she’s a kid in high school and sometimes Julie thinks she’s Lois in disguise. That is until she grabs a cardboard cut-out of some woman in a bikini and makes obscene gestures at it - that’s when she morphs into Tyra.
The party reminds her of the few she attended at Dillon. Crowded, though there’s breathing room, and plastic cups and dancing; lots of dancing with old, cheesy songs from the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Deciding then and there, she only wants to stay for an hour. She doesn’t deserve this kind of torment until a little later in life.
She stands in an open spot, listening as bands she remembers decently liking as a little kid play loudly in her ears. A headache’s going to be her punishment later. Tim’s beside her, cup in hand, and it’s an image she’s always had in her mind whenever she thinks of Tim Riggins.
He takes a sip, “Having fun?” He has to yell over the pop music of Mya.
She shrugs, “Beats Louis’ party.”
“What was that like?” he looks down at her, cup held high as he takes another drink. His eyebrows are furrowed and she wants to laugh at his curious expression. He thinks these parties are like the Dillon high school ones, the celebrations of Panther victory every Friday night.
She grins, “Mummies and coffins; mind you it was large cardboard boxes painted black.”
Tim’s eyebrows rise, his hand pauses at moving his cup to his lips as he regains his footing, “Halloween?”
“Birthday party.”
He smirks, blinking a couple of times before taking another drink, “Of course.” The cup disappears from his hand and he’s wiping his hands together. Julie runs her hands over the side of her dress so her hands have something to do.
Her mouth slants as Mya finishes up and Spice Girls comes on. She laughs, “Great music.”
Tim grins, leaning down towards her, hands clasped behind his back, “Wanna dance?” He looks a bit awkward, although his eyes sparkle cockily and she knows that this is a challenge of some sort.
She glances at him, watches the tug of his lips and the amusement sparkle in her eyes. Her foot taps against the beat and she knows, sooner than later, she’ll start singing. “Sure,” she shrugs, and she follows him towards what people have claimed to be the dance floor.
He keeps his distance, slightly swaying as Julie finds herself reliving her repressed teenage daydreams of dancing on her bed while singing into a hairbrush. Tim laughs at her as she starts to mouth the words. “Isn’t there a movie for this?” he has to lean in close to her so she can hear him over the music and her own singing that’s getting louder.
She laughs, her eyes settling on him as she breaks into a sway, catching her breath, “Spice Girls? Seriously?”
“Guess I’ll have to get cultured on this one.”
She raises her eyebrows as her answer and she closes her eyes, smiling at the thought of Tim Riggins watching the Spice World movie. She’ll have to buy herself a video camera so she can upload it to Youtube.
Julie feels hot, has been feeling it all night, and her furious movements have only intensified it. The air in Fred’s apartment is stuffy and the dance floor is worse than her original spot near the kitchen. Her legs feel hot from the movement and the familiarity of moving somewhat awkwardly like this, and her neck feels heat at embarrassment as she knows she’ll never live this down for the rest of her interaction with him.
There’s warmth against her mouth and its Tim kissing her.
*
Julie slams the door, walking frantically as she tries to unbuckle her shoes’ sudden tight grasp from around her ankles. Tim’s right behind her, shutting the door much more quietly, hands in his pockets and this is the Tim she remembers, the one who seems so nonchalant that nothing is running hysterically through his mind on fast-forward like hers.
She glares, but not for too long. She can’t even look at him.
It takes a few angry moves of her fingers, her nail getting stuck underneath the little buckle, to get her shoes off so she can kick them towards the couch. (She was going to kick them at him, hit him straight in the jaw, but for safety reasons - and how bad her kicking aim is, her blood is football not soccer - she goes for a place that can be known as another limb of Tim Riggins.)
“Why’d you do that?” she finds herself saying quickly, “Why’d you do that in front of all those people?” Julie turns, hands on her hips and she’s glaring, jumping to conclusions as she sees a slight shift in his face. He’s a bit flabbergasted, mouth open and eyebrows furrowed slightly, and he’s sort of swaying from approaching her and staying put. “Do you think this is some joke? That you can just kiss me and there’d be no repercussions? Because if so, you obviously don’t know me.”
“Jules -” he tries to approach her, but she moves back, finding those hysterical tears that are supposed to be on her cheeks swirling slowly in front of her eyes.
“Is that why you came here?” her eyes narrow even further, and to a point all she can see is darkness, “You playing with me, Tim Riggins? Are you taking back what you said when I took you into my house several weeks ago?”
He smirks, “It’s not a house.”
She narrows her eyes, hips jutted out as her hands fit into the grooves.
Tim’s hand attacks his neck and he sighs, looking everywhere around the apartment for something. Dillon provided an escape and New York lacks the familiarity and personal touch of home. “I just wanted to kiss you,” he shrugs out, hand fallen forlornly by his side. “Why is it such a big deal?”
“It’s a big deal, Tim,” she presses the name out like a slap, “you just can’t kiss me -”
“Why not?”
She stumbles, losing her pacing, the words she feels that have been in her head for years suddenly gone. “Because - of Tyra.”
“Tyra?” he smirks, laughter edged into his voice as his hand runs through his hair. “Because of Tyra? That’s weak, Julie, real weak.”
She licks her lips, “Fine then. My father.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Seriously?” He pauses, “Right, of course. Bringing in the parents when you feel insecure. Look, Jules, if you don’t want me around, just say so. I’m a big boy.”
Her hand curls around the fabric of her dress. She can’t think of anything better to do. With her mouth having gone dry and that nagging voice inside her head that she’s convinced belongs to Tyra has gone, pissed off when she needed it most, and she’s left gaping at him - literally gaping - like a fish as he watches her, eyebrows raised and hands by his sides. She’s trying to swallow words from the air so she can spit something at him, anything.
Tim just grins, shit-eating and Texas and she wants to tell him to get it off his face. Better yet, she wants to slap it; have her hand personally wipe that stupid grin off his stupid face and go down in the history of some equally stupid textbook. The rally girls will have her assassinated for hitting his pretty little face, but she thinks it’ll be more than worth it. At least Tyra would be proud.
Instead, he approaches her, and she’s stiff as a board, stiff as a statue, stiff as anything - and her mind wanders and she’s disgusted, thinking she’ll call Lyla tomorrow and ask her to pray for her if she’s still into that stuff - and he’s in front of her, his shadow swallowing her whole. He’s leaning down and his hands are on her wrists, sliding up her arms quickly and he’s kissing her.
She thinks she’s stupid if she didn’t see this coming.
It’s a light press of the mouth, his hands settle on her cheeks and he’s pulling her in like she’s metal and he’s a magnet and her hands grip his hair, pulling him down harder onto her as she opens her mouth to him. He’s grinning, and she feels the shit-eating grin of Tim Riggins that she’s learnt to love and hate at the same time feel so good against her mouth, a betrayal of how it affects her internally. His fingers mess up her hair, drawing circles in the strands, wrapping them around his fingers real tight. Shit-eating grin (and she thinks it deserves capitals at this state, though there’s pros and cons being scribbled down in the meantime) slides into just a grin, one she thinks she remembers from Matt, however she knows it’s different, it feels different as it slides into an open mouth kiss and Tim’s pulling her up against him, arms wrapped tightly around her shoulders and his hands slinking to the small of her back.
“We don’t have to do this,” he breathes, hot air caressing her mouth and it’s her that pushes her mouth against his neck. She tries to turn his face to her so she can feel that warmth again; her lips tingle hotly without it. His stupid stubbornness to face her as his head has turned to the side, eyes watching from the corners, pisses her off more than she’d like, frustration building in her clenched fists pulling the tight fabric of his shirt. Letting go, she allows the fabric to breathe, her frustration to dissipate. Only for a moment; it’s only fair, she reasons, as he doesn’t try to quench her irritation. She sucks at his neck, hands trailing over his chest, fingertips pulling at the fabric of his shirt, “I didn’t come here for this.”
She nods, figuring it’s the best way to bring his face to hers so she can drown out those tingles parading incessantly on her lips. The skin of his neck isn’t doing anything to flush it away. Drawing back, she places her palms on either side of his face and pulls him towards her, “Shut up.”
Gladly, he obliges, a smile rests on his lips as he opens them underneath her, his hands settling on her back, running up and down her spine causing her to arch into him. She feels his fingers teasing the fabric of her dress, pulling at it as though it’ll cave away; all he’s succeeding at is wrinkling it.
He pulls away, sliding his hands down her back and follows her dress until it ends halfway down her thigh. Pulling at the hem, he grins, and she feels like as though he’s just discovered puppets in some pawn shop. His palms are hot on her legs as he bends down, breaking away from her. He pulls her up, her legs wrapping around his waist and he carries her over to the stairs, taking them slow as though they’re unfamiliar - and she guesses they are, considering his allergies and what she likes to call his ‘medical condition’ - and once they’re up there, in her room, she grabs his face and wraps her legs tighter around him, causing most of her dress to bunch at her waist.
They move to the bed - him walking to it while she mauls at his face; she has to give him credit for memorising the layout of her simple bedroom within the few seconds before she grabbed him like some savage whose been devoid of any water - and they’re descending, her back hitting her soft sheets and he’s on top of her, knee between her legs and hands pressing against her sides. She feels the pressure of his hands on her legs, skimming up and down. He plays with her dress, whichever part he can get his hands on, sometimes pressing hard enough that she can feel him, fingers folding the fabric like paper.
His lips move to her neck, descend down to her collarbone and he’s still so far away from her, allowing too much space to be between them. They’re like Texas and New York and she resents him for it, for memorising maps and being the mathematical brat he is by keeping away from her like some force is stopping him from pressing hard against her. However, he lets himself hover, hand over her breast, thumb starting circular motions, and then, suddenly, he traces the lines in her dress, sometimes dipping his finger hard into her skin.
In retaliation, she wraps her legs tighter around his waist with a struggle due to the gap between them. She has to lift herself up, most of her weight shifting to her shoulders as her legs skim his sides. By straddling him, she thinks, she’ll be able to squeeze out all the bullshit and make him not be such a tease, the brat that he is, and that he’ll just do what Tim Riggins does and stop frustrating her to the point of seeing stars. He moves a bit down, and she feels the pain emerging at her neck fade away as she retracts from his slow fall, still keeping breathing distance between them. Her feet push against his legs, toes trying to curl into his jeans, and he seems to grin into the skin exposed by the v cut of her dress.
Fingers fluttering over his clothed back, they find the hem of his shirt, pulling it, nails skimming against newly exposed flesh and he breaks away from her, raising his arms so she can pull it over his head. She drops it to the side and her arms wrap around his neck, pulling her up so she can kiss him, mouth open, and fingers playing with his hair. He smells of her shampoo.
His hands find her spine again, causing her to arch her back, pressing sharply into him, making it easier for his flat palm to run over her dress. His finger skims up the zipper once he finds it, and he pulls it down slowly, as though he wants to be sneaky and be unheard, a silent thief of some kind in the night, and she smiles against his mouth, her hands pulling at his hair before sliding over his hard back, the muscles moving under her palms. Once the zip reaches its end, his hands slide up her back parting her dress like the red sea, leaving heat swelling in their wake; his palms skim over her shoulders, pulling the dress down until it bunches at her waist.
Her hands travel over his back and slide against the skin near the waistband of his jeans, fiddling with the silver buckle as his lips move down between her covered breasts; he pauses at her stomach, tongue flickering and lips sucking. She arches, getting his belt undone and his hands are over hers, pushing them away as he undoes his zip and he grabs them, placing them over his pockets as he pulls them, hands gripped tightly around hers, down his legs like water.
With her dress seemingly bunched at her waist, Tim’s palm slaps against her leg, trailing slowly down her heated skin into the abyss of red, flimsy fabric. His fingers tap a slow rhythm on the inside of her thigh, the small thumps on her leg turn into skimming and he traces the outline of her underwear, the heel of his palm faintly cupping her. As if burned, he rests his palm on her stomach, dangerously low, filling her with heat as his thumb moves to design shapes into her skin.
Julie’s hands slide between them, chasing after the hard muscles of his chest. He arches up, her nails tracing the contours as they glide down towards the waistband of his boxers. He moves his palm from underneath her dress to grab her hand, bringing it back up towards his shoulder. Planting her hand somewhere near his heart, his hands follow the curve of her arms and cup her shoulders.
Tim’s hands are on her back, sliding along the edge of her bra, before settling on the clasp. A snap moves his hands to her shoulders, fingering down one strap and placing an open-mouthed hot, wet kiss on her shoulder before repeating it on the other. He kisses her on the lips, his hands cupping her face, and he presses harder into her, mouth hot on hers and his hips pressing her dress against her, making her feel itchy from the movements of the fabric.
Her hands move to her dress, fingers trying to catch a part of it so she can try to push it down her legs, planning to kick them off. Tim’s lips leave hers, trailing a path from the corner of her lip over her jaw, sucking at her neck, and tongue licking her collarbone. His hands settle on either side of her, guiding him down as he descends, kissing the valley between her breasts and trailing a wonky line down her stomach. Fingers tickling her sides, he grips the dress, pulling it down her legs, his lips pressing at the waistband of her underwear - skimpy black boy shorts - as the dress settles around her feet. His hands abandon it, allowing her to use her feet to pull it off. He smirks against her skin as it seems to tangle slightly, her toes having to pick at it like chopsticks.
Kissing his way back up to her, hot and open-mouthed that occasionally leave a popping sound as he moves on to the next patch of skin. He diverts from his original path and kisses the side of her breast, forming a slight trail around it as his finger skims a straight line between them.
Julie has enough, sighing, frustration courses through her as she digs her hands down his back, trying to burn paths in his skin without the use of her nails. She tries to will him up, to feel his mouth hot on hers and his chest pressing her into the mattress. His legs tangle with hers, looping around her knee and he uses it to pull himself up towards her, tugging slightly, as he diverts to her collarbone. Tim stays at her shoulder, the pressure of a grin being resisted burns into her skin. His teeth bite and his lips suck and she shifts her hips, feeling him through his boxers, and he shuffles back, pressing hard against her momentarily before air seeps between their lower bodies.
She groans, rolling her eyes as she tugs at his hair, trying to get him to come up to her. She arches against him, feeling his smirk increase and weigh her shoulder heavily down. Jerking it, Tim laughs, hot air puffing across her skin.
“Okay, okay,” he says, still chuckling, and he moves so slowly, as though he’s swimming through the air, to press a kiss at the corner of her lip. Flicking his tongue out, he slides his mouth over hers, licking the pillow of her lower lip as he shifts his hips down. “Ever heard of patience is a virtue?”
She pulls at his hair, hands gripping at his cheeks as she moves her hips against his, wrapping her legs around his middle and trying to get him closer to her. His chest is hard against hers, knocking the breath out of her, “Ever heard that you’re a tease?”
He chuckles against her lips, biting at her bottom one, his fingers tapping wide patterns down her side to rest at her hip. She thinks he’s going to go for it again, try to overcome some hidden dragon as he acts as though her thin underwear is a metal chastity belt.
He does. She thinks she’s momentarily stupid for thinking anything could faze Riggins.
He pulls her underwear down, fingers sliding down the sides of her legs, dragging them over her knees and she hates the way he kisses all of her; the skin on her knees, the sides of her legs. She kicks the underwear from her feet in irritation that Tim Riggins is attentive to detail at the worst of times and he swims back up towards her, stupid smirk on his face, lips trailing up her leg.
She lets her head flop back onto the covers, feeling him slowly make his way up to her to pause at her hip, and then she feels him there nose grazing before his mouth seems to cover her, licking and hot and she grips the sheets in her hands.
She feels - she doesn’t know how she feels, words slipping away for the first time she can remember - him down there, seeming to work at her, pushing buttons she didn’t know existed. She groans, his fingers brush across her hips in replacement of the smirk she usually feels. He’s good, like real good, and she’s a fool for thinking he’d be coming in this as some sort of virgin. He’s not a high school boy - which she doubts he ever was - as she bends her knees and his hands are on her thighs, warm and giving her squeezes she guesses are of reassurance; it’s not like with Matt, who’d slip his hand beneath her skirt she’d wear just for this after a few stutters of are you sure? and flushing cheeks with shaking fingers that’d hesitate and pull away and she’d never felt as frustrated in her life.
The comparisons come with the intensity of the numbness she finds flooding her hands, letting go of the sheets to clench into fists. With Matt, she’d have to do it herself, sometimes, guide his fingers everywhere because he’d be too shy to touch her in ways she didn’t even touch herself, and then she’d try to repay him, slide her hands into his own pants and that didn’t get far either. With Tim, she doesn’t know, but she’s pretty sure he doesn’t hesitate and stutter with his fingers, would let her return the favour with vigorous enthusiasm.
Tim’s hands slip underneath her thighs, seeming to pull her up a little and she thrashes at this, as sensations she’s never felt suffocate her thickly as his tongue seems to wrap around her, push further into her, she doesn’t know, but she feels him even more, like he’s telling her to get her head back to him.
He’s giving her a hint and she’d be a damned hypocrite to act oblivious to it.
Arching her back, she groans louder, feeling her body turn into water as Tim’s licking his way up her abdomen, a stupid, smug grin on his face as his hands move his boxers down. Its slick between her legs, and when he gets a hand free, he seems to stroke her lightly, teasing, before all she can feel is air and the press of his mouth against random spots over her body.
Tim’s kissing her at an awkward angle as she has to support her weight with her elbows while his hands are working on a wrapper she hears crinkle loudly between his fingers. He’s trying to be quiet, as if not to scare her; she pulls his mouth harder against hers, tongue running over the seam of his lips as she feels the slight lick of air push between them. He presses his mouth firmly down on hers as her elbows give way, attempting to push herself up near the pillow before she lands on it and his hands lightly cup her breasts before moving into her hair.
Always in her hair, she grins lightly, fingers tugging at clumps of it as if to tell her that smirk belongs on his mouth, and in a way, it is fitting against his. She presses her chest into his, trying to see if his hands will move, run across the underside of her breasts; it stays in her hair, wrapping more tightly if possible.
He slides into her like it’s nothing. Her nails dig into his shoulders as he rocks his hips gently into her. “Fuck,” she groans, and he grins against her mouth, “stop being gentle. Not fucking porcelain.”
He takes her lip between his teeth, “I like it when you talk dirty, Taylor.” He melds his mouth against hers, hot and wet and he picks up the pace, rocking his hips a little faster into her.
She presses the pads of her fingers into his scalp, bits of hair sticking to her skin as she runs her hands through his hair. Locking her legs around him, he sinks in deeper, letting out a noise in his throat as he keeps kissing her, harder, hands running along her stomach like whispers. He’s talking to her, talking into her as his mouth stays connected to hers, breathing in air while lips are sticking together; she doesn’t register any of the words he’s saying, but she knows, without a doubt, they’re dirty and she’d blush at the sound of them. His mouth feels dirty against hers in that good way Matt’s never did.
All she hears resonating through her ears is “Fuck, Jules” and she feels something flutter in her stomach despite everything else, knowing that he’s right there with her - only her - and she thinks that maybe she’s selfish for hoping for it, considering everything she’s speculates about Tim Riggins and a certain girl living somewhere in California.
She grins, feeling his own words taste something thick in her mouth as she pulls away from his, pressing her lips to the tip of his nose, “Already doing that.”
He groans at this, a smug little smirk on his lips as he pushes his mouth onto hers, teeth nipping and clashing and he seems to move faster, hips copying his mouth. The heel of her feet press hard against his back, words slipping between them she can’t even hear as Tim’s breathing is loud in her ears.
She says she sees stars, falls apart, something that means fireworks and slipping away from the controlled manner she’s used to when she comes. It’s so blunt to her, the way his nails try to dig into her skin when he’s almost there, so close that she needs to rock into him to help him along the way. She feels like liquid, wet and like she’ll drip off the bed as she buries her head in his neck, licking the skin there as her hands skim up and down his back, nails biting in the flesh.
Propping her hands against his shoulders, she tries to get him to sink deeper into her, make her feel like she’s been completed, like some stupid puzzle when she’s found the piece she’s been missing for months. Dirty words she doesn’t care to repeat coherently toss from his mouth as he pants - and she does, too, even though she feels slack and incoherent - her breath muffled with moans and “Come on” as she tries to get him to grin against her mouth at her own innuendo. Her lips form words she’s mimicking from him, and Tim slumps against her, hips motionless and still. It’s the first time she thinks she registers the feeling of him being there. She feels so full and hot, and he shifts a little, up and down, and she clenches around him to keep him there.
Pressing open-mouthed kisses to her mouth, he trails over her cheek to settle against her shoulder. She brushes hair from his sticky forehead, and he plants his hands either side of her, pushing himself up. Air brushes against her skin, her lower body feeling heated, and she doesn’t like how the chilled air plays along her flesh. Wrapping her legs tighter around his lower back, her feet feel like ice against the sun of his body; he grins down at her, kissing her nose, not making an attempt to try to extract himself from her cage. He seems to shift, enjoying it there a little, and she closes her eyes, nails biting into him as she tries to catch her breath.
“Stay,” she breathes, feeling like she hasn’t used her voice all her life, like he’s rocked her voice box out of her.
He grins, pulls out of her with a kiss to her other shoulder, and he moves behind her, chest pressing tightly against her back like he doesn’t want to part from her, be a separate entity. “Alright, Jules,” he says into her neck, lips seeming to suck lazily at her skin.
Julie rolls onto her side, her bangs askew, strands sticking to her lashes and others itching near her hairline. She feels the pillow shift, breath slightly teasing her hair, and he’s right behind her, the two of them compacted without a lick of air between them.
He presses a kiss to her hair as she shifts, legs wrapping with his. Her hands settle against her stomach, not knowing where else to go, and she feels Tim’s slide from their perch on her spine, one crawling underneath her, over the sides of her stomach to tuck themselves under her palms.
Tim wraps his fingers with hers.
one. | three.