70. (fnl) we burn our hands. (4/6)
we burn our hands (4/6).
new york pisses rain. julie moves on -- baggage follows. friday night lights. tim/julie. r. 8633 words.
for: liquid_garnet for fnl_santa. requested: A long(ish) Tim/Julie fanfiction (relationship fic, can be smutty).
note: sorry that this is a little later than i said in the previous installment. i blame school. once again, thank you to iluisaaa for being a pain in my backside. thanks for sticking with this! :) ♥
She wakes up around four from a restless sleep. She’s been lying awake for hours, and listening for sounds of life from the living room.
There’s only been silence.
Shuffling out of bed, she pads down the stairs, pyjama shorts tight around her legs as she slows down, trying to muffle her steps as she approaches the bottom. Sliding across the floor, she tries to pretend she’s not looking at the couch - because she isn’t, she just wants to make sure he has a blanket to keep him covered, despite how warm it is in the apartment - and when she stands on her tiptoes near the kitchen table and can’t see anything over the couch, she only approaches because of that - the blankets.
The lounge is bare, blankets folded nicely in squares against the arm rest she usually occupies.
She frowns, hands curling around the back of the lounge, fingers squeezing into the leather. Glancing around the apartment, she surveys every item she can see in this light, and nothing has moved. He’s still here; she breathes out a sigh, and moves to go to the fridge. The light brightens up the panels, the dust collecting at the bottom is intensified and she kicks her toes over it. Looking over her shoulder, the fridge light barely curls around the walls, lighting the little alcove where the spare bedroom is.
Julie hasn’t been counting down the days since Tim arrived - and this is the ugly truth, not her trying to convince herself by telling herself a lie - but she’s been noticing that since he’s been here, even from Day One, the spare bedroom’s door has never been closed. Partly shut, but there’s always a breath of air that sneaks into the living room, light that cascades from the room into the apartment.
This morning, though, with a heavy heart, she slams the fridge shut louder than intended knowing that the door is shut.
*
Tim doesn’t like answering the phone. Or her phone. She thinks that maybe Martha’s gotten to him and warned him about the potential trouble his presence may get her in with Taylor.
She thinks he’s stupid if he believes the phone is bugged.
However, on other days, she’d think that. Blame his stupidity, his overactive imagination; today, he’s not talking to her, and he’s not acknowledging anything that’ll bring him into contact with her.
She’s had to fetch her own mail.
She runs to the phone, tossing a glare along the way as Tim shuffles further into the couch, as if to say I’m not moving in that stupid Riggins way of his. “Hello?”
“Hello?” it’s a deep voice her brain rattles through dust to try and place a face to. Tim moves, she hears the couch groan, and she keeps her hands wrapped tightly around the phone.
Eyebrow crinkled, she glances at Tim, head bowed as he’s reading instructions that he folds back on crooked creases and slides it into the back pocket of his jeans. She can tell he’s staring hard at the cardboard box he decided to carry back earlier. “Hello?”
“Coach Taylor’s Daughter?” the way it’s spoken is like a name, and her brows pull further towards each other, like magnets and metal, like her and Tim, and the name is on the foreground of her mind, however, vague.
“Uh huh,” she nods, planting herself in her recently vacated kitchen stool. Her fingers pause over the magazine, a habit she’s picked up by talking to Lois a little too much as she talks about Tim’s hair and the softness of his lips and how big - she stops there, the voice slightly registering in her mind. “Who’s this?”
“Billy Riggins. Was told my dumbass brother was there.”
Julie shifts on the stool, her elbow resting on the back as she looks over at the couch. Tim’s connecting some Xbox or Playstation or something to her television so he can teach her the basics to graphically designed football. He was, though, all past tense and her back stiffens at this. When left to his own devices, Tim can be quite a Regina George. (Since two weeks ago, he praises himself on it.) She’s slightly paranoid he’ll connect porn to her television like her mother warned her about. “Did you want to speak with him?”
Billy makes a noise that suggests the negative. “So he finally chased you down.”
“I -” she clears her throat, settling her back against the chair and writing words on the table, the book pushed to the side. “I guess?”
The older Riggins grins, “Well, ain’t that somethin’.”
Julie shuffles on the stool, her feet slipping off it’s little rest and hangs limply, like Tim’s arm, to the floor. “Seriously, I can get him -”
“No, no, don’t,” she thinks she hears screeching in the background, a familiar guttural whine she used to detest. Still does, however she won’t tell her mother that what she thinks is beautiful is, in fact, the ugliest thing she’s ever heard. Shelly says she’ll just throw the you’re not a mother, you won’t understand line at her.
She pauses, elbow slides slightly on the table, “Okay.”
“You just make sure he looks after himself. He’s a world class idiot, Coach Taylor’s Daughter,” Billy seems to breathe here, shift his hand over the receiver before thinking otherwise, “And you’re a smart cookie, as Collette tells me.”
She breathes, words spurting off in different directions in her mind as she tries to gather a response that isn’t a timid thanks?. He hangs up after that.
Julie thinks all Riggins lack manners. Tim keeps fiddling with her television and that paranoia flushes through her body; palming her forehead, she’s preparing herself for Paris Hilton’s sex tape.
*
Martha invites them over without the knowledge of their silence. Julie doesn’t have the strength to sit through all her questions with the expectant cock of her eyebrow, waiting for answers she doesn’t even have.
Tim sits on the couch, playing the PlayStation or Xbox - she’s not sure which one he’s able to purchase - when Martha pops her head in, smile on her face, and she tells them they’re coming out for dinner. “It smells like dead feet in here,” she laughs, and Julie clings to the door, hiding behind it.
“No thanks, Martha,” Tim throws over the couch, makes an effort to slip her that old grin of his, the one Julie thinks got many hearts racing back in high school. “Rain-check?”
“Anything for you,” Martha grins, though she darts a glance at Julie as if to ask a question she’s not prepared to answer. “You still up for it?”
She licks her lips, glances at Tim as he guides a purple dragon off a cliff, and nods, “Sure.”
“Super,” Martha taps the side of the door, her fingers near Julie’s white knuckled ones, “see you at seven.”
Tim seems to chuckle at this.
*
Julie locks herself in her room. She’s almost convinced herself to give Harry Potter another go when she glances at the clock, realising it’s almost seven, and going out in her Tickle-Me-Elmo pyjama pants wouldn’t be proper attire for whatever Martha’s got wedged up her sleeve.
Moving to her bathroom, some of Tim’s things have been left on her vanity. They’re placed sloppily in places she thinks he guessed where they would belong. He doesn’t have much, just a razor with shaving cream and moisturiser she presumes either her father or Billy issued him with.
His toothbrush is nowhere to be found.
Distracted, she brushes her hair and teeth, and finds a pair of jeans with paint stains fading on the knees to wear with a striped shirt Tim suggested she get. Julie considers going down the stairs and taking up home at the kitchen stool that’s slowly becoming hers - like how the television and couch is Tim’s.
6:55 passes and she’s already into chapter two of The-Boy-Who-Lived.
*
Martha takes her to a bar sans the strippers. It’s an upgrade to what Tyra chooses as their dining venue. They sit at a booth, in a somewhat quiet corner that’s drenched in shadows, and Martha taps her fingers against her glass. She’s painted them fluorescent green since Julie last noticed.
“I don’t mean to pry -”
Julie pulls a small smile, “But you will.”
“It’s in the job description as your neighbour across the hall,” Martha grins, fingers pausing their drumming against the glass as she waits for Julie’s approval to continue. She waves her hand and Martha bows her head, “Trouble in paradise? It was like what I imagined Jan walked into when Marcia and Greg were in the same room.”
“You should really stop watching The Brady Bunch. All it ever does is screw up your view on the world.”
“My view of our precious world is fine, thank you,” Martha grins, wrapping her hands around the thin glass. She’s drunk half of her lemonade within the first half hour; Julie’s glad she didn’t order alcohol. “Seriously, though, everything okay?”
She shrugs her shoulders, “I don’t know.”
“Like,” Martha bends forward, pulling her glass towards her, smudging the sweat ring. She crosses her arms and leans forward, elbows shifting in the slight damp, “You don’t know the answer to a math problem or …”
Julie sighs, looks away from her, and her fingers curl around the edge of the table. “I don’t know.”
“Oh,” Martha leans back, hands gripping her glass, and she looks slightly to the side. All it screams is that’s worse than I thought.
Julie slides down the sticky booth.
*
Julie regrets not coming home drunk.
She’s stone-cold sober, reeking of obvious dullness as her night wasn’t as exciting as what she presumes Tim’s was. Pressing the door closed quietly, the apartment is coated with darkness. The television flickers light projected from the music channel over the living room and a motionless Tim. She hopes he’s motionless; she pauses, listening for that shuffle of his and that sigh.
It doesn’t come.
Maybe he’s gotten quieter. Julie wants to laugh at this; all Dillon Panthers are loud.
Placing her handbag on the kitchen counter, she peels her shoes off and leaves them by her stool. Approaching the couch with weariness, she feels this sudden fear in her gut swell and latch onto her insides. She hasn’t been this close to him since their blow-up, and she doesn’t want him to see her, to read the lines lightly taking home on her forehead and to see the smoothness of his skin show her his careless stance on their whole friendship breakdown.
He’s asleep, mouth opened, arm hanging from the couch, and it’s an odd sight. Julie can only remember him in her bed, wrapped in sheets, arm hanging over the edge of the bed or around her waist. The blanket is slipping off him and she latches her fingers lightly onto it, trying to avoid contact with him as Tim’s sometimes a surprisingly light sleeper and the slightest push against his skin awakens the beast. She pulls it up to his chin, finger risking waking Godzilla (nostalgic pangs here) from his hibernation; she traces his jaw to his ear in a whisper of a press.
Pressing a kiss to his cheek, she bids him goodnight. (Goodbyes taste too sour on her tongue.)
*
She doesn’t think he’ll play puppy to her mail, but he does. Julie realises this seconds too late.
Tim leaves two minutes before checking her mail slot registers in her mind. Becoming accustomed to Tim fending her off to snatch bits of envelopes and spam mail from her box has lead to her forgetting about this, the importance of fetching her own mail. Taking her keys, she locks the apartment as she heads to the elevators. The button is sticky underneath her fingertip.
Once she’s at the ground floor and in the mail hallway (Taylor fondly calls it The Post Office), she sees him, large figure moving in a way she thinks suggests laughter. (She’s not sure; he’s been too stiff and robotic for the past week for her to remember how fluid and easy he used to move.) In his grip is the mail, slitted between two fingers, lightly touching the side of his leg. Julie shuffles, keys digging into her palms, and over Tim’s shoulder is the leggy third floor girl she’s never really spoken to, unless “Have you seen my underwear?” counts as a conversation.
He’s laughing, and the sound wraps around her, stings at her eyes with a chill breeze of daggers, and Julie grasps the idea that Tim Riggins is unhappy.
Shifting on her heel, Julie pads away, shoulders deflated and her mind working hard to build a barricade strong enough to keep Tyra’s voice inside her head from defining why her whole mood has sunken like Titanic (and her heart pangs at this, as written on her calendar in chicken scrawl possessed by something drunk is Titanic with one of those sloppy smiley faces). She presses the elevator button with more vigour than intended.
What she doesn’t understand is why he doesn’t leave.
*
Tim’s persistence she remembers after Fred’s party has abandoned him. He’s sluggish in his movements, pulls his limbs in directions to avoid bumping or simply brushing against hers. She doesn’t feel like she exists when he’s around; she refuses to give a definition to that sinking feeling in her stomach.
Strategies that belong on the football field come into play; he seems to use the simplest ones on her. He waits by the sink, washing it out like they’ve used it for dishes sometime in the morning (which they haven’t; he’s just cleaning a dry space) while she’s at the fridge.
It’s ridiculous, to her, it’s really, stupidly ridiculous. So Tim Riggins she wishes she could laugh.
Julie moves to the sink as he’s at the fridge. They trade places, like the reality show about spouses, and they move in sync with each other that remind her of dance. She misses it, how her legs would ache at first until it became like breathing. Time moves slower now, and she remembers the minor details, like where the sun hits and the best time to tune into the music channel. She also knows Tim’s favourite time of the day, and before, she thinks, she was better off without it.
She’s cleaning the dishes she left there from her early hour morning wake-up. It’s like she’s suddenly programmed to wake up around four and chew on some liquorice she doesn’t remember buying that’s stored in the corner of a cupboard she can’t quite reach. There are other plates there, with a fork and cup thrown in, that she doesn’t remember ever using.
Tim moves, fingers flicking against the cupboards as he’s slowly approaching her, possibly running through the contents of each box through his mind before he pauses right beside her. Pulling open the door right above her head, he leans up - the first time she’s seen him use the tips of his toes - and tries to grab a round bowl her mother bought her in Dallas. A light brown with lines that remind her of the lifelines on trees, pretty, simple flowers are carved into it, the petals a darker brown that reminds her of chocolate as the stems are painted a sloppy, fading green.
It’s lodged in the corner, the very far one at the back of the cupboard, and even though Tim’s as tall as the biggest tree in New York, his arms don’t seem as long, breaking off halfway into the cupboard like the feeble sticks passers-by call branches. He shifts, moving closer towards her, and she finds her hands stilling, the sponge releasing the suds as her fingers press it hard into the plate. She suddenly becomes aware of his proximity, romance novels Lois sent her imbedded into her bones, as she feels like she’s stopped breathing altogether.
He’s behind her, back pressed to hers, and she stiffens, because this reminds her of the Mornings After following Fred’s party and what came of it. The revelations and the tingling and how that lead in her stomach sort of shifted every time she caught Tim giving her a sideways glance she’s not sure she was supposed to catch. His arms are boxing in the air above her head, and she finds herself staring at the tap, feeling him push and pull away from her as he leans up more until his whole being is pressed against her lightly thrumming one.
Time moves slow with him, and when his hands grip the dish, it flashing momentarily in her vision, it speeds up again, betraying her, making her lose those precious sensations and moments she can’t lodge into her memory quick enough. She curses her parents for not selecting the photographic memory gene.
Her legs choose this time to move back. She bumps into him, the bowl is a slight pressure against her back, and she shuffles to the side quickly, like Matt’s stutters, and grabs the dishtowel. His eyes flicker up to hers, fingers loose around the bowl before they tighten, like some reflex, like he’s stopping himself from touching her. She’s thinking it’s that, hoping, because she doesn’t want it to be anything else.
Tim inhales, his whole body pulls away from her, arches so there’s distance between the sink where she was and him. She looks down, bangs falling into her eyes, itching ferociously at her skin like the dust on her bedside table. He presses his lips together as her hands move slowly with the towel, the plate already dry in her hands, and he takes a step back before diverting.
It’s like he can’t get away from her fast enough.
He pauses to place the bowl on the table, as if he’s suddenly lost his appetite. “Sorry,” she says, and his feet pad away like the word isn’t layered.
*
To sum it up, Tyra sends her a vulgar text telling her how she needs to get her ass out of the self-pitying pool and be the Julie Taylor who may stutter in front of Tim Riggins but sure as hell doesn’t take his shit lying down - or in her own apartment while he seems to dominate the place as if it’s his own shack. It’s the kick in the ass she needs and knows Tyra would give her if she was in the same city. So, she calls Vanessa, a girl from dance, who runs a little studio a few blocks from Julie’s and asks whether she needs a hand from her on-call dance teacher. Julie leaves the apartment with a slam of the door, tired of skirting around Tim as if he’ll attack her somehow. She’s not the scared teenage girl anymore. She doesn’t need protecting from Riley or the heartbreak that’s bound to come when she messes with boys. Julie Taylor is a big girl now - and even if she wasn’t, she’s a Taylor. They’re supposed to be fearless. They’re supposed to evoke fear.
Julie walks because cabs are a little too much and she doesn’t want to cheat herself out of the fresh air and city noises and herself, in her environment, without the Texan sun and the plague of football. She takes a little longer than necessary and apologises profusely to a smiling Vanessa who hushes her by pulling on Julie’s arm to get her into the apartment. She’s lucky because her neighbour’s aren’t as colourfully psycho as Julie’s - she can make as much noise as she wants, just as long as she sends a letter to her neighbours stating to excuse the noise.
“Thanks for the call,” Vanessa says, manoeuvring to her kitchen while Julie drops her bag on a chair in the living room. The studio isn’t a proper dance studio, like the one Julie rehearses in and has always dreamed of living in. It’s an apartment that is lived in daily, has the photo frames aligned on draws, and cushion covers that are fading with use. Vanessa’s apartment is just spacious, and Julie’s a little jealous of the privacy she gets with halls and proper rooms.
“No problem,” Julie slides her hands into her pockets. “I’ve been meaning to call you, anyway.”
“Yeah?” Vanessa fills up a glass with a soft drink, “I heard about your living situation.” She moves towards Julie, gestures for her to sit on the worn-out couch, and follows her soon after. “I wasn’t surprised that you haven’t called in a while. The kids sure do miss you.”
Vanessa offers Julie a cup, and she takes it with a smile, taking a long sip before placing it on a coaster. “I just got a little busy,” Julie shrugs, placing her hands on her knees with an awkward movement of her body as she tries to settle into the couch. “I’ve missed the kids, too. I feel like I’m living with one,” she tries to crack a smile, but it falls, sort of like a deflated balloon once the helium has lost its charm.
“Well, I could really use you this week. If you don’t mind,” Vanessa smiles over the rim of her cup, like a conspirator.
Julie smiles, “Use me.”
*
It’s been more than a week since she called Vanessa, and she’s been almost living at the studio ever since. She buys a balloon from the newsagents along the way to her hot dog stand and walks slowly to Vanessa’s because she enjoys the fresh air and Dad called last night to make sure she’s been getting some. Apparently her last email with photographs of her attached looked too “pale” and how dare she set such a bad example for Little Gracie Belle? She doesn’t think of Tim, or the fact that she won’t finish her hot dog for the purpose of giving it to him.
When she arrives, loud music is blaring, and she doesn’t wince at the sound of Britney’s earlier tracks, finding her feet tapping to a beat once she slides her slip-ons by the door and closes it. “Honey, I’m home,” she shouts, and Vanessa’s head appears from the studio room, laughing.
“You’re late.”
She waves the balloon that kisses the ceiling, “I brought a forgive-me present?”
Vanessa gestures with her hand for her to get into the studio. The Studio, with captials and even a little TM placed somewhere on the top, is just a bare room with no furniture. Vanessa’s certificates of her accomplishments in dancing are displayed on the walls along with framed pictures the girls have drawn. A large mirror glued to a sliding door that hides a wardrobe with little odd knick knacks Julie thinks belongs to previous and current students is the only mirror in this room. It’s not like Center Stage or anything as immaculate as the proper dance studios, but it does the trick somehow. It’s simple and Julie likes simple.
When Julie reaches the door, she leans against the frame, watching as five girls follow Vanessa’s instructions and mimic her. One of them says hello, pausing in her movements, and Vanessa snaps her fingers to keep the girl concentrating. Distractions are bad, Julie remembers, and when you falter on the stage you falter in your performance and quite possibly your life. Sometimes she thinks her old dance teacher’s rather negative views reflect her current situation.
Julie waits for the break, the balloon in her hand bobs up and down as she tries to still it. She waits just outside the threshold and as the girls cross it to reward themselves with a glass of water, Julie stops the third girl in the line and wraps the balloon string around her wrist. “Happy Birthday,” she says and her reward is a hug.
Julie stays until it’s almost eight before she reluctantly crosses Vanessa’s own threshold to eventually struggle over her own. She knows that once she passes her own she won’t be as pleased as the little girl.
She hates how this isn’t as simple as it used to be.
*
Tyra was right. When Tim Riggins is bored, he’s bored.
He slips out the door, doesn’t bother with explaining where he’s going - sometimes he comes back with plastic bags filled with shopping (her things included) and sometimes it’s the mail and sometimes, if she’s having a particularly bad day, his hands are empty and the slant of his mouth slips from his face entirely when he sees her - or who he’s going with and Julie won’t admit she worries on occasion.
She’s losing something that never really belonged to her.
She works her way up to her room with deflated steps admitting defeat to a battle she’s not even sure she’s fighting. She doesn’t know who she’s fighting, either. Lying on her bed, her hand reaches for the phone sitting in it’s cradle. Exhaling a sigh of relief, she’s glad that this hasn’t changed.
Julie curls into the phone as if it was Tyra’s arms, and she’s consoling her from another state in another time with other problems weighing her down. There’s distance between them, something far more significant than literal, and she blames herself for dropping off the map and being caught up in a whirlwind of what she knew would happen.
Julie doesn’t say anything to Tyra, just breathes into the phone, and she can see the slant of her mouth, the disappointment haunting Tyra’s blue eyes, “I’m so sorry, Julie.”
She shrugs, “It’s bound to happen, right?”
“If he goes back to that cheating cheerleader bitch, I’ll kill him.”
Tyra always knows how to make her feel better, even at a distance.
*
The apartment is suffocating.
She knocks on Martha’s door, decides to initiate a little ‘girl’s day out’ that Martha’s been dying for. She’s worse than Lois at times, and Julie never thought that was possible.
“You still owe me that lunch date,” she grins, holding up a finger as she gathers her bags, Ferret in the distance, and flicks her keys into her palm. “Where to?”
Julie shrugs, “I owe you, remember?”
Martha pulls a sad grin, locking her door; she nods to hers, “In there?”
Another lift of the shoulders, she keeps her head down, and Martha’s arms slide across her shoulders.
*
There’s a movie Julie’s too timid to say she wants to watch, as Tim’s sitting on the couch, legs stretched out to cross at his ankles on the coffee table. She pauses at the staircase, feet stopping on their own accord as she’s impulsively planned a night of reading her paperback. Again.
“There’s some Anne Hathaway movie on in a minute,” he says, fingers pressing buttons on the remote as it settles on the channel.
Julie looks down to gain the confidence to take in his profile. His arms are crossed over his chest and the remote has been abandoned on the arm of the couch. Julie draws forward, believing it’s safe to enter the lion’s den, and she moves behind the couch to not disturb his legs, and sits in the corner. She tries to pack herself up into a neat little square so she won’t come untangled.
The phone rings; Martha’s playing the role of saving grace and invites her out again.
*
“You want to stay with me tonight?” Martha tilts her head, palm gripping the door, and Julie thinks for a moment, fingers tapping against her leg, as Martha motions to her own door, “Give you some peace.”
Julie shakes her head, “No thanks.”
“It’s not imposing,” Martha raises her eyebrows, as if to challenge something Julie’s unsure she’s given the scent of off, “and I don’t mind. I’ll lock Chester in the cupboard again.”
She grins, “Stop watching Harry Potter.”
“It’s not my fault I succumb to the Hollywood peer pressure,” she rolls her eyes, and her grip tightens on the doorknob. “I’m serious, Julie. You can stay with me. We can have one of those girly sleepovers where we get naked and have a pillow fight.”
Julie laughs, hands sliding into the back pockets of her jeans, “You’ve never been to a sleepover, huh?”
Martha shrugs, “Hollywood.”
Nodding, Julie sighs, darting a glance to her apartment, “No, I better go.” Pulling her eyebrows together, she looks back to Martha, offering her a shrug as if that’ll convince her that being in her apartment would be best. “Got to face my problems, you know?”
“You’ve been facing this one for a bit, from how I’ve interpreted things.”
Shrugging, Julie pulls at her hair, “I’ll see you tomorrow or something.”
She starts moving, back to Martha because the look on her face is eating away at her. Glancing over her shoulder, Martha nods, keys inserted in the cut and her fingers are twisting it while her other hand works at the doorknob, “My apartment is always free.”
Julie twirls, slowly walking backwards, “I know. Thank you,” the door opens smoothly under her palm.
*
Julie feels drained. Sitting on her bathroom vanity, she pulls a brush through her hair absently. Her mind is in another place, where paranoia settles in nicely and she starts imagining scenarios that she knows are true, have heard that they’re true, and that gnawing feeling in her stomach intensifies, morphing into an itch.
Tim’s footsteps are loud on the stairs, pitter patter like rain on her wooden panels, and he’s leaning against the doorframe of her bathroom, arms crossed, wearing only his boxers. His lips are slanted in that tired way of his that’s so relaxed she wants to melt into him. “You mad at me?”
She feels her arm still, midway through pulling the brush in her already soft hair and she swallows, “No.”
He pushes a smile to his face, tries for an icebreaking “Liar” that doesn’t take away any of the tension she knows she’s at fault for. He sighs, running a hand through his hair, “Jules -”
“Just drop it,” she finds herself saying, the brush making its way to the end of her hair before moving onto another section. Her hand is moving robotically, as if she’s programmed to do this, and she watches his reaction, the duck of his head before he looks up at her, keeping his eyes on her. It unnerves her, his sudden attention to detail. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yeah,” he blinks, nodding vaguely, “it does.”
She looks down; pressing her lips together and settles her hands into her lap. Pressing her legs into them, it keeps them from shaking. The brush sits on her leg, its handle cool against her skin. “Tim.”
“Jules,” he mimics, a sad smile that’s meant to reassure her settles against his mouth, “I’m sorry I brought up Saracen. I didn’t mean to pry.”
She shrugs, “It doesn’t matter. We’re over.”
He looks down, “Yeah, it does. Just because you’re over and done with each other doesn’t mean the feelings aren’t still there.”
“There are no leftover feelings.”
He shakes his head, “Even the sad ones.” Tim looks up at her, and she thinks she can finally see him, the patches of him that he keeps hidden and disguises with liquor, girls or tones. The wall he keeps up so effectively seems to have drained him, and he looks tired, a little worse than she thinks of her own appearance, and her lips press together at the sight. “They’re hard to talk about, so we lock them up.”
There’s her answer. That gnawing in her stomach ceases, and her hard grip on the hairbrush handle deflates slightly. Her mouth feels dry as she looks at him, her mind unsettled from deciphering all the underlying messages Tim has given her with a few sentences. She blinks slowly, “And throw away the key?”
He grins, amusement sparking in his eyes, however light and dull it may be the butterflies in her stomach still burst into life. He chuckles, “So that’s how those stories go?”
She breathes out a laugh, ducking her head as she feels that flush heat up her face. “I meant what I said,” she says to her lap, “there are no leftover feelings. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Lyla.”
He shrugs, “She could’ve told me herself.”
Julie bites the inside of her cheeks, nodding, because she agrees with it. It’s none of her business, like she’s been feeling ever since he turned up at her door, that she should tell him about Lyla and what’s going on with her. It’s like how he won’t go into details about Matt; just skim the surface, probe to find out what she knows before he spills any specifics. Team loyalty was always bullshit to her, but she’s learning, slowly, that it extends beyond the high school years.
Tim pushes himself off the doorframe, his feet padding slowly across the small space between them. He comes to stand before her, hands coming to rest on the vanity on either side of her, locking her in. She feels his mouth against her cheek, the light flutter of his eyelashes skimming her skin as he blinks, “You’re not a stand in.”
Her own eyes close, and his hand wraps around hers, pulling the hairbrush out of her watery grip. He turns to kiss her, hard pressure against her cheek, and his large hands come to fall into her hair, wrapping his fingers around the recently untangled strands.
She grins at the fact that he’s going to tangle them on purpose.
He presses his mouth against hers in a slow kiss, mouth opening over hers at a snail’s pace. It’s lazy, in a way, and it makes her sleepy in that inappropriate way as his hands flicker through her hair, pulling at it slightly, before his palms rest on her thighs. Her hands grip his shoulders before settling into a sluggish cup.
Smiling against his lips, she pulls away, fingers fluttering to the hem of her tank top before pulling it over her head, discarding it in her clean sink. Tim presses closer to her, moving between her legs, and his mouth is harder on hers, that lazy slant of his pressing against hers. His hands slide over her back, resting between her shoulder blades as he presses their chests together. Julie’s settle in his hair, trying to pull him closer to her as his mouth opens under hers, growing restless with the sluggish rhythm he set.
Her fingers settle on the waistband of his boxers, sliding under the fabric to caress a tiny patch of skin as Tim’s follow her direction, his hooking in the waistband of her long pants. He grins, pulling away from her and resting his forehead against her chin, looking down at the pattern on the fabric. She groans, embarrassment flushing through her as he can’t bite his tongue, “Elmo?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
He presses his mouth back against hers, pulling her off the sink as her legs wrap around his waist. His fingers latch onto her waistband again, pulling it down to the middle of her thigh before setting her down on her feet. She pulls them down, kicking her pants off and Tim’s kicking his boxers off before wrapping his arms around her waist, mouth against hers, and she’s sitting on the vanity again.
The surface is cold through her underwear, and Tim’s fingers hook onto the waistband, sliding them down as she tries to wiggle some space between the surface and her skin. It’s slow, and his fingers brush over her flesh in teasing jest. She sinks her nails into the skin on his shoulder blades in a weak form of retaliation.
It’s colder than she thought previously, her underwear settling at her ankles as she kicks them off. Tim’s fiddling with a wrapper he’s snatched from one of the drawers in her bathroom that he must’ve snuck in here when he decided to go shopping solo. He’s back at her, arms wrapped tightly around her middle as she feels like she’s teetering on the edge of the vanity.
She gasps when he sinks into her, his mouth pauses on hers as he lets out a slow groan, and she grips at the panes of his back, nails sinking into his skin without the purpose of getting slight revenge. He pushes against her, a rhythm that gets faster quicker than she remembers, and her legs wrap tightly around him, causing him to sink deeper into her. The heel of her foot presses against his lower back as he presses his mouth firmly on hers, his hands sliding through her hair and over her back before mussing up her hair again.
Her entire being feels hot, scorching where his hands touch her, and when she falls apart, mouth open and motionless under his, her grip on him slackens as she places her head on his shoulder. She keeps shuddering against him, his hips jerking up against her, and she tries to ride it out with him instead of turning into concrete beneath his heated grip. Turning her face into his neck, she kisses it lazily, flicking her tongue out in that way that he does to her, and he shortly follows her, hand on her breast that slides down her side, gripping at her leg; the tenseness throughout his body slithers away like water.
She feels Tim press his cheek into her hair, his hands settle on her hips, fingers squeezing absently as he catches his breath. “Not just a stand in,” she feels his lips against her scalp, her hair twitching under the movement of his mouth pulling a grin. “Dunno how else to tell you, Jules.” He presses a lingering kiss into her hair.
When he pulls out, she doesn’t feel as empty as before.
*
It feels awkward, this sudden reconciliation. She’s used to sputtering words apologising, taking back words that meant too much to be swept under the rug. She’s always thinking of Matt, considering him her experience in the dating world. There was Ryan and Seth and a waiter called Jared, but it always comes back to Matt.
They sit on the floor. It’s new, because it’s usually the couch, kitchen table, or bench. He takes up more space on the floor, she thinks, with his legs spread out while hers are tucked underneath her, wooden panels imprinting their patterns into her skin. She pulls at the hem of his shirt as he rubs his fingers against the wood. The floor needs a good sweep.
He pulls in his bottom lip, shifting so he’s leaning against his palms, eyes surveying her. She keeps her attention to the hem of his plaid shirt, one that sort of smells like Texas. “You know I go through your phonebook, right?”
She shrugs, “The phone bill got higher.”
He runs a hand through his hair before it smacks loudly on the floor. “I didn’t mean to blow up at you.”
“You didn’t.”
He tilts his head, eyebrow raised, and she tries to keep her glances down, not so obvious, so he can’t sustain eye contact and convince her that she’s a real idiot for thinking that one. “I was just burned,” he shrugs, bare shoulders a pink hue under the lighting.
“I was scared,” she looks up at him from underneath her bangs, angling her head so she can see him through the curtain. “You and Lyla are this big thing. Matt and I have our problems, and there are these obstacles we need to face together to be able to become a big thing like before.”
He shakes his head, “Garrity and I aren’t a big thing.”
“There was a pool,” her fingers grip tightly at the hem, curling it around, “at Tyra’s college. Betting on when you two would just get hitched.”
“It’s not going to happen.”
Julie presses her lips together, pushing her mouth up to the side; courage flows into her slowly, and she glances at his chin. “Maybe.”
“It’s not.”
She shrugs.
“You know I don’t believe in this destiny bullshit you keep shovin’ down my throat. Honestly, I’d start thinkin’ you wished it was true with you and Seven.”
The tingles stampeding underneath her knee come full-force, a lot quicker than usual, and she pushes her feet from underneath her, keeping herself curled up as her hands pause on her thighs, “It’s not.”
His eyebrows raise, gesturing his hand to her, “See.” Pushing his knee up, he palms it, sighing, “Garrity and I aren’t this big thing that’s going to come back together. We’re not some endgame relationship on a television show you watch. It’s done, it’s over, and I know what I want now.” He’s frustrated when he runs his hand through his hair, fingers gripping at it hard before letting it go. It’s like he’s trying to imprint this into her brain, make this knowledge overtake the previous, and the only way he feels he can get this done is by inflicting some sort of pain on his own scalp. “I don’t know about you and Seven. I can’t say anything about it, but destiny doesn’t happen unless you make it happen.”
She pulls her eyebrows together, palms wrapping around her ankles, “Matt and I have grown out of each other.” Julie shrugs, looking at the floorboards, because these issues between Matt and her stay between her and sometimes Tyra Collette’s voicemail. Telling Tim is like giving him ammunition against her - or Matt, she’s not sure about their relationship and that swelling of anxiety erecting in her stomach wishes to never know the state of it - and Julie doesn’t know if they’ve come this far for heart-to-hearts and conversations that reflect diary entries. “We tried, we failed. Our ship is sinkable.”
Tim shrugs, “The Garrity-Riggins ship sunk a while ago. I guess we were clinging to icebergs.”
Her mouth pulls with this, breaking from her hard resistance, as Tim’s found the DVDs she’s hid behind the pillows on the couch. She shifts, sighing, her tongue starting to feel thick and heavy as she tries to address what Martha’s been asking her and what Tyra’s been trying to define through protests of not wanting to open her eyes and see what’s in front of her. “What is this, Tim?” she bites her lip, hand clenches around her ankle, and she glances at him, bangs filtering her view of him, “This … thing. Is it fun? Some pastime until you head back to Dillon?”
He runs a hand through his hair, fingers tangling within it like she’s felt in her own, and he sighs, eyes shifting to focus at a point on the stairs. Julie tries to prepare herself for the blow she knows isn’t written in the romance novels Lois has shoved down her throat. He shrugs, eyes trailing over her, settling on her hand curled around her ankle, “It’s whatever you want it to be.”
She rolls her eyes, “I’m asking you.”
“This is a trap,” he sighs, “because whatever I say, there’s a risk you’re not gonna like it.”
“Am I not going to like it?”
He shrugs, a heavy lift of his shoulders, and he seems to crawl into himself a little, sink into the floorboards, because he looks smaller, in that frightened animal way. She’s never seen it before and she knows she doesn’t like it. “Don’t know,” he breathes, the impact she expected doesn’t come. Instead, she’s left with a faint fuzziness enveloping her thoughts and impulsively thought up predictions of how this would play out.
Tim Riggins always seems to be surprising her.
Julie feels the Texan heat descend upon her as she fiddles against the floor, the cracks in the boards pressing tight against her skin. Her mouth feels loose when she mouths out, breath a hoarse whisper, “You won’t know unless you say.”
He seems to suck in his lips, pulling his legs up to his chest and resting his arms on his knees lethargically. “It’s fun,” he says, eyes on her feet, her fingers pressing tightly against her skin at this, the sudden betrayal she feels towards the bullshit Lois has been feeding her. “But,” he shrugs at this like it doesn’t matter, as though it won’t help his case; he slides his feet away from him, stilling them when they’re near her and his knees are faintly bent. “Maybe it’s more?”
She looks up, blinking the tips of her bangs away from clinging to her lashes, and she pulls at her mouth, biting the inside of her cheek. Julie thinks this is the Tim Riggins Lyla saw, the one who stayed with her until the college applications were received and he let her go like the romance movies promised. He locked this one up in one of those dark closets she’s always feared, and he’s opening up the door for her. He’s looking under his bed for the monsters he hopelessly believed in as a child.
“I don’t define stuff,” he pulls his legs back, “because it ends up screwing up in the end. Karma and all,” he shrugs, “but this isn’t what you think it is, Jules, and if it is, then I’ve read this all wrong. I’m not much of a reader,” he cracks a grin at this, as if it’s some inside joke, and Julie’s not one for other people’s inside jokes, little phrases that sweep over her head that others can laugh at her for, but, in this instance, the irritation that usually settles within her isn’t there. She finds herself not minding, because Tim’s sort of pulling her in, letting her in on the joke; he’s sharing with her in that cryptic way of his where he doesn’t explain everything in detail like Landry with his algebra equations. “But I can read this, I think. I don’t need someone reading it to me to be able to figure it out.”
Her mouth feels dry, throat bare, and she tries to swallow; her voice hitches with a croak, “What have you figured out?”
Tim pulls at his hair, tilting his head, and a smile she’s missed greets her without slipping away at the mere sight of her. He shrugs playfully, eyebrows raised in that child-like way of his, “You’ll just have to wait and see.”
*
Tim’s hardly on her phone, and when he is, he makes his calls at night. It’s the ones she’s been able to witness.
Curled up in her bed with the sheets wrapped around her, she can hear him in the kitchen, pacing, words pitching as he disappears underneath her and becoming loud when he opens the fridge. “Billy,” he says, and that seems to begin the tirade on Billy’s half of the phone. (She can tell; Tim sighs a lot.) He was here moments before, tucking her into bed, pressing a sound kiss against her forehead while excusing himself to god-knows-where. Momentarily, she panics he’ll settle for the couch again, like he’s rediscovered his love for the piece of furniture that can’t hold the length of him. The panic is wedged away when she hears the loud presses of buttons of her phone.
She can’t sleep with his voice so loud in her ears.
“Yeah, Billy, I hear ya.” He’s been saying that for five minutes now. She doesn’t know how Billy Riggins is, but by the sounds of it, he’s pissed. It’s not like he doesn’t have every right to be. From what she’s heard, his car fixing business is taking off and Tim’s been home helping him. Apparently Tim’s the one who has more information on cars then the one who owns a garage.
“Yeah, I’m an idiot, I got that the first few times,” he seems to huff, repressing that usual chuckle that’ll only infuriate Billy. She thinks Billy’s a bit like Dad, and therefore she sort of understands how his mind is turning right now. By the sounds of exasperation in Tim’s voice, it’s heading in that direction where he forbids her from seeing any boy and forcing her into nunnery with football being used to save people.
“No,” he sighs, and then he presses it into Billy’s eardrum, “no. It’s not about a girl. I’m not being stupid. This isn’t about Lyla.” Tim sighs, opening draws, shutting them quietly with a soundly click, “It’s not always about Lyla. No, it’s not. She’s got a name. Shut up Billy.”
Tim lets out an exhale of air, momentarily slipping out from his charade of being quiet. Confused by the bright light of the kitchen, his voice pitches a little higher, trying to push the conversation into a wall where it’ll end. “Yeah, yeah; I’ll be home soon. I don’t know when.” He slams a cupboard shut, mutters a shit that she thinks Billy misunderstands as he flicks the tap on then off, “Now you’re bein’ stupid.” His accent gets thicker before he sighs loudly, trying to pull at his reigns of tone-control. “Get the chick with the grease to deal with it. She knows more shit than I do about engines. Yeah, it’s possible Billy. Stop lying. I’ll come home when I’m ready.”
With a sigh, Tim’s voice fades with his movements, finally coming to a stalemate, she thinks, as she can feel both New York and Texas stop spinning. “Yeah, I’ll be careful.”
The light flickers off after that.
*
When Tim slides into bed, it’s an hour later and she still hasn’t fallen asleep. She’s not even on the brink of it.
He curls behind her effortlessly, like he hasn’t been away from her for the time that’s passed where they weren’t even on speaking terms. He fits in with her in ways she didn’t know were possible for a boy she never really got to know and still really doesn’t. She pulls at the blankets, wrapping them a little tighter around her, forcing them to become a second skin. She needs protection from him and the way he fits like that clichéd puzzle piece on a board. His hands fall flat against her stomach, sliding down to feel for her own and lands on her arms. He settles there, her own hands clasped tightly against the sheets.
He presses his face into her hair and stills. His entire body curls around hers, his cold feet pushing against the skin of her ankles. Putting it plainly, Tim wraps around her like Christmas paper. At first, it takes some fiddling before he’s snug and it looks right, regardless of the overuse (or under use) of sticky tape and the state of the paper.
Once he relaxes, she tenses, “What was that about?”
He hums into her hair. “What?” she feels his breath on her neck, his nose pressing against her scalp as he shifts.
“The phone call,” she blinks, eyes burning from staying up so late waiting for him in the dark. Sometimes, with him, she always feels like she’s trapped in the dark, even after they’ve made some progress by shedding some light. She shifts, sort of pulling away from him, sort of moulding against him; she’s not sure which bench she’s sitting on.
He sighs, hand pulling the hair back from her neck, “Just talkin’ to Billy,” slips in the Texan accent as he presses an open-mouthed kiss to her shoulder.
She waits, hoping for more, that Tim will finally open up to her just a little, give her a slither of light. “Okay,” she presses her eyes closed, the burning doesn’t increase or decrease; it just sits.
He doesn’t give her that fine string of light she wants. Instead, he licks his fingers and presses the flame of a candle she didn’t see burning, until it’s too late, out.
three. | five.
new york pisses rain. julie moves on -- baggage follows. friday night lights. tim/julie. r. 8633 words.
for: liquid_garnet for fnl_santa. requested: A long(ish) Tim/Julie fanfiction (relationship fic, can be smutty).
note: sorry that this is a little later than i said in the previous installment. i blame school. once again, thank you to iluisaaa for being a pain in my backside. thanks for sticking with this! :) ♥
She wakes up around four from a restless sleep. She’s been lying awake for hours, and listening for sounds of life from the living room.
There’s only been silence.
Shuffling out of bed, she pads down the stairs, pyjama shorts tight around her legs as she slows down, trying to muffle her steps as she approaches the bottom. Sliding across the floor, she tries to pretend she’s not looking at the couch - because she isn’t, she just wants to make sure he has a blanket to keep him covered, despite how warm it is in the apartment - and when she stands on her tiptoes near the kitchen table and can’t see anything over the couch, she only approaches because of that - the blankets.
The lounge is bare, blankets folded nicely in squares against the arm rest she usually occupies.
She frowns, hands curling around the back of the lounge, fingers squeezing into the leather. Glancing around the apartment, she surveys every item she can see in this light, and nothing has moved. He’s still here; she breathes out a sigh, and moves to go to the fridge. The light brightens up the panels, the dust collecting at the bottom is intensified and she kicks her toes over it. Looking over her shoulder, the fridge light barely curls around the walls, lighting the little alcove where the spare bedroom is.
Julie hasn’t been counting down the days since Tim arrived - and this is the ugly truth, not her trying to convince herself by telling herself a lie - but she’s been noticing that since he’s been here, even from Day One, the spare bedroom’s door has never been closed. Partly shut, but there’s always a breath of air that sneaks into the living room, light that cascades from the room into the apartment.
This morning, though, with a heavy heart, she slams the fridge shut louder than intended knowing that the door is shut.
*
Tim doesn’t like answering the phone. Or her phone. She thinks that maybe Martha’s gotten to him and warned him about the potential trouble his presence may get her in with Taylor.
She thinks he’s stupid if he believes the phone is bugged.
However, on other days, she’d think that. Blame his stupidity, his overactive imagination; today, he’s not talking to her, and he’s not acknowledging anything that’ll bring him into contact with her.
She’s had to fetch her own mail.
She runs to the phone, tossing a glare along the way as Tim shuffles further into the couch, as if to say I’m not moving in that stupid Riggins way of his. “Hello?”
“Hello?” it’s a deep voice her brain rattles through dust to try and place a face to. Tim moves, she hears the couch groan, and she keeps her hands wrapped tightly around the phone.
Eyebrow crinkled, she glances at Tim, head bowed as he’s reading instructions that he folds back on crooked creases and slides it into the back pocket of his jeans. She can tell he’s staring hard at the cardboard box he decided to carry back earlier. “Hello?”
“Coach Taylor’s Daughter?” the way it’s spoken is like a name, and her brows pull further towards each other, like magnets and metal, like her and Tim, and the name is on the foreground of her mind, however, vague.
“Uh huh,” she nods, planting herself in her recently vacated kitchen stool. Her fingers pause over the magazine, a habit she’s picked up by talking to Lois a little too much as she talks about Tim’s hair and the softness of his lips and how big - she stops there, the voice slightly registering in her mind. “Who’s this?”
“Billy Riggins. Was told my dumbass brother was there.”
Julie shifts on the stool, her elbow resting on the back as she looks over at the couch. Tim’s connecting some Xbox or Playstation or something to her television so he can teach her the basics to graphically designed football. He was, though, all past tense and her back stiffens at this. When left to his own devices, Tim can be quite a Regina George. (Since two weeks ago, he praises himself on it.) She’s slightly paranoid he’ll connect porn to her television like her mother warned her about. “Did you want to speak with him?”
Billy makes a noise that suggests the negative. “So he finally chased you down.”
“I -” she clears her throat, settling her back against the chair and writing words on the table, the book pushed to the side. “I guess?”
The older Riggins grins, “Well, ain’t that somethin’.”
Julie shuffles on the stool, her feet slipping off it’s little rest and hangs limply, like Tim’s arm, to the floor. “Seriously, I can get him -”
“No, no, don’t,” she thinks she hears screeching in the background, a familiar guttural whine she used to detest. Still does, however she won’t tell her mother that what she thinks is beautiful is, in fact, the ugliest thing she’s ever heard. Shelly says she’ll just throw the you’re not a mother, you won’t understand line at her.
She pauses, elbow slides slightly on the table, “Okay.”
“You just make sure he looks after himself. He’s a world class idiot, Coach Taylor’s Daughter,” Billy seems to breathe here, shift his hand over the receiver before thinking otherwise, “And you’re a smart cookie, as Collette tells me.”
She breathes, words spurting off in different directions in her mind as she tries to gather a response that isn’t a timid thanks?. He hangs up after that.
Julie thinks all Riggins lack manners. Tim keeps fiddling with her television and that paranoia flushes through her body; palming her forehead, she’s preparing herself for Paris Hilton’s sex tape.
*
Martha invites them over without the knowledge of their silence. Julie doesn’t have the strength to sit through all her questions with the expectant cock of her eyebrow, waiting for answers she doesn’t even have.
Tim sits on the couch, playing the PlayStation or Xbox - she’s not sure which one he’s able to purchase - when Martha pops her head in, smile on her face, and she tells them they’re coming out for dinner. “It smells like dead feet in here,” she laughs, and Julie clings to the door, hiding behind it.
“No thanks, Martha,” Tim throws over the couch, makes an effort to slip her that old grin of his, the one Julie thinks got many hearts racing back in high school. “Rain-check?”
“Anything for you,” Martha grins, though she darts a glance at Julie as if to ask a question she’s not prepared to answer. “You still up for it?”
She licks her lips, glances at Tim as he guides a purple dragon off a cliff, and nods, “Sure.”
“Super,” Martha taps the side of the door, her fingers near Julie’s white knuckled ones, “see you at seven.”
Tim seems to chuckle at this.
*
Julie locks herself in her room. She’s almost convinced herself to give Harry Potter another go when she glances at the clock, realising it’s almost seven, and going out in her Tickle-Me-Elmo pyjama pants wouldn’t be proper attire for whatever Martha’s got wedged up her sleeve.
Moving to her bathroom, some of Tim’s things have been left on her vanity. They’re placed sloppily in places she thinks he guessed where they would belong. He doesn’t have much, just a razor with shaving cream and moisturiser she presumes either her father or Billy issued him with.
His toothbrush is nowhere to be found.
Distracted, she brushes her hair and teeth, and finds a pair of jeans with paint stains fading on the knees to wear with a striped shirt Tim suggested she get. Julie considers going down the stairs and taking up home at the kitchen stool that’s slowly becoming hers - like how the television and couch is Tim’s.
6:55 passes and she’s already into chapter two of The-Boy-Who-Lived.
*
Martha takes her to a bar sans the strippers. It’s an upgrade to what Tyra chooses as their dining venue. They sit at a booth, in a somewhat quiet corner that’s drenched in shadows, and Martha taps her fingers against her glass. She’s painted them fluorescent green since Julie last noticed.
“I don’t mean to pry -”
Julie pulls a small smile, “But you will.”
“It’s in the job description as your neighbour across the hall,” Martha grins, fingers pausing their drumming against the glass as she waits for Julie’s approval to continue. She waves her hand and Martha bows her head, “Trouble in paradise? It was like what I imagined Jan walked into when Marcia and Greg were in the same room.”
“You should really stop watching The Brady Bunch. All it ever does is screw up your view on the world.”
“My view of our precious world is fine, thank you,” Martha grins, wrapping her hands around the thin glass. She’s drunk half of her lemonade within the first half hour; Julie’s glad she didn’t order alcohol. “Seriously, though, everything okay?”
She shrugs her shoulders, “I don’t know.”
“Like,” Martha bends forward, pulling her glass towards her, smudging the sweat ring. She crosses her arms and leans forward, elbows shifting in the slight damp, “You don’t know the answer to a math problem or …”
Julie sighs, looks away from her, and her fingers curl around the edge of the table. “I don’t know.”
“Oh,” Martha leans back, hands gripping her glass, and she looks slightly to the side. All it screams is that’s worse than I thought.
Julie slides down the sticky booth.
*
Julie regrets not coming home drunk.
She’s stone-cold sober, reeking of obvious dullness as her night wasn’t as exciting as what she presumes Tim’s was. Pressing the door closed quietly, the apartment is coated with darkness. The television flickers light projected from the music channel over the living room and a motionless Tim. She hopes he’s motionless; she pauses, listening for that shuffle of his and that sigh.
It doesn’t come.
Maybe he’s gotten quieter. Julie wants to laugh at this; all Dillon Panthers are loud.
Placing her handbag on the kitchen counter, she peels her shoes off and leaves them by her stool. Approaching the couch with weariness, she feels this sudden fear in her gut swell and latch onto her insides. She hasn’t been this close to him since their blow-up, and she doesn’t want him to see her, to read the lines lightly taking home on her forehead and to see the smoothness of his skin show her his careless stance on their whole friendship breakdown.
He’s asleep, mouth opened, arm hanging from the couch, and it’s an odd sight. Julie can only remember him in her bed, wrapped in sheets, arm hanging over the edge of the bed or around her waist. The blanket is slipping off him and she latches her fingers lightly onto it, trying to avoid contact with him as Tim’s sometimes a surprisingly light sleeper and the slightest push against his skin awakens the beast. She pulls it up to his chin, finger risking waking Godzilla (nostalgic pangs here) from his hibernation; she traces his jaw to his ear in a whisper of a press.
Pressing a kiss to his cheek, she bids him goodnight. (Goodbyes taste too sour on her tongue.)
*
She doesn’t think he’ll play puppy to her mail, but he does. Julie realises this seconds too late.
Tim leaves two minutes before checking her mail slot registers in her mind. Becoming accustomed to Tim fending her off to snatch bits of envelopes and spam mail from her box has lead to her forgetting about this, the importance of fetching her own mail. Taking her keys, she locks the apartment as she heads to the elevators. The button is sticky underneath her fingertip.
Once she’s at the ground floor and in the mail hallway (Taylor fondly calls it The Post Office), she sees him, large figure moving in a way she thinks suggests laughter. (She’s not sure; he’s been too stiff and robotic for the past week for her to remember how fluid and easy he used to move.) In his grip is the mail, slitted between two fingers, lightly touching the side of his leg. Julie shuffles, keys digging into her palms, and over Tim’s shoulder is the leggy third floor girl she’s never really spoken to, unless “Have you seen my underwear?” counts as a conversation.
He’s laughing, and the sound wraps around her, stings at her eyes with a chill breeze of daggers, and Julie grasps the idea that Tim Riggins is unhappy.
Shifting on her heel, Julie pads away, shoulders deflated and her mind working hard to build a barricade strong enough to keep Tyra’s voice inside her head from defining why her whole mood has sunken like Titanic (and her heart pangs at this, as written on her calendar in chicken scrawl possessed by something drunk is Titanic with one of those sloppy smiley faces). She presses the elevator button with more vigour than intended.
What she doesn’t understand is why he doesn’t leave.
*
Tim’s persistence she remembers after Fred’s party has abandoned him. He’s sluggish in his movements, pulls his limbs in directions to avoid bumping or simply brushing against hers. She doesn’t feel like she exists when he’s around; she refuses to give a definition to that sinking feeling in her stomach.
Strategies that belong on the football field come into play; he seems to use the simplest ones on her. He waits by the sink, washing it out like they’ve used it for dishes sometime in the morning (which they haven’t; he’s just cleaning a dry space) while she’s at the fridge.
It’s ridiculous, to her, it’s really, stupidly ridiculous. So Tim Riggins she wishes she could laugh.
Julie moves to the sink as he’s at the fridge. They trade places, like the reality show about spouses, and they move in sync with each other that remind her of dance. She misses it, how her legs would ache at first until it became like breathing. Time moves slower now, and she remembers the minor details, like where the sun hits and the best time to tune into the music channel. She also knows Tim’s favourite time of the day, and before, she thinks, she was better off without it.
She’s cleaning the dishes she left there from her early hour morning wake-up. It’s like she’s suddenly programmed to wake up around four and chew on some liquorice she doesn’t remember buying that’s stored in the corner of a cupboard she can’t quite reach. There are other plates there, with a fork and cup thrown in, that she doesn’t remember ever using.
Tim moves, fingers flicking against the cupboards as he’s slowly approaching her, possibly running through the contents of each box through his mind before he pauses right beside her. Pulling open the door right above her head, he leans up - the first time she’s seen him use the tips of his toes - and tries to grab a round bowl her mother bought her in Dallas. A light brown with lines that remind her of the lifelines on trees, pretty, simple flowers are carved into it, the petals a darker brown that reminds her of chocolate as the stems are painted a sloppy, fading green.
It’s lodged in the corner, the very far one at the back of the cupboard, and even though Tim’s as tall as the biggest tree in New York, his arms don’t seem as long, breaking off halfway into the cupboard like the feeble sticks passers-by call branches. He shifts, moving closer towards her, and she finds her hands stilling, the sponge releasing the suds as her fingers press it hard into the plate. She suddenly becomes aware of his proximity, romance novels Lois sent her imbedded into her bones, as she feels like she’s stopped breathing altogether.
He’s behind her, back pressed to hers, and she stiffens, because this reminds her of the Mornings After following Fred’s party and what came of it. The revelations and the tingling and how that lead in her stomach sort of shifted every time she caught Tim giving her a sideways glance she’s not sure she was supposed to catch. His arms are boxing in the air above her head, and she finds herself staring at the tap, feeling him push and pull away from her as he leans up more until his whole being is pressed against her lightly thrumming one.
Time moves slow with him, and when his hands grip the dish, it flashing momentarily in her vision, it speeds up again, betraying her, making her lose those precious sensations and moments she can’t lodge into her memory quick enough. She curses her parents for not selecting the photographic memory gene.
Her legs choose this time to move back. She bumps into him, the bowl is a slight pressure against her back, and she shuffles to the side quickly, like Matt’s stutters, and grabs the dishtowel. His eyes flicker up to hers, fingers loose around the bowl before they tighten, like some reflex, like he’s stopping himself from touching her. She’s thinking it’s that, hoping, because she doesn’t want it to be anything else.
Tim inhales, his whole body pulls away from her, arches so there’s distance between the sink where she was and him. She looks down, bangs falling into her eyes, itching ferociously at her skin like the dust on her bedside table. He presses his lips together as her hands move slowly with the towel, the plate already dry in her hands, and he takes a step back before diverting.
It’s like he can’t get away from her fast enough.
He pauses to place the bowl on the table, as if he’s suddenly lost his appetite. “Sorry,” she says, and his feet pad away like the word isn’t layered.
*
To sum it up, Tyra sends her a vulgar text telling her how she needs to get her ass out of the self-pitying pool and be the Julie Taylor who may stutter in front of Tim Riggins but sure as hell doesn’t take his shit lying down - or in her own apartment while he seems to dominate the place as if it’s his own shack. It’s the kick in the ass she needs and knows Tyra would give her if she was in the same city. So, she calls Vanessa, a girl from dance, who runs a little studio a few blocks from Julie’s and asks whether she needs a hand from her on-call dance teacher. Julie leaves the apartment with a slam of the door, tired of skirting around Tim as if he’ll attack her somehow. She’s not the scared teenage girl anymore. She doesn’t need protecting from Riley or the heartbreak that’s bound to come when she messes with boys. Julie Taylor is a big girl now - and even if she wasn’t, she’s a Taylor. They’re supposed to be fearless. They’re supposed to evoke fear.
Julie walks because cabs are a little too much and she doesn’t want to cheat herself out of the fresh air and city noises and herself, in her environment, without the Texan sun and the plague of football. She takes a little longer than necessary and apologises profusely to a smiling Vanessa who hushes her by pulling on Julie’s arm to get her into the apartment. She’s lucky because her neighbour’s aren’t as colourfully psycho as Julie’s - she can make as much noise as she wants, just as long as she sends a letter to her neighbours stating to excuse the noise.
“Thanks for the call,” Vanessa says, manoeuvring to her kitchen while Julie drops her bag on a chair in the living room. The studio isn’t a proper dance studio, like the one Julie rehearses in and has always dreamed of living in. It’s an apartment that is lived in daily, has the photo frames aligned on draws, and cushion covers that are fading with use. Vanessa’s apartment is just spacious, and Julie’s a little jealous of the privacy she gets with halls and proper rooms.
“No problem,” Julie slides her hands into her pockets. “I’ve been meaning to call you, anyway.”
“Yeah?” Vanessa fills up a glass with a soft drink, “I heard about your living situation.” She moves towards Julie, gestures for her to sit on the worn-out couch, and follows her soon after. “I wasn’t surprised that you haven’t called in a while. The kids sure do miss you.”
Vanessa offers Julie a cup, and she takes it with a smile, taking a long sip before placing it on a coaster. “I just got a little busy,” Julie shrugs, placing her hands on her knees with an awkward movement of her body as she tries to settle into the couch. “I’ve missed the kids, too. I feel like I’m living with one,” she tries to crack a smile, but it falls, sort of like a deflated balloon once the helium has lost its charm.
“Well, I could really use you this week. If you don’t mind,” Vanessa smiles over the rim of her cup, like a conspirator.
Julie smiles, “Use me.”
*
It’s been more than a week since she called Vanessa, and she’s been almost living at the studio ever since. She buys a balloon from the newsagents along the way to her hot dog stand and walks slowly to Vanessa’s because she enjoys the fresh air and Dad called last night to make sure she’s been getting some. Apparently her last email with photographs of her attached looked too “pale” and how dare she set such a bad example for Little Gracie Belle? She doesn’t think of Tim, or the fact that she won’t finish her hot dog for the purpose of giving it to him.
When she arrives, loud music is blaring, and she doesn’t wince at the sound of Britney’s earlier tracks, finding her feet tapping to a beat once she slides her slip-ons by the door and closes it. “Honey, I’m home,” she shouts, and Vanessa’s head appears from the studio room, laughing.
“You’re late.”
She waves the balloon that kisses the ceiling, “I brought a forgive-me present?”
Vanessa gestures with her hand for her to get into the studio. The Studio, with captials and even a little TM placed somewhere on the top, is just a bare room with no furniture. Vanessa’s certificates of her accomplishments in dancing are displayed on the walls along with framed pictures the girls have drawn. A large mirror glued to a sliding door that hides a wardrobe with little odd knick knacks Julie thinks belongs to previous and current students is the only mirror in this room. It’s not like Center Stage or anything as immaculate as the proper dance studios, but it does the trick somehow. It’s simple and Julie likes simple.
When Julie reaches the door, she leans against the frame, watching as five girls follow Vanessa’s instructions and mimic her. One of them says hello, pausing in her movements, and Vanessa snaps her fingers to keep the girl concentrating. Distractions are bad, Julie remembers, and when you falter on the stage you falter in your performance and quite possibly your life. Sometimes she thinks her old dance teacher’s rather negative views reflect her current situation.
Julie waits for the break, the balloon in her hand bobs up and down as she tries to still it. She waits just outside the threshold and as the girls cross it to reward themselves with a glass of water, Julie stops the third girl in the line and wraps the balloon string around her wrist. “Happy Birthday,” she says and her reward is a hug.
Julie stays until it’s almost eight before she reluctantly crosses Vanessa’s own threshold to eventually struggle over her own. She knows that once she passes her own she won’t be as pleased as the little girl.
She hates how this isn’t as simple as it used to be.
*
Tyra was right. When Tim Riggins is bored, he’s bored.
He slips out the door, doesn’t bother with explaining where he’s going - sometimes he comes back with plastic bags filled with shopping (her things included) and sometimes it’s the mail and sometimes, if she’s having a particularly bad day, his hands are empty and the slant of his mouth slips from his face entirely when he sees her - or who he’s going with and Julie won’t admit she worries on occasion.
She’s losing something that never really belonged to her.
She works her way up to her room with deflated steps admitting defeat to a battle she’s not even sure she’s fighting. She doesn’t know who she’s fighting, either. Lying on her bed, her hand reaches for the phone sitting in it’s cradle. Exhaling a sigh of relief, she’s glad that this hasn’t changed.
Julie curls into the phone as if it was Tyra’s arms, and she’s consoling her from another state in another time with other problems weighing her down. There’s distance between them, something far more significant than literal, and she blames herself for dropping off the map and being caught up in a whirlwind of what she knew would happen.
Julie doesn’t say anything to Tyra, just breathes into the phone, and she can see the slant of her mouth, the disappointment haunting Tyra’s blue eyes, “I’m so sorry, Julie.”
She shrugs, “It’s bound to happen, right?”
“If he goes back to that cheating cheerleader bitch, I’ll kill him.”
Tyra always knows how to make her feel better, even at a distance.
*
The apartment is suffocating.
She knocks on Martha’s door, decides to initiate a little ‘girl’s day out’ that Martha’s been dying for. She’s worse than Lois at times, and Julie never thought that was possible.
“You still owe me that lunch date,” she grins, holding up a finger as she gathers her bags, Ferret in the distance, and flicks her keys into her palm. “Where to?”
Julie shrugs, “I owe you, remember?”
Martha pulls a sad grin, locking her door; she nods to hers, “In there?”
Another lift of the shoulders, she keeps her head down, and Martha’s arms slide across her shoulders.
*
There’s a movie Julie’s too timid to say she wants to watch, as Tim’s sitting on the couch, legs stretched out to cross at his ankles on the coffee table. She pauses at the staircase, feet stopping on their own accord as she’s impulsively planned a night of reading her paperback. Again.
“There’s some Anne Hathaway movie on in a minute,” he says, fingers pressing buttons on the remote as it settles on the channel.
Julie looks down to gain the confidence to take in his profile. His arms are crossed over his chest and the remote has been abandoned on the arm of the couch. Julie draws forward, believing it’s safe to enter the lion’s den, and she moves behind the couch to not disturb his legs, and sits in the corner. She tries to pack herself up into a neat little square so she won’t come untangled.
The phone rings; Martha’s playing the role of saving grace and invites her out again.
*
“You want to stay with me tonight?” Martha tilts her head, palm gripping the door, and Julie thinks for a moment, fingers tapping against her leg, as Martha motions to her own door, “Give you some peace.”
Julie shakes her head, “No thanks.”
“It’s not imposing,” Martha raises her eyebrows, as if to challenge something Julie’s unsure she’s given the scent of off, “and I don’t mind. I’ll lock Chester in the cupboard again.”
She grins, “Stop watching Harry Potter.”
“It’s not my fault I succumb to the Hollywood peer pressure,” she rolls her eyes, and her grip tightens on the doorknob. “I’m serious, Julie. You can stay with me. We can have one of those girly sleepovers where we get naked and have a pillow fight.”
Julie laughs, hands sliding into the back pockets of her jeans, “You’ve never been to a sleepover, huh?”
Martha shrugs, “Hollywood.”
Nodding, Julie sighs, darting a glance to her apartment, “No, I better go.” Pulling her eyebrows together, she looks back to Martha, offering her a shrug as if that’ll convince her that being in her apartment would be best. “Got to face my problems, you know?”
“You’ve been facing this one for a bit, from how I’ve interpreted things.”
Shrugging, Julie pulls at her hair, “I’ll see you tomorrow or something.”
She starts moving, back to Martha because the look on her face is eating away at her. Glancing over her shoulder, Martha nods, keys inserted in the cut and her fingers are twisting it while her other hand works at the doorknob, “My apartment is always free.”
Julie twirls, slowly walking backwards, “I know. Thank you,” the door opens smoothly under her palm.
*
Julie feels drained. Sitting on her bathroom vanity, she pulls a brush through her hair absently. Her mind is in another place, where paranoia settles in nicely and she starts imagining scenarios that she knows are true, have heard that they’re true, and that gnawing feeling in her stomach intensifies, morphing into an itch.
Tim’s footsteps are loud on the stairs, pitter patter like rain on her wooden panels, and he’s leaning against the doorframe of her bathroom, arms crossed, wearing only his boxers. His lips are slanted in that tired way of his that’s so relaxed she wants to melt into him. “You mad at me?”
She feels her arm still, midway through pulling the brush in her already soft hair and she swallows, “No.”
He pushes a smile to his face, tries for an icebreaking “Liar” that doesn’t take away any of the tension she knows she’s at fault for. He sighs, running a hand through his hair, “Jules -”
“Just drop it,” she finds herself saying, the brush making its way to the end of her hair before moving onto another section. Her hand is moving robotically, as if she’s programmed to do this, and she watches his reaction, the duck of his head before he looks up at her, keeping his eyes on her. It unnerves her, his sudden attention to detail. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yeah,” he blinks, nodding vaguely, “it does.”
She looks down; pressing her lips together and settles her hands into her lap. Pressing her legs into them, it keeps them from shaking. The brush sits on her leg, its handle cool against her skin. “Tim.”
“Jules,” he mimics, a sad smile that’s meant to reassure her settles against his mouth, “I’m sorry I brought up Saracen. I didn’t mean to pry.”
She shrugs, “It doesn’t matter. We’re over.”
He looks down, “Yeah, it does. Just because you’re over and done with each other doesn’t mean the feelings aren’t still there.”
“There are no leftover feelings.”
He shakes his head, “Even the sad ones.” Tim looks up at her, and she thinks she can finally see him, the patches of him that he keeps hidden and disguises with liquor, girls or tones. The wall he keeps up so effectively seems to have drained him, and he looks tired, a little worse than she thinks of her own appearance, and her lips press together at the sight. “They’re hard to talk about, so we lock them up.”
There’s her answer. That gnawing in her stomach ceases, and her hard grip on the hairbrush handle deflates slightly. Her mouth feels dry as she looks at him, her mind unsettled from deciphering all the underlying messages Tim has given her with a few sentences. She blinks slowly, “And throw away the key?”
He grins, amusement sparking in his eyes, however light and dull it may be the butterflies in her stomach still burst into life. He chuckles, “So that’s how those stories go?”
She breathes out a laugh, ducking her head as she feels that flush heat up her face. “I meant what I said,” she says to her lap, “there are no leftover feelings. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Lyla.”
He shrugs, “She could’ve told me herself.”
Julie bites the inside of her cheeks, nodding, because she agrees with it. It’s none of her business, like she’s been feeling ever since he turned up at her door, that she should tell him about Lyla and what’s going on with her. It’s like how he won’t go into details about Matt; just skim the surface, probe to find out what she knows before he spills any specifics. Team loyalty was always bullshit to her, but she’s learning, slowly, that it extends beyond the high school years.
Tim pushes himself off the doorframe, his feet padding slowly across the small space between them. He comes to stand before her, hands coming to rest on the vanity on either side of her, locking her in. She feels his mouth against her cheek, the light flutter of his eyelashes skimming her skin as he blinks, “You’re not a stand in.”
Her own eyes close, and his hand wraps around hers, pulling the hairbrush out of her watery grip. He turns to kiss her, hard pressure against her cheek, and his large hands come to fall into her hair, wrapping his fingers around the recently untangled strands.
She grins at the fact that he’s going to tangle them on purpose.
He presses his mouth against hers in a slow kiss, mouth opening over hers at a snail’s pace. It’s lazy, in a way, and it makes her sleepy in that inappropriate way as his hands flicker through her hair, pulling at it slightly, before his palms rest on her thighs. Her hands grip his shoulders before settling into a sluggish cup.
Smiling against his lips, she pulls away, fingers fluttering to the hem of her tank top before pulling it over her head, discarding it in her clean sink. Tim presses closer to her, moving between her legs, and his mouth is harder on hers, that lazy slant of his pressing against hers. His hands slide over her back, resting between her shoulder blades as he presses their chests together. Julie’s settle in his hair, trying to pull him closer to her as his mouth opens under hers, growing restless with the sluggish rhythm he set.
Her fingers settle on the waistband of his boxers, sliding under the fabric to caress a tiny patch of skin as Tim’s follow her direction, his hooking in the waistband of her long pants. He grins, pulling away from her and resting his forehead against her chin, looking down at the pattern on the fabric. She groans, embarrassment flushing through her as he can’t bite his tongue, “Elmo?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
He presses his mouth back against hers, pulling her off the sink as her legs wrap around his waist. His fingers latch onto her waistband again, pulling it down to the middle of her thigh before setting her down on her feet. She pulls them down, kicking her pants off and Tim’s kicking his boxers off before wrapping his arms around her waist, mouth against hers, and she’s sitting on the vanity again.
The surface is cold through her underwear, and Tim’s fingers hook onto the waistband, sliding them down as she tries to wiggle some space between the surface and her skin. It’s slow, and his fingers brush over her flesh in teasing jest. She sinks her nails into the skin on his shoulder blades in a weak form of retaliation.
It’s colder than she thought previously, her underwear settling at her ankles as she kicks them off. Tim’s fiddling with a wrapper he’s snatched from one of the drawers in her bathroom that he must’ve snuck in here when he decided to go shopping solo. He’s back at her, arms wrapped tightly around her middle as she feels like she’s teetering on the edge of the vanity.
She gasps when he sinks into her, his mouth pauses on hers as he lets out a slow groan, and she grips at the panes of his back, nails sinking into his skin without the purpose of getting slight revenge. He pushes against her, a rhythm that gets faster quicker than she remembers, and her legs wrap tightly around him, causing him to sink deeper into her. The heel of her foot presses against his lower back as he presses his mouth firmly on hers, his hands sliding through her hair and over her back before mussing up her hair again.
Her entire being feels hot, scorching where his hands touch her, and when she falls apart, mouth open and motionless under his, her grip on him slackens as she places her head on his shoulder. She keeps shuddering against him, his hips jerking up against her, and she tries to ride it out with him instead of turning into concrete beneath his heated grip. Turning her face into his neck, she kisses it lazily, flicking her tongue out in that way that he does to her, and he shortly follows her, hand on her breast that slides down her side, gripping at her leg; the tenseness throughout his body slithers away like water.
She feels Tim press his cheek into her hair, his hands settle on her hips, fingers squeezing absently as he catches his breath. “Not just a stand in,” she feels his lips against her scalp, her hair twitching under the movement of his mouth pulling a grin. “Dunno how else to tell you, Jules.” He presses a lingering kiss into her hair.
When he pulls out, she doesn’t feel as empty as before.
*
It feels awkward, this sudden reconciliation. She’s used to sputtering words apologising, taking back words that meant too much to be swept under the rug. She’s always thinking of Matt, considering him her experience in the dating world. There was Ryan and Seth and a waiter called Jared, but it always comes back to Matt.
They sit on the floor. It’s new, because it’s usually the couch, kitchen table, or bench. He takes up more space on the floor, she thinks, with his legs spread out while hers are tucked underneath her, wooden panels imprinting their patterns into her skin. She pulls at the hem of his shirt as he rubs his fingers against the wood. The floor needs a good sweep.
He pulls in his bottom lip, shifting so he’s leaning against his palms, eyes surveying her. She keeps her attention to the hem of his plaid shirt, one that sort of smells like Texas. “You know I go through your phonebook, right?”
She shrugs, “The phone bill got higher.”
He runs a hand through his hair before it smacks loudly on the floor. “I didn’t mean to blow up at you.”
“You didn’t.”
He tilts his head, eyebrow raised, and she tries to keep her glances down, not so obvious, so he can’t sustain eye contact and convince her that she’s a real idiot for thinking that one. “I was just burned,” he shrugs, bare shoulders a pink hue under the lighting.
“I was scared,” she looks up at him from underneath her bangs, angling her head so she can see him through the curtain. “You and Lyla are this big thing. Matt and I have our problems, and there are these obstacles we need to face together to be able to become a big thing like before.”
He shakes his head, “Garrity and I aren’t a big thing.”
“There was a pool,” her fingers grip tightly at the hem, curling it around, “at Tyra’s college. Betting on when you two would just get hitched.”
“It’s not going to happen.”
Julie presses her lips together, pushing her mouth up to the side; courage flows into her slowly, and she glances at his chin. “Maybe.”
“It’s not.”
She shrugs.
“You know I don’t believe in this destiny bullshit you keep shovin’ down my throat. Honestly, I’d start thinkin’ you wished it was true with you and Seven.”
The tingles stampeding underneath her knee come full-force, a lot quicker than usual, and she pushes her feet from underneath her, keeping herself curled up as her hands pause on her thighs, “It’s not.”
His eyebrows raise, gesturing his hand to her, “See.” Pushing his knee up, he palms it, sighing, “Garrity and I aren’t this big thing that’s going to come back together. We’re not some endgame relationship on a television show you watch. It’s done, it’s over, and I know what I want now.” He’s frustrated when he runs his hand through his hair, fingers gripping at it hard before letting it go. It’s like he’s trying to imprint this into her brain, make this knowledge overtake the previous, and the only way he feels he can get this done is by inflicting some sort of pain on his own scalp. “I don’t know about you and Seven. I can’t say anything about it, but destiny doesn’t happen unless you make it happen.”
She pulls her eyebrows together, palms wrapping around her ankles, “Matt and I have grown out of each other.” Julie shrugs, looking at the floorboards, because these issues between Matt and her stay between her and sometimes Tyra Collette’s voicemail. Telling Tim is like giving him ammunition against her - or Matt, she’s not sure about their relationship and that swelling of anxiety erecting in her stomach wishes to never know the state of it - and Julie doesn’t know if they’ve come this far for heart-to-hearts and conversations that reflect diary entries. “We tried, we failed. Our ship is sinkable.”
Tim shrugs, “The Garrity-Riggins ship sunk a while ago. I guess we were clinging to icebergs.”
Her mouth pulls with this, breaking from her hard resistance, as Tim’s found the DVDs she’s hid behind the pillows on the couch. She shifts, sighing, her tongue starting to feel thick and heavy as she tries to address what Martha’s been asking her and what Tyra’s been trying to define through protests of not wanting to open her eyes and see what’s in front of her. “What is this, Tim?” she bites her lip, hand clenches around her ankle, and she glances at him, bangs filtering her view of him, “This … thing. Is it fun? Some pastime until you head back to Dillon?”
He runs a hand through his hair, fingers tangling within it like she’s felt in her own, and he sighs, eyes shifting to focus at a point on the stairs. Julie tries to prepare herself for the blow she knows isn’t written in the romance novels Lois has shoved down her throat. He shrugs, eyes trailing over her, settling on her hand curled around her ankle, “It’s whatever you want it to be.”
She rolls her eyes, “I’m asking you.”
“This is a trap,” he sighs, “because whatever I say, there’s a risk you’re not gonna like it.”
“Am I not going to like it?”
He shrugs, a heavy lift of his shoulders, and he seems to crawl into himself a little, sink into the floorboards, because he looks smaller, in that frightened animal way. She’s never seen it before and she knows she doesn’t like it. “Don’t know,” he breathes, the impact she expected doesn’t come. Instead, she’s left with a faint fuzziness enveloping her thoughts and impulsively thought up predictions of how this would play out.
Tim Riggins always seems to be surprising her.
Julie feels the Texan heat descend upon her as she fiddles against the floor, the cracks in the boards pressing tight against her skin. Her mouth feels loose when she mouths out, breath a hoarse whisper, “You won’t know unless you say.”
He seems to suck in his lips, pulling his legs up to his chest and resting his arms on his knees lethargically. “It’s fun,” he says, eyes on her feet, her fingers pressing tightly against her skin at this, the sudden betrayal she feels towards the bullshit Lois has been feeding her. “But,” he shrugs at this like it doesn’t matter, as though it won’t help his case; he slides his feet away from him, stilling them when they’re near her and his knees are faintly bent. “Maybe it’s more?”
She looks up, blinking the tips of her bangs away from clinging to her lashes, and she pulls at her mouth, biting the inside of her cheek. Julie thinks this is the Tim Riggins Lyla saw, the one who stayed with her until the college applications were received and he let her go like the romance movies promised. He locked this one up in one of those dark closets she’s always feared, and he’s opening up the door for her. He’s looking under his bed for the monsters he hopelessly believed in as a child.
“I don’t define stuff,” he pulls his legs back, “because it ends up screwing up in the end. Karma and all,” he shrugs, “but this isn’t what you think it is, Jules, and if it is, then I’ve read this all wrong. I’m not much of a reader,” he cracks a grin at this, as if it’s some inside joke, and Julie’s not one for other people’s inside jokes, little phrases that sweep over her head that others can laugh at her for, but, in this instance, the irritation that usually settles within her isn’t there. She finds herself not minding, because Tim’s sort of pulling her in, letting her in on the joke; he’s sharing with her in that cryptic way of his where he doesn’t explain everything in detail like Landry with his algebra equations. “But I can read this, I think. I don’t need someone reading it to me to be able to figure it out.”
Her mouth feels dry, throat bare, and she tries to swallow; her voice hitches with a croak, “What have you figured out?”
Tim pulls at his hair, tilting his head, and a smile she’s missed greets her without slipping away at the mere sight of her. He shrugs playfully, eyebrows raised in that child-like way of his, “You’ll just have to wait and see.”
*
Tim’s hardly on her phone, and when he is, he makes his calls at night. It’s the ones she’s been able to witness.
Curled up in her bed with the sheets wrapped around her, she can hear him in the kitchen, pacing, words pitching as he disappears underneath her and becoming loud when he opens the fridge. “Billy,” he says, and that seems to begin the tirade on Billy’s half of the phone. (She can tell; Tim sighs a lot.) He was here moments before, tucking her into bed, pressing a sound kiss against her forehead while excusing himself to god-knows-where. Momentarily, she panics he’ll settle for the couch again, like he’s rediscovered his love for the piece of furniture that can’t hold the length of him. The panic is wedged away when she hears the loud presses of buttons of her phone.
She can’t sleep with his voice so loud in her ears.
“Yeah, Billy, I hear ya.” He’s been saying that for five minutes now. She doesn’t know how Billy Riggins is, but by the sounds of it, he’s pissed. It’s not like he doesn’t have every right to be. From what she’s heard, his car fixing business is taking off and Tim’s been home helping him. Apparently Tim’s the one who has more information on cars then the one who owns a garage.
“Yeah, I’m an idiot, I got that the first few times,” he seems to huff, repressing that usual chuckle that’ll only infuriate Billy. She thinks Billy’s a bit like Dad, and therefore she sort of understands how his mind is turning right now. By the sounds of exasperation in Tim’s voice, it’s heading in that direction where he forbids her from seeing any boy and forcing her into nunnery with football being used to save people.
“No,” he sighs, and then he presses it into Billy’s eardrum, “no. It’s not about a girl. I’m not being stupid. This isn’t about Lyla.” Tim sighs, opening draws, shutting them quietly with a soundly click, “It’s not always about Lyla. No, it’s not. She’s got a name. Shut up Billy.”
Tim lets out an exhale of air, momentarily slipping out from his charade of being quiet. Confused by the bright light of the kitchen, his voice pitches a little higher, trying to push the conversation into a wall where it’ll end. “Yeah, yeah; I’ll be home soon. I don’t know when.” He slams a cupboard shut, mutters a shit that she thinks Billy misunderstands as he flicks the tap on then off, “Now you’re bein’ stupid.” His accent gets thicker before he sighs loudly, trying to pull at his reigns of tone-control. “Get the chick with the grease to deal with it. She knows more shit than I do about engines. Yeah, it’s possible Billy. Stop lying. I’ll come home when I’m ready.”
With a sigh, Tim’s voice fades with his movements, finally coming to a stalemate, she thinks, as she can feel both New York and Texas stop spinning. “Yeah, I’ll be careful.”
The light flickers off after that.
*
When Tim slides into bed, it’s an hour later and she still hasn’t fallen asleep. She’s not even on the brink of it.
He curls behind her effortlessly, like he hasn’t been away from her for the time that’s passed where they weren’t even on speaking terms. He fits in with her in ways she didn’t know were possible for a boy she never really got to know and still really doesn’t. She pulls at the blankets, wrapping them a little tighter around her, forcing them to become a second skin. She needs protection from him and the way he fits like that clichéd puzzle piece on a board. His hands fall flat against her stomach, sliding down to feel for her own and lands on her arms. He settles there, her own hands clasped tightly against the sheets.
He presses his face into her hair and stills. His entire body curls around hers, his cold feet pushing against the skin of her ankles. Putting it plainly, Tim wraps around her like Christmas paper. At first, it takes some fiddling before he’s snug and it looks right, regardless of the overuse (or under use) of sticky tape and the state of the paper.
Once he relaxes, she tenses, “What was that about?”
He hums into her hair. “What?” she feels his breath on her neck, his nose pressing against her scalp as he shifts.
“The phone call,” she blinks, eyes burning from staying up so late waiting for him in the dark. Sometimes, with him, she always feels like she’s trapped in the dark, even after they’ve made some progress by shedding some light. She shifts, sort of pulling away from him, sort of moulding against him; she’s not sure which bench she’s sitting on.
He sighs, hand pulling the hair back from her neck, “Just talkin’ to Billy,” slips in the Texan accent as he presses an open-mouthed kiss to her shoulder.
She waits, hoping for more, that Tim will finally open up to her just a little, give her a slither of light. “Okay,” she presses her eyes closed, the burning doesn’t increase or decrease; it just sits.
He doesn’t give her that fine string of light she wants. Instead, he licks his fingers and presses the flame of a candle she didn’t see burning, until it’s too late, out.
three. | five.