FNL - My Best Friend's Girl (Landry, Tim, Matt)
I cannot begin to tell y'all how happy it makes me to read my flist and see everybody talking about FNL. I mean really. YAYE! Also, I repeat myself. I know this. Suck it up and go watch this week's deleted scenes anyway, it will assuage some of that pissiness I know some of us were feeling when the episode was over. Hopefully this'll help a bit too.
Friday Night Lights
Spoilers for 1.12 'What to Do While You're Waiting'
Landry Clarke, Tim Riggins, Matt Saracen
Rated PG
My Best Friend's Girl
To know Landry was to know that he loved the rodeo.
Landry loved the rodeo like his mom loved Dr. Phil. Like his dad loved Monday Night Football.
Landry loved the rodeo like a fat kid loved cake -- but he had to stop quoting 50 Cent, because that wasn't what soon-to-be-very-rich-and-famous-and-have-Jessica-Alba-on-speed-dial, Christian-death-metal-rock-gods listened to. They were supposed to listen to Judas Priest.
Still, through, it was true.
About the rodeo thing.
Landry loved the rodeo and the fair and the cotton candy and the announcers and the hay and the hot dogs and all of it. If he wasn't going to be a rock god he might've joined the Future Farmers of America or maybe just liked hay a lot or something.
To know Landry was to know this.
So when Matt told him that the football team was going to the rodeo for some booster event, Landry didn't even let him finish before he'd dug up his cowboy hat and was talkin' about all the hot dogs he was gonna eat.
And then Matt cleared his throat real loudly, and Landry stuck his head around the doorframe, because he was in the kitchen getting some lemonade. "What's wrong with you?" he said. "QB1 got a dry throat? You need a Gatorade sponsor to quench your thirst or somethin'?"
Even though his mom's lemonade wasn't as sugary as the stuff they gave you at the rodeo, it wasn't bad. Of course, Landry's mom said that stuff would make his teeth fall out, too.
Matt did that thing that Matt did sometimes where he didn't know how to say something, and he looked at his shoes like it was written on his toes. Then he started stuttering a lot. "The -- the -- the thing is, you know, I, um."
Landry came back in the living room, because this was a lot of stuttering. "The thing is what? QB1 has to ride a bull? You need some chaps or somethin'? I don't have any, but I just filled up the car so we can drive to the city and get some leather ones. I dunno what your size is though," he said, "or I'd surprise you."
Matt gave him that wobbly smile he gave when he had to do something or say something he really didn't want to, and Landry froze. "Well, spit it out already. Damn, you're making me nervous. You're not going to Oklahoma after all, are you?"
Matt shook his head. "Nah, it's not that. It's just that I told Julie that I'd take her."
Landry licked his lips. They were always dry, but at least right now they tasted like sugar and Country Time Lemonade powder. "Okay, so you'll need me to drive. That's cool; I can play Nigel the chauffeur or something. Not like I don't go on most of your dates anyway."
Landry wasn't bitter about it. Not much anyway. He'd known things were gonna change with the QB1 thing and then with Matt getting himself a girl. He'd known that. He told himself that over and over again when he had too much pie at lunch, because Matt was sitting with Julie and her friends, and Landry found himself looking for Riggins to get rid of it.
"No, it's not that," Matt said, "it's just that I told Smash we'd double date with him and Waverly and, um."
"And I don't have a girl and I don't play ball," Landry finished. "I got it."
"It's not like that," Matt tried to say, but it was like that.
Landry knew it was.
Matt had said some other stuff. He'd tried to apologize, but Landry had just shrugged it off and gone back into the kitchen. He hadn't come back out until he'd heard the screen door slam, and that was where Landry was now, three days later: sitting at home on Friday night, eating chips, reading Lord of the Flies, minorly pissed off, a little bitter and trying to pretend otherwise.
When he saw headlights slide across the room he thought it was his mom and dad, home early from the movies. Contorting himself in his chair he managed to turn down Judas Priest without ever actually getting up.
Landry had read Lord of the Flies on his own back in eighth grade, but he didn't mind reading it again. There were bits of he understood better now than he had when he was younger. The parts about what happens when you don't fit in and what it's like to just want to be like everyone else -- yeah, he got those real well.
Landry liked to think he was more Ralph and less Piggy, if only because he didn't want to die by having a boulder pushed on his head. He'd kind of thought of Matt and he as the outsiders trying to keep control with the conch shell, but now Matt was going over to the other side of the island and Landry was on his own.
"Hey, how was it?" he called, when he heard the creak of the third step. "I told y'all that Casino Royale was good, didn't I?"
The screen door wheezed open and Landry looked over the sofa to see Tim Riggins lounging in his doorway.
"Did you knock?" Landry asked, raising an eyebrow as Tim walked in. "I feel like you just walked in my house without knocking. You know I could have you arrested for breaking and entering, Riggins. Not that I would, because I don't feel like being strung up by my underwear on the goalposts, but I'm just sayin'."
Riggins' expression was all indolence as he dropped down on the sofa across from Landry, picked up Landry's glass of lemonade, and downed it in one swallow. "Landry, you ever shut up?" he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when he finished drinking.
"You ever ask before you eat somebody else's food?" Landry retorted.
Tim grinned, put the glass back on the table, and sat back, sprawling himself open on the sofa, legs and arms everywhere. "Aw, baby, don't be like that," he said with a soft smile.
Landry pursed his lips. "Aren't you supposed to be at the rodeo cow-tying girls and lassoing bulls?"
Tim shook his head, "Landry, you've got this whole wrong idea about me."
Landry scowled, leaned over the sofa, turned up his music, and went back to reading. Not five seconds later, Tim was leaning over the arm of the sofa to turn it back down. "You're gonna go deaf listenin' to that," he said, snagging the bag of potato chips that were sitting in Landry's lap. "What're you reading?"
Landry sighed as he watched Tim inhale his BBQ chips. "Lord of the Flies. I was gonna say you should've read it in tenth grade, but then I remembered I was talking to you."
Tim grinned wryly. "What's it about?"
Landry didn't look up from his book. "High school."
"Really?"
"No, not really. Well, it is, in a metaphorical sense," he began, trying to soldier on with the page he'd been reading when Tim arrived.
"Metaphorical?" Tim's tone said it all.
Landry sighed. Clearly the Dillon school system wasn't even asleep on the job -- instead it was out back shooting cans off an empty oil barrel, while the kids cleaned out the house. "It's about a bunch of kids trapped on an island without any adult supervision, and they're supposed to look after themselves, but they just sort of run riot."
"Sounds like fun to me," Tim said around a mouthful of chip.
"Yeah, it would. It's always fun and games until people get killed with boulders," Landry said.
Tim paused with a chip halfway to his mouth. "They kill each other?"
"Just like high school," Landry mocked.
Tim put the chip back in the bag. "Man, what crawled up your ass and died?"
Landry folded down the corner of the page he was reading and gave up. "Why're you here, Riggins?"
Tim shrugged. "You weren't at the rodeo, and seriously, can't you change this, uh, you call this music?"
"I'm studying the greats for Crucifixtorious. You gotta know where you've been to figure out where you wanna go," Landry said stubbornly.
Tim stuffed some more chips in his mouth. "This what you do on Friday nights?"
"No, most Fridays I hang out with Matt and Julie and pretend like my best friend's girl didn't ruin our friendship."
Tim blinked. "You too, huh?"
It took Landry a moment to realize what he said. "Yeah, pretty much."
Tim nodded. "This is more like it," he said after a moment.
It took Landry a second to realize what he was talking about. "It's not mine," he said of the Johnny Cash now crooning through the speakers. That wasn't strictly true, but Johnny Cash, like 50 Cent, wasn’t exactly appropriate Crucifixtorious fodder. Although Cash's later God-fearing stuff might be okay for the Christian death metal scene.
Tim sighed. "Aw, Landry, just when I thought you had hope."
"You're a real funny man, Riggins," Landry mocked. "Tyra know you're this funny?"
Tim's face got cloudy. "She turned me down. Said my timing was all wrong. So, here I am. You gonna read me some of this Lord of the Flies?"
Tim had never confided in Landry before. Landry didn’t even know what to say. It was weird; he would just ignore it. "Why would I read to you? I've about read you the entire Bible at this point. Don't you think it's about time you read to me?"
Tim looked at Landry for a moment and then set the chips to the side. "All right," he said making a grabbing motion, "hand it over."
Landry froze. It was the second time in five seconds that Tim Riggins had shocked the hell out of him. High school really was weird. What was even weirder was Landry handing over the book.
"I'm gonna get some more lemonade," he said, grabbing his glass and getting to his feet. "You can start at the top of the page."
Tim set the book of the sofa and shrugged out of his coat. Landry look down at him curiously. "Gotta get comfortable," Tim said as though reading Landry's mind. "You're gettin' me some lemonade too," he added, as though Landry might forget.
Landry rolled his eyes, but then Tim picked up the book, opened it to the page that Landry had folded down, and began to read.
"What I mean is…maybe it's only us," Tim read, and Landry thought for a moment before moving away from the sofa.
Even if it had been only he and Matt, or Tim and Jason Street, or Piggy and Ralph -- or god forbid -- him and Riggins -- that was okay: at least they had each other.
That had to be better than being all alone.
-end-
p.s. I admit to being completely biased where Landry's involved, but y'all, I'm telling you this story gave me the warm fuzzies.
Friday Night Lights
Spoilers for 1.12 'What to Do While You're Waiting'
Landry Clarke, Tim Riggins, Matt Saracen
Rated PG
My Best Friend's Girl
To know Landry was to know that he loved the rodeo.
Landry loved the rodeo like his mom loved Dr. Phil. Like his dad loved Monday Night Football.
Landry loved the rodeo like a fat kid loved cake -- but he had to stop quoting 50 Cent, because that wasn't what soon-to-be-very-rich-and-famous-and-have-Jessica-Alba-on-speed-dial, Christian-death-metal-rock-gods listened to. They were supposed to listen to Judas Priest.
Still, through, it was true.
About the rodeo thing.
Landry loved the rodeo and the fair and the cotton candy and the announcers and the hay and the hot dogs and all of it. If he wasn't going to be a rock god he might've joined the Future Farmers of America or maybe just liked hay a lot or something.
To know Landry was to know this.
So when Matt told him that the football team was going to the rodeo for some booster event, Landry didn't even let him finish before he'd dug up his cowboy hat and was talkin' about all the hot dogs he was gonna eat.
And then Matt cleared his throat real loudly, and Landry stuck his head around the doorframe, because he was in the kitchen getting some lemonade. "What's wrong with you?" he said. "QB1 got a dry throat? You need a Gatorade sponsor to quench your thirst or somethin'?"
Even though his mom's lemonade wasn't as sugary as the stuff they gave you at the rodeo, it wasn't bad. Of course, Landry's mom said that stuff would make his teeth fall out, too.
Matt did that thing that Matt did sometimes where he didn't know how to say something, and he looked at his shoes like it was written on his toes. Then he started stuttering a lot. "The -- the -- the thing is, you know, I, um."
Landry came back in the living room, because this was a lot of stuttering. "The thing is what? QB1 has to ride a bull? You need some chaps or somethin'? I don't have any, but I just filled up the car so we can drive to the city and get some leather ones. I dunno what your size is though," he said, "or I'd surprise you."
Matt gave him that wobbly smile he gave when he had to do something or say something he really didn't want to, and Landry froze. "Well, spit it out already. Damn, you're making me nervous. You're not going to Oklahoma after all, are you?"
Matt shook his head. "Nah, it's not that. It's just that I told Julie that I'd take her."
Landry licked his lips. They were always dry, but at least right now they tasted like sugar and Country Time Lemonade powder. "Okay, so you'll need me to drive. That's cool; I can play Nigel the chauffeur or something. Not like I don't go on most of your dates anyway."
Landry wasn't bitter about it. Not much anyway. He'd known things were gonna change with the QB1 thing and then with Matt getting himself a girl. He'd known that. He told himself that over and over again when he had too much pie at lunch, because Matt was sitting with Julie and her friends, and Landry found himself looking for Riggins to get rid of it.
"No, it's not that," Matt said, "it's just that I told Smash we'd double date with him and Waverly and, um."
"And I don't have a girl and I don't play ball," Landry finished. "I got it."
"It's not like that," Matt tried to say, but it was like that.
Landry knew it was.
Matt had said some other stuff. He'd tried to apologize, but Landry had just shrugged it off and gone back into the kitchen. He hadn't come back out until he'd heard the screen door slam, and that was where Landry was now, three days later: sitting at home on Friday night, eating chips, reading Lord of the Flies, minorly pissed off, a little bitter and trying to pretend otherwise.
When he saw headlights slide across the room he thought it was his mom and dad, home early from the movies. Contorting himself in his chair he managed to turn down Judas Priest without ever actually getting up.
Landry had read Lord of the Flies on his own back in eighth grade, but he didn't mind reading it again. There were bits of he understood better now than he had when he was younger. The parts about what happens when you don't fit in and what it's like to just want to be like everyone else -- yeah, he got those real well.
Landry liked to think he was more Ralph and less Piggy, if only because he didn't want to die by having a boulder pushed on his head. He'd kind of thought of Matt and he as the outsiders trying to keep control with the conch shell, but now Matt was going over to the other side of the island and Landry was on his own.
"Hey, how was it?" he called, when he heard the creak of the third step. "I told y'all that Casino Royale was good, didn't I?"
The screen door wheezed open and Landry looked over the sofa to see Tim Riggins lounging in his doorway.
"Did you knock?" Landry asked, raising an eyebrow as Tim walked in. "I feel like you just walked in my house without knocking. You know I could have you arrested for breaking and entering, Riggins. Not that I would, because I don't feel like being strung up by my underwear on the goalposts, but I'm just sayin'."
Riggins' expression was all indolence as he dropped down on the sofa across from Landry, picked up Landry's glass of lemonade, and downed it in one swallow. "Landry, you ever shut up?" he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when he finished drinking.
"You ever ask before you eat somebody else's food?" Landry retorted.
Tim grinned, put the glass back on the table, and sat back, sprawling himself open on the sofa, legs and arms everywhere. "Aw, baby, don't be like that," he said with a soft smile.
Landry pursed his lips. "Aren't you supposed to be at the rodeo cow-tying girls and lassoing bulls?"
Tim shook his head, "Landry, you've got this whole wrong idea about me."
Landry scowled, leaned over the sofa, turned up his music, and went back to reading. Not five seconds later, Tim was leaning over the arm of the sofa to turn it back down. "You're gonna go deaf listenin' to that," he said, snagging the bag of potato chips that were sitting in Landry's lap. "What're you reading?"
Landry sighed as he watched Tim inhale his BBQ chips. "Lord of the Flies. I was gonna say you should've read it in tenth grade, but then I remembered I was talking to you."
Tim grinned wryly. "What's it about?"
Landry didn't look up from his book. "High school."
"Really?"
"No, not really. Well, it is, in a metaphorical sense," he began, trying to soldier on with the page he'd been reading when Tim arrived.
"Metaphorical?" Tim's tone said it all.
Landry sighed. Clearly the Dillon school system wasn't even asleep on the job -- instead it was out back shooting cans off an empty oil barrel, while the kids cleaned out the house. "It's about a bunch of kids trapped on an island without any adult supervision, and they're supposed to look after themselves, but they just sort of run riot."
"Sounds like fun to me," Tim said around a mouthful of chip.
"Yeah, it would. It's always fun and games until people get killed with boulders," Landry said.
Tim paused with a chip halfway to his mouth. "They kill each other?"
"Just like high school," Landry mocked.
Tim put the chip back in the bag. "Man, what crawled up your ass and died?"
Landry folded down the corner of the page he was reading and gave up. "Why're you here, Riggins?"
Tim shrugged. "You weren't at the rodeo, and seriously, can't you change this, uh, you call this music?"
"I'm studying the greats for Crucifixtorious. You gotta know where you've been to figure out where you wanna go," Landry said stubbornly.
Tim stuffed some more chips in his mouth. "This what you do on Friday nights?"
"No, most Fridays I hang out with Matt and Julie and pretend like my best friend's girl didn't ruin our friendship."
Tim blinked. "You too, huh?"
It took Landry a moment to realize what he said. "Yeah, pretty much."
Tim nodded. "This is more like it," he said after a moment.
It took Landry a second to realize what he was talking about. "It's not mine," he said of the Johnny Cash now crooning through the speakers. That wasn't strictly true, but Johnny Cash, like 50 Cent, wasn’t exactly appropriate Crucifixtorious fodder. Although Cash's later God-fearing stuff might be okay for the Christian death metal scene.
Tim sighed. "Aw, Landry, just when I thought you had hope."
"You're a real funny man, Riggins," Landry mocked. "Tyra know you're this funny?"
Tim's face got cloudy. "She turned me down. Said my timing was all wrong. So, here I am. You gonna read me some of this Lord of the Flies?"
Tim had never confided in Landry before. Landry didn’t even know what to say. It was weird; he would just ignore it. "Why would I read to you? I've about read you the entire Bible at this point. Don't you think it's about time you read to me?"
Tim looked at Landry for a moment and then set the chips to the side. "All right," he said making a grabbing motion, "hand it over."
Landry froze. It was the second time in five seconds that Tim Riggins had shocked the hell out of him. High school really was weird. What was even weirder was Landry handing over the book.
"I'm gonna get some more lemonade," he said, grabbing his glass and getting to his feet. "You can start at the top of the page."
Tim set the book of the sofa and shrugged out of his coat. Landry look down at him curiously. "Gotta get comfortable," Tim said as though reading Landry's mind. "You're gettin' me some lemonade too," he added, as though Landry might forget.
Landry rolled his eyes, but then Tim picked up the book, opened it to the page that Landry had folded down, and began to read.
"What I mean is…maybe it's only us," Tim read, and Landry thought for a moment before moving away from the sofa.
Even if it had been only he and Matt, or Tim and Jason Street, or Piggy and Ralph -- or god forbid -- him and Riggins -- that was okay: at least they had each other.
That had to be better than being all alone.
-end-
p.s. I admit to being completely biased where Landry's involved, but y'all, I'm telling you this story gave me the warm fuzzies.