FIc: Tell Me About It
Justified. Carol/Tim. Explicit.
Set during episode 2.10 "Brother's Keeper." One-shot. ~2,800 words.
Special thanks to beta rillalicious.
Short disclaimer: All characters and scenarios belong to Elmore Leonard and Graham Yost and NOT ME.
Summary: In which Carol Johnson finally gets some.
Tim is two beers and a shot in when Art calls him. He’s been off the clock for two hours, having stayed late to finish up some paperwork. The bar is loud with chatter and clinking and over-produced country hits, so Tim swiftly exits to hear the call properly.
“Did I catch you at a bad time, Tim?” Art’s voice always sounds the same over the phone, even, but a little impatient, like he doesn’t care for this newfangled contraption.
“No, sir,” Tim answers.
He always makes a point to sound happy to hear from Art, when he’s sober anyway, no matter what the hour, but once the alcohol begins working on him, his inner resentful teenager starts in with the sarcasm. Tim can’t tell if it’s the former or the latter this time as he speaks. Art gives him no clue.
“I’m sorry to call when you’ve just got off, son, but Raylan was called back to Harlan and Rachel has a family concern.”
“It’s no problem, Art. What’s goin’ on?” Tim’s eyes are on a couple necking near their car as he walks across the parking lot. He keeps his voice strictly professional.
“Raylan had to leave Carol Johnson, the mining executive, outside his… apartment,” this is everyone’s euphemism for the motel room they all know Raylan is still living in, “I need you to pick her up and take her wherever she needs to be.”
Tim stops himself from huffing impatiently. Again, he’s the delivery boy. He grits his teeth, takes the mission and gets off the fucking phone before the alcohol says something he doesn’t mean.
It takes him twenty minutes to drive to Raylan’s motel. He is not driving fast, as he is not an idiot, and he doesn’t care if the woman has to wait.
She’s sitting at the head of one of the parking places, on those cement beams they use as barriers. He saw her before, when Raylan was working her protection detail at the courthouse, during the bomb scare. He’d thought then she looked like a corporate bitch, in her expensive yet ugly as shit suit and her smug smile. Tonight she looks tired, careworn and defeated. She looks smaller and paler, and Tim almost feels bad for disliking her without talking to her, almost feels worse for taking so long to come get her.
He pulls up alongside her, and she walks to the passenger side window. She must recognize him from the Marshal’s office. She’s not looking at him like a stranger. She leans against the door, like she’s chatting up a john. She’s got a smart smirk on her face, like she can’t wait to make this joke.
So he speaks before she can. “Ma’am, I’m with the Marshals, I’m here to pick you up.”
She doesn’t pout, thank God. She does, however, very nearly roll her eyes as she replies, “I remember you, deputy.” And she doesn’t get in the car, either. She smiles at him, and it’s weird, predatory, and not all together unpleasant. “You’re cute.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he replies, falling back on politeness to hide his discomfort.
“You are,” she repeats, like his thanks means he didn’t believe her. “Listen, I know you Marshals take your duties real serious and all, but I’m wondering if you wouldn’t want to,” she pauses, raises her eyebrows and leans in just a little closer. Tim’s stomach just about drops when she continues, “take me someplace else.”
Tim can’t quite believe what’s just happened and it’s not because he doesn’t get girls. He knows he’s a good looking guy and the sniper stories seriously work wonders, but a proposition from a woman he’s met only once, in passing, and on a professional basis, is a first for him. It really makes him wonder about this woman, who she is and what on two legs she won’t fuck.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying,” is all he can think to ask. Despite his lack of eloquence, Tim might as well be sure what he’s about to pass up.
She smiles again, wider and wanton, and his stomach twists where it’s dropped to the general region of his cock. That smile would turn heads on a crowded street, it would be the kind of smile you jerk off to in the shit, ‘cause of the promise of what it holds, and you can’t stand thinking about it and not touching yourself, not imagining. Tim knows he’s had too much to drink.
“Turn off the car, honey, I’m going to get us a room.” She’s about to pull away.
He lunges across the passenger seat and seizes her hand. “Look lady, my boss just told me I gotta get you where ever you need to be. I can’t,” he stops himself from saying what he can and cannot do, but the mission’s stuck in his head, no matter how much he wants to take advantage of this situation. “So where is it, exactly, that you need to be?”
Her eyes hold some kind of understanding that her lips refuse to get behind. She replies in a hard, sly voice, “Well I need to be in Cincinnati in two and a half hours, but since it only takes 40 minutes to drive there from here, why don’t we get a room at this motel and you can take me to paradise or wherever you damn well please.”
Tim turns off the car. He tells himself its Raylan’s fault for dropping this woman off in the middle of nowhere, that it’s Rachel’s fault for having a nephew and a mother to take care of, that it’s certainly Art’s fault for putting him in this position when he obviously doesn’t have the willpower to be the better man. He knows those are fucking lies, but he also knows being a good man doesn’t count for shit sometimes, too. So he follows her into the room, four down from where Raylan Givens sleeps.
She’s smiling like she just won something as she turns to him right in front of the bed. He sets his keys down on the small wooden table near the door and the window. He’s a little weirded-out by how similar this place looks to Raylan’s.
He looks at her and wonders something out loud, “Lady, do you even remember what my name is?”
Her eyes flash at him, like she’s just been caught at something. “Not that I really care that much but I think it’s Tom or Jim, or something.” She produces half a sixer of beer from her giant purse, twists one off and throws it to him.
He catches it easily. “Tim,” he replies, not quite keeping annoyance from his tone, “Tim Gutterson.”
Carol looks a little bit intrigued, but somehow also impatient, “Now doesn’t that sound nice and Nordic, are you a Minnesotan boy?”
He smirks, says, “Milwaukee actually,” knowing where she’ll go next.
“You family work in the breweries or the-“
“My family owned a general store, ma’am,” he punctuates the courtesy with an edge to his tone. “Not everyone around here is a walking stereotype.”
“Oh, sorry, honey” she replies into her beer can, not sounding very apologetic, “It gets a little tough when your job compels you to be around nothing but stereotypes for days on end.” There’s something rough about the way she says this, bitter, and hurt. He’s suddenly not as annoyed, realizing she’s trying hard at projecting something, and not really succeeding.
“Do you have any respect for them at all?” He says quietly.
She glares at him, but speaks low, like somehow he’s pulled the truth from her. “Now, I do.” And now Tim really feels bad. Harlan County has chewed her up and spit her out.
Tim smiles, because he’s not really sure what else he can do, and raises his beer to her. “To getting out of Kentucky,” he says.
The clink of aluminum sounds hollow and unsatisfying.
They sit down on the bed together, still drinking, and Tim’s wondering if she really thinks he’s going to make the first move when it was her that got them here in the first place.
“So, I gather you don’t like Kentucky, then?” She asks, like they’re on some kind of get-to-know-you date.
He plays along though, it’s not like he’s the one with a plane to catch. “It has its good points and bad points.” Tim smirks and says, “Most of the bad points are in Harlan County.”
Carol smiles big, and straddles him. She hovers about a foot above him for just a second, her long hair brushing against his cheek, until she settles herself down on his lap. Her eyes flick up at him flirtatiously as she says, “Tell me more about what you think about Harlan County,” like she’s asking him to whisper something filthy in her ear.
Tim doesn’t usually do dirty talk. A buddy of his once said it’s because his voice is so dry, no girl would get off on it anyway. Another piped in to say it was because he’s too nice, and he would never get off on it at all. Tim used to think it was a combination of those two things, and because he had no fucking practice.
Now, he’s turned on as all hell, and he knows just what to say.
He pulls her close to him, hard and swift, and her eyes widen. “Harlan County, Kentucky is the most ass-backwards, back woods, trash heap, shit-hole that I have ever seen and I’ve fought two tours in Afghanistan.”
Her smile is encouragement enough as she reaches down, brushing the crotch of his jeans, to pull up the bottom of her shirt. She takes it off in one swift motion and Tim stares down her ample, magnificent bosom as he continues, his voice deepening with conviction and something else. “The people are the most foul, loathsome combination of ugly and stupid that I have ever encountered and I worked the night shift at a grocery store in my formative years.”
Carol laughs loudly and grinds her pelvis into him, only slightly, to lean closer and press her lips to his jaw line and neck. He groans, almost unconsciously, and she speaks in his ear, “More.”
“They’re gun crazy, moonshine running, half-wits who can’t hold a job unless it’s on the wrong side of the law. They’re gonna take all the money your company’s gonna pay them and blow it on expensive trash, stupid investments, and alcohol. They aren’t gonna be any better off than they were before, and you’ll laugh in their faces when they try and blame you.”
Carol’s got her pants unzipped now, and she’s breathing deep and short, working on Tim’s fly. He puts his hands on her waist, smaller than he thought it’d be, and he whirls her around to lie on the bed, effectively switching their places. He hovers over her, smiling as he strips off her jeans, then chucks his own to the floor, after pulling a condom from his pocket.
She pulls her bra off and throws it across the room. Her breasts are pulled wide by gravity, drooping beautifully towards the bed. He cups one in his hand, rubbing his trigger finger across her nipple. She gives a little cry and his cock gives a little jerk, going hard as hell.
He takes a second to slip on the rubber and she watches him do it with an appreciative smile on her face. Tim always likes to do it before the girl has to ask, he gets the feeling it just makes things all around more agreeable.
“Tell me about Boyd,” she murmurs when he’s done, crawling in starts and stops up to the head of the bed. Her eyes are big and a darker green in the dim light of the room. She’s looking at him like his words are the key to her orgasm and, somehow, he really, really likes that idea.
“Boyd Crowder,” Tim repeats, searching his mind as he follows her. He kisses her deep before he starts again. “Boyd Crowder is a racist, terrorist asshole, who’s gonna get shot in the gut before he ever controls crime in Harlan.” As he speaks Carol puts her hand on his cock, raising herself a little up to him and fitting him to her. Tim groans and he can barely think coherently enough anymore, but she prompts him, breathless when he sinks into her, “What else?”
“And…” Tim stutters because she moving against him and he wants to move with her. “And he probably wants to fuck you right now as bad as I do, but he’s not… he’s not gonna, because he lost his chance and it’s my turn now.”
She laughs again and says, “Damn straight, deputy,” pulling him down for a searing kiss. Their lips move against each other in a similar rhythm to the one they find together. Tim’s cock is so hard inside her, that sweet pressure building up and up, and it feels so good. He thumbs her clit and she moans, pushing harder against him, faster.
“Fuck Harlan County,” she says, low and vicious, thrusting furiously against him. “Fuck those fucking…” and her words are drowned in a moan, like she’s lost her train of thought.
“Yeah,” he grunts, getting the feeling that he’d agree to anything she says right about now. “Yeah, fuck ‘em.” It’s coming on strong and soon. Tim feels it crest, that pressure, feels his eyes roll as he shuts them tight.
“Ahh,” she cries, and suddenly she clamping around him, all her muscles going stiff at once and then quivering. He keeps his fingers on her clit and she cries a little louder but no more coherently.
The sound of it sends Tim right the fuck over and he clutches at her back and hair as it moves through him. “Jesus,” he groans, collapsing on top of her.
He rolls off and away, almost immediately, feeling just a little bit weird about how close they are now that they're not fucking. He pulls off the condom and cleans himself up a little with the blankets, ignoring a twinge of sympathy for the housekeepers.
She rolls onto her stomach and smiles at him, looking particularly satisfied and Tim grins back, feeling that sense of stupid pride that goes along with giving a woman an orgasm. "That was better than I thought it'd be," she says.
He remembers now why he thought he didn't like her much. "Thanks," he replies dryly.
"Oh, don't be that way." She keeps smiling as she gets up, unsurprisingly without any modesty at all, and strides around the room, picking up her scattered clothes. "Come on, honey. We don't even have time to shower, now. You gotta get me to Cinci. My flight leaves in an hour."
He looks at her puzzled, but isn't ready to move yet. "Aren't you worried about security?"
"It's a chartered jet. I don't have to worry about anything." Her smile is now the corporate self-congratulatory smirk that really makes him remember why he didn't like her.
He realizes suddenly that she got what she really needed with this whole situation. More than just a sweaty, anonymous orgasm, to her, she got herself her mojo back. But Tim remembers, he knows what she looked like when Harlan and its devious residents had knocked her around, when whatever personal and professional battles she'd been fighting had ultimately been lost. He's not going to say anything, but it makes a difference that he knows, and that she knows he knows.
He insists on washing his hands, face, and neck in the sink before he puts his clothes back on while she tries not to look anxious. He can tell she's the kind of person who doesn't like to be late, but does like to pretend she's not that kind of person. He gets a little revenge on her for the "better than I thought" dig by taking his sweet time.
He drops her off in Cincinnati with little fanfare and no romanticized notions of anything whatsoever. She just climbs out of the car with a, "see you later," and another smirk, followed by a little wave from the curb which he returns amusedly. He's not sure he quite believes any of it happened.
Art calls when he is just pulling out of the airport drive and onto the highway. "You see her off?" Art asks with a certain edge to his voice that Tim has learned to recognize when his boss is thinking off three things at once and only talking to you about one at a time. It's usually reserved for when Deputy Givens is involved.
"Yes, sir," Tim answers. "Is there anything else you need, boss?" He just knows something else is going down.
Art sighs audibly into the phone, which is a rare occurrence for Tim. He winces at it and braces himself. "There's been an incident down here in Harlan, Tim. I need you to come in and help me sort out the scene. It's gonna be a long night, son."
Tim doesn't say that for him, it already has been.
Set during episode 2.10 "Brother's Keeper." One-shot. ~2,800 words.
Special thanks to beta rillalicious.
Short disclaimer: All characters and scenarios belong to Elmore Leonard and Graham Yost and NOT ME.
Summary: In which Carol Johnson finally gets some.
Tim is two beers and a shot in when Art calls him. He’s been off the clock for two hours, having stayed late to finish up some paperwork. The bar is loud with chatter and clinking and over-produced country hits, so Tim swiftly exits to hear the call properly.
“Did I catch you at a bad time, Tim?” Art’s voice always sounds the same over the phone, even, but a little impatient, like he doesn’t care for this newfangled contraption.
“No, sir,” Tim answers.
He always makes a point to sound happy to hear from Art, when he’s sober anyway, no matter what the hour, but once the alcohol begins working on him, his inner resentful teenager starts in with the sarcasm. Tim can’t tell if it’s the former or the latter this time as he speaks. Art gives him no clue.
“I’m sorry to call when you’ve just got off, son, but Raylan was called back to Harlan and Rachel has a family concern.”
“It’s no problem, Art. What’s goin’ on?” Tim’s eyes are on a couple necking near their car as he walks across the parking lot. He keeps his voice strictly professional.
“Raylan had to leave Carol Johnson, the mining executive, outside his… apartment,” this is everyone’s euphemism for the motel room they all know Raylan is still living in, “I need you to pick her up and take her wherever she needs to be.”
Tim stops himself from huffing impatiently. Again, he’s the delivery boy. He grits his teeth, takes the mission and gets off the fucking phone before the alcohol says something he doesn’t mean.
It takes him twenty minutes to drive to Raylan’s motel. He is not driving fast, as he is not an idiot, and he doesn’t care if the woman has to wait.
She’s sitting at the head of one of the parking places, on those cement beams they use as barriers. He saw her before, when Raylan was working her protection detail at the courthouse, during the bomb scare. He’d thought then she looked like a corporate bitch, in her expensive yet ugly as shit suit and her smug smile. Tonight she looks tired, careworn and defeated. She looks smaller and paler, and Tim almost feels bad for disliking her without talking to her, almost feels worse for taking so long to come get her.
He pulls up alongside her, and she walks to the passenger side window. She must recognize him from the Marshal’s office. She’s not looking at him like a stranger. She leans against the door, like she’s chatting up a john. She’s got a smart smirk on her face, like she can’t wait to make this joke.
So he speaks before she can. “Ma’am, I’m with the Marshals, I’m here to pick you up.”
She doesn’t pout, thank God. She does, however, very nearly roll her eyes as she replies, “I remember you, deputy.” And she doesn’t get in the car, either. She smiles at him, and it’s weird, predatory, and not all together unpleasant. “You’re cute.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” he replies, falling back on politeness to hide his discomfort.
“You are,” she repeats, like his thanks means he didn’t believe her. “Listen, I know you Marshals take your duties real serious and all, but I’m wondering if you wouldn’t want to,” she pauses, raises her eyebrows and leans in just a little closer. Tim’s stomach just about drops when she continues, “take me someplace else.”
Tim can’t quite believe what’s just happened and it’s not because he doesn’t get girls. He knows he’s a good looking guy and the sniper stories seriously work wonders, but a proposition from a woman he’s met only once, in passing, and on a professional basis, is a first for him. It really makes him wonder about this woman, who she is and what on two legs she won’t fuck.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying,” is all he can think to ask. Despite his lack of eloquence, Tim might as well be sure what he’s about to pass up.
She smiles again, wider and wanton, and his stomach twists where it’s dropped to the general region of his cock. That smile would turn heads on a crowded street, it would be the kind of smile you jerk off to in the shit, ‘cause of the promise of what it holds, and you can’t stand thinking about it and not touching yourself, not imagining. Tim knows he’s had too much to drink.
“Turn off the car, honey, I’m going to get us a room.” She’s about to pull away.
He lunges across the passenger seat and seizes her hand. “Look lady, my boss just told me I gotta get you where ever you need to be. I can’t,” he stops himself from saying what he can and cannot do, but the mission’s stuck in his head, no matter how much he wants to take advantage of this situation. “So where is it, exactly, that you need to be?”
Her eyes hold some kind of understanding that her lips refuse to get behind. She replies in a hard, sly voice, “Well I need to be in Cincinnati in two and a half hours, but since it only takes 40 minutes to drive there from here, why don’t we get a room at this motel and you can take me to paradise or wherever you damn well please.”
Tim turns off the car. He tells himself its Raylan’s fault for dropping this woman off in the middle of nowhere, that it’s Rachel’s fault for having a nephew and a mother to take care of, that it’s certainly Art’s fault for putting him in this position when he obviously doesn’t have the willpower to be the better man. He knows those are fucking lies, but he also knows being a good man doesn’t count for shit sometimes, too. So he follows her into the room, four down from where Raylan Givens sleeps.
She’s smiling like she just won something as she turns to him right in front of the bed. He sets his keys down on the small wooden table near the door and the window. He’s a little weirded-out by how similar this place looks to Raylan’s.
He looks at her and wonders something out loud, “Lady, do you even remember what my name is?”
Her eyes flash at him, like she’s just been caught at something. “Not that I really care that much but I think it’s Tom or Jim, or something.” She produces half a sixer of beer from her giant purse, twists one off and throws it to him.
He catches it easily. “Tim,” he replies, not quite keeping annoyance from his tone, “Tim Gutterson.”
Carol looks a little bit intrigued, but somehow also impatient, “Now doesn’t that sound nice and Nordic, are you a Minnesotan boy?”
He smirks, says, “Milwaukee actually,” knowing where she’ll go next.
“You family work in the breweries or the-“
“My family owned a general store, ma’am,” he punctuates the courtesy with an edge to his tone. “Not everyone around here is a walking stereotype.”
“Oh, sorry, honey” she replies into her beer can, not sounding very apologetic, “It gets a little tough when your job compels you to be around nothing but stereotypes for days on end.” There’s something rough about the way she says this, bitter, and hurt. He’s suddenly not as annoyed, realizing she’s trying hard at projecting something, and not really succeeding.
“Do you have any respect for them at all?” He says quietly.
She glares at him, but speaks low, like somehow he’s pulled the truth from her. “Now, I do.” And now Tim really feels bad. Harlan County has chewed her up and spit her out.
Tim smiles, because he’s not really sure what else he can do, and raises his beer to her. “To getting out of Kentucky,” he says.
The clink of aluminum sounds hollow and unsatisfying.
They sit down on the bed together, still drinking, and Tim’s wondering if she really thinks he’s going to make the first move when it was her that got them here in the first place.
“So, I gather you don’t like Kentucky, then?” She asks, like they’re on some kind of get-to-know-you date.
He plays along though, it’s not like he’s the one with a plane to catch. “It has its good points and bad points.” Tim smirks and says, “Most of the bad points are in Harlan County.”
Carol smiles big, and straddles him. She hovers about a foot above him for just a second, her long hair brushing against his cheek, until she settles herself down on his lap. Her eyes flick up at him flirtatiously as she says, “Tell me more about what you think about Harlan County,” like she’s asking him to whisper something filthy in her ear.
Tim doesn’t usually do dirty talk. A buddy of his once said it’s because his voice is so dry, no girl would get off on it anyway. Another piped in to say it was because he’s too nice, and he would never get off on it at all. Tim used to think it was a combination of those two things, and because he had no fucking practice.
Now, he’s turned on as all hell, and he knows just what to say.
He pulls her close to him, hard and swift, and her eyes widen. “Harlan County, Kentucky is the most ass-backwards, back woods, trash heap, shit-hole that I have ever seen and I’ve fought two tours in Afghanistan.”
Her smile is encouragement enough as she reaches down, brushing the crotch of his jeans, to pull up the bottom of her shirt. She takes it off in one swift motion and Tim stares down her ample, magnificent bosom as he continues, his voice deepening with conviction and something else. “The people are the most foul, loathsome combination of ugly and stupid that I have ever encountered and I worked the night shift at a grocery store in my formative years.”
Carol laughs loudly and grinds her pelvis into him, only slightly, to lean closer and press her lips to his jaw line and neck. He groans, almost unconsciously, and she speaks in his ear, “More.”
“They’re gun crazy, moonshine running, half-wits who can’t hold a job unless it’s on the wrong side of the law. They’re gonna take all the money your company’s gonna pay them and blow it on expensive trash, stupid investments, and alcohol. They aren’t gonna be any better off than they were before, and you’ll laugh in their faces when they try and blame you.”
Carol’s got her pants unzipped now, and she’s breathing deep and short, working on Tim’s fly. He puts his hands on her waist, smaller than he thought it’d be, and he whirls her around to lie on the bed, effectively switching their places. He hovers over her, smiling as he strips off her jeans, then chucks his own to the floor, after pulling a condom from his pocket.
She pulls her bra off and throws it across the room. Her breasts are pulled wide by gravity, drooping beautifully towards the bed. He cups one in his hand, rubbing his trigger finger across her nipple. She gives a little cry and his cock gives a little jerk, going hard as hell.
He takes a second to slip on the rubber and she watches him do it with an appreciative smile on her face. Tim always likes to do it before the girl has to ask, he gets the feeling it just makes things all around more agreeable.
“Tell me about Boyd,” she murmurs when he’s done, crawling in starts and stops up to the head of the bed. Her eyes are big and a darker green in the dim light of the room. She’s looking at him like his words are the key to her orgasm and, somehow, he really, really likes that idea.
“Boyd Crowder,” Tim repeats, searching his mind as he follows her. He kisses her deep before he starts again. “Boyd Crowder is a racist, terrorist asshole, who’s gonna get shot in the gut before he ever controls crime in Harlan.” As he speaks Carol puts her hand on his cock, raising herself a little up to him and fitting him to her. Tim groans and he can barely think coherently enough anymore, but she prompts him, breathless when he sinks into her, “What else?”
“And…” Tim stutters because she moving against him and he wants to move with her. “And he probably wants to fuck you right now as bad as I do, but he’s not… he’s not gonna, because he lost his chance and it’s my turn now.”
She laughs again and says, “Damn straight, deputy,” pulling him down for a searing kiss. Their lips move against each other in a similar rhythm to the one they find together. Tim’s cock is so hard inside her, that sweet pressure building up and up, and it feels so good. He thumbs her clit and she moans, pushing harder against him, faster.
“Fuck Harlan County,” she says, low and vicious, thrusting furiously against him. “Fuck those fucking…” and her words are drowned in a moan, like she’s lost her train of thought.
“Yeah,” he grunts, getting the feeling that he’d agree to anything she says right about now. “Yeah, fuck ‘em.” It’s coming on strong and soon. Tim feels it crest, that pressure, feels his eyes roll as he shuts them tight.
“Ahh,” she cries, and suddenly she clamping around him, all her muscles going stiff at once and then quivering. He keeps his fingers on her clit and she cries a little louder but no more coherently.
The sound of it sends Tim right the fuck over and he clutches at her back and hair as it moves through him. “Jesus,” he groans, collapsing on top of her.
He rolls off and away, almost immediately, feeling just a little bit weird about how close they are now that they're not fucking. He pulls off the condom and cleans himself up a little with the blankets, ignoring a twinge of sympathy for the housekeepers.
She rolls onto her stomach and smiles at him, looking particularly satisfied and Tim grins back, feeling that sense of stupid pride that goes along with giving a woman an orgasm. "That was better than I thought it'd be," she says.
He remembers now why he thought he didn't like her much. "Thanks," he replies dryly.
"Oh, don't be that way." She keeps smiling as she gets up, unsurprisingly without any modesty at all, and strides around the room, picking up her scattered clothes. "Come on, honey. We don't even have time to shower, now. You gotta get me to Cinci. My flight leaves in an hour."
He looks at her puzzled, but isn't ready to move yet. "Aren't you worried about security?"
"It's a chartered jet. I don't have to worry about anything." Her smile is now the corporate self-congratulatory smirk that really makes him remember why he didn't like her.
He realizes suddenly that she got what she really needed with this whole situation. More than just a sweaty, anonymous orgasm, to her, she got herself her mojo back. But Tim remembers, he knows what she looked like when Harlan and its devious residents had knocked her around, when whatever personal and professional battles she'd been fighting had ultimately been lost. He's not going to say anything, but it makes a difference that he knows, and that she knows he knows.
He insists on washing his hands, face, and neck in the sink before he puts his clothes back on while she tries not to look anxious. He can tell she's the kind of person who doesn't like to be late, but does like to pretend she's not that kind of person. He gets a little revenge on her for the "better than I thought" dig by taking his sweet time.
He drops her off in Cincinnati with little fanfare and no romanticized notions of anything whatsoever. She just climbs out of the car with a, "see you later," and another smirk, followed by a little wave from the curb which he returns amusedly. He's not sure he quite believes any of it happened.
Art calls when he is just pulling out of the airport drive and onto the highway. "You see her off?" Art asks with a certain edge to his voice that Tim has learned to recognize when his boss is thinking off three things at once and only talking to you about one at a time. It's usually reserved for when Deputy Givens is involved.
"Yes, sir," Tim answers. "Is there anything else you need, boss?" He just knows something else is going down.
Art sighs audibly into the phone, which is a rare occurrence for Tim. He winces at it and braces himself. "There's been an incident down here in Harlan, Tim. I need you to come in and help me sort out the scene. It's gonna be a long night, son."
Tim doesn't say that for him, it already has been.