FIC: You Were You
POV: Billy
Authors: shelbecat
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I own the idea, everything else belongs to NBC.
Summary: Written for the fnl_laundrylist, Week 4 Challenge. This is Prompt #13: Take any character that is not a main character and write about their life in Dillon as of "Extended Families".
Spoiler: Up to 1x18.
You Were You
Sometimes you wonder what kind of parent you’d be.
There was once, when Tim was still in JV, when a Rally girl came knocking on your door to say she was probably carrying your kid. The party had been chaos, and you didn’t remember much past your first 10 bottles, so really, who were you to say, ‘Nope, wasn’t me.’ Then it came out that her friend just wanted to date Tim and they went away, made-up baby and all.
There was relief then, but you were drinking the day Tim and Jason came home laughing about it, so you weren’t sure if they were laughing at her or you or the idea of you ever being a dad at all.
And there was sadness, just a little. For a second, for a quick moment when the girl with the blonde hair and her brunette friend were standing shy outside your door, you thought, ‘Yeah, I can do this. And I’m going to be nothin’ like Dad.’ Then you cracked open a bottle and chugged down half of it.
A kid was news that required drinking.
There were times when you felt like a parent to Tim, when permission slips would come home from school looking for a signature. Or that one parent/teacher night you’d dressed up and gone to. Your girlfriend at the time had a kid in school so really it was more about the date than your brother, but still, you wore a tie, and that counted for something. You spent the evening talking to Tim’s coach and stealing donuts from the dessert table. The coffee sucked, but Marie looked gorgeous and there was a lot of sex afterwards, so overall it was worth it.
Most days you just tried to stay out of Tim’s way and let him grow into whatever man he was going to be. He was 16 and hormonal, hopped up on the highs of football and the lows of fucking his best friend’s girl; and when he wanted his Daddy back, who were you to say no?
You tried to warn him, tried to explain that this was going to end badly, no matter how much he wanted it, but Tim was Tim and you had to let him go. That was a parenting thing, right? Letting them make their own mistakes? When he backed down the driveway you felt your heart going right along with him. All the way to Corpus Christi and back, thankfully, but your heart wasn’t much of a protector, or a warning, and somehow Tim managed to bring the old man back along with him.
He was just a kid, and you couldn’t be mad, but you were.
You couldn’t stay there and watch Tim get his dreams crushed, so you left. It wasn’t the stuff of good parents, but then, no one ever said you were a good one, you just were and Tim either appreciated it or he didn’t. You wanted to protect him, wanted to be there with peroxide and band-aids like that time when he was 12 and him and Jay had somehow managed to scrape all four knees recreating a scene from The Fast and the Furious. He’d looked at you with sad eyes and a quivering lip, but didn’t cry-wouldn’t cry. A part of you wanted to slap him around for being so goddamn reckless, but instead you blew softly on the cuts, slapped on the band-aids and whispered in his ear that at least his cuts were bigger than Jay’s. That made him smile. Good parent moment right there.
Now he was all grown up and refusing your advice, let alone your comfort, so you stayed at Trudy’s and waited for the inevitable call. You didn’t think it would be Tyra making it, but then Tim always did have a soft spot for that girl. At home, pressing ice on his face and tsk-ing softly at the bruised mass that was once your baby brother, you laid all the blame squarely on yourself. Walt was gone. Tim had somehow seen to that; but you never should have let it get this far. You were the adult, the parent, and want it or not, Tim was your responsibility.
Today it was just the two of you again. Walt was a fading memory and Tim refused to talk about it. You stood in the doorway and watched Tim in the driveway. That little kid from next door was back again, the one who never seemed to take a breath. Tim was squinting into the sun, the bruise on his face still visible, but fading. He was dirty from cleaning gutters that weren’t yours, but he looked happy and you couldn’t fault him for helping your neighbor-after all, she was hot.
You thought about being a parent then, about making mistakes and learning as you went. Tim was a good kid; he’d made some mistakes, but then, he didn’t have the best role models. When you tried harder, he tried harder, and the results were obvious. Outside, Tim picked up a football and placed it in the kid’s hands. Tim Riggins, big brother. You never thought you’d see it, but he’d learned it somewhere and you smiled as you realized it was from you.
Maybe you weren’t the kind of parent that went to parent/teacher conferences, and maybe you didn’t make cookies for bake sales, but you went to his games, and you tried to show him that he was wanted, that he was loved. One day maybe you’d do the parenting thing for real and Tim would be one hell of a practice run, but you’d never give it up, never take it back.
He was all yours, and your chest could burst with pride. You were you and you loved him, some days that was enough.
/fin/
Author’s Notes: I haven't written second-person POV very often, but I think it's my favorite. I love the way you can get inside a character's head and really play with all the secrets they hold, all the things they think but won't say. Thanks to 1407graymalkin for agreeing that Billy wasn't a main character and rachel_wilder, always, for the beta.
Authors: shelbecat
Rating: T
Disclaimer: I own the idea, everything else belongs to NBC.
Summary: Written for the fnl_laundrylist, Week 4 Challenge. This is Prompt #13: Take any character that is not a main character and write about their life in Dillon as of "Extended Families".
Spoiler: Up to 1x18.
You Were You
Sometimes you wonder what kind of parent you’d be.
There was once, when Tim was still in JV, when a Rally girl came knocking on your door to say she was probably carrying your kid. The party had been chaos, and you didn’t remember much past your first 10 bottles, so really, who were you to say, ‘Nope, wasn’t me.’ Then it came out that her friend just wanted to date Tim and they went away, made-up baby and all.
There was relief then, but you were drinking the day Tim and Jason came home laughing about it, so you weren’t sure if they were laughing at her or you or the idea of you ever being a dad at all.
And there was sadness, just a little. For a second, for a quick moment when the girl with the blonde hair and her brunette friend were standing shy outside your door, you thought, ‘Yeah, I can do this. And I’m going to be nothin’ like Dad.’ Then you cracked open a bottle and chugged down half of it.
A kid was news that required drinking.
There were times when you felt like a parent to Tim, when permission slips would come home from school looking for a signature. Or that one parent/teacher night you’d dressed up and gone to. Your girlfriend at the time had a kid in school so really it was more about the date than your brother, but still, you wore a tie, and that counted for something. You spent the evening talking to Tim’s coach and stealing donuts from the dessert table. The coffee sucked, but Marie looked gorgeous and there was a lot of sex afterwards, so overall it was worth it.
Most days you just tried to stay out of Tim’s way and let him grow into whatever man he was going to be. He was 16 and hormonal, hopped up on the highs of football and the lows of fucking his best friend’s girl; and when he wanted his Daddy back, who were you to say no?
You tried to warn him, tried to explain that this was going to end badly, no matter how much he wanted it, but Tim was Tim and you had to let him go. That was a parenting thing, right? Letting them make their own mistakes? When he backed down the driveway you felt your heart going right along with him. All the way to Corpus Christi and back, thankfully, but your heart wasn’t much of a protector, or a warning, and somehow Tim managed to bring the old man back along with him.
He was just a kid, and you couldn’t be mad, but you were.
You couldn’t stay there and watch Tim get his dreams crushed, so you left. It wasn’t the stuff of good parents, but then, no one ever said you were a good one, you just were and Tim either appreciated it or he didn’t. You wanted to protect him, wanted to be there with peroxide and band-aids like that time when he was 12 and him and Jay had somehow managed to scrape all four knees recreating a scene from The Fast and the Furious. He’d looked at you with sad eyes and a quivering lip, but didn’t cry-wouldn’t cry. A part of you wanted to slap him around for being so goddamn reckless, but instead you blew softly on the cuts, slapped on the band-aids and whispered in his ear that at least his cuts were bigger than Jay’s. That made him smile. Good parent moment right there.
Now he was all grown up and refusing your advice, let alone your comfort, so you stayed at Trudy’s and waited for the inevitable call. You didn’t think it would be Tyra making it, but then Tim always did have a soft spot for that girl. At home, pressing ice on his face and tsk-ing softly at the bruised mass that was once your baby brother, you laid all the blame squarely on yourself. Walt was gone. Tim had somehow seen to that; but you never should have let it get this far. You were the adult, the parent, and want it or not, Tim was your responsibility.
Today it was just the two of you again. Walt was a fading memory and Tim refused to talk about it. You stood in the doorway and watched Tim in the driveway. That little kid from next door was back again, the one who never seemed to take a breath. Tim was squinting into the sun, the bruise on his face still visible, but fading. He was dirty from cleaning gutters that weren’t yours, but he looked happy and you couldn’t fault him for helping your neighbor-after all, she was hot.
You thought about being a parent then, about making mistakes and learning as you went. Tim was a good kid; he’d made some mistakes, but then, he didn’t have the best role models. When you tried harder, he tried harder, and the results were obvious. Outside, Tim picked up a football and placed it in the kid’s hands. Tim Riggins, big brother. You never thought you’d see it, but he’d learned it somewhere and you smiled as you realized it was from you.
Maybe you weren’t the kind of parent that went to parent/teacher conferences, and maybe you didn’t make cookies for bake sales, but you went to his games, and you tried to show him that he was wanted, that he was loved. One day maybe you’d do the parenting thing for real and Tim would be one hell of a practice run, but you’d never give it up, never take it back.
He was all yours, and your chest could burst with pride. You were you and you loved him, some days that was enough.
/fin/
Author’s Notes: I haven't written second-person POV very often, but I think it's my favorite. I love the way you can get inside a character's head and really play with all the secrets they hold, all the things they think but won't say. Thanks to 1407graymalkin for agreeing that Billy wasn't a main character and rachel_wilder, always, for the beta.