Work Text:
"Hey." Raylan caught Tim by the arm coming out of the office.
He let him, obviously, and he stopped and turned to him just like Raylan wanted.
"Can we do the thing without having sex?" Raylan asked, out in the open air.
Tim sighed. "I don't know, Raylan. Can we?"
Raylan scoffed and rolled his eyes. "Sorry, Ms. Gutterson. May we?"
Jesus, what an asshole. Tim wiped at his eye. "I'm being serious, Raylan," he protested lowly. "Can we get through a spanking session without it devolving into fucking? We haven't so far."
"Well," Raylan offered, "we haven't tried yet. We're capable adults."
He was gonna regret this. "Fine. One more spanking before you hit the road. My place or yours?"
**
Tim was having deja vu, fully dressed with Raylan in his lap. At least they were at his apartment instead of a seized McMansion this time.
It was easy to settle into the rhythm of things, hitting Raylan's backside and calling him naughty. Raylan reacted as beautifully as usual, yelping and moaning with each smack.
What was hard, besides Tim's dick, was doing nothing about the way he wanted to buck his hips and stuff himself down Raylan's throat.
Raylan moaned again and pressed his own hardness against Tim's hip, and this just wasn't working.
"Stop, stop," he said and hauled Raylan until he was upright. "Why am I doing this?"
The question was rhetorical, but Raylan tried to answer anyway. "Because I let Ava get away?"
"Let? Jesus—" Tim cut himself off to pinch the bridge of his nose. "You got shot in the fucking head!"
"But if I had—" Raylan started, but Tim shook his head in dismissal.
"That's not the point," Tim said, suddenly tired. "I mean, what am I getting out of this?"
Raylan looked absolutely baffled. "You like hitting me," he said, like it was obvious.
Maybe it was, based on the tent in his pants. Tim sighed. "Sexually. I like it, sexually. What do I get if we don't have sex?"
Raylan rolled his eyes. "What do you ever get for helping me out?"
Tim closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "Okay. We're done here. Get out."
"Wait, what?" Raylan protested. "That's just. . . it?"
"Yeah, that's what I'm sayin'," Tim confirmed.
Raylan frowned even as he slid off the bed and pulled his pants up. "You said this wouldn't get weird," he accused.
"No," Tim said, more patiently than Raylan deserved, "I said it was already weird."
"What's that even supposed to mean?" He watched Tim get off the bed as well and then open his closet to grab a jacket. "Where are you going? This is your place."
Tim laughed, a harsh, mean little thing. "I'm going out to get a good hard fuck because I'm not finding one here."
Raylan put his hands on his hips. "Well, that's hardly fair. I'm seeing someone again."
"Fair?" Tim pulled on his jacket and glared until Raylan started moving toward the door. "What's fair about you getting back with the mother of your child while I'm—" Maybe if he just stopped talking, Raylan wouldn't notice what he'd almost said.
"While you're what?" Raylan threw back with a heated look in his eye.
Yeah, not so much.
"I'm in love with you, Raylan," Tim said as flatly as he could.
Raylan scrubbed a hand over his face, like this was surprising news or something. Tim took the opportunity to push past him and grab his keys off the hook. He opened the apartment's front door and tugged Raylan along with him as he stepped out into the hallway.
While Tim locked the door behind them, Raylan sighed. "You coulda said something."
Tim didn't look to make eye contact. "Shouldn't've had to."
"Oh, I have to be a mind reader now?" Just from his voice, Tim could tell he had his hands back on his hips.
"I honestly thought you knew," Tim admitted, finally looking at Raylan's face.
For some reason, Raylan looked hurt. "You thought I knew and was purposely being a dick about it?"
"You did it to Crowder," Tim pointed out.
"Listen, Boyd and me—"
"I meant Ava, Jesus Christ," Tim interrupted, before they got into something he really wasn't interested in hearing about.
"Oh." Raylan frowned at him, looking as tired as Tim felt. "Well, I like you better'n Ava."
Tim smiled weakly at that. "But you don't love me."
Raylan winced. "Sorry."
"Christ, don't apologize," Tim complained. "I didn't ever expect it, anyways."
"I'm starting to hate low expectations," Raylan said under his breath.
Tim rolled his eyes, but quickly found himself pushed up against his front door and getting kissed within an inch of his life. He barely had the chance to open his mouth on a moan before Raylan was pulling back away.
"I coulda," Raylan said sternly, pointing with his finger for emphasis. "If you'da let me."
Then he turned to leave.
"Raylan," Tim tried, but the man was gone, down the hallway, without a look back.
Fuck.
Somehow Tim came off as the asshole here, didn't he?
**
He did go out, but he didn't pick anybody up. Just wasn't in the mood anymore.
**
Work was boring without Raylan or Boyd stirring up shit. A month passed without much incident.
Then Tim received a text.
"it didnt work out," read the first one, coming from Raylan, followed by, "with me and Winona," as though Tim couldn't figure that out on his own.
Tim didn't know how he was supposed to feel about that, besides like he could have predicted it to the day, if he'd wanted to. More than that, though, he didn't know how Raylan wanted him to feel about it.
Well, Tim decided he was still mad at him, and sent back, "Cool beans, dude," and ignored all subsequent texts.
The subsequent texts went on for weeks, and with each stupid non sequitur, photo of whatever random cat Raylan ran into, and rare selfie, Tim felt his resolve weakening.
Fuck, but he really liked Raylan.
Then came the ice cream photo.
**
It wasn't really about the ice cream photo; Tim honestly just missed Raylan. And sometimes he was just insanely horny. That's life for you.
So when Raylan sent the photo of himself holding a vanilla ice cream cone with melted ice cream dripping down onto his long fingers, Tim didn't bother responding via text and just hit call.
"Are you in public?"
"Hi, Tim, it's nice to hear from you," Raylan answered sedately, a smug smile audible in his voice. "How're you doing?"
"Fuck you," Tim snaps back, letting the sound of his pants' buttons popping open speak for itself. "Take your pants off, Givens."
Raylan laughed, full and delighted. "You givin' me another chance?"
"I didn't wanna give up on you in the first place," Tim admitted, shifting his phone to his shoulder. "Now get me off or I'm blocking your number."
It didn't matter if he was contradicting himself. Raylan was gonna do the right thing.