Thud.

The crutch just barely missed Raylan as it fell. Not that he cared; the crutch wasn't the only thing falling, and it was the other floor-bound figure that he was worried about.

Sheer reflex had him moving forward the same time he put his arm out, and it was those reflexes he thanked – and a couple of gods, for that matter – when he managed to catch Tim around the waist and chest in an awkward sort of half-hug. He wasn't entirely sure if the grunt that came out of Tim's mouth right after was more pain or surprise, but he was quick to try to get a better hold on him, pulling Tim back against his chest by his hips so that he could let go of his shoulder.

It would've worked a lot better if Tim hadn't immediately tried to throw an elbow at him.

The hand that he'd had on his shoulder went immediately to hooking around his arm, pulling it behind his back with just enough force to hold him still and (hopefully) not enough to bust the line of stitches running what felt like half a mile down his chest.

"Hey, hey, easy" he said, pulling Tim a little closer by the hand around his hips – he didn't dare pull his arm any tighter; those stitches of his could only handle so much – when he gave another jerk trying to turn himself loose. "It's just me, Tim. It's just me."

With the way he was holding him, Raylan couldn't see Tim's face. He didn't need to, though, to know when he started to relax. He felt it, as all of Tim's too-tense muscles relaxed a little bit. Not all the way, though; he was having to fight too hard to keep himself upright. "There you go," he said. "Come on, let's get you back to bed." And he started to get him headed that direction, starting with kicking the crutch up off the floor so that he could give Tim something else to hold him up.

Only, Tim started pushing himself back. "No," he said.

Raylan stopped short. Moving Tim would be hard enough if he had Tim's cooperation; he wasn't going to try if Tim was resisting, for Tim's good and his own. Besides, he wasn't Tim's warden. If he didn't want to go back to his bedroom, then Raylan would at least hear him out on why.

"No?"

Tim shook his head, only to let out a soft groan. The knot on the back of his head was still giving him fits, and when he started to tip over, Raylan took that as his cue to start getting Tim somewhere he could get him horizontal. Just as he started steering him towards the bedroom again, though, Tim grabbed his arm.

"I'm sick of the bedroom," Tim said.

Raylan quirked an eyebrow. "Never thought I'd hear those words coming out of your mouth."

"You're a hoot." The snark in Tim's voice was offset by the reedy strain. He was hurting; Raylan could tell. He was hurting bad. Raylan needed to get him off his leg and get some painkillers in him, preferably after some food.

"Okay, not the bedroom," Raylan said. "How about the living room, then? Pop in one of those movies you're so fond of and have ourselves a party. Sound good?"

"Yeah," Tim said through gritted teeth. "Sounds good."

Raylan figured he probably would've gone with the laundry room at that point, if it meant getting off his leg. Having been shot before himself, Raylan could respect the notion, and he started Tim for the living room so that hopefully, he could get him sitting down before he fell down.

"Easy does it," Raylan said as he helped Tim down the hall. He was on Tim's bad side, the one with the sling, holding him by his hips while Tim used the crutch to balance it out on the other side. "Almost there. Just keep one foot on front of the other, okay? You're almost there."

Tim's head dipped tersely in as close to a nod as Raylan figured he could give. He was breathing a hell of a lot harder than someone should've been just walking a couple of yards down the hall, but then, most "someone"s hadn't been carved like a Thanksgiving turkey from shoulder to hip and shot in the leg. Frankly, Raylan was amazed Tim was still moving as well as he was. And what's more, for all the pain Raylan knew he had to be in, he didn't say a damn thing. Not a single complaint. Nothing.

It was like Raylan had said all along: Tim Gutterson was a tough little son of a bitch. And what's more, he was Raylan's tough little son of a bitch.

It wasn't until about a half hour later that Raylan was reminded that even someone tough and crazy and all around impossible as Tim had his limits.

He'd been in the kitchen getting some soup – chicken noodle microwaved from a can, 'cause hell, that was about where his cooking skills topped out – and he was just coming back with a bowl of it in one hand, a glass of water in the other, and a bottle of pills in the pocket of his jeans.

A part of him was relieved to find Tim still stretched out on the couch, hand over his face and breath coming a lot more regularly than before. He hadn't really thought the guy would go anywhere, but Tim always was a little stir crazy, even back in the hospital when he'd been in worse shape than this.

Granted in the hospital, he'd had better pain meds than this, too. Hell of a lot easier to push his limits when he was high as a kite.

But no, Tim was still on the sofa where he was supposed to be, stretched out with his ankle propped up on the leg of the couch to keep his thigh elevated, as per doctor's orders.

"Dinner's served," he said as he walked in, sitting the bowl on an old gun magazine on the table and the glass on a coaster. He was working on pulling the table a little closer to the sofa when the silence started striking him as odd. Tim was a quiet fella, but he wasn't that quiet. He'd have made some sort of noise, if only one of his little grunts.

"Tim, you awake?"

No answer.

He turned back around to the sofa. "Tim, are you—" He stopped, his heart dropping into the pit of his gut. "Jesus Christ."

He hadn't noticed when he came in; Tim's hand had been over his eyes. But now it was over his mouth, tensed so hard it shook just like the rest of him. There were tears in his eyes, streaming down his cheeks as he stared up at the ceiling.

Tim was crying.

But what's worse – he was trying, Christ but he was trying, to keep it all back. Like a levee on the business end of a hurricane: bound to break, but fighting it for all it was worth.

Raylan turned the rest of the way around in a hurry, sitting up on his knees next to the couch. "Tim, what—" Raylan went to move his hand, but Tim shrugged him off.

"I'm fine."

It would've been easier to buy if his voice hadn't caught, and Raylan wasn't gonna be blocked out so easy. "Don't lie to me," he said, wrapping his fingers through Tim's and pulling his hand from his face altogether, curling it in his own larger hand. "You've got nothing you've gotta hide."

And there went the levee.

The first sob came the moment Tim's hand was gone, and it went downhill from there. They were harsh enough to wrack his whole form, and Tim started trying to sit up, to curl in on himself, but Raylan intercepted him.

"Hey, come here," he said, sliding in behind him on the couch as carefully as he could and pulling him close. He held him, firm as he dared, and Tim held on all of half a second before he broke down. As Raylan wrapped his arms around him, Tim turned into Raylan's shoulder. It was all the turning he could do, being in the shape he was, but it was enough that Raylan couldn't see his face, and Raylan figured that was the whole point.

Not that it mattered. He didn't need to see his face to feel his pain. He could feel it in every shake of his shoulders, in every pound of pressure in Tim's grip on his arm, in every drop of moisture that seeped through the grey cotton of his t-shirt. Even if Tim didn't make a sound – seemed he dealt with this kind of pain the same way he dealt with the other kind: silently – Raylan knew.

Raylan had never been the kind to get uncomfortable with silence, though, and it seemed to him that there weren't really any words for this sort of thing. What did you say to comfort someone after something like this?

You didn't.

You didn't say a damn thing, and Raylan didn't. He and Tim had never really been about words, anyhow. It was more about understanding, about presence, and Raylan knew now that the best thing he could do for his lover was to make him understand that he was there. That he was there, and that Tim was safe.

And after God only knew how long, after the soup went cold and the water went warm, when Tim finally got himself together enough to put words together, he listened.

"I thought…" Tim's voice was muffled by Raylan's shoulder, but Tim never exactly crystal clear when he was speaking, anyhow. Raylan had gotten pretty good at sorting through the mumbled bits.

Tim didn't seem to care much for it, though. He straightened up as best he could, wedging his good shoulder in between two of the cushions on the back of the couch to hold himself up. He forced out a chuckle that sounded to Raylan a little too much like one of the choked-back sobs he'd heard before. "The door…for a second, I thought…" His voice kept catching, and he couldn't seem to finish the thought.

Raylan finished it for him. "You thought I was one of them," he said. The realization made him frown. That was why Tim had been so bent when he'd first caught him in the hall. "You thought I was one of the Reavers."

Dragging the back of his hand across his eyes, Tim gave a sad sort of one-sided shrug. "The thought had crossed my mind."

"Did more than cross it, it looked like."

Tim bristled, and Raylan knew he was fixing to get the earful that had been months in coming. "Well, what the hell was I supposed to think, Raylan? Sure as hell didn't think it'd be you."

Still, seemed knowing it was coming didn't do anything to ease his temper. It stung, hearing that Tim didn't think he'd stay. He'd spent every hour of his day at the hospital that he hadn't spent at the office dealing with the bastards that had done this to his Tim. And Tim just thought he'd leave him? "You think I was just gonna bring you home and that'd be that?"

Tim's face was turning red, the fingers of his good hand twisting into a fist around the blue fabric of his UK basketball shorts. "I wasn't your problem anymore!"

"You were never my problem!"

Tim flinched.

Raylan froze.

Shit, he hadn't meant to shout like that. Hadn't meant to raise his voice or lose his temper. He was supposed to be making Tim feel safe, not giving him something else to be afraid of.

"I'm sorry," he said, and the words felt foreign on his tongue. Tim Gutterson didn't miss, and Raylan Givens didn't apologize. Not for just anybody. Not for just any reason.

Frowning, he tried to get his shit back together. Figure out what he wanted to say before he opened his big mouth again.

Easier said than done.

It took a good long bit of silence in which Raylan finally got a good idea of what people meant by "uncomfortable silence" before he finally managed to figure out just what it was he wanted to say and how to say it without hopefully making himself look like more of an ass than he already had.

"Tim, I'm not just gonna leave you here by yourself. And even if I could in good conscience, which I can't, I wouldn't want to. I didn't keep coming by the hospital, spending the night in that hard ass plastic chair, 'cause I liked the scenery. I did it 'cause I wanted to be there for you." He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "I still do. I want to be here for you, and I don't want to leave you alone."

As much as he wanted to keep on, to say everything running through his head, he could tell by the look on Tim's face that he needed to give him a second to sort through what he'd already said. Tim was generally pretty quick on the uptake, but a week on heavy-duty painkillers was bound to gum up even some of the best-oiled machines, and there was no point in saying what he had to say if Tim couldn't process it.

But finally, the gears got turning, and comprehension slowly started to spread across Tim's still-red face. "You spent the night at the hospital?"

Raylan could've smacked him. All that, and that was what he wanted to know? But no, he forced himself to calm down. No more losing his temper. Small steps.

"Yeah," he said. "Every night."

"And you…you're uh…you're staying here, too?" Was that hope Raylan saw in those baby blues? "I mean, while I'm laid out and all."

Smiling patiently, Raylan nodded. "Already cleared the time off with Art."

And Tim, God save him, looked genuinely surprised. Happy, but really just confused out of his damn mind. "Why?" he said. "Why would you do that?"

"Let's just say I'm fond of the company. And Tim?"

"Huh?"

Raylan fixed Tim with the moist pointed, dubious expression he could muster. "Did you really think I was one of them?"

The prod was meant to be lighthearted, and Tim took it that way, giving half a sheepish shrug. "Well, just 'cause you're paranoid…"

"Doesn't mean someone's not out to get you." Raylan nodded. "But to be fair, just 'cause someone's out to get you, doesn't mean they will."

Tim turned his head as best he could, eyebrow raised as well as the still-healing cut on his brow would allow. "Oh yeah?"

Again, Raylan nodded. "Yeah."

"And how's that?"

"'Cause," Raylan said, cupping a hand to Tim's lightly-stubbled cheek, "you got me to protect you."

Tim swallowed thickly, almost nervously, but he leaned into the touch just the same. "That right?" he said.

Raylan smiled. "That's right. And you know why?"

This time, though, when Tim opened his mouth, Raylan cut him off with a kiss. Nothing rough, nothing desperate…just smooth and warm and real. Because if he'd learned anything over the past week, it was that there was more between him at Tim than fire and friction.

"'Cause I love you, idiot."