omg_wtf_yeah | HLotS fiction: Unlove You

Title: Coming Home (part 2/?)
Rating: 13
Fandom: Homicide: Life on the Street
Pairing: Frank/Tim
Summary: Preslash, set after the movie. (Spoilers for the entire series.) When Tim is released from prison Frank offers a helping hand.
Warnings: Mild profanity.
Disclaimer: The characters of Frank Pembleton and Tim Bayliss as well as the series Homicide belong to NBC, Tom Fontana and David Simon.
Table: In this post.
Prompt: #9 Always wondered what this would be like.

(Part One)

(Part Two)

A little after ten the Waffle House off the state road was still open.

Frank and Tim took a seat near the window, Frank gesturing to the waitress as Tim doffed his coat and sat down. Under the hanging lamps Tim’s hair looked darker than it had outside, his beard flecked with gray. It’d been a surprise the first time they’d met after being separate. Frank had expected him to be the same man he’d met in the parking lot of the BPD and was met instead by Tim’s grave features – the knit brows that said what he wasn’t saying.

Frank tongued his cheek, saying nothing as he inspected Tim’s features. The soft squeak of the waitress’s white sneakers heralded her approach. Tim kept his eyes on the salt and pepper shakers, flicking them up to Frank’s face then over as the waitress arrived. Frank turned away first, vaguely admiring her figure as Tim looked at his profile then at the girl. “Hi, my name’s Juliet. I’ll be your waitress.” She placed their menus down before them, her arm a fence over which Frank glanced at Tim. “What’ll you be having to drink?”

Tim paused and Frank looked in his direction as he hung his head, languidly flipping the laminated menu open. The waitress waited for them. Frank lifted his brows expectantly as Tim read the menu. Frank cleared his throat, crossing his arms over his chest. Tim looked up at him, his mouth heavy as he frowned. He followed the direction of Frank’s eyes up to the waitress who stood, her pad open, pen poised above the sheet. “Coffee. With cream.” He volunteered. Frank folded his hands in the center of the table, releasing Tim from the pressure of his gaze. “Hot water, lemon.” He ordered for himself.

“All right. And will this be on the same check or are you paying separately?”

Frank and Tim shared a look, Tim’s shoulders still curved over his menu and Frank leaning back into the vinyl upholstered bench. Frank lifted his brows, cocking his head and Tim lifted and let fall his shoulder. “Separately.” Tim answered, sparing a brief look at the waitress again. The waitress nodded, smiling as she closed her notebook. “Great. I’ll be right back with your drinks.” Frank followed her exit with his eyes. “Sure that’s okay?” He asked without looking over.

Tim was lost.

“What?” He stared wearily at Frank’s face. Frank stretched his arm out across the length of the back of the bench he sat on. He shrugged. “Spending your money.” He enunciated the words clearly. “When you don’t have a job.” He finished. His brown eyes slid to Tim across the table, catching the light like water in a well. An expression of irritation passed over Tim’s features. “I have savings, Frank.” He said defensively. “I have a savings account.”

Frank shrugged as though to say whatever stupid thing Tim wanted to do was his business.

He baited the hook knowing that Tim could never let it go. For a moment, Tim looked at him incredulously. Then, glancing at the other patrons of the diner, he straightened his back. “I don’t just spend money freely. I save up. I saved up.” Frank spread his palms in the air, shrugging his shoulders. “Okay.” He said. “You don’t have to tell me.” It seemed as though his words drained away Tim’s stubbornness. His hazel eyes lingered on Frank, seeming suddenly confused and troubled. He opened his mouth to say something more but closed it and looked down.

Tim pored over the menu and Frank followed the movements of the other diners, seated across the restaurant near the door. Outside the windows small lights were perceptible through the shadow, the lit windows of a house across a field. The cold came off the window. Frank flipped the menu open and read the words.

A picture of a pancake made to look like a smiling face peered up at him, little blueberry eyes two beady points above a whipped cream grin. It was what Frank Jr. and Olivia ordered when they went out all together of a Saturday morning. Frank decided on a low sodium plate of eggs, breakfast meats and oatmeal. Being the only low sodium entry on the menu the decision wasn’t hard. Having made a decision, he looked at Tim, whose head was bowed over the table, reading the menu like it was a serious piece of literature as he sucked at his lower lip.

Frank leaned back in his seat, stretching his feet out beneath the table. The movement caught Tim’s eyes and he looked up. Frank said nothing for a full minute as Tim stared at him until his stare softened and he bit his lip, distracted and deep in thought.

“You get your hair cut?” Frank said. It was somewhere between a statement and a question because it was evident. Tim’s hair was shorn to a quarter inch length, the shortest Frank had ever seen it. “Yeah.” Tim said. “It was getting long. And, uh…” He shrugged. “I was sick of it, Frank. So I got it cut.” Frank nodded, turning his face away. In his periphery he saw Tim’s expression, like Frank had said something confusing he couldn’t place.

“What you gonna order?” Frank asked, turning the cover of the menu with his index finger. “I think-“ Tim’s answer was interrupted by the waitress’s appearance. They both looked up at her sudden return.

“Coffee with cream and hot water with lemon.” The waitress narrated as she set their drinks out before them. “Are you ready to order?”

“Yeah.” Frank replied indolently. “I’ll have the number twelve.” The waitress scribbled the order in her notepad and having finished, Frank nodded, looked back at Tim. “All right.” She said, “And for you?” Tim pointed at the menu. “Can I get a number six? With, you know… I don’t want the sausage.” The waitress nodded. “So, a number six, no sausage.” She repeated. Frank expected him to order the eggs poached or singularly egg whites but Tim nodded his assent and the waitress folded her pad and turned away.

“You still not eating meat?” Frank asked. Tim looked up, placing the small square sugar receptacle before him, carefully straightening the packets of Nutrisweet. “Uh, yeah.” He replied. “Force of habit.”

“And you don’t think a cow would eat you if the tables were turned?” Tim scowled irritably. “No, Frank, I don’t care if a cow would eat me. What does that – cows are herbivores.”

“I know they’re herbivores. But if a cow was at the top of the food chain you think it would choose not to eat a human?”

“That doesn’t even make sense, Frank.”

“Neither does not eating meat.”

Tim appraised Frank’s features with sudden coolness and the old rapport stalled with that look, his stillness. Again Frank noticed his weary demeanor, the gray in his beard. His fingers played at the edge of the sugar packets beneath them. “Yeah, well, some things I do don’t make a lot of sense, Frank.” Again, there was that irritating expression like Frank didn’t understand him, never tried to and when he got it Frank found himself having to yield to him like with Mary if he wanted to have peace.

Sometimes it’d be nice if they could talk in Standard English instead of speaking in landmines like some tiresome married routine. Frank’s dark eyes sharpened. “I’ve noticed that.” Tim was quiet at his reply and they were at stalemate – immersed in some memory of the past. Tim’s lips sagged, his eyes downturned and soft with surrender. Frank stared at him for a while, saying nothing at all.

Across the restaurant the other customers were bent in quiet conversation, looking probably like they did. Stillness belying a struggle. They worked in those slow circles, back to the place they’d once been – back to where they belonged. It was hard to find their rhythm after they’d lost it. Hard and surprisingly easy at once because sitting across from Tim in a roadside diner felt natural. Familiar. Like coming home. It was easy to imagine that time hadn’t forged divergent paths for them, that they were working out a case, opposing each other, supporting each other. The old rhythm never really went. It just changed into something else. He didn’t know which it was anymore – if it was too different or oddly the same.

Frank’s eyes slid from the other patrons back to the bar with its vinyl stools the color of cherry lollipops, over the checkered floor and back to Tim. He saw the crown of his head, hair an in-between color, shorn so short. He tried to figure that out, couldn’t get to it, why it felt like a mystery – that short, short hair.

“So what’d you do in there?” He asked. Tim looked up at the sound of his voice. Hesitating, his fingers stroked the sugar packets with tenderness and negligence only Tim could turn on objects inanimate. He slipped them back into the sugar receptacle. “I was being rehabilitated, Frank.” The way he said it sounded spiritual, like a religious trial – karma by way of the American judicial system, which irritated Frank and soothed his nerves. “I was paying penance for my crime.” Frank pursed his lips, digesting it – how it could irritate and vindicate him simultaneously. At length, he nodded, letting it go.

“Good.”

The weary weight of Tim’s gaze communicated something neither of them wanted to hear and across the room the waitress’s sneakers scuffed on the linoleum floor. “Anything else I should know about?” Tim shrugged, looking down into his coffee cup. He picked up his spoon and swept it in slow circles in the cup, metal clicking against ceramic. He cupped his coffee in his hands and lifted it, sipping cautiously then set it back down and picked two packets of sweetener up, muttering to himself. “No sugar.” He’d forgotten. It reminded Frank of something else. He nodded, lifting his cup to his lips.

“You forgive yourself?” Tim glanced at him, surprised by the question. “What?” He asked.

Frank straightened, placing his cup on the table with a low sound. His gaze was level. “Did you forgive yourself in there – for killing Ryland?” Tim’s eyes were blank, his lips lax and his white teeth were visible. “No.” He said as though shocked. Then, shaking his head, he said, “I’m guilty, Frank. I killed him.” Frank motioned downward with his hands and Bayliss cast a glance over his shoulder at the other diners by the door.

“You forgave your uncle.”

Again, Frank’s words drew Tim’s gaze and jarred him. He stared inexpressively at Frank for a moment and Frank lifted his brows, frowning. “I didn’t forgive my uncle, Frank.” His voice was hoarse. “I came to terms with what he did.” He dropped his gaze back to his coffee and flexed his fingers on his cup. Frank nodded slowly. He shrugged.

“It’s…Y’know, it’s not the same.”

“That’s true.”

Tim looked up at him, startled by the concession though he shouldn’t have been. There were times that Frank could yield as well.