Shooting Stars
by DevilChild
Fandom: Friday Night Lights
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Tim/Landry
Author's Note: Sequel to Under The Bleachers.
This also came out of my attempt to write that angsty story where Tim and Landry get caught under the bleachers by coach. I was going to have this scene where Landry raps on Tim's window and asks if he's okay.
And then my brain took the idea of Landry rapping on Tim's window and ran with it.
Thanks to M'lyn for some research help.
Copyright and Disclaimer:
Friday Night Lights is copyright its respective owners
. I make no claims to ownership or creation. This bit of not for profit modern folklore (thank you Prof. Jenkins) is mine.
Sharp tapping on his window wakes Tim some time in the middle of the night. He stumbles over and hikes the blinds. Only, they're old and the pull cords have been fucked up for years, and the left side goes up and the right side — the side that the window opens on — only goes up an inch or two, so he grumbles and ducks under them.
It's Landry.
Tim slides the window open. It sticks and squeaks in the dusty tracks because it's been years since he's actually had to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night. (The last time he tried it, back when he was 14, he made such a racket when he tripped over some pool gear that Billy bitched him out for waking him up, not for actually sneaking out at 2 am.)
"Hey," Landry says. "Are — are you okay?"
Why wouldn't I be? "I guess," Tim mumbles dully, dragging a hand through his hair and getting it snagged in a knot. "Why?"
"You've got a —" Landry's hand reaches out, heading for Tim's ribs.
Tim snatches it before it can connect. Right now, the bruise is mostly a pinkish lump with some faint purple-blue, but in a few days, it's going to be a really ugly mess of green and yellow. "I made a bad block in practice."
"Oh." But Landry can't take his eyes off of it. It fascinates him for some reason.
"It happens." Tim crosses his arms over his chest. "What's up?" He can't really be cranky and pissy about Landry doing this to him, because he did it to Landry not too long ago.
"Well, I don't really sleep well, or a lot, and there's what's supposed to be a really good meteor shower in about 45 minutes. Want to go see?"
Not really. He's got another practice in the morning. But there's this hopeful excitement in Landry's voice and Tim's never actually
seen a meteor shower. He drags his hand over his face and says, "Let me get dressed. Meet me at the front door in about five minutes."
Tim throws on his heaviest sweats and grabs his jacket. On the way out the door, he pockets his keys — if they're going to watch the sky, it's probably better if they do it from the bed of his truck, rather than twisting their necks this way and that in Landry's POS station wagon. He steps out the door. "You drive a standard shift?"
Landry blinks. "Uh ... yeah."
Tim flips him the keys, "Let's take my truck. You drive." I'm tired enough, I might as well be drunk.
"Okay. Let me grab the stuff from my car." Landry comes back a few moments later with a few ratty old quilts, an old sleeping bag, and one of those fleece blankets you can buy for about $10 at the grocery store. "Normally, I spread these on the ground."
Tim scrubs at his eyes and climbs in the passenger side, which feels a bit strange, because he's almost never not the one driving his truck.
There's a lot of slop in the column shift, but Landry only grinds it once as he guides them out to the bluffs. He's talking all about stars and planets and asteroids and his voice washes over Tim, who leans his head against the window and falls into a weird half-dreaming, half-awake state until Landry jostles him and says, "We're here."
They lay the sleeping bag and quilts in the truck bed, putting the blanket over their legs, and Tim half-wonders if laying them over the ground might be the better option, because they're not doing that much to soften the bumpy metal of the truck bed.
Tim's half surprised to discover that they're not the only people here. Landry got waves from (and waved back to) the people in three other cars parked out here.
"You do this often?"
"Yeah. There's more of us insomniacs out here in the summer, though." He pauses. "In summer, Matt sometimes comes out here with me. I think Julie would like them too, but there's no way in hell that Coach or Mrs. Taylor's going to okay that."
Tim chuckles at the idea of Coach along with Matt, Landry, and Julie. Hell, the idea of Coach and Landry spending five minutes with each other. He says, "So what are we out here for again?"
"The Leonids. They're going to look like they're coming out of Leo."
"And where's that, because I only know the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and the North Star."
Landry tries to point it out to him, but the night is so cold and clear that the Milky Way actually looks like a smear of milk, and the sky is so full of stars, it's impossible to figure out exactly what he means when he says things like, "That reddish one, right next to the bright white one."
"Tell you what. I think I'll figure it out when the show starts." He cracks a huge yawn.
Landry laughs. Tim thinks about biffing him in the head, but that would mean taking his hands out of his pockets.
He doesn't mean to, but it's so quiet, with only the occasional sound and feel of Landry shifting next to him that Tim dozes off again. Landry's elbow nudges him. "Tim, it's starting."
He can't quite find words for what happens next. Shooting stars streak across the sky, and Tim suddenly remembers the first time he saw one. He was about six, and they were taking a long road trip and he saw one blazing across the sky and ooohed so loudly that it woke Billy up. For months afterwards he was obsessed with Tootsie Pops and getting the shooting star on the wrapper and making a wish.
(None of them ever came true.)
He can't —
He doesn't —
He had half forgotten than things this amazing and wonderful exist. He can feel the slack jaw smile on his face, hear himself gasp, and even give a soft "oh" in stereo with Landry when the shower peaks. He even blows out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding when the last trails of fire fade from the horizon.
"That was amazing," he whispers into Landry's ear.
Landry gives him a goofy, happy smile back, and replies, "De nada."
They're not yet quite ready to go, so they both hunker down under the blanket. Landry's next to him, pointing out other constellations, and talking about which stars in them are special. And some of them aren't even stars, they're nebulas, which means they're actually remnants of stars that went supernova and exploded.
He wakes up spooned around Landry, and it's fucking freezing cold, the sky is starting to turn grey along the edges, and he's got to piss so bad it's like someone's knifing him in the groin.
But then Landry sighs in his sleep, and shifts against him, and Tim decides he can hold it just a little while longer.
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Last Updated: 6/07/07