FNL Fic: Faded From Winter, We Will Stretch Our Wings (Landry, Tim)
Friday Night Lights
Faded from the Winter, We Will Stretch Our Wings
Landry, Tim. E for Everyone.
“You know it’s illegal to pick bluebonnets in Texas?”
Faded From Winter, We Will Stretch Our Wings
Landry’s art teacher isn’t from around here and spends long hours waxing poetic about the big sky above them, clear, crisp, and cloudless and how you don’t get that color blue in Dallas. Landry thinks of Dallas a night, all violet, red, and orange, and wonders why anyone would leave there to come here.
Landry’s mom is still sleeping when he leaves at noon, but there’s a bright pink post-it on his steering wheel that says pick up your meds. home for dinner w/ dad? in tightly packed script with a flower doodled in the corner that she signs all her notes with. His is the only car in the driveway. He throws it crumpled into a ball onto the passenger and it’s lost in the ever accumulating papers and books that live in his car.
“I like the flower,” says Riggins after a period of comfortable silence and a moment goes by where Landry doesn’t know what he’s talking about until he sees the wrinkled magenta peeking out between Riggins’s fingers.
“It’s a bluebonnet.”
“It looks like corn.”
“It’s a bluebonnet.”
“I think I know what my state flower looks like and this is not a bluebonnet.”
“She likes bluebonnets, it’s a bluebonnet. Shut the hell up.” There’s a long stretch of silence before Riggins lets it go and the paper flutters down to the floor in lazy circles. Riggins stares straight out ahead and finally Landry says, “I take medicine to help me sleep.”
“Oh.” Then, “Are we there yet?”
”Be patient, Riggins, I’m broadening your horizons.”
“Yeah, I’ve never seen Texas before.”
“Was that a joke? A real live joke?” Landry doesn’t have the heart to tell him that sarcasm is the lowest form of humor if only because he doesn’t want to step on Tim while he’s still growing.
“Sometimes I have thoughts too.”
“I’ll try to keep that secret for you.” The road ahead of them looks endless and endlessly bleak with tall brown and yellow-green grasses spouting up on both sides. When Landry was younger, his family used to come out and pick wildflowers off the highway and on the long ride home, Landry’s mother would make long garlands out of wilting Indian paintbrushes, black-eyed susans, and bluebonnets. His parents would shield the bounty of flowers every time they passed a car and it was Landry’s job to make sure that no one spotted the illegally picked flowers. By the time they got home, the flowers would be wet and dark, browning under in the face of the sun.
Between the grasses, he can make out the faintest pale pink turning its face away from the bleaching light overhead.
“I’m starving.” Riggins speaks so little ordinarily, but when he gets a subject in his head, he will just not shut up.
“We’ll be there soon.”
“I want a burger.”
“There’s no beef in the Garden.” Tim turns full-body to stare at him and, out of the corner of his eye, Landry can make out his bemused expression. “What do you think vegetarian means, Riggins?”
“Birdfood.”
Landry twists his mouth in disgust. “You are… so typical.” And then he laughs because Tim Riggins is a lot of things-annoying as hell among them, but he’s probably not that typical. “You are going to be amazed.”
“Is it going to blow my mind, Landry?”
“Yes. You’ll be a whole new person.”
“You’re just always making me better.”
Landry thinks that if he hadn’t found Matt all those years back, he probably would have ended up just like Riggins. What a fortunate twist of fate that Matt ended up tripping over his own two feet and landing himself in the nurse’s office the day that Landry was throwing up a spectacular shade of purple. They might never have met otherwise.
“Do you remember making those bluebonnets out of popcorn?”
Tim sighs. “What are you talking about?”
Sometimes Landry forgets that not everyone can just read his mind the way Matt can. “You know, in like fourth grade?” The road curves a bit in front of them and suddenly Landry’s vision is flooded with blinding white. He squints at the road-Tim’s pulled out his sunglasses. “With the popcorn that was all sticky and dyed blue?”
“Yeah?”
“Once I ate so much of popcorn instead of making my bluebonnet that I threw up all over the hallway.”
“I know.” When Landry turns to look at him, Tim sighs. “I was in your class.”
“Really?” He has a vision of skinny, quiet Timmy Riggins, who never said a word unless called on and stuttered over paragraphs of The Giver. It’s hard to believe that there was ever a time when Tim Riggins was all elbows and knees and Landry could barely remember his name. “You know they made maroon bluebonnets down in College Station?”
Riggins snorts. “They made orange ones in Austin.” Landry’s not surprised. The things people will do for a football team.
“You know it’s illegal to pick bluebonnets in Texas?”
“I think that’s a myth, Landry.”
“Myths have to start somewhere.” He pauses, feels a prickling heat on his neck. “I mean, that’s what my mom used to tell me.” Tim turns to him with a smile creasing his face and in the instant he takes to open his mouth, Landry cuts him off, “We’re here.”
Riggins looks around. “Huh.”
The Garden looks like your typical falling apart roadside attraction, all weathered wooden panels and dreary windows with a fluorescent sign proclaiming The Garden of Eatin’ in doubled red script. The parking lot isn’t paved, loose gravel skidding under the wheels and pot holes to swallow you whole. It’s neither packed nor empty and Landry smiles gleefully when he checks his cell phone. “We just missed the lunch rush.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it’s normally packed.” Tim swings out of the car easily, gracefully like he’s never had an awkward day in his life, and pushes his sunglasses up his forehead. “I’ve seen you eat meat before.”
Landry shrugs. “My parents are really into healthy stuff.” Off Tim’s glance, he continues, “Like my mom buys organic food. They moved out here to get away from the city-don’t ask me why.”
“That explains so much.”
“Like my superior-” He stops and Tim’s shoulder knocks his as he walks past. Tim spins, boots making arcs in the gravel, holding his hand up a come-on gesture. “That’s my dad.” He’s exiting the Garden, an unbleached paper bag stained with greasy leftovers under his left arm and jingling his keys in his other hand. Landry’s always felt that his father has a distinctive way of jingling his keys, one that Landry could pick out across department stores as a kid. Landry waves before he can stop himself and a second passes in minutes like in a movie where his dad freezes, the restaurant door swings open, and Landry drops his hand.
“Is that-”
“No.” He keeps walking, practiced and easy, until he’s only a few feet away, Riggins suddenly close on his tail. “Hey.”
“Landry.” The name hangs between them and his dad smiles suddenly, brilliantly. Landry wonders what Tim is thinking. “What are you doing here?” He looks messy and loose, Friday's pressed suit turned into Saturday's rumpled shirt.
“We’re uh, having lunch.” He shakes his head, squints in the sun. “Dad, you know Tim Riggins?” He doesn’t, of course. His parents don’t listen to local radio. “Rig-Tim, this is my dad.” Even if Landry is pretty sure that the Riggins home is about as close to a wolf den as possible, Tim does a fair approximation of a normal human when he smiles and shakes hands.
“Landry’s my English tutor. And history.”
“And everything really. Science, math.” Landry grins, rocks back and forth on his heels and Tim knocks him with his shoulder. “General life lessons. I’m his guru.”
“Can anyone sign up?” The woman turns to Tim. “Do you recommend him?” She’s got a wide mouth and kind of messy hair pulled up in a bun.
“Run while you can.” Tim doesn’t appear to be joking.
Landry’s dad clears his throat. “Hannah, this is my son, Landry.” While she’s shaking Tim’s hand, he continues, “I think you two met at the barbeque a while back.”
“Right!” She smiles and drops her hand as she’s reaching out. “Your dad and I work together. I’m-”
“I know who you are.”
There’s a beat and then Tim elbows him painfully. “We should, uh-”
“Right, right.” His dad nods rapidly, looking tired, and the woman seems frozen in her smile. “I’ll see you tonight?" She sighs at the words, says something vague about the stresses of work and Landry's dad avoids his gaze. "I won't be home until late."
Landry shrugs, he’s turning away, thinking of the tiny crumpled paper on his car floor. “Yeah, maybe.” He echoes Tim’s goodbye, leading them both into the quiet of the Garden.
“Nice meeting you!” She yells at them even though they’re still mere feet away.
“Right.” Inside, the light is cooler and the place smells like the heavy pots full of soil and ivy hanging at random intervals around the restaurant. Outside, Landry’s dad gets into his own car and his coworker gets into another. They don’t appear to speak.
Landry reads the menu has he’s never read it before, even when Tim says, “So teach me already,” with a careful laugh and they’re silent until the waitress pours them both ice water and Tim thanks her over loudly. Tim dips his fingers into his glass, pulls out an ice cube to pop into his mouth. The tooth-cracking crunch makes Landry wince.
“Stop doing that.”
Tim swallows the ice. “What’s your dad do?”
“Insurance. That’s his, uh-I don’t remember what she does.”
Tim nods slowly, studying the menu and mouthing words like ‘sprouts’ and ‘cauliflower’ as if they’re alien to him. “My mom-”
“Please stop.” Landry closes his menu, sets it carefully down on the table so that it’s even with the edge. On the cover is a picture of rolling hills covered with blue and white flowers stretching for miles. “We don’t need to share, okay?” He looks past Riggins at the watery sunlight filtering in through the textured glass windows. “Just let it go.” They’re served pita bread and spicy hummus for free; Tim digs in while Landry makes curling designs in the condensation on his water glass. Tim admits that his mind is blown when he bites into the pita, but Landry’s so busy thinking about the black pit in his stomach that he doesn’t notice. There are tiny flowers carved into the silverware.
Riggins’s cheeks are puffy with food and he stretches his arms above him until they crack. Landry runs his finger along the curling shape carved into the table, follows the bud to the main stem only to have it branch out again into dozens of tiny flowers. It’s stained a russet color, making it look almost like an abstract design from this angle.
When he looks up again, Tim’s got one of his stupid half smiles, and he shakes his head so that inertia creates a floating corona of hair around his face. It’s then that Landry squints, sees the cornflower color by Tim’s ear and follows his gaze to the starburst in the window box. It circles the perimeter of the restaurant, exploding into a supernova of cobalt and cream.
“I’m not bailing you out when you get arrested.”
“Sure you will.” Tim flicks one of the fragile buds next to his ear. “They’re not going to miss just one.”
end.
Freedback appreciated.
Faded from the Winter, We Will Stretch Our Wings
Landry, Tim. E for Everyone.
“You know it’s illegal to pick bluebonnets in Texas?”
Faded From Winter, We Will Stretch Our Wings
Landry’s art teacher isn’t from around here and spends long hours waxing poetic about the big sky above them, clear, crisp, and cloudless and how you don’t get that color blue in Dallas. Landry thinks of Dallas a night, all violet, red, and orange, and wonders why anyone would leave there to come here.
Landry’s mom is still sleeping when he leaves at noon, but there’s a bright pink post-it on his steering wheel that says pick up your meds. home for dinner w/ dad? in tightly packed script with a flower doodled in the corner that she signs all her notes with. His is the only car in the driveway. He throws it crumpled into a ball onto the passenger and it’s lost in the ever accumulating papers and books that live in his car.
“I like the flower,” says Riggins after a period of comfortable silence and a moment goes by where Landry doesn’t know what he’s talking about until he sees the wrinkled magenta peeking out between Riggins’s fingers.
“It’s a bluebonnet.”
“It looks like corn.”
“It’s a bluebonnet.”
“I think I know what my state flower looks like and this is not a bluebonnet.”
“She likes bluebonnets, it’s a bluebonnet. Shut the hell up.” There’s a long stretch of silence before Riggins lets it go and the paper flutters down to the floor in lazy circles. Riggins stares straight out ahead and finally Landry says, “I take medicine to help me sleep.”
“Oh.” Then, “Are we there yet?”
”Be patient, Riggins, I’m broadening your horizons.”
“Yeah, I’ve never seen Texas before.”
“Was that a joke? A real live joke?” Landry doesn’t have the heart to tell him that sarcasm is the lowest form of humor if only because he doesn’t want to step on Tim while he’s still growing.
“Sometimes I have thoughts too.”
“I’ll try to keep that secret for you.” The road ahead of them looks endless and endlessly bleak with tall brown and yellow-green grasses spouting up on both sides. When Landry was younger, his family used to come out and pick wildflowers off the highway and on the long ride home, Landry’s mother would make long garlands out of wilting Indian paintbrushes, black-eyed susans, and bluebonnets. His parents would shield the bounty of flowers every time they passed a car and it was Landry’s job to make sure that no one spotted the illegally picked flowers. By the time they got home, the flowers would be wet and dark, browning under in the face of the sun.
Between the grasses, he can make out the faintest pale pink turning its face away from the bleaching light overhead.
“I’m starving.” Riggins speaks so little ordinarily, but when he gets a subject in his head, he will just not shut up.
“We’ll be there soon.”
“I want a burger.”
“There’s no beef in the Garden.” Tim turns full-body to stare at him and, out of the corner of his eye, Landry can make out his bemused expression. “What do you think vegetarian means, Riggins?”
“Birdfood.”
Landry twists his mouth in disgust. “You are… so typical.” And then he laughs because Tim Riggins is a lot of things-annoying as hell among them, but he’s probably not that typical. “You are going to be amazed.”
“Is it going to blow my mind, Landry?”
“Yes. You’ll be a whole new person.”
“You’re just always making me better.”
Landry thinks that if he hadn’t found Matt all those years back, he probably would have ended up just like Riggins. What a fortunate twist of fate that Matt ended up tripping over his own two feet and landing himself in the nurse’s office the day that Landry was throwing up a spectacular shade of purple. They might never have met otherwise.
“Do you remember making those bluebonnets out of popcorn?”
Tim sighs. “What are you talking about?”
Sometimes Landry forgets that not everyone can just read his mind the way Matt can. “You know, in like fourth grade?” The road curves a bit in front of them and suddenly Landry’s vision is flooded with blinding white. He squints at the road-Tim’s pulled out his sunglasses. “With the popcorn that was all sticky and dyed blue?”
“Yeah?”
“Once I ate so much of popcorn instead of making my bluebonnet that I threw up all over the hallway.”
“I know.” When Landry turns to look at him, Tim sighs. “I was in your class.”
“Really?” He has a vision of skinny, quiet Timmy Riggins, who never said a word unless called on and stuttered over paragraphs of The Giver. It’s hard to believe that there was ever a time when Tim Riggins was all elbows and knees and Landry could barely remember his name. “You know they made maroon bluebonnets down in College Station?”
Riggins snorts. “They made orange ones in Austin.” Landry’s not surprised. The things people will do for a football team.
“You know it’s illegal to pick bluebonnets in Texas?”
“I think that’s a myth, Landry.”
“Myths have to start somewhere.” He pauses, feels a prickling heat on his neck. “I mean, that’s what my mom used to tell me.” Tim turns to him with a smile creasing his face and in the instant he takes to open his mouth, Landry cuts him off, “We’re here.”
Riggins looks around. “Huh.”
The Garden looks like your typical falling apart roadside attraction, all weathered wooden panels and dreary windows with a fluorescent sign proclaiming The Garden of Eatin’ in doubled red script. The parking lot isn’t paved, loose gravel skidding under the wheels and pot holes to swallow you whole. It’s neither packed nor empty and Landry smiles gleefully when he checks his cell phone. “We just missed the lunch rush.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it’s normally packed.” Tim swings out of the car easily, gracefully like he’s never had an awkward day in his life, and pushes his sunglasses up his forehead. “I’ve seen you eat meat before.”
Landry shrugs. “My parents are really into healthy stuff.” Off Tim’s glance, he continues, “Like my mom buys organic food. They moved out here to get away from the city-don’t ask me why.”
“That explains so much.”
“Like my superior-” He stops and Tim’s shoulder knocks his as he walks past. Tim spins, boots making arcs in the gravel, holding his hand up a come-on gesture. “That’s my dad.” He’s exiting the Garden, an unbleached paper bag stained with greasy leftovers under his left arm and jingling his keys in his other hand. Landry’s always felt that his father has a distinctive way of jingling his keys, one that Landry could pick out across department stores as a kid. Landry waves before he can stop himself and a second passes in minutes like in a movie where his dad freezes, the restaurant door swings open, and Landry drops his hand.
“Is that-”
“No.” He keeps walking, practiced and easy, until he’s only a few feet away, Riggins suddenly close on his tail. “Hey.”
“Landry.” The name hangs between them and his dad smiles suddenly, brilliantly. Landry wonders what Tim is thinking. “What are you doing here?” He looks messy and loose, Friday's pressed suit turned into Saturday's rumpled shirt.
“We’re uh, having lunch.” He shakes his head, squints in the sun. “Dad, you know Tim Riggins?” He doesn’t, of course. His parents don’t listen to local radio. “Rig-Tim, this is my dad.” Even if Landry is pretty sure that the Riggins home is about as close to a wolf den as possible, Tim does a fair approximation of a normal human when he smiles and shakes hands.
“Landry’s my English tutor. And history.”
“And everything really. Science, math.” Landry grins, rocks back and forth on his heels and Tim knocks him with his shoulder. “General life lessons. I’m his guru.”
“Can anyone sign up?” The woman turns to Tim. “Do you recommend him?” She’s got a wide mouth and kind of messy hair pulled up in a bun.
“Run while you can.” Tim doesn’t appear to be joking.
Landry’s dad clears his throat. “Hannah, this is my son, Landry.” While she’s shaking Tim’s hand, he continues, “I think you two met at the barbeque a while back.”
“Right!” She smiles and drops her hand as she’s reaching out. “Your dad and I work together. I’m-”
“I know who you are.”
There’s a beat and then Tim elbows him painfully. “We should, uh-”
“Right, right.” His dad nods rapidly, looking tired, and the woman seems frozen in her smile. “I’ll see you tonight?" She sighs at the words, says something vague about the stresses of work and Landry's dad avoids his gaze. "I won't be home until late."
Landry shrugs, he’s turning away, thinking of the tiny crumpled paper on his car floor. “Yeah, maybe.” He echoes Tim’s goodbye, leading them both into the quiet of the Garden.
“Nice meeting you!” She yells at them even though they’re still mere feet away.
“Right.” Inside, the light is cooler and the place smells like the heavy pots full of soil and ivy hanging at random intervals around the restaurant. Outside, Landry’s dad gets into his own car and his coworker gets into another. They don’t appear to speak.
Landry reads the menu has he’s never read it before, even when Tim says, “So teach me already,” with a careful laugh and they’re silent until the waitress pours them both ice water and Tim thanks her over loudly. Tim dips his fingers into his glass, pulls out an ice cube to pop into his mouth. The tooth-cracking crunch makes Landry wince.
“Stop doing that.”
Tim swallows the ice. “What’s your dad do?”
“Insurance. That’s his, uh-I don’t remember what she does.”
Tim nods slowly, studying the menu and mouthing words like ‘sprouts’ and ‘cauliflower’ as if they’re alien to him. “My mom-”
“Please stop.” Landry closes his menu, sets it carefully down on the table so that it’s even with the edge. On the cover is a picture of rolling hills covered with blue and white flowers stretching for miles. “We don’t need to share, okay?” He looks past Riggins at the watery sunlight filtering in through the textured glass windows. “Just let it go.” They’re served pita bread and spicy hummus for free; Tim digs in while Landry makes curling designs in the condensation on his water glass. Tim admits that his mind is blown when he bites into the pita, but Landry’s so busy thinking about the black pit in his stomach that he doesn’t notice. There are tiny flowers carved into the silverware.
Riggins’s cheeks are puffy with food and he stretches his arms above him until they crack. Landry runs his finger along the curling shape carved into the table, follows the bud to the main stem only to have it branch out again into dozens of tiny flowers. It’s stained a russet color, making it look almost like an abstract design from this angle.
When he looks up again, Tim’s got one of his stupid half smiles, and he shakes his head so that inertia creates a floating corona of hair around his face. It’s then that Landry squints, sees the cornflower color by Tim’s ear and follows his gaze to the starburst in the window box. It circles the perimeter of the restaurant, exploding into a supernova of cobalt and cream.
“I’m not bailing you out when you get arrested.”
“Sure you will.” Tim flicks one of the fragile buds next to his ear. “They’re not going to miss just one.”
end.
Freedback appreciated.