Chapter Text
That afternoon after seeing the doctor Kate ended up taking more time off despite Tyler’s protests that he would be fine going home alone. She completely ignored when he pointed out he had done it before and she scoffed at him when he said he’d call Boone if he needed help. Tyler just ended up pouting that she knew him well enough to know he would never call anybody while she patted him on the head condescendingly.
Two days after seeing the doctor Tyler finally broke down and asked to use their washer and dryer as he had completely run out of clean clothes to wear. Kate facepalmed herself and then him. He had blinked in shock while she explained that of course he could do laundry here and that they were both stupid for not bringing it up earlier.
Four days after seeing the doctor Boone called Tyler.
“Hey, T. Everything okay, man? City girl didn’t murder you, right?”
“Boone, I wouldn’t be answering if she murdered me.”
“Oh, yeah, guess that’s true. Well then she didn’t kidnap you, right?”
Tyler laughed, “No, she didn’t kidnap me.”
“Okay. Let me know if you need a rescue though. You can give me some kind of code word. Somethin’ like Yelp.”
“Why would it be ‘Yelp’?” Tyler asked incredulously.
“Because it rhymes with ‘help.’ Duh, T.”
Tyler couldn’t help but to laugh, “Nah, man. Everythin’s fine.”
Kate had walked by the doorway and shouted, “Five fractures isn’t fine, Ty.”
“Wait, what did she say?”
Tyler sighed and shot Kate the bird when her head poked into the living room, “Nothin’, B. All good.”
“No, no. She said fractures. Your leg? Did she say five? Wait, you got it checked out? Thought you hadn’t gone home yet? Did she drag you to a hospital? Did you willingly go to the hospital? Shit, T. I’ll be there soon.”
Boone wouldn’t let Tyler get a word in edgewise. When he was met with the beeping of Boone hanging up, he pulled his phone away from his ear and pushed the edge of it into his forehead.
“What’s wrong?”
Tyler looked up to be met with Kate’s overly innocent expression, “Great goin’. Now you got Boone all worked up.”
“You’re the one who lied.”
Tyler sputtered, “I didn’t lie! I’m fine! And you’re the one who just summoned Boone here.”
“Boone’s coming? Why?”
“‘Cause you tattled on me, Kit Kat!”
Kate laughed at Tyler’s outraged tone.
“And he’s probably dragging everybody else with ‘im to stage a rescue!”
Kate laughed at Tyler’s distress as he buried his head in his hands. She sat down on the arm of the couch, and placed a hand on his shoulder, “Come on, Tyler. It can’t be that bad.”
–
Kate barged into Tyler’s room that night and flopped down on the bed beside him, both of them on their backs just staring at the ceiling.
“It was that bad,” She conceded.
Tyler snickered, “Told you so.”
“I didn’t realize how much of a mother hen Boone was.”
Tyler groaned at the reminder. Boone had been overly worried since he got there. And then with the rest of his crew there and hanging out, Tyler’s social battery had officially run out. His leg hurt and he was exhausted.
Boone immediately rushed into the house, almost running into Kate who opened the door. He spared a minute to come back and hug her, greeting her as “Tornado Taming Not City Girl” before he rushed into the living room where Tyler sat with his leg propped up on the coffee table.
“T! Holy shit, man!” Boone gawked at the brace, “Was it that bad? Man, I should’ve taken you to the doctor or made you go. I should’ve known not to trust your word on it. ‘I’m fine’ my ass. That’s a monster of a brace. And it got your ankle, too? Damn, man. How is it? It hurt? You need anything, man? How long you gotta wear it? Can you still chase? Not being able to chase would really suck.”
“Boone!” Tyler finally was able to cut him off as Boone finally stopped for air, “I told you: I’m fine, okay?”
“And didn’t you just hear me? ‘Fine’ my ass.”
Tyler chuckled and rolled his eyes. Taking his leg off the table and standing up, he spread his arms to Boone, “Look, man. Still in one piece. It’s all good. Only gotta wear it two weeks. Fractured, not broken.”
“Minimum of two weeks. And five,” Kate chimed in from her place leaning against the doorframe where the rest of his crew was gathered.
“Five? Five what?” Dexter asked.
“Five fractures in that leg.”
“At that point, I feel like it’s just slightly broken,” Dani joked, which made Kate cheer with her arms thrown up and Tyler groan as he dropped his head.
“Woah, T. You okay?” Boone hovered a little nervously.
“Yeah, B. Kate’s just been telling me that for days and I just lost twenty bucks.”
Lily raised her eyebrows, “You bet on whether we thought it was fractured or broken?”
“We bet on-” Tyler started before Kate finished excitedly.
“On who was right and who was wrong.”
“There’s a difference,” Tyler said passionately, “A break goes all the way through a bone, which none of mine do.”
“But if you put all of them together would they go through the bone?” Dani asked with a knowing look.
Tyler wrinkled his nose and didn’t answer, making everybody else laugh. He was glad Dani and Dex were taking this so casually. Boone had seen him struggle with it, and Lily to an extent, but he had never shown Dani or Dex. When they didn’t even bat an eye at him as he limped into the dining room on crutches to play board games he realized he probably should. They had been with him a long time and they trusted him with their lives often enough. The least he could do was trust them to know about his leg being a liability.
Deciding he would tell his whole crew collectively about it later, since Boone and Lily only knew bits and pieces, he pushed the thought from his head for now.
They started out pretty tame playing board games with Life. Boone gave up pretty quickly, more intent on hovering over Tyler than playing the game. Then eventually they moved onto monopoly which had everybody shouting and throwing things to the point Cathy was holding her stomach she was laughing at them so hard. Then somehow the monopoly got broken, (ahem, Dani, ahem) and after promising to buy Ms. Carter a new set, they decided to move onto card games. After Go Fish got too violent when everybody was accused of cheating and Tyler was accused of counting cards (it was only a problem if they could prove it), they ended up playing poker with candy. Somehow poker ended up being the most tame out of all the games they played and after Tyler had wiped the floor with them multiple times and Boone vowed never to play with him again (like he did every time), they were all yawning.
Dani had to practically force Boone away from Tyler, promising that they could come back tomorrow but Ms. Carter only had one guest room.
“That’s fine,” Boone had insisted, “I can bunk with Tyler. We do it all the time.”
Lily smacked the back of his head while Dexter smacked his own forehead.
“No,” Dani declared, practically dragging him to the van, “We’re gonna go back to the motel and leave them alone.”
“But, T may need somethin!”
“Kate can get it.”
“How will Kate know? She’s got her own room-OH!”
Kate blushed while Tyler shook his head from their spot on the front porch, watching Dani slam the door on Boone’s shocked face. When the car started, the back window rolled down and the upper half of Boone’s body popped out, “Y’all be careful! Use protection!”
Lily’s silhouette dragged Boone back in and presumably Dexter rolled up the window on Boone’s cackling laughter.
Tyler couldn’t help but smile, even as he knew how red his cheeks were. God, he loved his crew, even if they embarrassed the crap out of him sometimes. Kate used the excuse of forgetting something in the barn to slip into the night beyond the floodlights of the porch. Tyler had a feeling she was just waiting for her cheeks to not be the same color as his truck. Turning around, Tyler hop-stepped his way back inside on the crutches. Somehow Kate was always there when he tried to get away with not using them. It was getting kinda scary actually, how well she always knew.
Tyler awkwardly climbed the stairs, still managing to put no weight on the leg. He couldn’t quite flop down on the bed, but he sat down and carefully pulled his left leg onto the bed before laying down flat. He heard Kate’s light footsteps ascend the stairs shortly after.
“You were right.”
“The famous tornado tamer admits that I was right? Little ol’ me?”
Kate laughed and gently smacked his chest, “Shut up. You’re smarter than you let on, Ty, and we both know it.”
“Well I’m not stupid but I still wouldn’t consider myself all that smart.”
Kate looked at him with furrowed brows and a smile, “Ty.”
“What?”
Kate sat up and looked down at him, “I was working on a PhD.”
“Yeah, I know,” Tyler said, not seeing her point.
“You were able to understand all of my research. Nobody could do that other than me and my advisor. Even…Even Addy, Praveen, and Jeb didn’t really get it. They got the gist of it, sure, but I still had to translate what I had written into ‘human’ as Javi called it. You looked at it once and immediately understood.”
Tyler felt heat rising into his cheeks as she continued staring down at him. He had the unnerving feeling that she was looking straight through him. Through all those masks he spent years making. The ones that hide how smart he is. He became a bull rider because they’re never mistaken for being smart. Then after only a few years at college he decided to chase storms around Oklahoma with people who he could never truly converse with academically. That is, until he met Kate. Somehow he found himself spitting out facts and information and calculations he never would’ve before.
Kate tilted her head, “You’re smarter than you think.”
Throwing caution to the wind, he blurted out “You do have to be kinda smart to get a PhD, I guess.”
Kate blinked at him.
“Hold on, you have a PhD?”
Tyler sat up and shrugged, leaning back on his right hand while his left unconsciously rubbed his leg over the brace, “Yeah. Meteorology with a focus in engineering. Those devices Javi is so obsessed with? I, uh, may have created the original design for tracking a tornado.”
“Wait, I thought Javi made them?”
“No. Well, he had the thought to alter the device he was manning to get pictures of missiles to get pictures of tornadoes. And then he got permission from the military to use and alter some of their portable units. And then he got funding to send the units to a lab to be reconstructed to get data for tornadoes and not missiles. And they called me. That’s kinda my other job. Youtube doesn’t quite support five people and equipment for storm chasing. I mean, it could but if I take less, then the others get more. And I just get called in when they need me for something. Or if I come up with my own idea. I mean, it’s a good way to get income and still be free for storm season.”
Kate just stared. And then she shoved him, “You have a PhD?”
Tyler shrugged, “Yeah.”
“You have a PhD and the rest of your crew doesn’t even have degrees?”
“Seems that way.”
“You have a PhD.”
Tyler laughed, “Yeah, Sapulpa. Why’s that so hard to believe?”
“That’s how you do all of your own designs for your truck.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So if I needed a new sensor or data tracker…”
“I could probably make one. Depends on what exactly it is that you want sensed or tracked.”
Kate just nodded and laid back down.
“How did you even get into meteorology? That tornado when you were eight with your aunt?”
Tyler looked at her. He studied her for a second. The curve of her jaw, the slope of her nose, the angle of her cheekbones.
“My mom was a storm chaser.”
“Oh.”
Tyler was thrown off course by her next question. It wasn’t quite the one he was bracing for.
“Where did you get it? Your degree.”
He cleared his throat, “Texas A&M.”
“Ha. Why does that not surprise me?”
This time Tyler propped himself up on an elbow to look down at Kate with a charming grin, “Guess you know me too well, darlin’.”
“Yeah,” Kate whispered, “Guess I do.”
Their breaths tangled as Tyler hovered right over Kate. Her brown eyes flicked between his green ones. Kate’s head tilted up, bringing their lips even closer together. They were just a hair's breadth away from touching when Kate ran her hands up his chest, slinging a leg over him making him groan and press his forehead down into her shoulder as she knocked into the brace.
Kate immediately retracted her leg and pushed him down on the bed as she hovered nervously over him, “Shit, that's my bad. I’m sorry. Shit, Ty.”
“Nope,” Tyler said tightly, “All good.”
She looked at him with a look that said ‘be real with me.’
“Okay,” He gave in, “Maybe it hurt a little bit.”
Kate scoffed, “A little. Sure. I’m gonna go get you an ice pack.”
And then she was gone.
Tyler groaned as he pushed his hand into his face for a completely different reason than pain.
Stupid fucking leg. Wouldn’t even let him kiss the girl. He glared down at his leg.
Kate was back quickly with a bag of crushed ice. Tyler started at the top of the brace while she started at the bottom to undo all of the enclosures. Once they finally got the brace open, Kate gently laid the bag of ice down on his leg. He winced at the cold sensation on his burning leg.
“I’m sorry about your leg.”
“Not a big deal, Kit Kat. I mean, you could’ve bitten into a KitKat without breaking it. That would’ve been so much worse.”
Tyler smiled when that finally got an exasperated laugh out of Kate.
“It’s late. I think I’m gonna head to bed.”
“Okay. Get some rest before Boone comes back tomorrow.”
Kate laughed and squeezed his good leg before leaving Tyler alone.
Tyler sighed.
Stupid fucking leg. What a bitch.
–
Kate had a handful the next day with all the wranglers being there again. Tyler had convinced Lily to help him sneak out to the barn to work on his truck and Kate didn’t catch them until they were most of the way there.
“Come on, Kit Kat. I’m already this close. You gonna make me go all the way back without sitting down and resting?”
Kate was about to insist when Tyler dropped his head and widened his eyes, giving her literal kicked puppy eyes. Her lips twisted.
“Fine! Fine, okay. But you have to sit while you’re out here, Ty.”
Tyler and Lily cheered at her exasperated approval. She turned around to hide her smile from them.
Which led to the whole wrangler crew gathering in her barn. Lily was looking at engineering schematics alongside Tyler at what had become his desk but Kate couldn’t tell if they were for his truck or her drone. Dex was sitting in a lawn chair he pulled from the camper truck sketching out something on a notepad. Dani was sitting across from Dex on the floor with her back against a pillar working on editing for the Youtube channel.
And of course Boone was flitting about, mostly hovering over Tyler. Tyler had been indulging him for hours when Kate finally decided to take pity on him.
And her mom’s text that just came through gave her the perfect excuse.
“Hey, Boone, I’ve got to check a fence for my mom,” Kate held up her phone to signify she got a text, “You wanna come help?”
Boone excitedly hopped up, “Of course.”
It didn’t take long for Boone to start talking once they left the barn.
“Tyler looks happier. You know, since you’ve been here.”
“Tyler looked plenty happy before he met me.”
“Yeah, I guess. I mean, he likes us plenty, don’t get me wrong. But there’s something about you that just makes him happier. I think he gets to be more like him when you’re around.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well he’s smarter than all o’ us combined. He never really got to talk to us like he talks to you. He had to explain stuff for a long time. Dex is pretty smart about the sciencey part of storms and Lily is a crazy engineer and Dani is good at the video stuff but it’s nothing like what you guys talk ‘bout. I saw that notebook earlier. I’m guessin’ it was your handwriting but it also had Tyler’s in the margins. Man, I couldn’t even begin to guess what the hell it meant.”
“Boone, you keep up just as well as the rest of us. I could never understand the explosions like you do.”
Boone laughed, “Yeah. I didn’t know how to do ‘em either but they looked fun. I told Tyler that when we started and he said 'okay' and went an’ found a ton of videos and books and stuff. We holed up at his place for like a week while we learned everything we could about ‘em. Anything that I couldn’t get at first, Tyler would do like this crazy deep dive into it so he could explain it to me. But he never made me feel stupid, not like the teachers an’ stuff from school. He just sat there and we worked together until I got it.”
“Huh. He hadn’t mentioned that.”
“Nah, he wouldn’t. He’s pretty protective of us. He’s always there when we need somethin’. Hell, that does not work both ways though. He would never let us see him hurtin’. He’s got this thing where if he thinks he’s doin’ something he considers weak then he runs off and hides away from us until he’s better. I think it’s got somethin’ to do with when he was a kid but I don’t know. He don’t talk ‘bout the past. An’ he definitely don’t talk ‘bout his family.”
Kate was silent for a minute, thinking about ‘my mom died in a hospital’ and ‘the crutches kill my shoulder’ and most importantly, ‘my mom was a storm chaser.’ Pieces of Tyler that he had given her and she took for granted.
“But it’s cool. I know he needs us too. Sometimes he gets a little…lost. You know? Like inside his head. If he gets going on somethin’ he forgets to eat and drink and stuff. Phew, first time he did that it scared the crap out of me. He passed out on the way out of the motel. Just dropped in the middle o’ the parkin’ lot. He woke up pretty soon after but I still dragged him to the hospital.” Boone rubbed the back of his neck and looked embarrassed, “He freaked. Passed out again in the lobby. The first time it was cause he hadn’t had anything to eat or drink in two days but the second…doctor just said he panicked. I didn’t know yet ‘bout him not likin’ ‘em.”
“He passed out?” Kate said in disbelief.
Kate and Boone had finally reached the section of fence her mom needed checked. Boone started on one side without being told other than a vague gesture from Kate and Kate started on the other, working their way closer together. Once they were in talking distance again, Boone started back up.
“He pulled away for a bit after that. I don’t know what he was thinkin’. I just know that I wa’n’t gonna be the one to leave so I stayed. And eventually everythin’ went back to normal. And then Lily joined. And things picked up on Youtube. And then Dani and Dex. And we’ve been chasin’, the five of us, together for three years now.”
Kate took a leap of faith based on the one comment he made about calling Boone if he needed help, “And his leg?”
Boone’s head snapped up in shock, “He told you about his leg?”
That was not the response Kate expected.
“Yeah. I was there when the doctor came back with the x-rays. He’s broken it a lot. He really surprised the doctor when he said he didn’t have a limp.”
Boone chuckled, “Yeah. Tyler is always defying odds. I wasn’t there the first few times but I was there the last two. One was when he also got shoulder surgery after a bad bull ride. He hated being confined to the bed. I had to threaten to tie ‘im to it ‘fore he stayed put. It’s stopped actin’ up as much but this probably won’t help. I’m pretty sure me and Lils are the only ones who know though. He’ll stay in his motel room when it’s bad. I bring him food and water an’ make ‘im eat and stuff and sometimes Lily’ll keep him company but that’s all he lets us do. I haven’t even really seen it. I mean, I saw the casts and I know about the brace but he don’t let anybody close to that leg.”
“Can I…?” Kate asked, not quite touching yet. Once he gave her permission though, her hands gently ghosted over the hard plastic. It was warm beneath the tips of her fingers. It went halfway up his thigh and then back down to halfway down his calf. He sat still as she gently followed the path of the plastic, simply watching her.
He grabbed her hand and gently put it on the side of his knee, letting her fingers trail over the scar there. His hands were warm where he kept them over her own. She could feel the roughness of them from his days in the rodeo and now from working on his truck. Then he guided her hand to the front of his knee and let her look at that scar.
“Oh.”
It must’ve been her tone that made Boone look at her and tilt his head, “He let you though, didn’t he?”
Kate didn’t answer, “Fence looks good. I’ll text mom.”
Boone just grinned at her and headed back to the barn. Kate did text her mom, but she also stared out at the pasture gathering her swirling thoughts for a minute. She thought about the last week. Everything her and Tyler had said to each other and everything they hadn’t.
Wincing, she remembered what she had said to him in the doctor’s office. She would have to apologize for that. As she had thought about it later that night, she had realized that she needed to tell somebody. She had been keeping it locked up for so long that she didn’t even know if she could. But then he came along. He pushed all the right buttons and it came spilling out. And he never said anything. He just let her get it out. He didn’t push, he didn’t promise anything he couldn’t keep. He’s letting her have the room to put herself back together without pressure but he’s also been there every time she’s fallen.
Without realizing it, she had made her way back to the barn. Lily was rolling her eyes but laughing at something Tyler and Boone had done. Boone was hitting Tyler’s shoulder excitedly while Tyler was leaned back laughing loudly. Even Dani was laughing while Dex had an expression on his face that said he thought they were all idiots. After a minute, even Dex’s lips tilted up in a smile.
Kate’s eyes were drawn back to Tyler though.
Sitting here, in the shitty lighting of her old barn, head thrown back laughing and braced leg propped up on a stool, she thought he looked like a storm she would chase. He looked like she could love him forever.
It didn’t take long for Tyler’s eyes to find her when he was done laughing, like he always knew where she was. Like he was just as in tune with her as she was with him. He waved his hand over with as much excitement as Boone had.
“Kate! Kate, come here! Boone, tell it again.”
Kate smiled as she walked into the barn. She ignored all the stuff she would have to figure out, like her job and apartment in New York and how to get back into a PhD program at Oklahoma but she could figure that out later. She had all the time in the world. With Tyler and his crew of misfits, she finally felt like she belonged somewhere again.