FNL: "One Day at a Time"
Title: One Day at a Time
Rating: Teen
Characters: Tami, Jason, Tim
Spoilers: Through 116 (Black Eyes and Broken Hearts)
Author's Note: Written for FNL_Laundrylist #3, prompt #4 Tami explains to one of her "projects" why she wants them to succeed.
Legalese: FNL is copyright its respective owners. This is a labor of love, not money.


Of course, this story wandered off the prompt a bit ...

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"So. GED. And you're certain of this."

"Absolutely." Jason Street tries to give her a confident smile, but she can see it's full of bravado. Hollow bravado at that.

"And then what?"

Jason rocks his chair back and forth a bit and Tami wonders if he's aware of it. Must be the wheelchair equivalent of shuffling your feet. She locks her eyes with his and won't let go. Eventually he mutters, "Y'know ..." shrug "Stuff."

The die is cast, she thinks. She puts a touch of frost in her voice. "Like sit in your house and scrape by on disability?" Dead silence. She can see the glint in Jason's eyes. He's getting pissed. Good.

"Well ... no ..."

"Sponge off of Lyla? On top of disability, of course."

Oh, he's pissed now. Inwardly, Tami smiles. She hit him square in his pride. He hates the idea of being mooch, a "scrub" as the girls call it these days ... she thinks that's what they're calling it these days.

He huffs and rolls his eyes and glares at her.

"I'm waiting. Or are you planning to Ju-Co your way to a four year school after you get your GED?"

He shuffles his wheels again. "Something like that." His voice is barely above a whisper.

Tami leans back in her desk and studies the ceiling tiles for a moment before saying, "You know what I think, Jason? I think you got back from quad-rugby tryouts, and had a mountain of work ahead of you, and all those eyes on you in the hallway, and it makes you feel overwhelmed, so you're going to take the quickest way out the door. But you haven't given much thought to what's on the other side of that door."

There's a long silence.

"You have no idea Mrs. Taylor," Jason says, his voice tight with anger and frustration. "You have no Goddamned idea. What it's like. Being me." He spits the words out.

"Enlighten me."

"Right, so I get dropped off at school by my mom like I'm some grade school kid, 'cause, hey, can't drive my ass here any more. And then there's just ... everybody looks at me. I couldn't be more of a freak show if I were ..." He pauses and there's a ghost of a smile on his face "that doof, Landry f'n Clarke in his Crucifictorious shirt, and he'd have to have -- I don't know -- a green mohawk. And there's a lot of pity in those eyes looking at me. I'm so sick and frikkin' tired of pity --" Jason sucks in a shaky breath "and then there are those who won't even meet my eyes. Just glaze over and glance on, and I don't know if it's because they don't want me to see the pity in their eyes, or if it's because of the whole damned lawsuit thing -- are we even allowed to talk at all about that? -- and yeah, the lawsuit thing. I've got people that never even talked to me, that I never did anything to giving me the evil eye because of that, and I don't ...." He blows out a huge breath. "I understand fucking hating High School now. Before? Yeah, school, books, something that you just had to get through, like a dull sermon. But now. I get it. I get those goth kids you see on TV. If I never had to come here again, it would be too soon." He gulps in deep, jittery breaths.

Aha. "I'm not going to argue with you about that. But before you jump out of the plane, you need to make sure you have a parachute. And you? I don't think you even have a rip-cord." Pause. "Look. Can we talk about this next week? Just give us both time to think about all the options?"

His eyes study the floor for a nearly a whole minute -- she watches the sweep of the second hand on the clock above the door. Then he blurts, "Okay. But I'm serious when I say I hate it here."

Sure you are. But there is no trace of sarcasm in Tami's voice when she replies, "I'm not saying you aren't. And I'm not saying that it's not very hard for you right now. I'm just saying doing things without a plan often leads to things getting a lot harder down the road."

He nods. "Is there anything else?"

"Nope. Back to English for you." Tami's bubbling inside. She's got him. It worked.

He wheels over to the door and opens it. There's barely a pause as he glides by her next appointment, Tim Riggins.

Sigh. She had hoped those two would work things out sooner rather than later.

He flops into a chair and studies his shoes.

But she can't contain the joy bursting up inside her. Glancing at Tim she says, "Tim, do you mind if I make a really quick phone call?"

He flicks his eyes up to hers. "No ma'am." Well, she's got to give him that. He's always unfailingly polite, even if it's just going through the motions. It's a start ....

Swiftly, she dials the number, cupping her hand over the receiver. He picks up on the third ring. She doesn't even wait for him to say hello. "I can't talk long." She whispers. "But you were absolutely right. Hit him in his pride."

"So Scooter's going to stay in school, then?" Herc says.

"Well, I did get him to promise one more week, but after that ... I think he'll see it's not so bad."

"Gotcha. And don't worry, if he says another word about GED, I'll beat some sense into his gimpy little ass."

Tami laughs, says good-bye and hangs up.

She closes her eyes, counts to three, and says to Tim, "So Tim, outside of football and chasing girls, tell me, what do you like to do?"