Chapter Text
“Tim?” She breathes out his name, looks at him with a hundred different questions written across her face.
“Lucy,” He shifts to face her completely, leaving one hand to scratch Kojo’s head and one foot on the floor. “I’m going to be completely honest with you here, OK?” She nods, and he continues. “I hated New York for so many reasons. But the worst part about it was knowing that you were all the way back here. Everyone else, too, but mostly you. I don’t know when it started, but I know when I realized how much I missed having you around. How much I wanted you to be there, everywhere I turned. But however hard I looked, it was never really you.”
She turns toward Tim, and something in her expression urges him to keep talking.
“I tried to move on; I tried to leave you here in LA, have something with Rachel. But I couldn’t do it, Lucy. I couldn’t ignore how much I missed you. I tried to tell myself it was for the best, that I’d left you for a good reason, but none of that mattered. Not when the best part of my week was you calling Rachel and interrupting our Friday night dates.
“I left, and-and I know that. I don’t know what would have happened if I had stayed here. Between … between us. But I do know that I was standing in an Indian restaurant when I realized how badly I wanted you to be there. And everywhere else I was. I never … I never said a word about it, to anyone. Not even Rachel. But she broke up with me anyway, four days ago, said I should be somewhere that I was happy. I thought that would be with her, but it wasn’t.
“We packed my things and I left New York that night. Never looked behind me. There’s not enough time in life to look backwards. And there wasn’t anything there for me to look back at; as soon as she said it, I knew she was right. We were never going to work out. Not when she was so excited about her new job, her new life, and all I wanted was to be back here. With you.”
He looks at Lucy more closely as he finishes his speech, and he could be mistaken but he thinks there are tears shining in her eyes. She bites her lip and he tries not to think about the way it makes his heart skip a beat as she scooches toward him slowly. There’s still distance between them, but less than there was before, and much less than there was four days ago.
When Lucy stops moving, Tim reaches tentatively forward with the hand that hasn’t stopped petting Kojo since he sat down. Before he can touch her, though, he hesitates and finishes the last thought in his head.
“So … here I am.”
Lucy slides her hand into his, squeezes his fingers gently.
“Here you are.”
A comfortable silence falls between them, and Tim thinks that this is maybe everything he’s ever wanted. He’s got Lucy, an incredible, strong woman who’s had his attention pretty much since the day he met her, even if he didn’t know it. And they have Kojo, the dog who’s saved them both in more ways than one. He doesn’t want to get ahead of himself, but it feels like maybe he’s got a family here, or at least the start of one.
But right now, Lucy is looking at him expectantly, and her hoodie is still slid halfway down her arm and he can’t think of anything he wants more than to know how her skin feels under his fingertips. She looks like she’s waiting for him to say something, even though he feels like he’s out of words to say.
Still, he finds a few more, just for her.
“Listen, Lucy. You know what kind of guy I am, right?” She opens her mouth, like she’s going to argue, try to tell him he’s a good man. He’s heard it before, from her, and from others. But that’s not what he means, not right now, so he plows on. “Show, not tell?”
He waits for her to nod before he leans in slowly, purposefully. There’s no mistaking the action, no surprise. But he doesn’t want to surprise her, not with this. He’s surprised her plenty today already, and he doesn’t want to do anything that would move too fast, push her too far, too soon.
So he moves slowly, makes sure she can see it coming, and she meets him halfway, closing the space between them to lean into a light kiss. Their lips brush together once, twice, before Tim turns his head just enough to press his mouth against hers more firmly as his hand slides from her fingers up to her bare shoulder.
Her skin is smooth, impossibly soft under his touch, so warm that he can feel it burning into his palm. He rubs his hand in a gentle circle then squeezes lightly as he leans back.
When his eyes open, the first thing he notices is the blush that fades across Lucy’s face. He’s probably imagining things, but Tim could swear that it starts from her shoulder, turning the skin pink all the way to where his hand is still resting.
He sweeps his thumb lightly across her collarbone and feels her shiver at the featherlight touch. She’s smiling broadly at him, and he’s sure that he’s wearing a similar expression, can feel the way his cheeks are flushing warm and pushing up to his eyes.
He brushes her skin again, just to feel the way his touch moves her, and breaks the silence between them with a raise of his eyebrows.
“By the way, I don’t have a place here anymore, and I really don’t want to pay for a hotel in my own city. Any chance there’s a spot for me on your sofa until I find something?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
Tim scrutinizes Lucy’s expression, looking for any hint of humor or teasing, but finds none and his heart drops a little bit in his chest.
He really thought he’d read this right, especially the way that Lucy leaned into his kiss just a moment ago. Before he can ask her anything else, though, she's talking again.
“You think you can get me out of bed at 4 a.m. on my day off, tell me that you drove all the way back from New York just to say you missed me, and expect to sleep on my couch?”
Alright, so maybe he misread her signals. He pulls his hand back from her shoulder and leans away.
“I can go find a hotel or something for the night. I’ll text Angela in a few hours, see if she and Wesley have a guest room I can take over. I didn’t mean to disturb you. I’ll just-”
He doesn’t get to finish his apology, tell her that he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable when he kissed her, ask if they can go back to what they had before he left. Tim was going to do all of those things, but before he can, Lucy is smacking him gently in the center of his chest. Her hand lingers before she pulls away, just long enough for him to notice the way she leaves her fingers over his heartbeat before the touch is gone.
“I’m trying to get you to cuddle me, you jerk!” She looks at him, surprise etched across her face, and laughs lightly. “You’re not sleeping on the couch because I want you to sleep in my bed!”
Oh. Maybe he wasn’t as far off base as he’d thought he was. Maybe he hasn’t crossed any boundaries tonight; maybe he’s just created some new ones, taken the relationship they’d had before and pushed it into a new, exciting territory they can explore together.
“You want …” He trails off, hoping she’ll say it again. He’d go anywhere she asked him to, do anything she wanted, but he wants to hear her invite him into her bed again. He wants to hear her say it, wants to relive that feeling over and over again, starting right now.
Lucy smiles at him, reaches for his hand again and makes his dream come true.
“Yes! We can talk about the rest in the … afternoon, hopefully; if you’re going apartment hunting or what. But for now, I’m going back to bed, and I want you to come lay down with me and Kojo.”
She stands up, still holding his hand, and pulls Tim closer to the edge of the couch. Lucy isn’t tall enough that he has to stand up or let go of her fingers, but he knows what the choice would be if he had to make it.
He never wants to stop holding her hand.
Tim swings their arms gently in the space between them, watches Lucy giggle a little bit and smiles before he takes a breath and presses his lips together.
“You want me to stay?” He doesn’t just mean now, and he can read the understanding in Lucy’s eyes. She pulls on his hand, steps back and waits for him to stand up.
When he’s facing her like this, he has to look down to see her. The top of her head is level with his shoulders, and his mind is instantly drawn to the idea of holding her against his chest, tucking her head underneath his chin and supporting her weight as she relaxes against him.
But in order to hold her like that, he’d have to let go of her hand. And he’s not ready to do that yet. So instead, he smiles down at her, watches again as she understands exactly what he meant about staying.
He wants to stay tonight, tomorrow, as long as she’ll let him; in her apartment, in her bed, in her heart. However she’ll have him, however long she’ll have him, he never wants to leave her again. Not if he can help it.
“I want you to stay.” She steps toward him and rolls up onto the balls of her feet to kiss him again, bringing her free hand up to rest over his heart. He’s sure she can probably feel the way his heart is pounding, the way she makes his heart pound. “But you’re not sleeping on the couch.”
He chuckles and nods, letting her pull him toward the bedroom. Before they get to the doorway, though, she lets go of his hand. He wonders briefly what’s coming next, but doesn't have to wait long to find out, because she’s shrugging out of the hoodie, letting it drop somewhere on the floor, forgotten as soon as it’s off of her body.
Tim forgets about it too, when he catches the first glimpse of her shoulders, her back around and between the thin straps of her tank top. He follows close behind her, Kojo right on his heels, and unzips his boots while she turns the light off.
There’s just enough moonlight coming through her curtains that he can watch her pad across the room as he shimmies out of his jeans. Kojo hops up onto the mattress, curling himself into the space between their legs as Lucy lays down beside Tim.
With the dog between them, he can’t hold her nearly as close as he’d like. Still, they’re able to situate themselves comfortably, her head resting on his chest and his arm around her shoulders. His fingers toy absently with the ends of her hair, and his free arm drapes across his stomach to reach for her hand again. She tangles their fingers together and smiles against his side, pressing a tiny kiss to his chest.
They’re both exhausted, and he can feel the way her body goes lax almost as soon as they’ve finished arranging themselves. Tim only stays awake a little bit longer, taking in his surroundings, the feeling of her body pressed against his. He never wants to forget what this moment feels like, the first of many he hopes to find in his future.
It took him two months and close to 6,000 miles to find his way here, but now that he knows where “here” is, he never wants to be anywhere else, wouldn’t trade a minute of his journey for all the sunsets and skylines in the world. Nothing could ever compare to this, to lying here with Lucy in his arms and Kojo at his feet.
As his eyes close again, Tim sighs and considers how different it feels to be starting this, compared to the new life he’d thought he was starting when he left Los Angeles.
He thinks about it as the heavy pull of sleep draws him in, and the only words he can find, the only way he can think of to describe the easy comfort he feels now, how perfect and simple and right this moment is?
It’s exactly what the start of forever should feel like.