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Tim looks over Angela’s shoulder. Again. He’s not “watching” Lucy, he swears. She just happens to be talking animatedly to Jackson and John, waving her arms as she recounts some story from her weekend, and the movement is distracting him. He’s just a cop, aware of changes to his surroundings. That’s all.
“So, anyway, Wesley and I have a pet coyote now. Wes is down a couple fingers, but who needs those anyway, and Chompers is settling in nicely.” Angela punctuates her story with a sip of her drink, and he realizes he’s lost track of the conversation.
“Wait, did you say a coyote ? I tuned out for a second there, but --”
“I noticed.” She’s smirking now, and smug is never a look Tim has liked on his best friend. “Soon as she’s not your rookie anymore, you can’t stop staring at her.”
She’s right, and Tim knows it. The rookies have been cut loose for close to three weeks now, and in all that time, Tim’s lucked into riding with Lucy one day. It’s been a sharp adjustment for him, even if he’s enjoyed having more time to hang out with Angela, sitting in squad cars and shooting the breeze. He’d deny it if anyone asked, but it’s easy for Angela to see how his face shifts every time Lucy’s voice comes over the comm, even if it’s just for her to announce that she and Jackson are going out of service for lunch.
“It’s just weird, riding with the same person almost every day for six months, then hardly seeing them at all. Even you’ve said you miss West’s mindless chatter.
“Yeah, I do. But I’m still capable of sitting with my back to him in a bar and not watching his every move.” She presses her lips together, knowing he isn’t going to have a good rebuttal.
“I’m observing the environment. Making sure I’m aware of any environmental changes. It’s called good police work.”
“You’re off duty.”
“Crime never--” she cuts him off.
“Don’t. If you say ‘crime never goes off duty,’ I’m going to be forced to cuff you, take you downtown, make sure there’s no controlled substances in your system. Or …" she waggles her eyebrows playfully. “I could get Lucy to do it."
“Shut up.” He hisses and sinks a couple inches lower in his chair. “I wasn’t going to say that!”
“Sure you weren’t. But now you’re thinking about Lucy. And handcuffs.” Tim opens his mouth, but Angela keeps talking. “You know better than to argue with me about this, Bradford. When have I ever been wrong? Talk to her. Tell her you miss riding together, maybe offer to get a drink sometime.” She follows his gaze to where Lucy’s approaching the bar. “Look, now you don’t have to do it in front of Jackson. Go.”
She reaches over and pushes him out of his seat.
“Don’t think too hard about it. You’ll psych yourself out. Go , Tim.”
“Boot.” Tim walks up next to Lucy and leans against the bar. “How’s it going?”
“Sir! I mean … Officer Bradfo—Tim?”
“Tim’s fine.” he isn’t trying to smile, but he feels his mouth pull up anyway, “Having a good night?”
“Yeah. Um, Nolan had a pretty cool call earlier, ended up turning into a decent-size drug bust. So we’re kind of celebrating that. What brings you and Lopez out?” The bartender sits the next round in front of her, but she doesn’t make any move to pick them up or walk away.
“Just out for a drink, blowing off some steam from a long shift of waiting for crime to happen. Spot checked half a dozen parolees, all clean, turned three traffic stops into tickets, but that was about it.”
“Ouch. I don’t think you ever let me have a day that slow.”
“Yeah, well, you got lucky. Slow shifts are the worst.” And now he’s stuck in a circle of shop talk, with no easy way to bring it around to their personal lives. “But the shift is over now, so we’re out to forget about how little we got done today, see if we can salvage a worthwhile evening.”
“Hey, do you want to maybe come sit with us? I’m sure the guys wouldn’t mind.”
“Nah, I think we’re gonna head out before too long. Raincheck? Um, on the group, and …" Tim trails off, silence hanging between them until Lucy’s brow furrows.
“Tim?”
“And … maybe some time I could take you out for dinner after a shift?"
“Dinner?” Her eyes widen a bit, but Tim takes a breath and keeps going.
“I don’t know when it happened, but I miss spending eight hours a day in a car with you, Lucy. Not the part where I quizzed you on the rook book, even though that was a crucial part of your training and I’d do it again if I needed to, but the parts in between. I’ve never wanted to get to know one of my rookies before, but I listened to your damn stories anyway, and it’s weird not hearing them anymore. So, yeah, dinner. Maybe I’ll even treat you to dessert, if there’s a decent looking chocolate cake on the menu.”
“Dinner?” She hears the catch in her own voice, and feels her heart skip a beat.
Lucy’s immediate instinct is to say yes, take him up on the offer. But before she can get the word out, her mind skips back six months, to her third day of training. Tim was out and she spent the shift writing traffic tickets, except when he turned up at the diner and made her chase the perp on foot.
Then she found out that he’d stacked the deck, pulled strings to make her spend the day with an officer he knew wouldn’t push her even half as hard as he had.
“Everything is a test, Officer Chen,” he’d said. And in the months between then and now, he’d proven himself right time and again, constructing elaborate ruses to push her beyond every limit she’d thought she had. She’s done hundreds of pushups, probably recited the entire California Penal Code five times over in the squad car, had talcum powder blow up in her face, all in the name of “testing her.”
Because everything is a test with Tim. So why wouldn’t this be too? He’s still talking, but she can’t make sense of his words over the thoughts in her own head. He’s asking her out, why? To prove a point about never dating a superior? To mock her for developing feelings for him while they were riding together? Maybe to show her that she should never let her guard down, that having emotions tied to the job will make her a bad cop?
Regardless, she’s not sure she wants to find out what ulterior motive he has with this one.
“Everything is a test.” She doesn’t mean to say it out loud, barely breathes the words, but she knows Tim hears them. Even with the din of the bar surrounding them, she can see the flicker of knowledge cross his face. She’s figured out his plan, and now he can’t finish whatever test this was going to be.
“Everything is a test.” Tim can tell he wasn’t meant to hear it, doesn’t think Lucy even knows she said anything, but he can’t stop the way it makes his heart clench.
She thinks it’s a test. He put himself out there, put his heart on the line, and she doesn’t think he means it.
For a second, he can’t figure out why that’s the first place her mind went. But as he mentally combs back through the last six months they’ve spent together, through the pushups and the pop quizzes and the baby powder “bomb” he rigged for her, it makes a little bit of sense.
Only a little though.
This is a different thing, and he thinks it should be obvious. He’s trained her into a sharper cop than that, but this goes beyond that. It’s been six months, and he can see every emotion written across her face. He knows how she takes her coffee, which veggie burger is her favorite in the city, and right now, he knows that her glass is filled with Malibu and Dr Pepper, which she’ll nurse until the ice is gone, then finish in one or two gulps.
He knows all of this, and she can’t even tell that he really, truly wants to go out with her.
But he supposes that he’d have had some doubts too, if someone had asked him out after spending his entire time in field training pushing him to be a great cop, whatever the personal cost, so he says the only thing he can think of to set the record straight.
“Nah, Boot. It’s not a test, just a dinner.”