Work Text:
He looks good hanging up curtains on a rod--white ones with tiny beige pom-poms coming off the edges. They are a happy result of one of her many recent Amazon nursery hauls. She tears through the box the evening before, pleasantly surprised with the outcome of her finds although a little over ambitious in her attempt to hang the curtains herself while seven months pregnant.
"Have I told you you're my favorite?" His shoulders hitch a little at her voice, not expecting her company. He turns towards her figure leaned against the door frame, curtain rod in his hands and both panels hanging down, some of the material spooling at his feet. She pushes off from her spot and waddles herself towards him, taking the rod out of his hands and draping it over the crib so she can hug him. "You're too good to me."
"Only the best for my girls."
He wraps his arms around her shoulders and places a kiss into her unkempt bed head. A lump forms in her throat, and she finds herself having to force it back down.
These damn horomones.
"Tim?" She pushes her chin against his sternum as she stretches her head back to look up at him. He looks exhausted.
"Hm?"
"Your girls also want you to sleep."
He lets out a weighted breath as his back muscles tense up underneath her palms. She brings a hand up to his cheek, running her fingers along his clenched jaw. "I'm not tired right now."
And for the first time that morning she notices the heaviness behind his eyes as he stares down at her. "Hard shift?" There had been a string of them lately. He manages a wordless reply with a nod of his head. "Wanna talk about it?"
He leans down to give her a kiss. "Maybe later."
She offers up an okay, and settles herself back against his chest to hold him instead. It was a hard thing for her in the beginning, accepting that sometimes he needed time to just process before talking things out. That he just needed her to be there and hold space. She likes to think she's gotten better at it though. Tim's expressed to her as much.
"I love you," she says, the words muffled against the fabric of his t-shirt.
"I love you too."
"Do you want me to stay in here and keep you company?"
His chest shakes against her cheek as he lets out a couple of huffs of laughter. "I don't think the citizens of Los Angeles are going to trust a crazy pregnant lady in her pajama's chasing down leads and surveying crime scenes."
"Sergeant Bradford," she says in mock offense, stepping away from him and putting a hand over her heart. "Are you calling me crazy? Telling me that you don't trust me with our fellow citizens?"
"Of course I trust you. I trained you." She rolls her eyes and he pulls her back into him, protuding bump against his well sculpted abdomen, with a smirk curving his mouth. "I'm just saying that I don't want to be called into a meeting tomorrow because my wife showed up to work in her Free Britney shirt and a pair of boxer shorts."
"It was an important cause," she laughs, and brings herself to her tip-toes to smack a kiss against his cheek. "The citizens of Los Angeles would agree, but baby B and I will go get ready for the day to keep you out of any meetings."
He thanks them both through a laugh and she says a couple more crazy things as she waddles herself out of the room and to the bathroom to get ready. She'd be back in here in about 45 minutes anyway so that he could help her put on her shoes.
"Boots or flats?"
There's a garbled response on his end and she looks up from her options in hand to see him with a hanging bookshelf in one hand and a hammer in the other. When he turns to survey her, there's a nail pursed between his lips.
Lucy grimaces. "Can we not stick nails in our mouth? I don't have time for a trip to the ER when you accidentally swallow it trying to talk to me."
He snorts but removes it anyway, tucking it in the hand with his hammer before turning back to the wall and muttering something about her being in mom mode which she decides to ignore. "Boots or flats?"
"If it's up to me, flats."
"You didn't even look at them."
"Lucy," he groans, and lays the bookshelf, hammer and nail on the window sill before turning back to her, giving her his undivided attention. She smiles brightly at him as he glances between the brown leather boots and the black ballet flats. "The flats are going to be easier to put on your feet and seeing as you only have," he lifts his arm to glance at his watch, "ten minutes until you have to be out the door and you still haven't eaten breakfast or poured your coffee, my answer is flats."
"Can you help me?" She carelessly tosses her boots to the side, the soles knocking against one of the front legs of the crib, and makes her way to the glider in the corner of the room. He ducks his chin and stares at her with raised brows before he casts a brief glance over to the boots laying on the floor, waiting for her to say something. "I will pick them up on my way out."
He offers a disbelieving, 'mhmm,' before shuffling his way towards her and finding a seat on the ottoman in front of her. "I spent a lot of money and way too much time assembling that crib for you to just be tossing things at it."
She lifts a foot into his lap and passes him her shoe. "Babe, cribs are built to be durable. If it doesn't withstand a little bump from the sole of my shoe then we have other problems."
"I'm just saying."
"You always are," she teases, easing forward in the chair after both feet are back on the floor. He rises from the ottoman and reaches out both hands to help her stand upright. "Pretty soon I'm not going to be able to get up at all with this belly. I'm just going to have to roll."
He chuckles, gently grabbing both sides of her face in his hands. She puckers her lips for a kiss and he obliges her. "I'm not going to let you just roll."
"Why not? It could be fun!"
He shakes his head at the playful glint in her eye, and bends down to press his forehead against hers. "You know what won't be fun? Dealing with Seargant Caradine when you walk in ten minutes late."
"Right," she bites her bottom lip, "breakfast, coffee, and I gotta let Kojo in."
Tim steals one last kiss from her before she waddles out the door, and yells a 'love you, be safe, bye,' before the front door slams shut. Meanwhile, Kojo totters into the room after his food and water break and finds a spot to lay down right by Lucy's boots, the ones she said she would pick up before she left.
"Kojo," the dogs ears perk up at his name and he glances up at Tim, "your mom is a mess."
"Do you think the green is too dark?"
"I'm not changing the accent wall color, Luce." She lets out a sigh, her breath fanning across his neck as she curls herself further into him in the glider. They had been here for the past hour after her shift, Kojo snoring at the foot of the ottoman and Tim rocking them back and forth slowly while Lucy talks about her day, asks him questions about his, and dreams up final touches that she wants to add to the room. "You wanted nature chic. There is nothing that says nature more than the color green."
She hums in agreement and runs a hand across her belly where she feels a kick. Three months from now those tiny feet would be out of the womb, kicking inside this nursery which was both a relief and a slightly terrifying realization.
Tim seems to read her mind as she tracks more of the baby's movements with her hand. "I can't believe she's almost here."
"Are you scared?"
He mulls it over for a second, pursing his lips together and cocking his head to the side. "Maybe a little."
"Tim Bradford a little scared," she giggles, "never thought we'd see the day."
He leans his head back and closes his eyes. "I was scared of you," he says with a grin. He pops one eye open when he feels her staring at him in wide-eyed disbelief.
"No you were not," she protests, and smacks him playfully on the chest. He begins to laugh as he pulls her closer. "Tim Bradford there is no way!"
"Not at first, obviously," he says, reaching up to tuck a fly away hair behind her ear, "but when I realized how much I loved you, yeah, of course I was scared."
He shrugs it off like it's no big deal because he's Tim, but Lucy can't help but press for the details. "Why?"
"Lucy," he says her name like it should be so obvious to her. "Because of where we are right now, married, sitting in our daughter's nursery, rocking on the glider. I could see all of this with you but never thought it was something I would get to have. Things like that never seemed to work out for me. It seemed too good to be true."
Her chin starts to tremble as tears well up in her eyes hearing this all for the first time. "What?"
"Babe, don't cry."
"It's the horomones," she gargles out, swiping underneath her eyes to collect the tears as they drip, "but why would you even think that? You deserve every good thing."
"I don't know about that, but not everyone felt that way so it didn't always seem like it." Her frown settles in deeper and he reaches his hand up to swipe it away with his thumb. "Hey, I'm here now, that's all that matters."
Here now. In this chair, in this nursery, in front of the newly hung curtains.
"I'm glad you're here," she tells him very matter-of-fact, leaving no room for doubt or question. She brings him in for a kiss, her lips a little salty from the tears. "I wouldn't want you anywhere else."
And it's true. She'll keep him here, he looks good here, next to her, kissing her, holding her. The father of her children, her other half, her everything, her little bit of magic in the ordinary and mundane.