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Lucy hears the SportsCenter outro fade into the kitchen as she opens the fridge. There are green onions in here, she knows; she just bought them the other day. They’ve got to be somewhere, but they’re not on the shelf with the other vegetables. Nor are they on the bottom, in the crisper drawer.
So she stands up, rolling onto her toes to see the top shelf. Then she stretches forward, moving a carton of milk out of the way with her wrist and grabbing a Tupperware of leftover green beans to see if the onions have somehow fallen behind it. Her T-shirt rides up, the air conditioning chilling her skin as she pokes her head further forward.
“Lucy,” she startles when Tim’s voice appears, closer behind her than she’d expected. His hand is warm on her hip, covering the exposed strip right over her hip bone. From the way his fingers flex against her, she knows he felt her jump.
It’s not unusual for him to wander into the kitchen while she’s cooking, but usually he prefers to lean against the counter and “watch her in her element.” But he’s right behind her now, like he’s trying to see over her shoulder or something.
He can wait another minute for his beer; her soup needs time to simmer.
“Hmm? I’ll be out of your way in just a -”
“Lucy,” he cuts her off, says her name more urgently this time, like there’s something she needs to see right away.
So she turns around, green beans still in her grasp, Tim’s hand dragging across her back, pushing her shirt over his knuckles.
He doesn’t step back, doesn’t move out of Lucy’s personal space. She stares up at him, craning her neck back so she can see his face, but there’s only fond amusement in his expression.
“What?”
Tim doesn’t say anything. He just reaches up with his free hand to take the green beans away from her and set them on the counter. He turns the two of them sideways until he can kick a foot out and make sure the fridge is sealed, then takes Lucy’s hand in his and pulls her to the middle of the room.
The confusion fades, realization dawning as Tim finally takes a step away from her. When their arms are outstretched, he tugs on her hand until she gets the memo and twirls back toward him. Tim catches her by the waist, grinning down at her as she giggles.
She’d been startled by his sudden appearance, but she’s not surprised. Since they started dating – and even more since she’s practically moved in with him – Tim does this pretty often. It had been a great revelation at first, how laid-back he is off-duty, how tactile and spontaneous he can be.
Lucy listens carefully to the room. The TV is playing distantly, still commercials, but behind the voiceover trying to sell something – she thinks it might be life insurance, there’s classical music playing. She gives into it, sighing as she drapes her arm around Tim’s shoulder.
It reminds her of the first night they danced like this, a month or so after Angela’s wedding, hanging out with all of their friends at a tiny bar with no dance floor. She can’t remember the pretense, but they were celebrating something, and Jackson was watching carefully to make sure her drink never ran empty.
She wasn’t drunk, but she might have gotten there if her favorite song-of-the-moment hadn’t come on, some poppy ballad that topped the charts for a few weeks before fading to oblivion. Instead, she’d been just tipsy enough not to care that there wasn’t anywhere to dance as she sat her glass on the table and looked at Jackson.
“Jax,” she remembers the nickname falling out of her mouth before she could stop it. “Come dance with me!”
He’d rolled his eyes at first, but it hadn’t taken much wheedling before he’d let Lucy drag him to the quietest area they could find, squeezed in against a wall and the backside of a booth, hand-in-hand, bouncing happily back and forth. Jackson had spun her around a few times, and they’d both laughed when she tried to twirl him. His few inches of height advantage, combined with their lack of coordination, had left him all tangled up in their arms.
But through it all, even as they untwisted themselves and Jackson pulled her in for a loose hug, her gaze had kept drifting back to the table where their friends were sitting.
Back to Tim, who always seemed to be looking right back at her, smiling around the lip of his pint glass, or raising his eyebrows in amusement.
Until she looked up again, over Jackson’s shoulder, as he pulled their joined hands in wide, silly circles.
Then Tim was gone. His seat had emptied, and Lucy’s hands stuttered in their motions. Jackson noticed the way she squeezed his fingers, and turned his head to glance behind him. He looked over both sides, then nodded.
“He’s at the bar.”
And sure enough, when Lucy had looked over, Tim had been sliding his empty glass across the bar. He’d turned back empty handed and made his way slowly along the edge of the room. As the song ended, Lucy and Jackson had stepped apart, just in time for Tim to step up beside her and reach slowly for her waist. She’d seen it coming, made no move to lean away from his hand wrapping around her midsection, both too high and too low to be anything inappropriate.
“Can I cut in?” he’d asked, looking right at Lucy. She'd met Jackson’s eye over his shoulder and smiled as he nodded at her.
“Sure!” She’d shrugged happily, fitting her hands around Tim’s shoulders.
She can’t remember what song had played next, but they’d danced to it anyway. Through the first verse, Tim had carefully maintained a little bit of distance between them, but as the chorus started, Lucy stepped in closer, pressing herself brazenly against his chest.
His grip had tightened on her waist, and that's all it had taken for her to know that he was completely gone over her.
Like he’s still gone now.
The commercial is over; Lucy can hear the dog food ad that plays next, but neither of them move. They don’t care what’s happening in the other room, on the TV screen. They’re swaying gently in the kitchen, and Tim is pulling Lucy closer to him again. She rests her head on his chest, his heartbeat echoing in her ear as she runs her fingers through the short, scratchy hairs at the back of his neck.
“Mmm, I love you,” she sighs, and she’d swear she can hear his heart skip a beat, even though she knows it’s a medical impossibility. No matter how many times they say it, it always feels special and exciting to share that connection with Tim.
She remembers the first time he’d said it, standing in the middle of the bullpen, surrounded by their friends and coworkers. They’d been in the middle of another big case, pulling forces from every unit they could spare, trying to break down a human trafficking ring they suspected was working out of LAX. Lucy had been the one to suggest that the TSA leads might not have panned out because airport security agents might have been involved in the scandal, trying to throw the other agencies off of their scent. And sure enough, a couple of database searches later, Tim had turned up a checkpoint supervisor with connections to half a dozen of the suspected victims.
It had been their biggest break in close to two days, and everyone had immediately scattered to start preparing for the next stages of the investigation.
But Tim had stood up, glanced around to be sure that no one was looking, and drawn Lucy into his arms.
“God, I love you,” he’d said, against the top of her head. “You did great.”
She hadn’t known which part had been the bigger surprise: the flat-out praise while they were on duty, or the way he’d dropped the L-word so casually. Lucy had frozen against him, leaned back far enough to look Tim in the eye, and grinned when he nodded back at her, confirming what she’d thought she’d heard.
Later, he’d told her that he hadn’t meant to say it just then, that he’d been thinking about it for a while but was hoping for a more private moment between the two of them. Still, it had felt pretty perfect to Lucy, the division moving around them, while they stood still at the center of their own little universe.
“I love you too,” she’d said then, as Tim is saying now, pressing his lips to her forehead and running his hand up and down her back.
Lucy shivers, but she isn’t cold. She knows Tim felt it, can tell by the way he pulls her a little closer as he turns them around the kitchen again. He drops his hand to her hip and squeezes, quick and tight and just this side of possessive. She loves him like this, loves how he makes her feel wanted, needed, desired even when it’s just the two of them. She covers his hand with her own, slotting their fingers together and smiling at the quiet romance of the moment.
The commercial changes again, something with a car engine revving while a deep voice outlines the features on the year’s newest model.
But Lucy doesn't see how having the newest car could possibly matter, especially when it would mean giving up all the memories they’ve made in Tim’s pickup, or the little blue Camry she’d replaced the Datsun with after Tamara came into their lives.
Why should she care if a new car comes with a heated steering wheel? That’s what she and Tim have each other for, reaching across the gearshift to hold hands as they spend off days driving around the outskirts of LA, listening to the radio and talking about anything that crosses their minds.
Lucy had been stunned speechless the first time Tim had taken her driving, when he’d reached for the radio dial and turned the volume up as they drove north out of town.
“What?” He’d said, when he’d caught her looking.
“Nothing …" She’d trailed off, playing with his fingers. “Just … didn’t think you were a radio guy, is all.”
She was thinking about the hundreds of quiet hours they’d logged in the shop during her training. The quirk in Tim’s smile had told her that he remembered them too.
“Different rules at work,” he’d shrugged. “I like listening to music, but we need to be totally aware of our surroundings on-duty.”
Lucy had giggled and rolled her eyes as she smiled and squeezed his hand while he steered them down the closest thing to backroads that LA has to offer.
Tim tightens his grip on her fingers now, drawing her back into the present and pulling their joined hands off of her waist. He holds them in the air, uses his other hand to nudge Lucy by the hip until she gets the message and steps out of the embrace, turning herself away from him. When their arms are extended, she pushes off of her foot and twirls back into him. He catches her, like she’d always known he would, and tips her backward until her hair is dangling down as far as his knee.
She laughs, gravity making it sound more nasal than usual, as Tim pulls her back upright. Her foot collides with the edge of his when she sets it down, and she stumbles.
But he catches her then, too, holds her steady with an arm wound tight around her waist. She hadn’t known she’d trip, but she always knows he’ll catch her.
He always has, even if he pokes a little fun sometimes. Like the day they’d been walking into the station together, so early into their relationship that they weren’t even calling it as such yet, when she’d been so focused on the feeling of his gaze burning into the back of her head that she’d missed a step. She’d felt gravity try to take over then, started to brace herself for the inevitable landing and tried to twist so she wouldn’t go bouncing down the concrete stairs.
But Tim had reached out before she’d even tipped all the way over, caught her by the elbow and chuckled as he held her up while she regained her balance.
“Easy,” his voice had been low and warm in her ear. “If you’re going to get hurt on duty, have a better story than losing a fight against the front steps.”
“Right,” Lucy had let out a breath, testing her footing. “Like you getting shot on my first shift?”
“Exactly.” Tim had stepped even closer when they reached the top of the steps, reaching around Lucy to open the door for her. “Hey, listen, I’m going over to Angela’s tonight. Wes bought a bookcase, and he wants a hand putting the thing together.”
“No problem,” she’d known exactly what he was trying to tell her: they couldn’t hang out that night, because there wasn’t a good excuse for him to bring his former rookie, now friend (well, more than that, but not that anyone else had known at the time) along to help his best friend’s husband assemble furniture. “Jackson and I can have movie night. Will I … see you tomorrow?”
He’d smirked at her, just before they parted ways into their separate locker rooms.
“As if you could get rid of me.”
As if she’d ever want to. That’s the thought on her mind now, when Tim presses her hand into his chest, over his heartbeat. He picks up the rhythm, stepping and turning them around the kitchen island with more gusto than a moment before, like there’s music playing in his head that she can’t quite make out.
Still, she follows his lead, would follow him just about anywhere, but especially here, around the room until they’re back where they started.
The moment fades then, through some unspoken agreement. They lean back, just far enough to kiss softly before Tim lets go of her hand. He doesn’t stray far though; his other hand lingers on Lucy’s waist as she turns around. The oven beeps when she turns it on, the high-pitched noise echoing through the contented quiet between them. Tim steps away then, smiling at her as he walks backward toward the living room.
It’s a quiet end to a quiet moment, soft and intimate and perfect.
Perfect.
Just like dancing with Tim.