Work Text:
It’s time for you to move on…
You should go for it….
Move on…
Go for it…
Move.
She needed…to…move. Go inside. She needed to go back to Chris. Who was on her sofa. Waiting for her. She needed to go back to her boyfriend. The one who’d almost died. The one she’d almost cheated on . She needed to-
Her body jerked forward, taking an unsteady step forward. Her eyes shot towards her door, checking to see if Chris was watching. But even that was fleeting, a reflex more than a conscious thought. Because she was already moving again. Her feet carrying her quickly down the empty hallway that Tim had just left.
The elevator was closing as she rounded the corner. But she didn’t slow. Her pace picked up as she sprinted towards the stairwell. The door slammed open a bit too loudly as she pushed it open, and the sounds of her shoes hitting the concrete steps echoed in the space as she all but ran down the stairs. And part of her knew that Tim would probably be gone by the time she got down all six flights. Some part of her knew that she would be better off going back upstairs- letting the conversation be what it was.
But she couldn’t.
Because once she had stopped focusing on how much his words hurt, she focused on everything he wasn’t saying. She focused on the pain hidden in the corners of his smile and the way he’d looked as he turned away- as he’d looked at Chris on her couch waiting for her. She focused on how unsteady his voice had been when he said, ‘We didn’t…’.
So she kept moving. Pushing aside the voice that said this was a bad idea. Pushing aside the image of Chris’s scared, hurt face, as he whispered Rosalind’s name in the hospital. Even pushing aside the memory of Tim’s lips on hers, hands pulling her closer in that airplane bathroom. The only thing she let herself think about was reaching Tim before he drove away.
Her legs buckled as she hit the ground floor, her body expecting another step that wasn’t there. But she righted herself quickly, yanking open the door and sweeping into the lobby. It was luck that he was only just walking out of the building. She followed at a slightly slower pace, trying to catch her breath. But it was a wasted effort, because as soon as she stepped outside and he turned around, the breath died in her lungs.
He had parked under a lamppost. Which meant she could see him perfectly despite the darkness surrounding the rest of the world. So she saw the redness of his eyes and the tightness of his jaw as he met her gaze. She saw it and it made everything inside of her go tight and achy.
“Tim?” He took in a deep breath, and she felt her chest rising in time with his. Then she watched- she watched- as he put on that fake smile of his. The one she’d seen outside of her hallway just two minutes ago. She forced her frozen feet to move again. To step closer and close the distance between them. He met her halfway.
“You need something?” he asked, voice low and too soft.
And this was her out. This was when she should make up some excuse about work or Kojo or anything. This was the moment when she protected them both by pretending she couldn’t see the longing he was trying to hide. But she didn’t take the out. She took his hand, instead.
“I shouldn’t have invited you in,” she said, voice shaking on every word. Tim gave a slow nod, before dropping his eyes to the concrete beneath their feet. “But I shouldn’t have lied to you in the hotel, either.” Tim tensed, and Lucy could feel it. “I shouldn’t have pretended this could ever have been just biology. Because it’s not. And I don’t want it to be.”
“Lucy….” he rasped, glancing up at her for one pain-filled second before dropping his gaze again.
She took a step closer, tears she hadn’t noticed spilling over onto her cheeks. “What if I don’t wanna move on? What if- What if I know what I want and it’s not in Sacramento… or upstairs. What if it’s right here in front of me? Do I still owe it to myself to go for it?”
Tim’s lips pressed together into a hard line and Lucy watched the muscle in his jaw clench and unclench. She was barely breathing, her entire body felt suspended- that moment right before you fall. And, God, she hoped this had a soft landing. She hoped this didn’t destroy everything they were. Her eyes lifted to Tim’s at the same moment he finally looked at her. And for a moment- a single second- her heart broke. Because the look on his face…
She pressed her lips together in a vain attempt to keep her face from completely crumbling. “Okay,” she said, taking in a gasping breath. Trying not to think about how that one word sounded so pained. She bit the inside of her lip, and gave a quick, sharp nod. “Okay, yeah. I- I get it. I, um- I overstepped.” And she was pulling away, trying to separate her hand from his- to give him space. But…
“Lucy.” She shook her head, hating the tears that slipped free at the harsh movement. Her hand twisted in Tim’s grasp- and she wasn’t sure when he’d gone from barely holding her fingers to his hand wrapped around her wrist- but he didn’t let go. “Luce, look at me,” he said, voice little more than a pained whisper. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t. But it was Tim- he already knew that. So when his free hand softly cupped her cheek and gently tilted her face up so their eyes met, she didn’t fight it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“No.” He shook his head. “No, you have nothing to be sorry for with me.” His thumb brushed across her cheek, catching a tear. Her chest went tight at the look in his eyes. It was so soft and- “We’re pretty bad at this, huh? You’d think we’d know better than to lie to each other by now.” Lucy huffed out a surprised laugh, almost missing the way Tim’s lips curved upwards at the sight.
“So…?”
“So, we have a lot to think about. This- I want to see what this is, Lucy. I want to see what it could be when we aren’t pretending to be other people.” She nodded because, yeah, she wanted that too. “But I know that now isn’t the right time- no matter what almost happened. We’re both seeing other people. And we’re both riding some pretty high emotions. And I refuse to hurt you- not with this and not at work. So…” He nodded to himself, accepting whatever thought had just come into his head. “You should go to Sacramento. You should go to UC school and learn everything you can because you deserve that. And maybe, when you get back, we figure out what else this could be.”
Lucy nodded- heart still aching, but slightly less, now. “Okay,” she said on a relieved exhale. “Okay, yeah. So… I guess this is it for now?” Tim gave her a small smile. Still sad, but there was something like hope in his eyes now. His hand fell from her cheek and back to his side. Lucy took a breath and then took a step back, putting a safer amount of distance between them. “Then I will see you in a month.”
“See you in a month.” And that sentence shouldn’t have made her feel half the things she was feeling. Not when they were separating. Not when they both still had relationships to deal with. Not when Chris was upstairs, waiting for her. But that was Tim Bradford- he was always the exception. “Goodnight, Lucy.”
“Goodnight, Tim.”
She turned and went back inside, heart pounding just as hard as it had been when she’d come out here five minutes ago. Her mind ran over next steps as she rode the elevator to her floor. She would go to Sacramento. She would throw herself into this new opportunity at UC school. She would take the month to sort through everything she was feeling. And when she came back…
Stepping off the elevator Lucy almost bumped into someone waiting to go down. “I’m so sorry-“ she started, the words falling out of her mouth before her brain registered the person in front of her. “Chris… What-“
“You were gone for a while and I got worried. But then I looked out the window and saw you downstairs.” The usually bright smile Lucy was used to seeing on Chris’ face was gone. Instead, there was confusion and something akin to hurt in his eyes. And she knew. With one look, she knew what he would say before the words even left his mouth.
“What did you almost do, Lucy?”