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She remembered her palms sweating. Being more nervous than she’d ever been for a situation that wasn’t life-threatening. He wanted to come in, she knew he did, but he was honorable. His honor code was strict, and strictly prohibited everything she wanted to take from him if he entered.
She could have sung with relief when he finally crossed the threshold into her home, giving her space despite their mutual intention to invade each other’s. She stared at him, not quite knowing where to start, suddenly aware of her messenger bag on her shoulder. She used it as an excuse to gain a bit more distance because she couldn’t touch him until they’d reached her room. If she started, she wouldn’t stop, but if this was all she could have, she wanted him in her bed. So she adjusted the bag and brought it over to drop on the couch.
This couch. Something was… wrong. She could feel something wrong, and it had to do with this couch. Her couch was blue. It was supposed to be blue. Why was it now green? When did she get a green couch? And why did she feel like something should be on this couch?
All thoughts of anything being wrong vanished from her mind when a warm chest collided with her back, and thick, strong arms made their way around her waist. She held onto them for a moment before spinning to look up at him. There was so much affection in his eyes, new and familiar at the same time.
She reached a hand up to stroke the strong and softer contours of his face, running her fingers over the smile lines near his mouth, the crow’s feet near his beautiful blue eyes. The only thing she didn’t love was this stupid hairdo he’d been given. She smoothed the hard, gelled strands from his hairline to the back of his neck, watching in amazement as his hair puffed up behind her hand, leaving it shiny, fluffy, and upright, how he wore it every day. Just the way she liked it.
She tugged his arms from around her, holding his hands in hers for just a moment before grasping his elbows, and running her hands down both of his arms at the same time. She watched as his silly fake tattoos disappeared under her touch, finally ending at his fingertips until his forearms were completely clean. When she looked up at him, he was beaming, as if grateful to her for bringing him back to himself. With two fingers, she swiped at his neckline above his graphic tee once, then twice, ridding him of the last traces of ink on his chest, until there he was.
Not Dim, not Jake, just him. Just Tim.
He leaned forward, as she’d willed him to, and she melted into his kiss. So many months, so many times she’d envisioned this, and it was so different lately. Because now, it was real, or at least it had been. She now knew what it felt like to be held by him, desired by him, kissed by him like it was his last chance. In hindsight, he may have been right.
She’d expected to fall over the back of this strange couch as he continued to lean, but she was surprised when her back landed on her comforter, his body eagerly covering hers. How did they land in her bed? She didn’t know. Where did their clothes go? She didn’t know. She didn’t care. All she cared about was that she had him here, right where she wanted him, how she wanted him. As himself.
Her senses were unfocused as he overwhelmed her. She smelled aftershave and pine air freshener from his truck. She saw blue eyes and an ear-to-ear smile she didn’t see nearly as often as she needed to. She felt hands, skin, lips all over her, anywhere they could reach. And she heard his voice rumbling in her ear, telling her he’d stay with her, that he’d never let her go, that he was hers and always would be. That they could stay here, ignore the whole world, and just belong to each other forever.
Lucy’s eyes shot open, much to her dismay. She looked down to see her hand splayed across her own collarbone, which was where his had been last she remembered. In her dream, because it was always a dream.
She grumbled quietly and flipped onto her back, catching Chris in her peripheral vision lying on his. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye before looking back to the ceiling.
“Hey,” he greeted.
“What time is it?” Lucy asked, blinking in the darkness.
“Almost 2:30.”
“Damn,” she groaned, running a hand over her eyes. She turned to fully look at him, registering the tightness of his lips and the furrow of his brows. “Nightmare?”
“Yeah.”
“The usual?”
“Yeah.”
Chris’s usual nightmare was blurry, fighting to keep his eyes open as a redheaded woman with piercing green eyes dug a razor blade into his forearm, dragging it from his inner elbow to his wrist. Sometimes he’d wake up before she’d cut into his other arm, but sometimes he wouldn’t.
“I thought you hadn’t had that dream in a while.” While Lucy was in undercover school, he’d sent her updates on his recovery, both physical and mental. When he’d told her he hadn’t had the nightmare in a while, she was optimistic that maybe he was on his way to healing- maybe his return to independence wasn’t far off. She couldn’t let herself look into how badly she wanted him not to need her as much anymore, fearful of what kind of person that would make her.
“I think today triggered it,” he answered, and she made a small noise.
Today, he had found out the online group in which he’d found community while Lucy was away had actually brought him into regular interaction with the source of his nightmares. Lucy felt awful that he’d lost something that had come to mean so much to him, but a very selfish corner of her brain, one she tried her hardest not to indulge, had been whispering for hours, “Setback.”
“What about you?” Chris asked. “Did you have a nightmare?”
She sighed. “I dreamt about that day. Coming home and…”
It wasn’t technically a lie. Chris nodded as if he understood, but he didn’t. He never did, and she didn’t want him to. She didn’t want him to know that she’d spent the past two months dreaming of the same event he did, from a wildly different point of view. She couldn’t tell him that she dreamt of another man’s hands all over her on her couch, in his house, in the precinct, in their shop, on a plane, in the bed she and Chris were in now; all while he was dreaming of being completely alone while he was screaming, bleeding, dying.
Lucy loathed that Chris had to survive what he did. How could she not? Even if she hadn’t been through something eerily similar, she was an empathetic human being. But part of her, the part struggling to the surface, the part that reminded her that she deserved to consider herself as much as she did others, nagged that she was trapped in a nightmare as well. A waking one. She had to spend all day exchanging yearning glances with her sergeant, who went home to his own girlfriend as she came home to her boyfriend. She had to constantly watch herself around Chris and around Tim, her only real reprieve coming from visiting her lover when she slipped into unconsciousness.
She didn’t even realize she was beginning to tear up until Chris had turned on his side, brushing away her tears with his thumb. “Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he whispered soothingly. “I’m still here.”
“I know.” And that’s the problem.
“Let’s get some sleep, okay?” he asked, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “You’ve got an early morning tomorrow.”
She nodded, turning onto her side to give him her back, unable to face him right now. Turning away proved useless when he wrapped his arms around her, giving her one last kiss on the temple, wishing her goodnight, and driving the point home that she was the worst girlfriend in the world.
“Goodnight,” she murmured back, wiping the last of her tears and closing her eyes.
She wouldn't be able to fall asleep until she imagined that the arms around her were much more muscular, the skin more sunkissed and covered in a thin layer of blonde hair. She couldn’t sleep until she imagined the chest behind her was as broad and firm as his, shielding her from anything that could come for her in the night the way his body would.
She couldn’t fall asleep until she could trick herself into believing she’d be waking up in Tim’s arms.