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They’ve only been seeing each other for a little over three weeks when Angela starts cornering him and talking about his lack of love life.
“Seriously,” Angela says one night, around her fourth attempt. “I could set you up. Unless…” Her eyes narrow, the way they always do when she’s in the middle of solving a case. “Unless there’s some reason I can’t .”
Tim glances at Lucy over Angela’s shoulder. Last night he’d had her in his bed, her fingers tracing the stubble along his jawline, his mouth against the tattoo currently peeking out under her collar. He clears his throat, looks over at Angela.
“There’s no reason, Lopez. I just worry about your choice of date.”
“Whatever,” says Angela. “I have great taste in women.”
“Uh huh.”
Angela seems to take this non-committance as a direct and personal challenge. She stares at him, calculating, like she’s waiting for him to confess to whatever crime she thinks he’s committed. Personally, Tim doesn’t really considering wanting privacy to a crime, but go figure.
“Okay,” she says finally. “In that case, I’ll set you up.”
“Okay,” says Tim. Angela’s expression grows even more suspicious, somehow.
“On a date,” she says.
“Yes.”
“With a woman.”
“That‘s the idea, yes.”
“A human woman.”
“Starting to get concerned now, Ang.”
“Hmm.” To his relief, Angela gives in. She gets to her feet, pointing a long finger at him. “This isn’t over, Bradford. You’re hiding something.”
“If you say so,” Tim says. Angela’s responding glare is so withering, Tim should have been deeply afraid. As it is, he’s been on the receiving end of it too many times before. He gives her a cheerful wave goodbye.
His eyes catch on Lucy again, who’s still standing across the station. She meets his gaze and tilts her head at him, subtle, without even breaking her conversation. Tim has to fight to hide his stupid grin. Angela, thankfully, doesn’t notice a thing. Maybe they’re getting too good at this whole secret relationship thing.
“So,” Lucy says later, trying to shove a carton of soy milk into his fridge. “Angela tried to set me up today.”
Tim stops putting the groceries away. “She did the same thing to me at lunch.”
There’s thinly-veiled anxiety in Lucy’s eyes when she glances at him. Tim resists the urge to reach out and smooth her worry lines out with the pad of his thumb, and then remembers that he doesn’t have to resist anymore. She leans into his touch, instinctive.
“You think maybe she’s onto us?”
“We are trying to keep a secret from a station full of detectives,” Tim reasons. “ And Angela has wanted this for a while.”
“Has she?”
“Don’t go getting a big head, Officer Chen.”
“Officer Chen?” Lucy’s eyes are coy in a way that makes his heart race. “That’s not what you were calling me last night.”
Tim, naturally, takes that as a challenge. He presses in with his whole body, and she moves with him, until she’s bracketed against the open fridge. He leans down and grazes his mouth against hers, and she keens, a sweet little noise in the back of her throat that he’ll never tire of hearing. Of drawing out of her.
“Tim,” she whispers.
“Lucy.” He slides his hand down her arm to rest on her hand, enjoying the way goosebumps seem to appear in his wake. Then he closes it around the carton of soy milk still in her grip. “That’s not where that goes.”
Lucy whines as he pulls away, laughing, to return the soy milk to its rightful place in the bottom most fridge pocket.
“You suck,” she says. “You are so paying for that tonight!”
Her laughter is kind of undermining her threat. As compensation, and also just because he wants to, he leans down and steals a kiss from her anyway. She is responsive instantly, her hands fisting into his shirt to remove any space between them. Their kiss is as sweet and anticipated as it was on their first date, but he has to admit it’s a little clumsier than usual, on account of all her smiling.
“Stop being so happy,” he grumbles, pulling away.
She rolls her eyes at him, but her hands don’t move off his chest.
“Grinch,” she says, and then pauses. Tim knows that pause like the back of his own hand, almost knows what she’s going to ask before she can ask it. Still, she manages to surprise him every time.
“Lucy…” he coaxes.
She bites her lip. “Uh. Do you want to—I mean, should we…. talk about it?”
He raises his eyebrows. “About…”
She frowns at him. “About us.”
“Us?”
“You know, what we’re doing. What… we are.” She blinks at his expression. “Are you serious? You know, that we’re…Whatever we’re…” Tim gives it another moment. Three, two, one… She huffs at him, right on schedule. Like clockwork. “You’re kidding. Okay, I hate you. When did you get so confident? I miss when you were stuttering on my couch at just the thought of kissing me.”
“Just giving you a taste of your own medicine.” He shrugs, then sobers up a little. His hands wrap around Lucy’s wrists, her fingers playing at the back of his neck, her skin impossibly soft to the touch. “Look, I’m willing to let you take the lead on this one. As shitty as it is, your reputation is on the line here. I don’t want to jeopardize your career in any way.”
The fridge starts beeping. Tim ignores it in favour of looking at Lucy.
“You think we’re doing the right thing by hiding this?” she asks.
“I think…” There are a lot of words Tim can use to convey what he’s thinking, but truthfully none of them are big enough or good enough or Lucy enough. He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, unsure of whether it’s to ground her or himself. “I think that I like what we have now, and that I meant it when I said you’re worth the risk. If keeping something from Grey means that I get to have you around like this a little longer, I’m happy to break the rules.”
Lucy’s eyes are almost of a glassy quality, her mouth pulled into an admiring smile.
“Sergeant Bradford,” she says, “you’re kind of a romantic.”
“Yeah, well,” says Tim. “There’s also the added bonus of keeping Smitty out of my business.”
They’re careful about it. Actually. Tim likes to think that their relationship is not so much a secret but more a lie by omission.
They continue to be professional at work. Lucy’s careful to make sure they’re never paired together on-duty. Tim keeps coming up with various excuses to fend off Angela’s attempts to set him up with various women, which unfortunately is only serving to make her more suspicious.
It’s not an exact science. Sometimes they linger for a little too long in each other’s personal space and they have to spring apart, spluttering excuses, when they realise it. When Tim gets a huge purple bruise to the face on patrol, he has to shoot her a warning look when she instinctively goes to cradle her fingers against his jaw. And when Lucy goes UC, Tim has to constantly remind himself to dial his worry down by 300% to ward off any suspicions.
Actually, they’re kind of doing a poor job. But surprisingly, nobody’s said anything about it. Not even Angela. Tim’s kind of beginning to fear that the station is filled with terrible police officers who lack basic deductive skills.
Angela ambushes him one day on his way out of the locker room, demanding that they get tacos together. The expression on her face leaves no room for argument. They sit out by the food trucks, him in plain clothes, her detective’s badge glinting in the dying sunlight.
Lucy’s waiting at home for him. They were supposed to be watching a movie with Tamara tonight; some fancy indie film she apparently needs to write about for her midterm paper.
Angela eats her taco slowly and deliberately. Almost too slowly. Tim sighs and abandons any hope of getting home in time for the movie.
“What do you want, Lopez?”
“Nothing,” says Angela innocently. “Can’t I just eat tacos with a friend?”
“You’ve been eating that taco for twenty minutes.”
“You’re so suspicious,” Angela says, rolling her eyes. “Try turning your cop off once in a while.”
“I’m not a cop all the time,” he scoffs.
“Oh, really? Tell me what you did when you went home last night, Tim.”
Last night Tim went home to Lucy. He’d pulled a later shift than her and she was already curled up in his bed by the time he got home, buried in a huge pile of blankets with Kojo in a ball at her feet. He’d crawled into bed with her, content just to know she was next to him, but then she’d opened her eyes and they’d kissed until her lips were swollen and her hair was a mess. Sleeping had been far from either of their minds after that.
“Went home, worked out. Went to bed,” Tim says. It isn’t strictly a lie.
“Total cop,” Angela says. She keeps glancing at her watch, then her phone.
“Ang, what is going on?” Tim asks. “I have plans.”
“You’re right. You do have plans,” says Angela vaguely.
“What—“
“I’ve gotta go to the bathroom,” Angela says, her chair scraping as she stands. “I’ll be back. Don’t move.”
The moment Angela disappears out of sight, a blonde woman approaches their table, as if having been summoned. She’s wearing a nice dress, and there’s an easy smile on her face that instantly has him suspicious.
“Are you Tim?”
“Sergeant Bradford,” he corrects. “Who’s asking?”
“You date,” she says.
“My— What ?”
Sarah sits down across from him without invitation. To her credit, she doesn’t seem very offended by the look of horror Tim’s pretty sure he’s conveying right now.
“I’m guessing Angela didn’t tell you about this.”
“No,” Tim says, glaring in the direction Angela had disappeared in. “She didn’t.”
“You don’t seem very happy about it.”
Tim realises that his glowering might be giving off the wrong impression to this woman, who, in reality, is probably perfectly nice. Maybe a couple of months ago he would even have found something charming in her easy smile. But her eyes are the wrong shade of brown and she’s too tall. When she looks at him he can’t tell exactly what she’s thinking, and, okay, yeah—she’s not Lucy. It’s a little embarrassing to think that it’s only been three weeks and yet he can’t imagine himself ever going on a date with anyone else.
“Listen, uh—“
“Sarah,” she supplies.
“Sarah. I’m sure you’re really nice. And there’s nothing against you, seriously, I mean—you seem great. But I, uh—“ Am currently seeing someone. That’s the easiest—and most honest—answer. But Tim doesn’t know what kind of intel this Sarah might feed back to Angela. “Crap, I’m sorry, I’m just—“
“Relax,” says Sarah, her eyes bright in amusement. “Look, I’m not really ready to date yet. I only agreed to this because when it comes to Angela, it’s actually one of her milder schemes, and I was starting to get kind of scared about what else she might plan if I didn’t accept. Sound familiar to you?”
Tim deflates, relief flooding through his veins. “Yeah.”
“Angela’s probably watching us right now,” says Sarah, and she’s not wrong. “So how about we sit, have some tacos, and then tell Angela later that it didn’t work out?”
Tim has to admit that even he can’t really find much flaw in this plan. He nods, and Sarah smiles at him.
“Great. Now pass me that menu and tell me about whoever it is you were thinking about when you tried to turn me down just then.”
“I wasn’t…” Tim pauses. “How’d you know I was thinking about someone?”
The look Sarah gives him makes him feel awfully transparent.
“You’re in love. It’s written all over your face. Plus you keep glancing at your phone. You want my advice?”
Curiosity gets the better of him. He nods, and she grins.
“Never play poker,” she says.
Tim brings back a bag of tacos for Lucy and Tamara as penance for being late, to which they forgive him immediately. While Tamara goes to hear them up, Lucy kisses him in greeting.
“Missed you,” he mumbles against her mouth.
“It’s only been a few hours,” Lucy laughs, but she sounds pleased.
“Few hours since I saw you,” Tim corrects. “Been a while since I could touch you.”
“You can touch me at work,” Lucy says, innocent.
Tim leans in, voice low. Almost a growl. “You know that’s not what I’m talking about, Chen.”
She laughs again, bright and clear, and he swallows it up with another kiss.
“Hey,” she manages eventually, “What held you up?”
“Angela,” Tim grumbles.
Lucy grins. “Did she show you more photos of girls she wants you to date?”
“Worse,” says Tim. “She made me go out with one.”
Lucy stiffens, extracting herself from him and crossing her arms. “What? You went out on a date?”
“If that’s what you wanna call it,” Tim says. He picks up the DVD cover Tamara’s left out for tonight, pretending like he’s not aware of (and totally amused by) Lucy’s furrowed brow.
“Oh,” Lucy says after a long moment. “Was she—I mean, what did she look like?”
“I don’t know,” Tim says. “Tall. Blonde.”
“Blue eyes?” Lucy guesses. This actually does give Tim pause.
“How’d you know?”
She grins at him, like she’s pleased to know something he doesn’t for once. “Because that’s obviously your type.”
He gapes at her.
“That’s not my type.”
She rolls her eyes at him. “Come on. Isabel? Ashley? Don’t tell me they’re not carbon copies.”
“Okay,” Tim concedes. “They share similarities , yes.”
“It’s okay to admit you have a type, Tim,” Lucy says, nonchalantly reaching for the TV remote. He wonders vaguely just how the tables flipped from teasing her to teasing him so quickly.
“Lucy. I don’t have a type.”
“Uh huh.”
“I don’t.”
“Sure.”
Tim knows this is all fun and games, but frustration starts to bleed through all the teasing. He reaches out and grabs her arm, pulls her back and closer to him.
“Lucy,” he says, serious. “You know that you’re my type.”
Her eyes are wide, mouth parted, like she hadn’t expected him to be so confrontational about it.
“I know,” she reassures. “I’m kidding, Tim.” He’s silent for a moment, studying her eyes. “Seriously,” she adds, and then it clicks.
“You’re jealous,” he says.
Lucy scoffs. “What? No way.”
“Lucy…”
“Jealousy’s so petty. It’s childish. It’s totally beneath me. And I’m not jealous.” She glares at him when he raises her eyebrows at her. “Go on whatever dates you want. Kiss as many blondes as you want.”
“Hang on—I didn’t kiss anyone—“
“Look,” she says. “We’re not… I mean, we haven’t had that discussion about exclusivity around… whatever this is. So if you wanted to…” She bites her lip, and Tim’s eyes are drawn to them even amid his distress. “You can. I won’t stop you.”
“I didn’t kiss anyone, Lucy, it was barely even a date. Mostly against my own will and entirely orchestrated by Angela. It was just a couple of tacos with some stranger I’ll never see again. ”
She scowls at him. “I hate tacos.”
He sighs. “You love tacos.”
“Fine,” she relents. “I don’t mind tacos. But…”
“Lucy,” Tim interrupts, probably sounding a bit desperate but beyond the realm of really caring, “Look. I don’t know where you’re at. But I don’t want to go on a date with anybody else.”
“I don’t want you to go on a date with anybody else either,” says Lucy.
“Do you want to see anyone else?” Tim presses, thinking (unwittingly) about Chris and that stupid expensive house he’d wanted to buy with Lucy. Lucy shakes her head, and he lets his relief melt into a smile. “So… no more dates. For either of us. Can that be arranged?”
“I don’t know, I’ve kind of become accustomed to all the gifts from my line of suitors…”
He glared at her. “Very cute.”
She laughs, and finally ( finally ) comes back into his space. His fingers instinctively curl into her belt loops to tug her closer.
He waits for another joke, or playful insult, but she just stops and looks at him with those eyes he’s never been able to resist, and she says, “I’m yours, Tim,” and he thinks he actually loses his breath a little bit.
“Lucy?” he manages after a moment.
“Yes, Tim?”
“You are definitely, one hundred percent, my type.”
She smirks at him.
“I know.”
Everything’s going so smoothly. They are colleagues by day, pretending like at night they don’t share the same bed, the same toothpaste, that the red mark on her collarbone is from a nasty takedown and not a hickey from the night before. It’s good. Great. Then of course, one normal afternoon at the end of shift, Tim has to go and ruin it.
On pure instinct, without even thinking about it, Tim leans down and kisses Lucy goodbye. Quick, chaste, with a small squeeze of her hip. It’s nothing they haven’t done before. Actually, it’s considerably on the tamer side of things they’d done before. But for some reason, Lucy goes bright red and starts stuttering.
“ Tim ,” she manages, glancing around furtively, and it’s then that Tim realises his fatal mistake. They’re still in the station. Surrounded by people.
“Oh my god,” says Thorsen. “It’s finally happening.”
“Took you long enough,” Nyla says wryly. But she’s smirking at them. Beside her, Angela looks as if she can’t quite decide whether she wants to punch Tim in the shoulder or give him a massive hug. Tim hopes privately for the latter. Angela’s shoulder punches leave bruises for days.
“Sergeant Bradford,” says Grey, pulling Tim back down to the mortifying situation at hand. “Do I need to conduct a refresher on appropriate workplace conduct?”
Tim takes a sharp step back away from Lucy.
“Uh—No. Absolutely not, sir. This—it won’t happen again. It was a mistake. Not a mistake.” He looks wildly at Lucy. “Not saying you’re a mistake, Lucy. Uh, Chen. I mean, Officer Chen. You’re not a mistake. You’re great and I love you. What I mean to say is, there will be no more fraternisation between Officer Chen and I unless it’s at home. Or Lucy’s apartment. Or—“
Wesley coughs. “Tim, as a lawyer, I feel like it’s my duty to tell you to stop talking .”
“Right.” Tim takes a breath, then turns to Grey. “It will not happen again, sir.”
The stern expression on his face seems to melt into something lighter. Grey smiles at him, something both proud and smug at the same time.
“I’m pulling your leg, son. I think I speak for everyone in this station when I say this has been coming for a long time.”
Tim lets out a breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding.
“Thank you, sir.”
“We will be having an official conversation about this later,” Grey warns. “But for now…” He makes a point of glancing to the little audience around them. “I’ll let you fend off the masses. And, uh, Bradford. Maybe try and keep your mouth to yourself when you’re at the station.”
Tim nods, feeling very much like a sixteen year old having been caught making out with a girl by his dad. He spares a glance at Lucy, who doesn’t seem to look much better. Her face is still pink, and it worries him a little that she hasn’t said anything yet. Still, he figures she’s probably just content to let him take the spotlight and make a fool of himself for a bit.
As Grey departs, Tim felt himself coming back to his senses. He fixes his expression with his harshest approximation of his TO glare, and scowls at the crowd around them.
“Show’s over,” he snaps.
Unfortunately, Tim’s reputation as a hardass seems to be slipping. Even Juarez, who should have been shaking in her boots as a rookie, doesn’t move an inch.
“Nuh uh, Timothy,” says Angela, grinning at him with a smugness that reminds him of Genny. “This show is just starting. You’re not leaving until we get an explanation for whatever just happened here.”
“Nothing happened here,” Tim says defensively. “I was just… saying goodbye.”
Nyla raises an eyebrow. “With your mouth?”
“You’ve never said goodbye like that to me,” Nolan interjects helpfully.
Tim glances at Lucy. “Little help here?”
She shrugs. Her answering smile is all innocence, but Tim knows better. Her eyes are filled with mischief.
“Pretty sure they want to hear it from you, sir.”
He sighs and rests his hands on his duty belt. She touches his arm, fleeting but nevertheless still grounding in a way that he’s become accustomed to, from before they’d even established any kind of romantic relationship. He’s still impossibly greedy for her touch, even though now he is allowed to know her intimately.
“Officer Chen and I…” Tim looks out into the group of expectant faces. “ Lucy and I are seeing each other outside of a professional capacity.” There’s silence. He sighs.
“We’re dating,” he relents. The reaction is instantaneous. Angela and Nolan break out into the widest smiles he’d ever seen. Celina claps. Thorsen actively cheers.
“I knew it!” he says, before sobering at Tim’s glare. “I mean, congratulations on this very unexpected announcement. Sir.”
“We’re all extremely happy for you,” Nolan adds pleasantly.
Even Nyla has a begrudging smile on her face.
“You sure about him, Chen?” she asks.
Tim glances over at Lucy only to find that she’s already looking back at him. It’s comforting to know he can pinpoint almost each and every individual emotion that passes through her eyes. Fondness, amusement. A bit of exasperation. There’s a fourth expression there too, one that isn’t unfamiliar but that he doesn’t dare to put a label on just yet. If it is what he thinks it is. What he hopes it might be.
“Pretty sure,” Lucy says. The surety in her voice fills his whole body with the warmth he’s come to associate solely with her.
“Please don’t kiss again,” says Nolan. “I don’t want to get in trouble with IA.”
The room falls into chuckles. Even Tim shakes his head, mouth thinned in poorly suppressed amusement.
“Okay, all right,” he says finally. “You guys are all supposed to be working. Don’t make me write you all up.”
“There’s the man we know and love,” Angela teases. “Seeing you happy was kind of throwing off the whole balance of this place.”
Tim rolls his eyes as the other officers began to disperse. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Nolan mouth something to Lucy, and her smile brightly back. Angela, of course, ignores his instructions to grin at him.
“You done?” Tim asks.
“Not nearly,” says Angela, lowering her tone and stepping closer. “You’ve been holding back. We will be having words later, and you will be telling me the whole story.”
Tim looks at Wesley. “Think I’m gonna need a good lawyer.”
Wesley laughs, holding his hands up. “Sorry, man. I don’t take on cases I know I’m going to lose.”
Then Angela does something that surprises him. She pulls him into a hug. Tight, almost maternal in nature. He can almost feel every inch of the love she’s trying to convey to him.
“I’m happy you’re happy,” she says, low just so he can hear it. “You both deserve it.”
Finally it’s just him and Lucy. He reaches down and intertwines his fingers with hers, because now he can, and she leans into his shoulder as they walk out of the station. Tim can’t help but be reminded of a similar time not too long ago, when he’d been heartsick watching her walk away with Chris. Back when he thought they didn’t have a chance.
She’s uncharacteristically quiet as they get in the truck. Contemplative, not upset, but still lacking her usual character in a way that makes his overprotective instincts rear up.
Tim gives her space until they pull into his driveway, until the worry crowding his thoughts can’t be kept at bay anymore. He reaches out and touches her wrist.
“Listen, I’m sorry they found out that way. I wasn’t thinking. If I could take it back—”
“No, it’s not that,” says Lucy, shaking her head. “I’m glad they know. It’s just… you said something. Before. Well. During, I guess.”
“Whatever it was,” Tim says, cursing the panic that had uncharacteristically flustered him earlier, thinking about the way he’d inadvertently called her a mistake, “I didn’t mean it. Okay? I was just saying things in the moment. I panicked. Don’t read too much into it.”
Suddenly she’s looking at him like she’s trying to search for something in his face. He wants to give it to her (he wants to give her everything), but he has no idea what it is she’s searching for.
“Okay,” she says, quiet. “I won’t.”
Tim feels like he’d said the wrong thing, somehow. But Lucy gets out of the car and heads towards the house, and by the time Tim’s caught up to her, she’s back to being herself, beautiful and teasing and equal parts infuriating.
“Lucy…” he begins, and she tugs on his collar once, twice, three times until he gives in and leans down. She kisses him, slow and deep, with an intensity that has him fumbling for the door key, and for the moment, he forgets about it.
“So. That was some display you gave us yesterday, Sarge.”
Tim rolls his eyes at Angela, who is grinning cheekily at him over her cup of coffee.
“We’re not talking about this.”
Nyla swaps a knowing glance with Angela, and then smirks. “Hmm, actually, I think we are.”
“My personal life is none of your business.”
“You made it our business when you made out with an officer in the middle of the station.”
“We did not make out .”
“And your personal life has always been our business,” Angela continues, as if Tim hadn’t spoken at all. “Most of the time against our will.”
Tim frowns. “Excuse me?”
Nyla and Angela exchange another one of those annoying looks.
“You and Lucy are about as subtle as my two year old,” Angela informs him. “Actually, I think Jack probably has more finesse to him.”
“I’m sorry?”
Nyla stirs a packet of sweetener into her coffee. “You two have been the subject of office gossip ever since I joined Mid-Wilshire. Probably even before that.”
“I believe it first started after you had shirts printed after Lucy’s first night shift,” says Angela, nodding thoughtfully.
“That was funny,” Tim defends. “A practical joke. We play them all the time on rookies! That doesn’t prove anything.”
“You guys have no concept of personal space,” Nyla counters.
“When you spend so much time with a person, your boundaries start to change. You should know that, Harper—“
“You share a dog.”
“You danced together at my wedding.”
“You practically undressed her with your eyes at my wedding,” Angela adds.
Tim splutters. “That is not—This is—“
“You kissed. Twice. For no reason except for the fact that you’re clearly in love with each other—“
“I’m not in love with Lucy,” Tim interjects, feeling somewhat rattled and extremely flustered by their line of questioning. He has a newfound appreciation, suddenly, for how good they are at their jobs.
Both Nyla and Angela stare at him as if he was utterly incompetent.
“There’s no point denying it now,” says Nyla. “We all heard you.”
“ Heard me? What…”
Angela stills. “Oh my god. Timothy. Don’t tell me that’s the first time you told her you loved her.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Tim scoffs. Angela groans and leans back in her seat.
“And he doesn’t even realise he’d said it. Idiot.”
Nyla and Angela begin to gather up their stuff, swiping up their coffees and pushing their chairs in. Neither of them pay Tim any more mind.
“Hey, what the hell is going on?” Tim asks. “Lopez. Harper.”
“Poor Lucy,” says Angela. “Should we send her a fruit basket?”
“I think that might be necessary,” Nyla says. Finally, they seem willing to acknowledge Tim’s existence again. “Look, don’t be a moron, Bradford. You’ve been a lot more bearable these past few weeks, and I think it’s because you’re happy. Let’s keep it that way.”
Angela squeezes his shoulder, and then they leave. Tim sits there, still reeling, until the waitress comes by and awkwardly hands him the bill.
It comes to him as he was driving home.
Not saying you’re a mistake, Lucy. Uh, Chen. I mean, Officer Chen. You’re not a mistake. You’re great and I love you.
He had said it. He’d said it, in front of the whole station. He hadn’t even realised; it had just kind of slipped out. It hadn’t been a conscious thought or definitive decision. Tim’s known he loved Lucy for a while now, and the thought should scare him. Somewhere between that first day as her TO and now, she’s managed to take purchase in his life in a way no one really had before. Not even Isabel, who had been a whirlwind romance. Lucy Chen crept up on him, and now he loves her. Simple as that.
He’d said it, and he hadn’t realised. And then afterwards, she thought—he’d told her that it didn’t mean anything, and that—
Tim gets out of the car and bursts into the house. Lucy’s in the kitchen wearing his clothes. She pauses with a cup of tea halfway to her mouth when she sees him.
“Tim?” she asks, taking in his appearance and probably (correctly) deducing that he looks like a crazy person. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
Tim forces himself to calm down even though his skin is prickling.
“Lucy,” he says.
She puts her cup down and is over to him in an instant, her hands on his bicep. Her concern is so loud Tim starts to get a little worried by proxy.
“You should read into it,” he says.
Lucy frowns at him. “What?”
“The other day. What I said,” he insists. “You should read into it.”
“Are you drunk? What are you talking about?”
Tim stops to stare at her. “You think I’m drunk? It’s two in the afternoon.”
She huffs. “Well, I don’t know, you went out with Nyla and Angela and now you’re not making any sense—“
“I am making sense, you’re just not understanding me.”
“So enlighten me,” Lucy says earnestly. “I know we have a shorthand, but I can’t read your mind, Tim.”
Suddenly, Tim realises that maybe this is kind of the problem. He’s spent this whole time assuming Lucy knew, assuming that they are always on the same page. That their natural shorthand in the field also translates directly to their relationship. Most of the time, that’s probably a correct assumption. But sometimes he forgets that while he’s falling in love all over again, she’s probably doing this for the very first time.
Lucy’s a verbal person. As much as she can read him like nobody else, there’s no one who can tell exactly what he’s thinking at all times, especially if he’s trying to hide it from her. Sometimes, Tim’s realising, he just has to tell her.
“Apparently we didn’t really do a good job of hiding our relationship from the station,” he says.
Lucy blinks up at him. If she’s surprised by the sudden change in topic, it doesn’t show.
“I kind of figured,” Lucy confesses. “Tamara says the way we look at each other is something straight out of fanfiction.”
Tim pulls her in closer by the waist, his fingers grazing along her DOD tattoo.
“Should I ask what fanfiction is?”
“Only if you want to show your age,” she teases. Her fingers reach up to play with his collar. The gesture is a little nervous, and very endearing. “So… Our relationship, huh?”
He bites back a smile.
“I’m worried about the question mark after that statement, Lucy.”
“So we are in a relationship,” she says. “Just to confirm.”
“That’s correct, Officer Chen.”
“So if I were to call myself your girlfriend…”
“You wouldn’t be out of line,” he agrees. He gives into the smile and lets it take over his whole face, eyes crinkling, teeth showing. “I thought you knew all this.”
“Well, you never actually asked me!”
“I asked you on a date! I said we were dating . It was implied .”
“Anyone can go on a date! It doesn’t mean they’re in a relationship!”
Tim takes a breath and leans his forehead into hers. “Lucy,” he says. “Are you seeing anyone else?”
She swallows. “No,” she says, soft.
“Do you want to see anyone else?”
“Definitely not,” she says.
“Good,” he tells her. “Same.”
Lucy’s grip on him loosens. She crosses her eyes and frowns at him in a way that is, quite frankly, adorable.
“ Same ? Oh, that’s romantic.”
“I thought you weren’t expecting me to be romantic,” he counters, enjoying the way her eyebrows creep into her hairline and her mouth is pulling into a pout.
“No,” she concedes. “But—Same? Really? I’ve been agonizing over this for days , and then you come along and say same —“
Over the years, Tim has learned that the best way to get ahead of a Lucy rant is to interrupt her before she gets too involved. He pulls her into a kiss, (which had so far proved to be a very effective method) and she melts into him, instantly pliant against his body. Her pupils are wide when he pulls away, both their breaths slightly short.
“I love you,” he says.
Her eyes soften and seem to get all watery.
“Oh,” she says. “You ruined it.”
He opens his mouth to reply, but she presses a finger to his lips.
“I love you too,” she says.
“I know,” he tells her.
And he does, because she’s proved it over and over. She’s shown him, and he knows her, and he knows. But there is something so sweet about hearing the words directly from her mouth. For his ears only.
“Wanna tell the whole station?” Lucy teases.
Tim groans, pulling her into his chest, close to his thumping heart. “You’re not going to let that go, are you?”
“No,” she says, quite cheerfully. “It’s okay. Apparently everyone already knew anyway. You just… kind of confirmed it.”
Tim has a thought, and it’s like Lucy can tell, because her head tilts up at him. He brushes the hair out of her eyes.
“Look,” he says. “It’s only been a couple of weeks. If we’re moving too fast…”
“No,” Lucy says instantly. “We’re not.”
“You sure?”
“We’ve been doing this for much longer than a couple of weeks, Tim. Just without the physical parts,” Lucy says. “Or, um. At least I have.”
“Not just you,” Tim says, and Lucy smiles.
“I’ve, uh, I’ve kind of thought about this a lot. I wouldn’t risk it if I didn’t think this… I mean, if I didn’t think we were going somewhere. Right?”
“I don’t want us to crash and burn.”
“And we won’t,” Lucy says firmly. “Look, I’m all for taking things slow. But saying I love you … I don’t think that counts as moving too fast if we’re both already there, right? It’s not like it changes anything by saying it aloud.”
“No?” Tim teases, quirking up an eyebrow. “So… you’re saying you don’t want me to tell you I love you anymore?”
She laughs. “I’m just saying I already know . Without you telling me.”
“Okay, guess that’s the end of that...” He’s pulling away, still teasing. Her grip on him tightens and forces him back, and he hoists her up so she’s on her toes, so it’s an easier height to kiss her from.
“Lucy, I love you,” he whispers against her lips, grinning when she shivers under his touch.
“On second hand,” she says, in that voice which means she’s about to pull him into the bedroom. “I guess the confirmation is kind of nice.”
He chuckles, drops a kiss in her hair.
“Our relationship is going to be interesting, isn’t it?”
“I think the word you’re looking for is amazing,” Lucy corrects. “I am a great girlfriend, and an even greater person to be in love with. You’ll see.”
Tim cracks a grin at her.
“Can’t wait.”