Work Text:
Tim didn’t realize just how quickly the entire Bradford family had grown used to having Lucy around until he arrived at his sister’s Airbnb without her on New Year’s Eve and found himself immediately bombarded with questions about her whereabouts.
He probably should’ve been expecting it, honestly. His sister and Lucy had immediately bonded during Genny’s ride-along several weeks prior, and his nephews had taken to his aide almost as quickly. As it turned out, Tim wasn’t the only Bradford endlessly charmed by Lucy’s antics. He was just the only one who had any qualms about allowing it to show.
Lucy had been a near-constant in their lives for the past several weeks, which was a major part of the reason Tyler and Dylan had gotten so attached so quickly. She’d helped with the renovations after shift and on her days off; she’d insisted on decorating Tim’s place for the holidays, despite his many protests; she’d helped to hunt down a tree and decorations for Genny’s Airbnb the day before Christmas Eve, when Genny finally admitted it would be better for everybody if she and the boys spent Christmas in the city rather than back in Sacramento with Rob, who was far more often drunk than sober those days. She’d come to their rescue more than once in the span of less than a month, and it’d seemingly permanently endeared her to the entire family. Needless to say, everybody was pretty obviously disappointed when he showed up alone.
“Is Lucy not coming?” Genny questioned the moment Tim walked through the door alone, sounding so disappointed by the prospect that Tim was slightly offended.
“No, she’s not,” Tim said dryly, setting the paper bag full of baking supplies she’d asked him to grab on his way on the kitchen counter. “I’m here, though. You know, your only brother.”
His sister rolled her eyes, resuming the process of rolling out cookie dough for the boys to then cut into shapes using the various cookie cutters she’d already gathered and laid out for them. “I am very happy to see you, only brother. I just thought you’d be bringing Lucy with you. It’s not like you go many places without her, these days.”
“Contrary to popular belief, we’re not actually attached at the hip,” Tim said, stealing one of the already-baked but not yet decorated cookies from a nearby plate and completely ignoring Genny when she attempted to swat it out of his hand. “She’s in Porterville for the day.”
“What’s in Porterville?” Genny asked curiously, rolling her eyes but not otherwise commenting when Tim leaned forward to snag a second cookie after finishing his first.
“Her great-aunt,” Tim supplied, biting into the cookie. “Her whole extended family, actually. Her mom invited her to celebrate the New Year with the rest of the family.”
Genny’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. “I thought she hadn’t spoken to her mom in months.”
Tim shrugged. “Vanessa called her last week, asked her to come. Lucy’s hoping it means her parents are finally ready to accept the fact that she’s staying a cop.”
“Do you think that’s possible?”
Tim hesitated only briefly before shrugging again. “I have no idea. I’ve only met the woman once, and it wasn’t under the best of circumstances.”
That was true enough. The first and only time he’d been in a room with Patrick and Vanessa Chen, their daughter was recovering from her abduction and near-death experience down the hall. He’d been willing to ignore it at first, because he didn’t think anybody would be at their
best if their only child was nearly killed by a violent, psychopathic serial killer; however, he’d learned enough about them during that single meeting and heard enough about them since to know they were far more like his own father – minus the physical abuse, not the emotional – than they were their daughter, and that she was far more than either of them deserved. In his honest opinion, he didn’t think Lucy spending New Year’s Eve with her family was going to improve anything; in fact, he had a bad feeling it was only going to hurt her more. He hadn’t
told her that, though. She’d been confident in her decision to go, and he hadn’t had the heart
to suggest that things might not actually go the way she’d already started to envision it going
in her mind.
“But you don’t think it is,” Genny said, cutting into his thoughts and bringing Tim back to the present. “You think they’re just going to hurt her even more.”
Tim sighed, shaking his head. “I’m still screwed up over everything that happened with Dad, and until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t said more than ten words to the man in over twenty years. Lucy’s parents were an important part of her life a lot more recently than Tom was an important part of mine.”
Genny exhaled heavily, shaking her head sadly. “Well, I hope you’re wrong. I hope everything works out for her.”
“Yeah,” Tim agreed quietly, glancing down at his phone to check for messages from Lucy and finding the screen blank, “so do I.”
Lucy was five minutes away from home when she finally allowed the first tears to fall. After two and a half hours of driving in absolute silence, with not even the radio playing in the background, she simply couldn’t hold it in any longer.
Porterville had been terrible. The only reason she’d even agreed to join the rest of her family for the holiday in the first place was because she’d been hopeful that her mother’s decision to reach out personally to invite Lucy along meant that her parents were finally willing to accept the fact that Lucy was a cop and was happy with that decision. In reality, they’d used it as an opportunity to remind Lucy of the fact that they weren’t the only ones members of her family angry with her. Many of her relatives had gone out of their way to make clear to her they were equally ashamed of and disappointed by her. Needless to say, it hadn’t been a particularly fun meal.
It had been her grandmother who finally drove her to leave. It wasn’t her grandmother’s cruelty which drove her away; rather, it was her kindness. When the older woman had found her hiding in the kitchen, fighting back tears, she’d told Lucy she needed to go, that it wasn’t fair for her to tolerate such cruelty from people meant to show her kindness above all else. Her grandfather had agreed. Within half an hour, Lucy had already hugged both of them – as well as the few cousins who hadn’t berated her for the entirety of her visit – goodbye and was in the process of backing out of the driveway.
She’d felt good about leaving, right up until she’d realized she didn’t have anywhere to go. Sure, she could go back to her apartment, but that wasn’t really something she wanted to do. December was never an easy month, especially now that her best friend was gone and most of her relatives had disowned her. She wasn’t really jumping with joy at the prospect of spending the final day of one of the toughest years of her life all alone.
She’d just pulled into her parking spot in the parking lot of her apartment building when she realized she didn’t have to be alone if she didn’t want to be, that somebody else had issued an invitation that they actually meant.
She dialed Tim’s number and smiled in relief when he answered halfway through the first ring.
“Hey,” he greeted warmly, sounding so delighted to hear from her that it brought tears to her eyes because man, it was nice to be reminded that some people were so happy about her mere existence. “How’d things go with your parents?” She could tell by his tone that he already had some inkling of what’d gone down, but he was polite enough not to say it aloud.
“Terribly,” she sighed, allowing her head to fall back against the headrest as her eyes drifted slowly shut. “I’m back home.”
“Back in LA?” he asked incredulously, falling silent for a moment when she simply hummed in response. “You doing anything right now?”
“I am sitting in the parking lot of my apartment building, trying to gather the energy to head up and stare at my walls for a couple hours,” Lucy informed him with a self-deprecating chuckle. “Why?”
“Gen and the kids are making cookies, if you want to help,” he offered lightly. “I can drive you home later if you want, or…”
“Or?”
“The place has four rooms. You can take one of them, if you want.”
“Are you offering up one of your sister’s beds to me without asking permission?”
“I am offering up one of my sister’s beds to you on orders from my sister,” he informed her dryly. “She doesn’t want you driving alone after dark on New Year’s Eve.”
Lucy smiled softly. “She’s more like you than either of you want to admit, you know.”
“Yes,” Tim sighed, sounding very put out indeed, “I have been made aware of that many, many times in the past.”
“Just wanted to make sure,” Lucy said lightly, grinning when Tim only heaved a sigh on the other end of the line. “I’ll see you in twenty minutes then, Tim.”
“See you in twenty minutes then, Lucy,” he echoed warmly, telling her to drive safe before ending the call.
It took the entire car ride over for Lucy to erase the sappy smile from her face.
Lucy pulled Tim into a tight embrace the moment she reached him. Tim didn’t even hesitate to hug her back. “Thank you,” she murmured against his ear before pulling away. “For being here.”
He cleared his throat, hoping to rid his voice of the emotion he was struggling more and more to hide. “No problem,” he finally forced out, hoping he sounded somewhat normal. “You want to talk about it?”
She was already shaking her head vehemently before he could even finish getting the question out. “Not right now. Right now, I just want to bake some cookies with your sister’s kids and beat a Bradford at Monopoly.”
He grinned at her, shaking his head. “Well, one of those things is easily accomplished.”
Her responding laugh, so bright and carefree even in that moment in time, seemed to warm him from the inside out.
The rest of their day was spent simply having fun. They baked and decorated cookies, played so many board games that Tim very nearly started confusing the rules of them all, and watched the animated movie the boys had been begging their mom to rent – one Tim had to admit wasn’t as awful as some of the others, even if it was a bit too sappy for his tastes – before both Tyler and Dylan gave up on the idea of staying up until midnight and passed out soon after ten. Tim then carried both boys to bed, leaving Genny to tuck them in and rejoining Lucy in the living room.
“My sister’s going to bed as soon as they’re settled,” he informed her lowly, claiming the seat next to her on the sofa. “She hasn’t made it to midnight since before Tyler was born.”
“Mm,” Lucy hummed quietly, taking a sip of her wine and then glancing over at him. “Did she hear anything from Rob today? Has she heard anything, since Christmas?”
Tim shrugged, shaking his head. “Not that I know of.”
“Poor Genny,” Lucy murmured, shaking her head. “Poor boys.”
“Yeah.” Tim reached for the half-empty bottle of beer he’d abandoned when the boys nodded off, taking a long sip and wincing when he realized the liquid had long since turned warm. “I keep telling her to leave him, but… I don’t know. He keeps telling her he’ll get help, that he’ll get better so long as she stays.”
“He’s only going to get better when he wants it for himself. At that point, it’s not going to matter if Genny’s there with him or not.”
“Yeah, well.” Tim shrugged once more. “You know everything my dad did to us, and she’s still spent the past twenty years trying to redeem the old bastard in any way she can. It will probably take more than just plain old alcoholism for her to leave Rob.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to think about that anymore, though. How about you? How were things in Porterville?”
“Horrible,” she admitted honestly, smiling self-deprecatingly when he glanced over at her in concern. “My parents aren’t the only members of my family who disapprove of my decisions. I’m always forgetting that.”
“Well, not to speak ill of your family,” he said in a tone that suggested he felt absolutely no guilt about doing just that, “but anybody who refuses to see that you’re an excellent cop is an idiot.”
“You made sure I was trained too well to be doubted, huh?” she asked teasingly.
“No. I can train people to do a lot of things, but I can’t train them to care about others the way you do. I might’ve helped shape you into the officer you are, but you walked through the door with the qualities that make you a good cop. Don’t let them make you doubt that.”
She drew in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Hey, Tim?” she asked after a moment.
“Yeah?”
“I know it’s not midnight yet, but… in spite of everything, you made this year tolerable for me. I know you don’t like all that sappy stuff, but… thank you for that.”
He smiled at her warmly, nodding once. “Anytime, Lucy.”