Chapter Text
Eighteen hours into what was originally meant to be a twelve-hour shift, Tim was finally able to walk out of Mid-Wilshire. Or, more accurately, he was ordered out of Mid-Wilshire by Sergeant Grey, who told Tim in no uncertain terms that he would not be called in at any point in the next twenty-four hours unless the department unexpectedly found itself dealing with another June 3-level catastrophe. While Tim was more than a little worried that Grey had jinxed them by even mentioning that as a possibility, he was far beyond too tired to protest. At thirteen minutes past two o’clock in the morning on November first, he pulled out of the Mid-Wilshire parking garage and began making the drive home. Traffic was lighter than he'd expected, and he made it home in less than half an hour.
He had just turned into his driveway when the phone in his cupholder dinged, alerting him to the fact that he’d received a text message. He finished putting the truck in Park before reaching for it. The message displayed on the screen was enough to very nearly make him drop the damned thing as his mind was suddenly flooded with images of every worst-case scenario possible.
It was a text from Lopez, one which simply read, You might want to check on Chen. She’s had a rough night, and though his friend enjoyed teasing him incessantly about the closeness he shared with Lucy, he also knew the detective well enough to know that she’d never send a text so vague and yet so concerning without meaning every word of it.
It took everything in him not to immediately dial Lucy’s number or, better yet, to drive over to her place without even reaching out first, but he knew he needed to calm down first. Receiving a frantic phone call from him in the middle of the night wasn’t likely to help her any, and Tim needed to check on Kojo and make sure his house was still structurally sound after the dog had been left alone for the better part of a day, anyway.
He'd just let the dog out and was in the process of refilling Kojo’s food and water bowls when his phone began vibrating in his pocket. He answered it without glancing at the display to see who was calling, greeting the person on the other end of the line with a “What?” that perhaps came out a little more harshly than was strictly necessary. In his defense, it was nearing three o’clock in the morning and he was still sort of in the process of talking himself down from a panic attack over whatever was going on with Lucy.
“Hey,” Lucy returned, greeting him much more softly than he’d greeted her, and though she didn’t sound like she was in any sort of imminent danger, there was a faint note of something in her voice that hadn’t been there when Tim last saw her. While she didn’t sound scared, per se, she did sound weary, which Tim found he didn’t like all that much more.
Still, the mere sound of her voice on the other end of the line was enough to soothe his nerves, and he let out a breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding as he placed Kojo’s bowls back on the floor. “Hey,” he returned, hoping he sounded calmer than he felt.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized before he could get another word out. “I know it’s late, but Nolan texted to say he’d left the station an hour ago, and with you being such an overachiever, I just assumed you’d outstayed him and were probably still awake.”
“Just walked through the front door five minutes ago,” he confirmed, balancing the phone between his ear and his shoulder as he went to open the back door for Kojo, who’d begun pawing at it to be let in. “What’s up? Is everything alright?”
“Not really,” Lucy replied with a tired little laugh, “but I don’t really feel like talking about it just yet. I was actually calling to check in on you. Rumor has it that you and Nolan got into it with a zombie doctor after his brother bought the dealer out?”
Ah. He should’ve known she’d find out about that sooner rather than later; after all, Lucy and Nolan were friends – the kind of friends who texted each other at the end of shift, apparently – and though Tim respected Nolan a lot more than he had when they first met, he also knew the guy never really shut up. He rolled his eyes as he walked over to the couch, Kojo trailing right behind him, and sank into the cushions with an exhausted sigh.
“He wasn’t a zombie doctor,” Tim corrected exasperatedly, trying to hide his amusement at her terminology as he clarified, “he was just some guy who thought it would be a good idea to put on scrubs and then get high on Bomb-X, that’s all.”
“Oh, right, Bomb-X. That drug that makes people behave the way sci-fi says zombies do,” she quipped teasingly. “No, you’re absolutely right, Tim, that’s totally a different thing.”
He shook his head, fighting a losing battle against the fond smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I’m not sure anybody’s ever told you this, Chen, but the fi in sci-fi is short for fiction. This is reality.”
“Okay, okay, fine, you and Nolan almost got your faces eaten off by a drug addict in scrubs, not a zombie doctor,” Lucy replied. He could practically hear her smirking at him. “I’m just telling you, though, that doesn’t sound even half as cool.”
“I don’t need my near-death experience to sound cool,” Tim informed her wryly. “That really isn’t high on my list of priorities.”
She sighed, amused. “Whatever. I just want to make sure you’re not planning on making a habit out of this. I mean, if you’re going to go out and pick a fight with the first monsters you can find every time I leave you alone to work with Nolan, then I’m never going to be able to take another sick day.”
He scoffed. “I was doing real police work, Officer Chen, getting a dangerous drug off the streets before it had a chance to kill any more people. I resent the implication that I need a babysitter, by the way.”
“Resent it all you want,” she returned, completely unapologetically. “I stand by it. If I’d been there, that guy never would’ve gotten anywhere close enough to you to eat your face.”
“He didn’t…” Tim trailed off, giving up on trying to correct her about the nature of the attack, and instead simply pointed out, “You were with me when our shop was attacked earlier in the shift, and that still happened.”
“And which of us walked away from that interaction with a torn uniform?” She didn’t even wait for him to sputter out a protest before continuing, “And how I got my uniform torn yesterday was a lot less fun than the way you got yours torn three years ago, I’m just saying.”
“Okay, I don’t know if you’re joking or not, but I can promise you, nothing about that interaction was fun. I was riding with Lopez that day, and she nearly laughed her way into an asthma attack once we made it back to the shop. She doesn’t even have asthma.”
Lucy laughed herself at that, sounding just a little bit lighter than she had when their call started, and Tim couldn’t help but smile proudly at the knowledge that he’d been the one to take some of that weight off her shoulders. “That sounds like her. Really, though, I’m glad you’re okay, Tim. I am also super relieved for the obituary writers who don’t have to figure out how to turn ‘his face was eaten off by a zombie’ into a story that wouldn’t induce mass panic.”
“Still wasn’t a zombie, Chen.”
“Mmhmm,” she hummed, unconvinced. “Like I said, I’m glad you’re okay. I don’t really think I could handle finding out you’d gotten hurt on top of every other terrible thing that has happened today. Tonight? Yesterday?” She heaved an annoyed sigh. Tim could practically see her waving her hand in the air in frustration. “Whatever. Either way, everybody’s safe and Bomb-X is off the streets, which means we won’t have to worry quite as much about keeping people from tearing each other apart when we go back on shift Monday morning.”
Tim scoffed derisively. “I think you’re overestimating the people of this fine city, Chen. Bomb-X might be off the streets, but keeping the public from destroying each other is pretty much an average Tuesday for us, even without the influence of psychedelic drugs.”
She huffed a laugh. “Fair enough.” She fell silent for a moment, then asked, almost teasingly, “It’s killing you not knowing what I was talking about earlier, isn’t it? When I said it’s been a bad night.”
“Yeah,” he answered honestly, refusing to lie to her. They’d come a long way in the little over a year that they’d known each other, and they were far beyond the point that he had to pretend not to worry about her she said worrying things. “But you said you didn’t want to talk about it, so…”
“Considering the fact that I’m pretty sure half of Mid-Wilshire’s on-duty cops are currently in my building’s lobby, I don’t think me not talking about it will keep you from finding out what happened, and I’d rather you hear it from me than from Webb or, God forbid, from Smitty.”
His eyes widened in alarm. “Last I heard, you and Lopez were just cosplaying as Ghostbusters to try and help out your neighbor.” Both Angela and Lucy herself had mentioned that one of Lucy’s elderly neighbors being scammed by paranormal experts – Tim couldn’t help but roll his eyes at just the thought that they were getting away with referring to themselves that way – and that they were going to see what they could do to help her. He hadn’t really been worried, because nothing about that had seemed inherently dangerous. Obviously, he’d been very mistaken. “What the hell happened between then and now?”
“Okay, first of all, I wasn’t cosplaying as a Ghostbuster,” she rejected sternly, sounding rather offended by the very idea. “I was trying to help a nice, little old lady not be taken advantage of by a bunch of bottom-feeders, which I did, and that’s not even all I did.”
He knew she was trying to distract him, to give him an opportunity to pull himself together before sharing the rest of the story. Despite her best efforts, it wasn’t really working.
“I’m still not understanding how an elder financial fraud case turned into something that got half of Mid-Wilshire’s on-duty cops into your building, Chen,” he said tightly, his nerves more than a little bit frayed.
“I’m getting there,” she assured him, sounding slightly irritated by his impatience. “As I was trying to say, before you so rudely interrupted me, I managed to find what has been bothering Mrs. Crouch.”
“So, what, you managed to find her ghost?” he asked skeptically, willing himself to calm down. While it wasn’t fun not knowing what’d happened at Lucy’s place before he called, he was on the phone with her. Obviously, she was at least physically fine. “What did you do, force it to talk about its feelings so that it could overcome all its earthly trauma and finally enter into the Great Beyond?”
He could practically hear her rolling her eyes. “No, because ghosts aren’t real, and if they were, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t work like that.”
“So let me get this straight – you believe in bad energies enough that you tried to convince Grey to smoke-cleanse the entire station after it came out that Armstrong was dirty, but ghosts are just totally out of the realm of possibility for you?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” Lucy confirmed easily, either not noticing or ignoring the incredulous way in which he asked the question. “And even if I did believe in ghosts, I know for a fact it wasn’t a ghost that was terrorizing Mrs. Crouch.”
“Then what was it?” Tim asked hesitantly, slightly dreading the answer.
“The stalker who’s been living in our walls.”
Tim sat up in alarm. “There’s a stalker living in your walls?” he asked, already reaching for his keys before he even finished speaking. “Do you need me to come over there?”
“There’s not a stalker living in our walls anymore,” she rushed to reassure him. “He has been taken into custody, and he wasn’t even targeting me or Tamara in the first place, so… you can stand down, Sarge.”
She said the title she so rarely used around him teasingly, and in any other situation, it probably would have amused him. In this instance, however, amusement was truly the very last emotion he was feeling.
“He was targeting someone, though,” Tim inferred, finding he wasn’t all that comforted by the fact that whoever this stalker was hadn’t specifically been targeting either Lucy or Tamara. The mere fact that he’d been in the same building with them long enough to pose a threat put Tim on edge. “Are they okay?”
“She’s fine. A little shaken, obviously, but fine. She’s staying with her parents for a few days, though, and I’m pretty sure she’s going to use the opportunity to find somewhere else to live.”
“Yeah,” Tim muttered, relaxing a little as he fell back against the cushions, “I think she’s got the right idea.” He shook his head in disbelief, then asked, “Do you know how he got in?”
“We’re still not totally clear on that, but there’s enough evidence to suggest he’s been living back there for a while,” Lucy said sheepishly, seemingly aware of the fact that this would be enough to alarm Tim all over again. “Mrs. Crouch said she’s been hearing noises for weeks, so…”
“Weeks,” Tim repeated as evenly as he possibly could. “This has been going on for weeks.”
“That’s also when things started going missing from the fridge,” she admitted quietly.
“From the – he was in your apartment?” Tim asked, much louder than he’d meant to, if the way that Kojo’s head immediately shot up was any indication.
“I live with a teenager,” she defended herself. “When things go missing from the fridge, I just assume she’s finished them and forgot to put them on the list.”
“I’m not judging you for not getting paranoid when things go missing from your fridge,” Tim assured her incredulously, “I am more worried about the fact that an attempted murderer had what was apparently unrestricted access to the place for long enough to raid your fridge.”
“He got into our apartment through a hole in the bathroom wall,” she informed Tim, “which the landlord covered with a mirror before I ever moved in. That’s some of the very little good news – I finally figured out what was causing that draft in my bathroom I always complain to you about.”
“I would’ve continued tolerating the complaining if I knew the alternative was finding out the actual issue was that there was a man-sized hole a stalker had been climbing through,” he told her dryly. “How in the hell did he get away with that for so long?”
“I mean, in all of our defense, this place has been reopened as like half a dozen things since it was first constructed, so there were a lot of places for him to hide from all of us. Also, I wasn’t exactly searching my walls for intruders every time I came home after shift.”
“Fair enough,” Tim allowed begrudgingly, though it still wasn’t enough to slow his heartrate to its normal resting point. “You said he’s in custody, though?”
“He is,” Lucy confirmed. “On stalking and aggravated assault charges. It’s possible they’ll go after him for attempted murder, too, since he was found with a weapon in his hand and there’s enough evidence of him stalking Margaret before he went after her to prove it’s premeditated. And he’s also being charged with, uh, the assault of a peace officer.”
Tim felt his heartrate go right back up. “Right. I’m assuming the peace officer in question is you?” he asked as evenly as he possibly could.
“Good guess.” Lucy exhaled heavily. “Don’t worry. There’s not a scratch on me. Hell, I barely even broke a sweat.”
“Mm. And what kind of weapon was it that he had?”
“A knife,” she admitted carefully. “But like I said, I’m fine.”
Tim forced himself to take a few deep breaths before asking, as steadily as he could manage, “And you’re sure the building is clear now?”
“Positive. Lopez left baby Jack’s first Halloween celebrations to come over and do it herself.”
That knowledge made him breathe a little easier. He knew Lopez wouldn’t have left a single stone unturned, not when Lucy’s safety was on the line. “She still there?” he asked curiously.
“No, she headed back home to Wesley and the baby,” Lucy replied. “But she promised she’d be here first thing in the morning with TID, and also made me promise to call her if anything else happened, so…”
“Good. What about the kid? How’s she doing?”
“She’s in her room.” Lucy sighed. “I think she’s still a little bit in shock. I asked if she wanted to go ahead and get a hotel room, but she said there wouldn’t be any point because she wouldn’t be able to sleep even if we were somewhere else.”
“That’s pretty standard, Luce,” he offered softly. “Even we get shaken by some of the things we see on a daily basis, and we’ve got the benefit of having been trained to deal with them. Tamara probably just needs a while to wrap her head around everything, that’s all.”
“I know. She’s got a Trig test on Monday that she’s been freaking out about for the past week, though, and an English paper due Wednesday, and…”
“She’ll get it done,” Tim assured her quietly. “Hell, I’ll come over if I need to. We can help her study. Math was always my easiest subject in school.” Not his favorite, because it reminded him too much of his father, but still his easiest.
“Maybe. I’ll let her know you offered, at least. Thanks, Tim,” she said, far more gratefully than he felt the situation called for.
“Sure.”
Lucy blew out a breath. “I’m already dreading having to explain this to her social worker,” she admitted quietly. “Tamara’s eighteen in less than six months, so they probably won’t force her to leave, especially since we can prove the building’s safe now, but it’s still probably not going to be a fun conversation.”
“Things happen. This wasn’t your fault, and you kept Tamara safe the whole time. They’d have to be idiots to overlook that.”
“Yeah.” She sighed again. “I really don’t want to move out.”
“You should,” he answered honestly, unable to stop himself. “You should be running like hell.”
“I know that, logically,” she admitted. “I do, and if Tamara wants us to leave, we will. Making sure she feels safe is my priority. She’s had too little of that in her life, up to this point. But if she’s okay with staying, I… we made a home here, you know? Me, Jackson, and Tamara, this was our home, and it took us both a really long time to start seeing it as a home again after he died. And I know it’s just an apartment, I do, but – I would hate to have that taken away from us by a stalker who can’t take a hint.”
The words he’d wanted to utter before she provided that explanation were stuck in his throat, because they no longer applied. He had been about to tell her it was just an apartment, just a place with four walls, that they lived in LA and she could easily find another just like it, but he couldn’t bring himself to say that anymore, because sure, it was just four walls, but it was also one of the few places Lucy had felt somewhat safe in after her abduction, and it was the first true home Tamara had ever really had. There were other apartments in LA, sure, but not one of them could offer that same sense of belonging.
“I’m sure Lopez or somebody will figure out a way to close off however he got in, make it safe again,” Tim assured her with confidence he didn’t entirely feel.
Lucy laughed wryly. “Lopez thinks we should move.”
“Because of the whole stalker thing?”
“Because she’s convinced herself the building is haunted.”
Tim blinked. “I thought you said she agreed those so-called paranormal experts were scamming your neighbor.”
“Oh, she did. She still believes the building is haunted, though. Apparently, it has a questionable history.”
“You mean the building you only moved into because somebody was murdered in the apartment you now live in and the landlord was willing to cut you a deal to get somebody in there as fast as possible?” Tim said dryly. “I can’t believe that place has a suspicious past.”
“You know, that didn’t even make her list,” Lucy replied thoughtfully. “She focused more on the deadly fire and the construction worker who died trying to claw his way out of the walls and the fact that one of the most infamous cult leaders in history lived here at one point.”
Tim’s eyes widened more with each word she spoke, and just like that, his blood pressure was on the rise once more. “I… I don’t even know where to start with that. No, I do. Cult leader? Lucy, what the hell kind of place are you living in?”
“You really want to know which cult leader it was now, don’t you?” she asked knowingly, sounding amused, and he realized he’d fallen right into her trap, allowing himself to be so distracted by his concern over what’d happened in the building decades earlier to continue stressing out about what’d happened there only hours before.
“No, what I really want to do is start sending you listings so that you’ll move in anywhere else,” he answered honestly, “but I’ll settle for knowing which cult leader it was.”
“Charles Manson,” she provided. “He used it as a recording studio.”
“Well,” Tim said slowly, somehow feeling even more unsettled than he had before knowing that information, “considering who we’re talking about, I guess that’s one of the better things that he could’ve used it for.” He exhaled heavily, shaking his head. “Exactly how cheap is your rent?”
“It’s less than half of what most people pay for an apartment this size, in this part of the city.”
“And you just have to be okay with the idea that somebody might’ve been murdered in any room of the place,” Tim muttered. “Interesting tradeoff. And your rent is still higher than my mortgage payments.”
“That’s because you closed on that place years ago, before you and Isabel ever got married, and ended up paying, like, a fourth of what it was worth, because the housing market was still in the middle of crashing and the previous owners just wanted to be rid of it.”
“That doesn’t make it any less ridiculous that your rent costs more,” he replied.
“I know it doesn’t,” Lucy groaned. “Don’t remind me how much it pisses me off that you will have paid off a house before I even finish paying off my student loans, please.”
“Sorry,” Tim said, meaning it.
“Don’t be. I’m the one who decided to go to one of the most expensive schools in the state and then work for the government instead of getting my doctorate and going into private practice.” Lucy sighed. “You know, Tamara saw how much I pay back monthly and just immediately left to get her laptop and start hunting for scholarships.”
Tim had seen how much Lucy’s monthly payments were a few times himself. He didn’t blame the kid in the slightest.
“Can we get back to the whole cult leader used to live there thing, please?” he requested after a moment, not liking how off-topic they’d gotten.
“It’s not that strange,” she protested, in a tone that suggested even she didn’t believe herself. “And I mean, if you think about it, the dead outnumber the living at least ten to one. Someone awful has probably lived or something creepy has probably happened everyone anyone’s ever thought to build anything, if you really think about it.”
“Getting all philosophical and existential on me isn’t going to distract me from the fact that you just told me Charles Manson used to rent out your apartment building, Chen,” he informed her disbelievingly. “I remind you, again, that you insisted on smoke-cleansing Nolan’s house and attempted to do the same at the station after we found out about Armstrong. Nick Armstrong is a dirty cop, sure, but one of the few things the guy’s got going for him is that he never tried to start a murderous cult before we caught up with him.”
“Well, at least to our knowledge,” Lucy said, causing Tim to roll his eyes. “I mean, if it makes you feel better, it wasn’t built to be Manson’s studio. It was originally a textile factory.”
“When was it built?” Tim asked, already dreading the answer.
“The early twentieth century. 1912, I think Angela said.”
“So, people definitely died there even before Manson got his hands on it,” Tim concluded.
"Well, that's a disturbing assumption to make," Lucy informed him ruefully. "How'd you get there so quickly?"
"My mom taught high school history for over forty years, Chen," Tim explained dryly. "I know more about American workplaces pre-OSHA than anybody actually needs to know. There's no way somebody didn't die in that place at some point while it was operational." It took her a moment longer to answer than he expected, and he frowned in concern before prompting, "Chen? You still there?"
"Yeah, yeah, sorry." She still sounded distracted, and he was about to ask her what'd changed in the past fifteen seconds when she said, quieter than before, "Your mom was a teacher?"
Oh. Tim guessed he hadn't exactly told her much about his family beyond the abusive father he hadn’t willingly interacted with in over twenty years. He was a little ashamed to realize that the worst member of his family was the one that one of the most important people in his life knew the most about. "Until a couple of years ago, yeah," he confirmed. "She retired about six months before you came onto the job and moved back to Maryland, where she grew up."
"Bethesda’s in Maryland," Lucy supplied, a little too soft, a little too knowing. "She's the answer to your first LA Clear question."
Tim swallowed hard, surprised to realize there were tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, and then cleared his throat before confirming, "Yeah, she is."
“That’s sweet,” Lucy murmured. He could hear the smile in her voice.
He didn’t say anything in response to that, mostly because he couldn’t think of anything to say. Instead, he simply said, “So, people died in that death trap even before Manson got ahold of it. I’m assuming it was in the deadly fire you mentioned earlier?”
Lucy exhaled heavily, seeming to realize she wouldn’t be escaping his interrogation without first providing him with an answer, before quietly and very begrudgingly admitting, “Yeah, it was the fire. Seven people didn’t make it out when the building went up in flames a year after the factory opened. It reopened a little over a decade later as a speakeasy during Prohibition, but it didn’t last long that time around, either.”
"Why did it close in the '20s?” Tim asked curiously. “A speakeasy in downtown LA? Business must’ve been successful.”
"They were having trouble keeping employees," she said evasively, in a tone that assured Tim there was definitely more to that story, and that it probably supported his assertion that she and Tamara should be living somewhere - anywhere - else.
"What, they couldn't find enough fine citizens willing to break the law?" Tim asked sarcastically.
"No, there might have been, uh, screams that they heard occasionally, that sounded like people dying in a fire, and so nobody really wanted to... work there..."
Tim stared at the blank television screen for a long moment, not knowing what to say to that. "Lucy," he finally said, with absolute seriousness, “that place is haunted.”
“Do you even believe in ghosts?” Lucy asked skeptically.
“It wouldn’t matter if I didn’t; I would still be telling you that place is haunted.”
“Okay,” she drew out, sounding like she was on the verge of outright laughing at him, “I think we need to change the subject before your blood pressure inches any higher.”
“That’s probably a good idea,” Tim had to admit.
“I’m going to the consultation,” she informed him abruptly.
He blinked, struggling for a moment to process the sudden subject change even though he’d been the one to request it. “At the fertility clinic?”
“Yeah,” she said simply. “You were right; there’s nothing wrong with contingency plans, and as much as I hate to admit my mom might've been right about something to do with my life, I'm not at a point in my life where I want kids, but I still know I probably will be one day, and I don't want to risk not being able to have the life I want when I'm ready because I didn't plan ahead."
"I'm glad to hear you're thinking about it," he said genuinely. "I also want you to know that even if you were ready now, I would've never let you take a baby into that apartment," he added bluntly, meaning every word. "I'm not thrilled about the fact that you've got a teenager living there."
She did laugh at him, that time. "I promise I will move out of this apartment before bringing a baby home from the hospital, Tim, just to save you the headache and the panic."
"Thank you," he said seriously, despite the fact that she'd been joking. After a few seconds of listening to her giggle under her breath, however, he grew somber once more. "If you know it's something you want in the future, then it's good you're considering it, Lucy. But, have you talked to your parents about it?"
"No," she admitted quietly. "I haven't had an actual conversation with my parents since the day after I finished my training, and this feels like a weird place to start."
"It's absolutely a weird place to start," he told her honestly, "but you're not the one who made an appointment at a fertility clinic without them knowing, so... maybe you just call them? I mean, they were the ones who turned their backs on you for choosing to stay a cop, Lucy. You're not the one who needs to be worrying about this conversation."
She exhaled heavily. Somehow, even her sigh managed to sound conflicted. "That's the part that keeps messing with my head, you know? I know it's thousands of dollars, I know I would have rights and custody even before the embryos were implanted, but I just - I think of how they've treated me, and I think about them treating my future kids that way, and it makes me want to scream. I don't want to feel like I owe them anything, Tim. I don’t want my kids to feel like they owe them anything.”
He knew her relationship with her parents wasn't exactly like his with his father; however, he also knew abuse wasn't only physical, and that the fact that the marks Patrick and Vanessa Chen had left on their daughter weren't visible didn't mean they weren't there. In that moment, hearing how heartbroken she sounded, he found he kind of wanted to kick his own ass for being so blasé about the whole thing when she'd been asking him for advice earlier. "You were right earlier, you know," he told her abruptly. "When you said you're only twenty-nine. If you don't want to go to this consultation, if you don't feel comfortable doing that, then don't. Don't let them have any more control over you than you feel comfortable giving."
She was silent for several moments before finally saying, again far more gratefully than he felt the situation called for, "Right. Thanks, Tim.”
"Anytime,” he returned earnestly, hoping she knew he truly meant it.
"If you ever compare my fertility or my reproductive system to a car crash again, though, you and I are going to have words, Sergeant Bradford.” Though she sounded mostly teasing, Tim could hear the serious undertone in her voice.
"It was a flawed analogy," he admitted immediately, "and since I can't think of a better one, I'm not going to use another. Just - I regretted it the first time as soon as I said it, so you don't have to worry about me saying it again."
“Good.” Lucy sighed tiredly. “Well, we've been talking about non-ghost-related things for a solid five minutes now; are you tired yet?”
“I was until you reminded me you’re living in a murder building,” he answered dryly, causing her to snort.
“What do you want to do, come sleep on our couch to keep us safe from the bad guys that we already know aren’t here?” It was obvious from her tone that she meant it as a joke, but when Tim remained silent, she grew serious. “Tim, do you need to come sleep on our couch?”
She wasn’t mocking him, or teasing him for his concern; she was simply asking a question about what he needed. She’d done it a thousand times over in the time they knew each other, and yet that quiet, unrelenting kindness of hers never failed to strike him right in the chest.
“Yeah,” he admitted at last, “maybe I do.”
She still didn’t tease him. Instead, she simply replied, “Use your key. When we get up in the morning, Tam and I’ll make waffles and you can try to talk us into moving out again, alright?”
He smiled despite himself, already reaching for his money clip and keys and whistling for Kojo, who immediately shot to his feet and looked over at Tim. “Alright.”
“I’ll see you soon, Tim,” Lucy said warmly.
He could hear the smile in her voice, and his own only grew brighter in response. “I will see you soon, Lucy.”