Chapter Text
1.
She’s not exactly sure how it happened—
Okay, she knows how it happened. She just doesn’t know when it happened.
They’d been careful, like really careful. With her in the prime of undercover work, his long hours as a sergeant with Metro, and both of them getting Tamara ready for her second year at UCLA now that her freshman year summer break is nearly over, this is quite literally the one thing they’d been trying to avoid.
They aren’t even married, for god sake. Not that it’s a deal-breaker or anything, but she thought when the topic of expanding their family came up in more than just casual conversations, it would be after she had a ring on her finger.
Needless to say, the universe thinks it knows better.
Or maybe she’s just been ignoring the signs right in front of her face — the weight gain, the incessant fatigue but inability to actually fall asleep, her swollen and tender breasts — the smiley face could jump off the tiny screen right now and slap her in the face and she would still be deep in denial.
She faintly hears the front door open and Kojo’s collar rattle as he jumps up from his spot at her feet and races out of the bedroom to greet his dad, startling her out of her lengthy moment of shock.
Her hands tremble as she hurriedly shoves the tests back into the box and buries them in her bucket of tampons in the back of the bathroom cabinet before taking a second to compose herself in the mirror, though she still has yet to figure out how to perfect her poker face for her boyfriend, so the only thing she can think of to do is shed her flannel shirt and replace it with her LAPD sweatshirt, splash some water on herself and hope her excuse of just getting home from a jog would suffice for now.
“Lu, you home?”
“One sec!” She calls out, taking a few deep but uneasy breaths before making her way out of her bedroom and into the kitchen, plastering on a soft smile as he pulls her into his arms the moment he drops his bag to the floor by the coat rack.
It’s not until she breathes him in, the scent of his cologne and the sweat after a long day of busting down doors and never-ending interrogations, that she finally realizes just how scared shitless she actually is and she nearly spills her secret when he whispers an ‘I love you’ against her neck, but the nausea creeping up in her throat keeps her from speaking at all as she grips onto the fabric of his shirt for dear life.
“Did you go for a run?”
She nods and pulls out of his embrace, standing up on her tiptoes to kiss him and wrap her arms around his neck as she returns his whisper with a hushed ‘I missed you’.
“I missed you, too, baby.” He says, “And good thing we have the whole week off so I can show you just how much.”
He must sense her weariness when she clings to him even after he drops his arms from around her, her face buried in the crook of his shoulder, and he asks, “Lu, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just love you.” She brushes him off, eventually pulling away to slip into her tennis shoes and reach for her keys, “I forgot some of the things we need to make dinner tonight, so I need to run to the market, but I’ll be back in like an hour.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll come with you—”
“No!” She exclaims, but she immediately notices the volume of her voice startle the both of them, so she smiles again, “No, it’s okay. Why don’t you pick the movie for tonight? I promise I’ll be quick.”
He tilts his head and squints at her, the confusion as to why she was so jittery written all over his face, but he lets it go for the time being which she is very grateful for.
“…Okay, um, be safe.”
She leaves him no time to say anything else as she’s out the door in a rush, nearly tripping over her own feet many times on her path to the parking garage and it’s not until she’s in her car that she lets her tears fall down her cheeks and the quiet sobs fill the silence.
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“Lucy?”
Angela’s voice draws her out of her daze and she blinks a few times to register that she’s on the Evers’ front porch.
“Is there a reason you’ve been standing outside my door for the last ten minutes? I can see you through the doorbell camera.”
“H–hi, I’m sorry to show up like this,” She shakes her head and fiddles with her hands, “I just…I needed to talk to someone.”
Not even five seconds later, the lock turns and Angela greets her with a perfectly-sculpted raised eyebrow and her arms crossed over her chest, but her look of skepticism quickly turns into concern at the sight of unshed tears sitting in Lucy’s dark eyes and her trembling chin.
“What’s going on?” Angela asks, and that’s all it really takes for her to crumble, chest-racking sobs of anguish howling from her chest as her friend scrambles to take her in and muffle the cries with the fabric of her t-shirt.
Angela is quick to usher her inside and out of the prying eyes of her neighbors, but it does very little to soothe her at all.
“Did something happen between you and Tim? Because I will kill him if he hurt you.”
“No, no, he didn’t do anything.” She sniffles and pulls away, wiping the tears off her cheeks with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, “He’s been nothing but good to me and Tamara. It’s actually why I’m losing my mind.”
“About what?”
She takes a deep, shaky breath, looks up from the floor, and finally faces her reality.
“I’m pregnant.”
It was clear to her that Angela was confused by her behavior; this kind of news that should elicit joy and yet it seems like it’s more harm than good.
“And a little Chenford baby is a bad thing because…”
“For one, we haven’t even really talked about having kids because when would we even have the time in our schedules to take care of them?” She scoffs, “And we don’t exactly have the best genetics, so…”
Angela reaches out to grip her hand, assuring her that her fears were valid but somehow denying them in the process, “Has he ever once raised his hand to you or Tamara?”
“Never.” She replies immediately, “He would never do that.”
“And have you ever told Tamara that her goals and dreams are pointless? That they’re not worth the risk?”
“No. She’ll be great at whatever she does.” She shakes her head, and it clicks in her head the point that her friend is trying to make.
She’s the only one besides his sister that knows the full extent of Tim’s childhood, the time they’ve been together giving him the comfort he needed to share what he went through, and in turn, he knows what her parents were like growing up, manipulation and ridicule, guilt-trips and gaslighting.
Neither of them won the lottery in the parent pool and she’s not sure she’s willing to risk making her child feel the way her mother makes her feel.
“You are not your parents, Lucy,” Angela tells her softly, a sympathetic yet understanding look on her face, “You are not your mom and Tim is not his dad.”
“But what if he doesn’t want a baby?” She chokes out, the tears quickly returning to her eyes, “I don’t even know if I do either, to be honest.”
“And that’s okay, but you won’t know what he wants until you ask him. I’m being honest when I say I wasn’t excited about Jack, and I wasn’t happy when I got pregnant with Ella,” Lopez confesses, “I love my children more than anything in the world, but it took me a long time to come around to the idea of being a mother. I didn’t feel ready until after they were both here, and sometimes there are days that I doubt I was really meant to be a mom at all. What I’m trying to say is that it’s okay to be unsure and scared, but I don’t want you for a second to feel like you’re alone in this.”
She circles the island and wraps her arms around Lucy, resting her chin on her shoulder, “For what it’s worth, this kid will be the luckiest in the world to have parents like you.”
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“…and Sandoval was doing the nasty with Raquel behind Ariana’s back for like seven months and then Ariana finds out and rips him apart like the scum he is…”
A soft smile graces her lips at what sounds to be like Tamara talking Tim’s ear off about another episode of reality TV when she walks in the door, and she knows he couldn’t care less about anything of the sort, but he listens anyway because he likes seeing Tamara excited.
It makes her worries a little bit easier to bear.
In the time from leaving the Evers’ house and arriving home, with a few stops in between, she let her mind wander and imagine what their life would be like if they were to add a baby to the mix.
With their extensive hours spent chasing down suspects and filling out statements while doing their best to make it home to each other every night, how was she to know if becoming parents would push them apart rather than pull them closer together?
It makes her question if it’s the best decision for Tamara. Although she’s grown and living her college student life to the max, the last thing Lucy would ever want is to make Tamara feel like anything less than the best part of their little family. It felt so right bringing the teenager into her home and it makes her quite sick to her stomach to think that Tamara might feel like she’s being pushed out.
But then she thought about how nice it would be to see Tamara as a big sister and Tim as a father to their baby.
He’s the only one she’s ever envisioned a future with — a picket fence and a pretty white dress and a few kids to raise.
It just makes sense.
“Hey, baby. We were getting worried about you.”
“Actually, Tim was worried about you,” Tamara chimes in, “I, however, totally understand the overwhelming need to get away from him for a while.”
She giggles as they stick their tongues out at each other and fling themselves over the back of the couch to see who can get to her faster, Tim ultimately winning because one, he has the longer legs, and two, he pushes her into the armchair before she can make a run for it and she falls for it every time.
“Hi, my loves.” She murmurs as they both eventually make it to her and hug her tightly, “It’s nice to see that you didn’t kill each other while I was gone.”
“Her chance of survival was hanging on by a thread when she tried to eat my peanut butter ice cream in the freezer.”
Tamara rolls her eyes with a scoff, “You’re such a big baby.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“Children,” She laughs, pushing them towards the living room as they continue to bicker, “Please have a seat.”
“Did you bring any food? I’m starving and a girl’s gotta eat.”
“If you sit down and close your eyes for a second, you’ll get the Chinese takeout I brought home.”
The teenager squints at her as she and Tim practically fall into the couch, “Why do I have to close my eyes?”
“Because if you don’t, I’ll change the Netflix password.”
“You wouldn’t dare.” Tamara challenges to which Tim instigates, “You mean no more Love Is Deaf ? What ever will we do.”
“It’s Love Is Blind, idiot.” She snarls at him before turning back to Lucy with a sweet smile that seems to get her what she wants most of the time, “If I behave better than Tim, can I have his fortune cookie?”
“Close your eyes and hold out your hands.”
They both groan but do what she asks anyway, and she swallows the lump in her throat as she pulls her phone out of her pocket and props it up against the flower vase on the coffee table, pressing record before digging out the two small gift boxes she’d picked up on her way home and setting them in their outstretched hands.
“If this is another flour bomb—” Tim jokes with a slightly terrified tone to his voice as he opens his eyes.
“I promise you’re safe, babe.”
She watches with unshed tears as they open their boxes and find the items inside, Tim’s breath catching instantly and his eyes widening in disbelief as he looks between her and the tiny piece of clothing folded up neatly, an unexpected numbness washing over him as he tried to make sense of what he was looking at.
Tamara on the other hand is silent as she brushes her fingers lightly over the dusty rose-colored shirt, her head down far enough to leave Lucy in the dark about what the teenager was feeling.
Before she left Angela’s house, she asked if her friend had any ideas on exactly how to tell them that she’s pregnant, and with a quick phone call to a custom print shop nearby, she placed an order for a baby onesie and a t-shirt with a request that ‘Little 34831’ and ‘Big Sis’ be printed on them.
And it’s clear that she made the perfect choice when Tamara lifts her head and clutches the shirt to her chest, her eyes shining to match the stunning grin everyone loved on her as she hurls herself into Lucy’s arms, squeezing her tight enough in hopes that the older woman can feel just how happy she is.
“So, I’m guessing you like the idea of being a sister?” Lucy asks, pressing a kiss on Tamara’s temple.
“Being an only child was getting kinda boring.” The teenager shrugs as she pulls the shirt over her head proudly, giving a little twirl for good measure before she speaks again, “I think you broke Tim, though.”
Lucy laughs and kneels in front of her boyfriend, resting her hands on his knees, “I know we haven’t really talked about having a baby, so I understand if you’re upset—”
He cuts her off with a deep kiss, pulling her onto his lap, as close to him as he could get her to be. The movement is quick and it catches her off guard for a moment, but within seconds she sinks into him and buries her head into the crook of his neck when they reluctantly have to come up for air.
They stay like that for what feels like a good few minutes before she pulls back, letting her hands fall to his chest as he stares at her with those hazel eyes she finds herself drowning in most days, a gentle but unsure smile on her lips, “Are you happy?”
“The happiest.”
And with his words, she feels some of the weight lift from her shoulders, and her mind get a little bit clearer.
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Ang
ur really just gonna leave me hanging like this, Chen?
Lucy
[1 video]
Lucy
[2 images]
Lucy
Tamara insisted that I needed to take a
picture of them with their shirts and then
told Tim she’d stop blabbing his ear off
about Vanderpump Rules if he took a selfie
with us
Ang
If that isn’t big happy family energy,
I don’t know what is
Lucy
Thank you for everything
Ang
You’re gonna be the best mama, I have no doubt
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