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Lucy Chen and Tim Bradford lay Lucy’s bed, staring up at the ceiling as they try to fall asleep. As a police officer, it can be difficult to leave work at the door, and their cases keep them up at night more often than not.
“Hey, can I ask you something?” Lucy asks softly, filling the silence in the room. Her fingers trail up and down her boyfriend's bare chest, her head resting on his shoulder.
“Of course, anything,” he responds, continuing to run his hands through her soft brown locks, which are sprawled out on the pillow behind her.
“Does it still scare you, not knowing if you will come home every night?” she asks quietly, her voice faltering slightly.
Tim isn’t surprised at her ominous question, because the topic had been on everyone’s minds for the last few hours. A patrol officer had been killed on duty today, and while they weren’t especially close to this officer, the death served as a painful reminder that tomorrow wasn’t promised.
And he wants to tell her that everything is going to be okay, and that their team is strong enough to handle anything thrown at him, but Tim Bradford isn’t a liar. Never in a million years would he have expected Anderson to lose a battle in the way that she did, and Jackson just emphasized that the unexpected should be expected.
“Well, I wouldn’t say that it’s a constant fear of mine, but the thought lingers in the back of my mind. Some days more than others,” he explains as calmly as he can, making sure to not delude nor scare her. “Honestly, I worry about you more than myself.”
“Really?” Lucy pauses and asks, lifting her head up and looking Tim in the eye.
“Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, I know that you’re tough and can handle yourself. But you’re by yourself a lot, and that scares me a little more than it should.”
“You know, I get really nervous every time Metro gets called to an operation. I know you have a whole team with you, but I’ve seen how brutal the cases can get. When it’s 3 a.m. and you aren’t home, it’s a little difficult to sleep. And I hate that there isn’t anything I can do about it.” Lucy’s hand continues to make its way across his chest until it lands on the skin above his heart. She flattens her palm against the muscle, syncing her breathing cycle up with his heartbeat. There was something about physically feeling and hearing it beat that never failed to comfort her. Every hug was a grounding reminder of their love.
“You’re right. As much as I would love to have you at my six every waking moment of the day, it’s not possible. But there is one thing that we can do,” Tim announces.
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“Never go to bed angry.” Lucy feels his heart rate decrease as he gently begins to scratch her scalp in a manner that comforts them both. “So that way, god forbid something happens, we won’t have any regrets. We won’t look back and wish we didn't leave things the way we did, you know?”
“Wow… that’s kind of morbid,” Lucy sighs, but it does make sense. In their line of work, they’ve come to learn that tomorrow isn’t promised. “It sounds like you’ve thought about this before.”
“It’s crossed my mind a few times. I guess it all started after you were taken by Caleb. I hated that the last conversation we had was me encouraging you to go on a date with a serial killer,” he explains quietly, and Lucy can sense the guilt lining his tone.
“Hey, that wasn’t your fault,” she reassures, but he shakes his head.
“Regardless, it made me think a little harder about how I end things.” He turns on his side so that he is facing her, looking straight into her deep brown eyes. “Lucy, promise me that we’ll never go to bed angry.”
Lucy brushes her fingertips down his cheek, tracing the stubble peeking through as she moves down his face. “I promise.”
They kiss goodnight, and it becomes a hell of a lot easier to fall asleep, in each other's arms.
— 8 years later
“Seriously, Tim?” Lucy exclaims from the kitchen, slamming her hands against the granite counter.
“What?” Tim yells back from the living room, where he’s helping Ivie - his youngest daughter - assemble her new Barbie dream house.
“I've been asking you for three days to do the dishes!” Hoping Tim can see her, she motions to a sink full of dirty dishes, likely piled up for over a week.
“Oh, it just slipped my mind. Once Ives and I have finished I’ll do them,” he responds nonchalantly, turning back to Ivie.
“Forget it,” Lucy mutters, but Tim fails to hear it over the giggles. She scrubs dozens of plates, cups, and utensils tirelessly as the night goes on. By the time she’s finished cleaning up the mess left over from the week, it’s well past 10 p.m. Tim and Ivie have migrated out of the living room. She foolishly assumes that her husband has put their daughters to bed, but as she turns to head into the bedroom, she runs into her oldest daughter.
“Mommy, I can’t sleep!” Andie whines, clutching her favorite stuffed bear in her hand. And of course Lucy Bradford loves her children, but her head is pounding and it’s taking all of her energy to be standing and working around the house this late.
“What happened, baby?” Lucy asks in a hushed whisper, hoping that her daughter catches on to her request for quiet. In true kid fashion, she doesn’t.
“Daddy didn’t turn my fan or nightlight on! And he didn’t read me a story!” Andie cries, stomping her foot on the ground.
“Baby, you’re a big girl now. I think that you can turn on your fan and light on by yourself. And I’m sorry that Daddy didn’t read you a story, but we can’t do that every night. You know that we both work late sometimes, and it can be hard to get everything done in a day,” Lucy explains softly, but the six-year old clearly doesn’t understand a thing.
“But Daddy had enough time to play with Ivie!” And Lucy knows that her oldest is right, that it’s only fair they both get the same amount of attention. She tells Andie that she’s right, and goes to get Tim. To her dismay, she hears the shower running as soon as she swings her bedroom door open.
“Babe, how much longer are you gonna be?” Lucy yells as she creeks the bathroom door open.
“I just jumped in, why?”
“Andie wants you to read her a bedtime story. And you forgot to turn her light and fan on when you tucked her in.”
“I’m gonna be a while, Metro had a rough op today. Think you can take over?”
“Well, she wants you, because you spent time with Ivie today. You have to be fair.”
“Oh, I think she’ll be okay for the day. Tell her that I’ll read to her tomorrow,” Tim shrugs, and he’s lucky that Lucy can’t see him.
“Fine,” Lucy says through gritted teeth, and she makes sure to slam the door on the way out.
Like any mother, she knows her daughter incredibly well, meaning that she correctly anticipates the meltdown that Andie throws about the unfairness of the situation. If Lucy wasn’t fighting to keep her eyes open, she might have tried harder to explain to the little girl that Daddy loves her just as much as Ivie, and that he would find another way to spend time with her tomorrow. But she’s tired and frustrated, which unfortunately is taken out on Andie.
“Andie, I know you’re frustrated, but I’m tired, and I can’t do this right now! Either I read you the story, or you go to bed without any story tonight.” With tears of fear in her eyes, Andie lets Lucy read her a quick story and doesn’t bother her any further.
By the time Lucy makes it back to her bedroom, Tim is out of the shower, changed into pajamas, and laying on the bed on his phone.
“Tim, do you mind grabbing some clothes out of the drawer while I brush my teeth?” Tim doesn’t hear her, and she has to repeat the question two more times until he is aware of her presence.
“Oh, sure,” he says, barely looking up from his phone.
Lucy shouldn’t be surprised when she comes back from the bathroom to find Tim fast asleep, the clothes she asked for nowhere to be found.
“Tim,” she yells, poking at his arm, which scares him straight out of his sleep.
“Woah, what?” he retorts, and that’s Lucy’s final straw of the night.
“What is up with you today? Are you trying to piss me off?” she asks angrily, crossing her arms.
“What? Of course not!” he defends, furrowing his brow out of confusion. “What’s wrong?”
“You never did the dishes, you didn’t offer to help me clean up, you didn’t put Andie to bed. Shall I go on?”
“Oh, come on, babe. I had a long day. I’m sorry,” he apologizes, but it means nothing to Lucy.
“You’re not the only one who’s had a long day!” She’s yelling now, and Tim is trying to shush her out of a fear of waking up the girls, but she doesn’t back down.
“I worked all day, picked the girls up from school, managed dinner, cleaned up after everyone, and still managed to fix all of your messes.”
“My messes? Lucy, you can’t be serious.” If he wasn’t alert before, he sure was now. “You have gotten Andie into such a bad habit with this bedtime routine. She’s going to be seven years old, you can’t baby her anymore!”
“Excuse me? This is more than her bedtime routine, it’s everything!” Tears well in her eyes, and she immediately runs her sleeve across the waterline before they can fall. It takes Tim a little longer than it should have, but he realizes the repercussions of his actions, or lack thereof.
“Luce, honey, I’m really sorry. I know that I wasn’t much help today, and I know that you’re tired and frustrated. Is this about the case that you’re working, because we can talk about it, if that will help,” he suggests, but that somehow seems to piss her off even further, and he leans back as her face turns a shade of red he’s never seen.
“Stop dismissing me! This isn’t about the stupid case, it’s about how I did literally everything by myself, and you couldn’t even get up to get me some clothes!”
“I already said I’m sorry, what can I do to make this better?” Tim asks, defeated. He knows that she’s completely in the right, but he doesn’t exactly have the power to change things right now.
“You can leave.”
“What?”
“I need some space. Take the couch tonight.”
“Luc-”
“Please just go.”
Out of options, Tim does exactly as he’s told.
****
Lucy wakes up alone the next morning, her husband not by her side. She remembers that he has an early shift this morning, so she isn’t shocked when she walks out to find a blanket folded up on the side of the couch, and Tim’s keys gone from the hook.
Having slept off her anger, a pit of guilt forms when she realizes that she didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. Tim was right when he suggested that her frustration stemmed from the lack of movement on an important case the detectives had been working on, and she felt terrible that she’d blown up on both him and Andie. She doesn’t miss the fact that Tim has laid out breakfast for all three of his girls, and has also packed lunches for them.
She smiles to herself as she goes to wake up the girls.
By the time she gets to the station, Metro has already been called to an operation. She heads to her desk, joining Angela and Nyla as they drive back into their incredibly stagnant case. Before she starts work, she texts Tim a quick apology for last night, and makes sure to thank him for his gesture this morning. She thinks nothing of it when it goes unanswered for a couple of hours, because that’s quite normal.
Right before her lunch break her phone lights up on her desk, distracting her from the dozens of files she’d been sifting through for the last hour. It’s Bailey, and while she wasn’t expecting a call from her friend, she takes the excuse to step away from crime for a minute.
“Hey Bailey, what’s up?” she asks cheerily.
“Lucy, we were just called to a Metro operation. I think something happened to Tim,” Bailey says, and Lucy’s entire world just stops.
“W- what?” she mutters in disbelief. This can’t be happening.
“I’m sorry, but it doesn’t look good. We’re going straight to Shaw Memorial if you want to meet us there. I’ll keep you updated.”
And Lucy has never stood up faster. Tears roll down her face as she drives well above the speed limit. At every red light, she opens her messages and stares at the text she’d sent Tim earlier. Every time she looks at it, she hopes that he’ll magically answer, sending her any sign that he’s okay, and knows that she’s forgiven him. But he doesn’t.
Her mind travels back to eight years ago, when they’d made the role to never go to bed angry. She had never hated herself more than she did right now, because she let something so stupid as the dishes affect her deeply. Because of her outburst, her last memory with Tim could be her screaming at him over something so childish.
She gets to this hospital before the LAFD, and the six minutes she waits are the worst six minutes of her life. The minute she sees the truck pull in, she runs to the door. She watches one, two, then tree officers wheel by until she spots her husband lying unconscious on a gurney.
“Tim, Tim!” she screams in agony as she clutches onto him, running with him as the workers wheel him across the room.
“Ma’am, you have to step away,” one of them instructs, but she refuses.
“No! My husband- Tim-” she cries as she looks down at him. They’re gashes all over his face, and she can see bruises spotting across his hands.
“What happened?” One of the EMT’s explains that his team had caught a bomb, and Tim had caught the brunt of the explosion, along with 3 other Metro officers. She stays with him as he’s examined, her heart jumping out of her chest as a doctor searches every part of his body.
“He’s okay, just had the wind knocked out of him. His hand is broken, so we’ll have to take him up for surgery,” the doctor explains, and Lucy nods as they take him into the operating room. She doesn’t say anything, because she knows she’ll choke on her sob if she does.
The 2 hours that Tim is in surgery are an incredibly long two hours, and she waits with bated breath despite the constant reassurance from multiple hospital staff. The minute that Tim is out of surgery, she joins him in the recovery room. She watches intently as his chest rises and falls; she doesn’t let the air out of her lungs until she confirms that his organs are still working.
The anesthesia wears off about thirty minutes later, and Tim’s eyes flutter open as he takes in his surroundings. Lucy jumps out of her seat and grabs onto him, scaring him a little bit.
“Woah, hi,” he mutters groggily, rubbing his non-injured hand across his eyes as he adjusts to the light.
“Hey, how are you feeling?” Lucy asks with a sad smile, gently running her hands through his hair.
“Okay,” he says, but she catches the wince as he tries to sit up straight. And now that he’s awake, it’s like a floodgate has opened inside of her, and everything comes pouring out at once.
“I’m sorry for screaming at you last night,” she cries, holding onto his free hand and squeezing it tightly. “I shouldn’t have told you to leave, and I went to bed angry. I broke our promise, and I’m sorry.”
“Hey, hey, it’s okay. I honestly deserved it,” Tim chuckles. “We all have bad days, Lucy, and I’ll admit that yesterday wasn’t one of our best. But the important thing is that we’re okay.”
“Yeah, I know,” she whispers, rubbing her sleeves under her nose to catch the tears. “But this could’ve ended badly.”
“But it didn’t,” Tim reminds her. “I know you didn’t mean anything by it. Let’s see this as a warning sign.”
“Oh yeah, trust me when I say that I’m never letting you out of my eyesight until we resolve an argument. No matter how small.”
“Good, the same goes for me,” Tim smiles at his wife. “I don’t mean to ruin the moment, but you’re kinda crushing my only functional hand,” he says, and Lucy immediately loosens her grip.
“Oops, sorry!” she squeals. “You know, if you didn’t wanna do the dishes, you could’ve just traded chores. You didn’t need to go and get blown up.”
“Hey, desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“Alright,” Lucy rolls her eyes with a giggle. “Never do that again. Bomb squad exists for a reason,” she reprimands.
“Oh trust me, I’ve learned my lesson. This old body can’t take it anymore,” he jokes.
“I’m just glad that you’re okay,” Lucy mumbles as she strokes his cheek, making sure to steer clear of any medical tape and sore spots.
“Me too.”
*
From that moment on, Lucy and Tim Bradford never went to bed angry,