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"We can't get out of here. Pretty sure we’re snowed in." Tim said, his voice even but the muscle in his jaw ticking as he clenched his teeth, grinding down on them so hard that it felt like some kind of miracle they weren't down to little nubs.
Lucy closed her eyes with a grimace. "I kind of gathered that much, Tim."
He didn't respond, and she almost felt guilty for her snarkiness.
That is until she remembered that she was stuck in a house, in middle of nowhere, no one knowing their current status, with her ex-boyfriend.
The very same ex-boyfriend that she can barely stand to be around right now. Between the ghosting, the almost lying and the unexpected demise of what she had thought to be the greatest, strongest and healthiest relationship in her life, it wasn't really much of a surprise that she didn't want to be around the man right now.
Especially when every single time she tried to get answers out of him, he'd deflect or say that he couldn't, that he wouldn't, talk to her about it.
But she couldn't exactly lie and say that that was all because of how things had gone down between them, or the lack of even attempted resolution.
No, it also had a whole lot to do with the fact that her heart was a traitorous jerk and all that she wanted to do when she was in the same vicinity of Tim, she desperately wanted — yearned, almost — to be back where she felt the safest: in his arms.
But that wasn't an option anymore. From what Tim had said in that parking lot, she couldn't be sure that it would be an option for them again ever.
(No matter how much she wanted it to be an option.)
"I've got no signal." Tim commented, his voice almost as stoic and emotionless as the look on his face. "The radio's aren't picking up frequency either."
They simultaneously glanced around the dingy, dusty, abandoned house and grimaced.
They were so screwed.
"Have you got any signal?"
Lucy levelled him with a glare almost immediately. "We're on the same network, I don't think a couple of feet of space is going to make much difference in whether we can tell people where the hell we are."
Still, she pulled her phone out of her back pocket and checked, holding it up in the air and giving it a slight wave in Tim's direction.
"As expected, I have no signal either."
Tim huffed, moving slowly, cautiously almost, to sit in the dusty armchair that was the farthest away from Lucy.
It was a movement, a gesture, that she both appreciated, and hated all the same. It was relieving, yet painful.
That pretty much perfectly summed up her relationship with Tim Bradford right now, though.
"So," Tim started again after a few moments of oppressive silence, "how have you been?"
Lucy's face shuttered. "Don't. We don't have to do this whole small talk thing. You already made it perfectly clear that you don't want to talk, so maybe it's better that we just don't."
She watched as his face blanched, clearly shocked at the malice in her tone, and it was almost enough to make her take it back — to make her feel guilty.
Almost.
"So, you wanna just sit here in silence until the snow tapers off or someone finds us?" Tim surmised, his voice now holding an edge of aggravation.
"Mhm. I think that sounds perfect."
It was meant to be an easy day today. Lucy hadn't been thrilled, of course, when she'd been paired with Tim just six weeks after their breakup, but she was a professional. She could do it.
(It also definitely helped that Tim seemed every bit as uncomfortable and awkward about the situation as she did.)
They had a few arrest warrants to serve, which they did, and as they were about to drive over to the station to clock out, the snow coming down heavy, they'd been called to an abandoned house in the snowy woods where there was apparently suspicious activity.
It looked normal, when they'd gotten there. It was clearly abandoned, but nothing looked out of sorts. It kind of just looked like a house that had been left for the winter, the woods too cold for the back end of December. It made sense.
Still, they had to clear it.
But as soon as they were about to leave, the front door slammed, locked and a massive heaping of snow fell down in front of the door, presumably from the snow heavy roof, blocking them inside.
Which is exactly how they're in their current predicament: spending Christmas Eve snowed in, essentially trapped, together.
Fantastic.
"Look, Lucy—" Tim started, only for her to interrupt him.
"So much for silence. I thought you'd have been happy to not talk to me, given that's all you want to do these days."
Tim sighed, his hand coming up to rub at his forehead. "We still need to be able to be professionals."
"Professionals?" She spluttered. "I can't believe you. This is ridiculous. Why did Grey think pairing us together was a good idea again?"
She thought she'd said that last part under her breath, so quiet that he couldn't possibly have heard it, but in the silence of the room around them, he did. And it hurt.
"Because we've always been good together." Tim supplied, giving her an answer that he believed to be truthful but she felt was the biggest slap in the face imaginable.
She felt her already splintered heart fracture entirely, before anger flooded her veins.
"Really? We've always been good together?" Lucy turned to face Tim, eyes wild. "That's funny, because I distinctly remember you being the reason that we're not good together right now."
"Lucy, I—"
"Don't." She snapped. "We're not doing this. I can't do this, and you've already made it painfully clear that you don't want to do this."
Another heavy silence fell over the room, before Lucy hauled herself up onto her feet, ignoring the tingling cold in her extremities.
"What are you doing?"
She shook her head, throwing her hands up in frustration. "There's got to be some way we can get the fuck out of here. A back door, a window, something, because I can't stay stuck here in this room with you any longer, Tim."
There was a beat before she spoke her next words, so quiet and timid. "It hurts too much."
She marched past him, avoiding the arm that he'd extended to try and stop her from walking away, heading towards the kitchen.
As soon as she enters the room, she throws her head back in relief when she sees a back door.
Thank God. Her prayers had been answered. Life had finally decided to give her a break.
"I already tried that door. It's locked."
Lucy huffed out a humourless laugh, her eyes and the bridge of her nose stinging with tears that she wouldn't allow herself to shed — she'd already cried far too many tears over Tim. "Of course it is."
Her hand came up to pinch at the bridge of her nose, desperately wracking her brain to find any possible way out, coming up painfully short— wait.
The door was locked. If it was locked, surely she could just...break it down, right? She's done that before. It's not exactly easy, but she knows how to do it.
Decision made and determination sparking within her, Lucy rolled her shoulders back, stepping a few paces to give her momentum.
"What the hell are you doing, Chen?" Tim asked, his voice fraught with tension. "Don't you dare try to," he was cut off by her practically throwing herself against the wooden door shoulder first, "break down the door."
A loud crack echoed around the room, except it wasn't the door giving way.
No, because the universe thought her life was some kind of sick joke, the crack was her shoulder jolting out of place.
She gasped in a breath of the cold air, then let out a strangled groan of pain in very quick succession, her vision whiting out for a moment as her body recognised the pain, one hand coming up to grasp the dislocated joint.
Tim rushed towards her, eyes wide with worry. "Did you just—"
"Dislocate my shoulder? I think so."
He cursed under his breath. "I told you not to try to break the door down, Chen."
Lucy glared at him. "Really? That's what you're going for — an I told you so?"
He at least had the decency to look chagrined. "Sorry." He apologised. "Are you okay? How bad is the pain?"
"It's sure as hell not fun, but I've had worse." Lucy paused, considering her options: she could wait until after they've escaped this godforsaken nightmare to put it back into place, put it back in herself, or she could ask Tim to do it. Admittedly, none of her options were great, but she decides pretty quickly. "Can you pop it back in?"
"What? Can I—" He spluttered, shocked. "No, Lucy. We should wait until we're out of here, let the paramedics do it."
She should've expected that. Still, though, she definitely wasn't going to sit with a dislocated shoulder for what could potentially be several hours.
"We could be here for hours, Tim! I know you've relocated joints before, so either you do it or I do it myself and probably cause permanent damage. Your choice."
She had him there, and they both knew it.
"I don't want to hurt you."
Lucy couldn't help it: she outright laughed. "Bit late for that one, isn't it?"
She watched as the words hit him with all the grace of a semi-truck, his eyes dimming and his face contorting in a display of emotions that Lucy couldn't quite place.
"Fine." He caved after a moment of consideration. "But after this, we're talking about— about all of this."
"I thought you didn't want to talk any of this." Lucy immediately rebutted.
He swallowed, his throat thick and tight. "Yeah, well, I don't want this, what's going on between us right now, even more."
Turns out, relocating a joint is painful. Extremely so. But Lucy knew that what came next was going to be bordering on unbearable.
When they'd found a way to almost stabilise her arm to stop her from causing any further injury, or making the pain worse, Tim perched on the edge of the couch, both of their eyes looking everywhere but at one another.
Lucy sat there waiting for him to start the conversation — it had been his idea this time, after all, but after several minutes sat in silence, no initiation of conversation in sight, she decided to just start it herself.
"You said that we were going to talk, so talk."
Tim wrung his hands together in his lap. "I don't know where to start, Lucy. I don't know what I can say to make this better."
"How about the truth? An explanation? Because I'm so confused. I still don't understand why." Her voice cracked on the last word.
"I don't know either, Lucy. I want to be able to give you answers, you deserve answers, but I don't have them." Tim admitted.
Lucy closed her eyes, willing the tears to stay where they were. "Is it—" she cut herself off, desperately trying to reign in her emotions as she asked the question that had the answer that scared her the most. "Is it because you don't love me anymore?"
"No!" He immediately exclaimed, pain ramming into his chest at the very notion. "Of course it's not, Lucy. It could never be that."
She sniffled, and Tim felt his heart drop, his gut clenching and guilt flooding him.
"Then why, Tim? Tell me. Help me understand. Because I thought you meant it in the parking lot when you said that we were worth the risk, but clearly that isn't the case." She shook her head forlornly. "I just don't get it. Just a few days before, everything was good. We were happy. What changed? How could you suddenly give up on us like that?"
Before he could stop himself, he pushed himself forward so that he was a little bit closer to Lucy, now in touching distance, desperately wanting to reach out and wrap his large calloused hands around her own.
"I wasn't giving up on us, Lucy, I was giving up on myself." He finally admitted.
It had taken several therapy sessions, but he'd finally started to understand that it all came back to how he felt about himself — how he held himself at such low value that he was able to convince himself that he wasn't good enough, that she deserved better.
He'd also realised, during therapy, that breaking up with her had never been the plan. He'd wanted nothing more than to go home with her, hold her in his arms and tell her everything — the good, the bad, the ugly. Every tiny detail.
But instead, he chose to destroy the best thing to happen to him in a long, long time. Possibly ever.
Now, all he could do was hope that he hadn't destroyed it beyond repair.
"I don't understand." She may have three quarters of a psychology degree in her back pocket, but none of this made sense to her, no matter how hard she tried to put the pieces together. "What do you mean by giving up on yourself?"
He shifted uncomfortably, steeling himself as he prepared to be completely vulnerable.
To shed his skin in a way that he never had before.
It was terrifying. It was something he'd never allowed himself to do, too scared that once someone saw him, all of him, they'd see him in the same way that he saw himself.
But if anyone deserved the raw truth, if anyone deserved to be privy to his vulnerability, it was Lucy.
"I think I was scared." He admitted, slowly. "I'd disappointed everyone close to me, betrayed everything that I thought I knew about myself. I'd worked so hard to move past everything that happened overseas, and the stuff that happened when I got back too, but in one swift movement...it all went to shit. I meant what I said that might, Lucy, you're incredible and you deserve so much better than this — than me. After everything, I just knew you wouldn't be able to look at me the same way, you'd realise that I'm not the man that you fell in love with and you'd leave."
Lucy blinked back tears. "So you left before I got the chance to."
Tim nodded, eyes downcast.
"You don't think I deserved a say in that? That I'm not capable of accurately assessing what I deserve?"
"You did. You do. Leaving you there that night, the way that I did, it will always be one of my greatest regrets, Lucy. It was wrong. I was wrong. But I know now that this— it had to happen...I had to realise how broken I am so that I could start trying to fix it."
The words made her heart ache, but she couldn't fault him for what he said. After all, this is what she wanted, wasn't it? To talk — to finally understand why he'd done what he'd done?
Except, now, as she listened to him explain, she was beginning to wonder if it was all a little too much for her weary heart.
Lucy gave him a sad, watery smile. "I could've helped you fix it."
He couldn't stop himself then, reaching forward to cover her hand with his own. "I know that now, Lucy. I know." Shaking his head, "I don't expect you to forgive me. I don't expect you to— to take me back, for this to be an easy fix. This isn't me paying some kind of penance or an attempt at righting my wrongs to make me feel better about myself. It just took me a while to realise that you were right when you said that you deserved a real, adult conversation from me. After everything, I owe you at least that much. This may not be the way that I'd have chosen to do it, but..."
For once in her life, Lucy found herself at a loss for words. But she knew that she needed to say something, anything. She didn't want this conversation to just stop, for the air to be heavy again.
She didn't want them to go back to being broken again. She wanted them to be whole again.
This distance was too much to bear, even for her.
"Do you want to know what I thought when I saw you come out of the station that night?" Lucy asked, her shimmering wet eyes meeting his own, crystals of tears dancing over her irises. "I just kept thinking that I was so proud of you."
His eyes widened. He hadn't been expecting that.
"I've never not been proud of you, Tim. I don't think there's a universe where I could ever stop it, it's become second nature to me. Even now, despite everything, I'm still so proud of you. I see the changes that you're making, the effort that you're putting in to get better, to be better. I'm hurt, I'm angry, but I'm still proud."
She paused, considering her next words, knowing that what she was saying now didn't match how she'd been towards him just half an hour ago.
"I don't want to be angry with you anymore, Tim. I've spent far too long being angry, and it's getting me — us — nowhere. I want us to be able to move forward, not back."
He was silent for a moment, before nodding. "I want that too. More than anything."
Their eyes remained locked on one another's, but neither of them moved to continue talking, more than content to sit in this new, not quite comfortable but better silence between the two of them.
The air no longer felt oppressive, the weight of everything done without explanation and all the things that had been left unsaid having finally been lifted.
It had long since grown dark outside, the cold biting, the snow still falling thick and heavy.
"How's the pain?" Tim finally broke the silence, gesturing towards her shoulder.
Her answer, however, was very much not about the recently dislocated joint.
"It doesn't hurt as much now."
He swallowed thickly. "Good."
Just as Lucy was about to voice her question of whether they were ever going to be found or if they should just be prepared to become icicles, she heard a familiar chorus of voices calling out their names.
"Looks like we've been rescued."
By the time they'd given a report of what had happened, been checked over and safely returned back to the station, Lucy's shoulder safely secured in a sling and being left with strict instructions to rest, it was late, the hours ticking closer to the beginning of a new day and the pair couldn't wait to leave, exhaustion holding them both hostage.
For the first time in weeks, Tim and Lucy walked out of the station together, a chasm of space no longer separating them. Physically, or emotionally.
They walked over to their respective vehicles, offering each other a quiet goodbye.
But just as Lucy was about to open her car door and climb inside, something stopped her.
"Tim?" She called out, quickly garnering his attention.
He turned around, a clear question simmering in his eyes.
Lucy couldn't stop herself, her body moving itself, propelling itself forward without permission.
It's like some kind of universal pull that neither of them can deny.
She rushes forward, wrapping her good arm around his neck, standing on her tiptoes.
"Merry Christmas, Tim." She whispers.
He pulls back, eyes full of longing and something far deeper. "Merry Christmas, Lucy."