Work Text:
— 1
87 days. Lucy Chen has been on a deep undercover mission for 87 days. As much as Tim wanted to drop to his knees and beg for her not to go, to cry like a child being left at Kindergarten for the first time, he knew he had to let embark on this journey, which she had worked so incredibly hard for. Lucy loved going undercover, and he was in no place to take that away from her.
He wouldn’t tell her about the fact that he suffered from night terrors, or that his heart stopped every time his phone rang. He wouldn’t tell her that Nyla has threatened to block him about 20 million times, due to his incessant check-ups. And he definitely wouldn’t tell her that after every single shift he would drive circles around her apartment foolishly hoping that she would appear, and he would wake up from this hellish nightmare that his life had become.
Though, he was thankful that Metro kept him busy. Fearing for his own life every time he stepped into uniform was an effective way to keep his mind off of Lucy, even just for a second. Especially when the mission resulted in an explosion, leaving him bruised and partially deaf for the day.
He wanted nothing more than to go home and sulk over his injuries in his bed with Kojo at his feet as the Rams highlight reel played in the background. But of course, peace doesn’t exist in the LAPD and he can’t leave the station without being bombarded with some nonsense - he assumes - from Nyla and Angela.
“Bradford,” Nyla calls out as she hurriedly paces towards him, Angela quickly following behind her.
”What, Harper?” Tim huffs, not trying to hide his annoyance in the slightest. Though, the pair of detectives shoot him a condescending look that makes him stand a little straighter.
“We’ve got word that Lucy completed her UC mission. They’re bringing her to the station now, I just thought I’d let you know,” Nyla shrugs.
“God forbid we try to do our jobs,” Angela sighs as the detectives turn away, not in the mood to deal with Tim’s apparent attitude.
Lucy is coming home.
Tim can’t bring himself to speak, or let alone move, for that matter. It has been 3 months since he’s seen Lucy, 3 excruciating long months he believed would never end.
His mind begins to spiral: Did something go wrong? Is she hurt? Does she even want to see me?
No, he thought to himself, everyone would be much more distressed if they’d caught wind of the mission going awry. Still, he had no idea what to expect of her homecoming. When Isabel would come home after a deep UC mission, she’d hibernate for weeks, not saying or doing anything. Tim felt like an outsider in his own home, and relationship.
But Lucy isn’t Isabel. After all, he trusts her. She has given him no reason not to.
____
The 43 minutes it takes Lucy to reach the station are the longest 43 minutes of Tim’s life. Per Lucy’s request, a couple of officers bring Tim to an open interrogation room to wait for her.
He taps his foot against the tile so loudly that he misses the soft creek of the interrogation room door. He doesn’t snap out of it until he feels a pair of arms wrap around his tense body. It takes less than one second for him to know that it’s Lucy.
3 extremely long months later, it’s Lucy.
For 5 minutes, none of them utter a single word. Instead, they just hold each other, soaking up everything they have been so cruelly deprived of these last 87 days. He missed everything about her: her scent, the way she folded her hand against his chest, the strands of her thick, long hair that brush against his face. God, he missed it.
“Oh, baby, I missed you,” he eventually utters, breaking the comfortable silence. He chokes over his words, but he isn’t the least bit embarrassed.
“I missed you more,” she whispers, her grip unwavering.
At this moment, Tim is nothing but grateful. Grateful that his love is back in his grasp, but more grateful that she wants to be back in his grasp. The bruises and bumps from an hour ago fade away into nothingness as he holds his girl. He has never felt as loved as he does at this moment.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” he sighs, rubbing his hands up and down her tense back.
“I’ll always come back to you,” she tells him confidently, and he believes her. For so long, Tim has lived in a world of false hope and empty promises. But now, he would feel foolish to call Lucy Chen a liar. Every decision she’s made, every word she’s spoken, it has all shown him that she’s here to stay.
Lucy’s passion and desire only become more apparent as her tears begin to fall on Tim’s shoulder. Shudders of relief pass through her body as she collapses into his warm, safe embrace. She’s been holding her breath for the past 87 days, never once letting her guard down.
Being an undercover officer has taught her an important lesson: home was never a place. A city, a building, a landmark can never signify that a person is home. Instead, she’s learned that home is where she can unapologetically be herself, and is undoubtedly safe. Her home is Tim Bradford.
— 5 years later
“Mommy!” a little girl cries out desperately, the sound of her fists repeatedly smacking against a table echoing through the house.
“Ivie, please,” Lucy sighs exhaustedly, her fingertips pressed against her throbbing temples. Ever since her and Tim have had kids, days off from work weren’t much to look forward to anymore. Don’t get them wrong, Lucy and Tim loved their children more than anything else in the world. It was just that sometimes… screaming toddlers were too much to bear alone.
“Mommy, mommy!” their eldest daughter, Andie exclaims excitedly, running into the room with a drawing in her hands. “Look at my art!”
“It’s great honey,” Lucy tells her daughter softly, though she barely looked at the piece of paper being waved in the air.
“But you didn’t see it!” the girl says. She attempts to stick the paper in her mother’s face, but her arm doesn’t reach past Lucy’s stomach. So she decides to jump, and jump, and jump until her tiny feet accidentally land on Lucy’s.
“Ouch,” Lucy yelps as she kicks her foot backwards in reflex. And as if things couldn’t get worse, her knee slams right against the little 4-year-old’s body, sending her flying to the ground.
“Oh my gosh,” Lucy gasps, immediately putting her pain aside as she reaches down to grab her daughter. With 2 screaming children now fueling her already terrible migraine, Lucy somehow manages to hold Andie as she grabs a pack of ice. She calmly and carefully sets her eldest down on the couch as she ices her stomach.
Lucy has been a parent long enough to know that she barely scraped her daughter, and Andie was purely crying out of dramatics, but she also knew that she needed to play into these dramatics to diffuse the situation.
With an ice pack in her hand, the little girl had been slightly soothed. Though, Lucy still had one more screaming child to silence before Tim came home. The last thing she wanted was for him to have to clean the messes she left for him after a long shift.
“Ivie, please finish your dinner,” she pleaded with her youngest, who was also much more difficult to handle than her older sister.
“No,” Ivie screeched as she threw a piece of broccoli onto the ground. Lucy groaned as she bent down to pick it up, but her legs shook as she attempted to stand back up. Part of her wanted to succumb to the exhaustion, to just collapse onto the floor and let her children sob until they tired themselves out.
But Lucy wasn’t a quitter. Well, she wasn’t a full quitter; she conceded and let Ivie abandon her nutritious dinner for a bowl of ice cream, which successfully stopped the tantrum.
Finally, a moment of peace.
Suddenly Lucy heard the sound of the front door clicking, signifying that Tim was home. Well, that, or there was an intruder who just so happened to lay their hands on a spare key. Luckily, she was right to assume that it was her husband.
Without a second thought she went flying across the living room, barely letting Tim enter through the front door before jumping into his arms.
“Hi, baby,” he laughs with a smile, grabbing onto his clearly exhausted wife. “How was your day?”
“Terrible,” she groans, her words muffled by Tim’s t-shirt.
“Aw I’m sorry to hear that. I’ll get the girls ready for bed and you can relax, okay?” he assures her gently, running his fingers through her knotted hair.
“Thank you,” she sighs gratefully, but she doesn’t loosen her grip around him.
As he combs through her hair, his hand accidentally slips and brushes against her forehead. Though, the abnormal temperature seems to catch his eye. “Baby, you’re burning up! Do you have a fever?”
“Umm…” Lucy trails off as Tim presses his cold hand against her warm skin, analyzing her rather pale cheeks and tilted eyes. Lucy had been sweating a little extra today, but she didn’t have time to think anything of it.
“Alright, come here,” Tim grunted as he bent down and wrapped one arm around Lucy’s leg, hoisting her up onto his body. Without struggle, he carried her to their bedroom and carefully laid her down on their bed.
“I’m going to grab some Tylenol and a thermometer,” he tells her; she nods as he quickly exits the room and begins shuffling around in drawers. Her entire life Lucy had put herself on the back burner, always scared of burdening someone else with her issues. But with Tim, she didn’t even need to ask to be taken care of. He just.. well, he just did it.
Even after they had children he doted on her hand and foot. She expected that having the girls would make her an afterthought in Tim‘s life, but she was wrong. Tim loved his daughters more than he could put into words, but that didn’t mean he loved his wife any less. In fact, if it was even possible, he loved Lucy even more for giving him their daughters. Becoming a father didn’t mean he could just abandon his duty as her husband, as she didn’t become less of a wife to him.
Lucy didn’t feel like a burden to Tim, and that was the most beautiful part of their relationship. They lived for each other, to take care of each other. It was something that they enjoyed, it was a part of sharing a life together. Tim never failed to take over when Lucy was sick in the same way that she dropped everything to take care of him on his own rough days.
It was a cyclical nature that they lived in, and they wouldn’t have it any other way. Lucy wasn’t scared to run back to him when something was wrong. In fact, she didn’t know any other way to live. She would always run back to him, forever and ever.