Work Text:
I know your fears and you know mine
We've had our doubts but now we're fine
And I love you, I swear that's true
I cannot live without you
Goodbye my lover
Goodbye my friend
You have been the one
You have been the one for me
What hurts the most isn’t the fact that she’s gone —
that’s a lie, that’s the part that will always hurt the most, every single moment until the day he dies
— it’s that he doesn’t get to say goodbye.
She lived for thirty seven minutes after they’d gotten her to the hospital, he finds out later.
Thirty seven minutes.
But the hospital hadn’t called him because he wasn’t her emergency contact anymore.
He wasn’t her fucking emergency contact because he broke up with her, and so she’d died alone, thirty-seven minutes of terror and pain and alone, alone, alone —
So, no.
What hurts the most isn’t that she’s gone.
It’s that she died alone, and he never got a chance to say goodbye.
It happens like this.
_______________________
April 2nd, 2025, 1:35 am
“It’s after midnight.”
Tim smiles, his eyes closed and his fingers running gently through Lucy’s hair, her body warm and soft against his.
Warm, soft, and naked.
“It is,” he confirms, humming as he presses a kiss to her hair.
The room is dark, silent, and still smells faintly of sex.
But Lucy is right — it’s after midnight.
And she’s still here.
Tim smiles and lets his eyes flutter closed again.
This is everything he’s been missing.
Everything he’d ruined, and everything that he never dared hope he’d be able to earn back.
Her thigh pressed between his and her hand over his heart. Her head laying gently on his shoulder and tucked into the crook of his neck, and her breath washing over his skin in a soft puff that nearly lulls him to sleep.
He doesn’t know how he’s slept without her all of these months, without the comforting weight of her against his side.
“Maybe…” Lucy begins, and Tim opens his eyes to pay attention at the tone of her voice.
It’s … hopeful?
A little bit scared?
“Maybe…?” he echoes, trying to squash the hope that’s rising in him as she props her chin on his chest and smiles at him in the semi darkness.
“Maybe we can… I don’t know, go out to dinner or something? Try again?”
Tim sits up so suddenly that Lucy falls off of him and onto the mattress beside him, giggling at his sudden movement, but her giggles quickly dissolve on his lips as he pulls her into his lap and devours her mouth.
He doesn’t pull back until they’re both breathless and panting, and the sight of Lucy’s flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes almost have him hauling her beneath the blankets for round two (three? four?) but he stops himself because this is important.
Maybe the single most important thing to ever happen to him.
“Are you serious?” he asks, his words more vulnerable than he’d intended.
Lucy’s eyes soften as she reaches up to cup his cheek, her thumb brushing over the prominent line of his cheekbone.
“Yeah,” she whispers, her smile gently as she leans forward and presses a soft, chaste kiss to his lips.
She’s not playing with him, he knows.
She’s not cruel like that.
“Yeah. I think… I think I’m almost ready. And I think that I don’t want to waste anymore time, you know? Whether I’m still mad or hurt or… or whatever, I know you’re my future, Tim. You’re it for me. So… I don’t want to waste anymore time. And I know that the station is going to be an issue because of rank, but—”
Tim cuts her off with another kiss, their smiles almost too wide for it to be any good, but neither of them care as they melt into the bed once more, giggles and happy laughter filling the air as they reacquaint themselves with each other's bodies after so long apart.
_______________________
April 2nd, 2025, 5:33 am
“I need to go home.”
Tim groans and holds Lucy more tightly against him, his arms wrapped around her back and one leg thrown over hers.
He doesn’t want to let her go.
“No,” he huffs, his voice hoarse and sleepy and a little bit petulant, too.
Lucy laughs and presses a biting kiss to his jaw, causing him to grunt and loosen his hold on her a little bit so that she can shimmy up his body and kiss him properly.
“I need to change before shift.”
“You probably still have clothes here,” Tim argues.
“But I don’t have panties here, and I’m not willing to go through an entire shift commando. Wool is not comfortable, Tim. It chafes.”
Tim grumbles something incomprehensible and Lucy laughs as she wiggles out of his arms and stands up at the side of the bed before he can wrestle her back into it. She’s still naked, her skin flushed from sleeping next to him (to anyone) for the first time in so long, and Tim finds himself just staring as she searches the bedroom for her clothes.
“Where is my bra?”
Tim grins as he remembers tearing it off of her the night before.
He throws an arm over his eyes and points toward the door.
“That didn’t even make it in the bedroom. It’s a casualty; Kojo’s torn it to shreds by now.”
“Tim!”
“What! He’s your dog!”
Lucy drops back onto the bed on all fours, knees digging into the mattress as she crawls back over to him and presses a kiss to the corner of his lips.
“Now I definitely have to go home.”
Tim catches her lips with his and pulls her into a long, lingering kiss, and it’s much, much later that she finally makes it out of the house, her clothes stuffed into her bag and Tim’s sweatpants and t-shirt baggy on her as she climbs into her car.
Celina will definitely know something’s up if she catches her on the way in, but Lucy’s hopeful it’s early enough that she won’t be awake.
She turns on the radio and smiles the whole way home, singing loudly to tunes that would have Tim grumbling and groaning over because of the early hour (apparently happiness and music weren't allowed until at least noon), her heart light.
She feels ready.
Ready to try again.
Ready to trust again.
Ready for whatever the world wants to throw at her today.
Ready for anything —
Anything except this.
The crunching metal.
The pain.
The darkness.
_______________________
April 2nd, 2025, 7:13am
Tim walks into the station nearly forty five minutes early for shift, trying to keep the ridiculous smile off of his lips because he knows that Grey’s initial reaction of anger and shouting had definitely been real and not at all April Fool’s related, and that if their boss finds out he and Lucy are really, actually going to try again, he’ll flip his lid.
They just have to keep things quiet until Lucy passes the Sergeant’s Exam, and then…
Well.
And then.
He’s all but whistling by the time he walks into the roll call room, his eyes sweeping the occupants as has become his habit.
He always knows where she is, is always aware of her presence and her mood and her every movement.
It’s become second nature, really, over the past few years.
Except this morning…
“Where’s Chen?”
His heart sinks with sudden realization.
She’s late.
He feels something hot and heavy settle in his stomach, something… wrong.
Something like that day, when he’d found her buried in the ground and breathed life back into her body.
Angela walks up to him quickly, and honestly, that’s the first sign that something is well and truly fucking wrong.
Angela does not sit in roll call unless she absolutely has to. Says it’s one of the perks of being a detective.
Nyla follows behind his best friend, and then Nolan.
Grey shouts something and the roll call room clears out, but Tim doesn’t hear any of his words.
He can’t hear anything over the ringing in his ears because oh, god, no.
Not again.
Not again!
“Where is Lucy?”
His voice is hoarse, his eyes wild as he glances around the bullpen and roll call room again and again and again, as if hoping she’ll appear from the locker room any moment.
He’ll tease her about being late.
She’ll roll her eyes.
He sucks in a ragged breath, his chest tight and his vision beginning to blur.
“I’m so sorry, son,” Grey says, a strong hand on Tim’s shoulder, but he shakes his head because no.
“No!” he says, shrugging all of his friends off. Grey’s hand falls to his side and Nolan takes a step back.
Angela, however, steps closer.
The only one who can get close to him right now, he thinks.
He’s a ticking time bomb, primed and ready to explode.
“Where… Lucy.”
His heart is flayed open, his throat clogged with fear, terror, disbelief.
Angela wraps an arm around his waist just as his knees give out, and she guides him to the floor before following him down and pulling him into her lap.
“It was an accident,” she whispers, her words and her tears pressed into Tim’s hair as he sobs in her lap, loud, guttural sobs. “This morning. She… she was hit at a stoplight. T-boned by some idiot going fifty miles an hour. They rushed her to the hospital, but…”
Tim shakes his head, but he can’t form words.
He can’t breathe.
His chest hurts, his vision is a haze of white, and he feels like he’s going to pass out.
Panic attack, he thinks, but he can’t do anything to stop it.
“N-No…”
Angela presses holds him tightly, one hand on his back soothing him and the other pressed tightly to his chest, holding him together as he breaks apart.
“No, she’s…” Tim pauses, sucking in a shallow breath that clears the fuzz for a single second before it’s back, closing in on the edges as he tries to breathe and speak, to make them understand. “She’s j-just…”
She’s just late.
She left his house late, because he’d pulled her back for just one more kiss about seven times.
She’s on her way right now.
She just…
She’ll be here!
He tries to explain it in broken sentences and stuttered words, and when he looks up to see if anyone is doing something logical like calling Lucy to ask where she is, he sees that there’s not a dry eye in the room.
“Tim.”
This time it’s Grey who is falling to his knees at Tim’s side, a strong hand gripping his shoulder.
“She’s gone, son.”
No.
“No,” Tim says, shaking his head as he pushes off of the floor. “No, she was just… she left me this morning. She was going home… Kojo ate her bra, and…”
Angela manages to move him to where he vomits on the floor and not her lap, and after he’s emptied his stomach of the bitter coffee he’d drank on the way to work, he collapses on his ass and drops his head between his knees.
No.
“I… I need to see her.”
He doesn’t think he’ll believe them until he does, but at the same time, the thought causes more bile to rise in his throat.
He throws up one more time, and then lets Angela lead him to his truck.
_______________________
April 2nd, 2025, 9:45am
“We called her emergency contacts, but no one picked up,” the doctor explains, but Tim doesn’t hear him.
He doesn’t hear anything.
He sits beside the table that Lucy is laying on, a sheet pulled up under her neck.
He knows she sustained a major head injury, but it’s covered by her hair.
She looks like she’s sleeping, her beautiful brown eyes closed, her lips parted softly in slumber.
“Lucy,” he whispers, his voice hoarse.
Angela’s grip on his shoulder tightens as he reaches out to take Lucy’s hand in his.
It doesn’t sink in, until he takes her hand in his.
It’s lifeless.
Cold.
Wrong.
She doesn’t grip his hand back, doesn’t slide her fingers between his.
Instead her hand lays limply on his, cold, pale, lifeless.
“Oh, … oh god,” he whispers, and then he’s sobbing again, breaking into pieces in a way he doesn’t think he’s ever let himself do before.
He’s always considered himself to be strong, unbreakable.
But that was before.
Before Lucy.
Before she became his heart walking outside of his body.
Before she became everything.
He’s never been strong, he realizes, he’s just never cared about someone enough to be weak for them.
Until now.
“I can’t… I don’t… oh, god.”
The doctor continues, sympathetic but desensitized.
“She coded before we could get her into surgery,” he explains softly. “We tried to revive her, but were ultimately unsuccessful. Time of death was 7:55 am.”
Tim does the math, even though he doesn’t want to.
Medical paperwork is ridiculously detailed, and he sees that she was brought into the ER at 7:18am.
Thirty seven minutes.
Thirty seven fucking minutes.
“Who… who is her emergency contact?” he whispers, his words barely audible as he wipes furiously at his eyes.
He doesn’t remember his phone ringing.
He’d checked it for a text from Lucy, but he doesn’t remember —
“Vanessa and Patrick Chen,” the doctor says, flipping through her chart. “No answer, and no call back since.”
He’s not her emergency contact.
He could have said goodbye if he was.
He could have made it here —
held her hand
kissed her
told her he loved her
begged her to fight
begged her to live
— but he wasn’t her emergency contact.
He nods once, swallowing back the emotion that rises in his throat. He doesn’t know if it’s a sob or a scream, but he holds it back regardless as he tunes Angela and the doctor out once again.
He holds Lucy’s hand and presses his lips to her cold skin, silently mouthing words of love over and over and over and over —
_______________________
April 2nd, 11:21pm
He loses pockets of time, after that.
He knows Angela brings him home and stays with him until he falls asleep on pillows that still smell like Lucy.
He knows Genny shows up at one point, but he sends her away and tells her to take Kojo with her because he’s in no mood to care for the dog.
He knows Grey calls twice and Nyla once.
He knows his family is worried about him, heartbroken for him, grieving with him.
He knows all of this, but he doesn’t remember much of it.
It doesn’t help that he’s almost found the bottom of his whiskey bottle, he admits, but he’d been hoping the alcohol would numb some of the pain.
It doesn’t, of course.
It doesn’t matter how much he drinks, the pain is still there.
The pain will always be there.
It’ll get easier one day, Angela had said, but Tim doesn’t think anything will ever be okay again.
He knows it won’t, because his entire future is gone.
He stares at the ring on the coffee table, the one he’s had hidden in his sock drawer for the past year, and then reaches for it with shaking hands as he empties the rest of his whiskey bottle. It burns down his throat and causes his eyes to water, but he doesn’t care as he runs his fingers over the simple, golden band he’d chosen for Lucy before that fateful night in the parking lot.
“You’re my future,” he murmurs, his eyes filling with tears again as he takes the ring out and presses it into his palm. He holds it tightly, so tightly that it digs painfully into his skin, and feels grounded for a single moment before reality crashes in and he realizes he’ll never be able to give her this ring.
He’ll never whisper I love you to her the way he’d been too hesitant to do this morning.
He’ll never pull her back into bed for just one more kiss.
He’ll never get to marry her.
He’ll never get to see her glowing and round with their child.
He’ll never get to meet the grandchildren they’d talked about on their first date, or walk their daughter down the aisle, or grow old with the love of his life by his side.
He’ll never —
He screams, the never so overwhelming that he can barely breathe, and raises his hand to throw the ring across the room.
He doesn’t, though.
He can’t let it go.
He can’t let her go.
Instead he holds the ring tightly in his palm and presses it over his chest as he falls back onto the couch, the empty whiskey bottle taunting him as some of the drunken haze begins to fade.
He doesn’t know how he’s going to live without her.
He doesn’t know if he even wants to live without her.
The thought shocks him as it first floats across his hazy, alcohol soaked brain, but the more he thinks about it, the more right it feels.
He doesn’t have to live without her.
He doesn’t have to survive the next fifty years alone, walking through life with a gaping, bleeding hole in his heart.
He can just… not.
He stumbles to his feet, the ring still clasped in his hand, and drops to the ground in front of his safe.
He hopes, prays, that Angela hadn’t thought of this.
That she hadn’t thought he would —
But she hadn’t.
It’s still there, tucked in the safe next to his badge.
He pulls the gun out and collapses back against his bookshelf, the cool metal in one hand and Lucy’s ring in the other. He stares at them both through tear soaked eyes and, for the first time since he’d walked into the roll call room this morning
everything feels right.