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The sky was clear, almost too clear, in that quiet kind of calm that doesn’t last. The air felt still, like it was holding its breath, waiting for something to shift., there was a tense kind of stillness, like it knew before anyone else that something was coming.
Tim had barely made it through roll call before Lucy’ eyes caught his from across the room. Just for a second, not long enough to mean anything. but something tightened in his chest anyway.
He hadn’t spoken to her much since the UC assignment ended. At least not the way he used to, because things weren’t the way they used to be.
Because once you’d kissed someone with your whole soul in a place where no one could see it, there wasn’t a way back.
Just sideways. Around it. Beneath it. Away from it.
That’s what he’d been doing since she came back from UC school.
Pulling Away.
———— * ————
They were two hours into their shift, when Chris called.
Lucy looked at her phone, hesitated, looking clearly uncomfortable, and answered anyway.
“Hey! You busy?”
“ Uh…no, where are you?”, she answered, looking confused.
“An open house, it was on my way to work!” Chris says, excited and smiling ear to ear.
Tim didn’t even pretend not to listen.
“I can’t really see anything…Can we talk later?”, she answered, looking confused and unconfortable.
“Okay, Love you!”
Lucy ends the call without saying anything back, Tim notices but doesn’t comment.
Instead he asks: “Are you and Chris moving in together?”
“No..” Lucy squirms in her sit, unsure of what to say.
“Well, he seems to think you are” Tim’s says, trying to sound dismise, as if he does’t care.
“I don’t know he kind of just sprung it on me this morning.”
They still had a lot to say, but soon enough their conversation was cut short. A call came trough and they had to go, their barely started conversation falling behind, not forgetted, just moved to some other time as they go back to professionalism.
———— * ————
It had already been a brutal day. They were mid-shift, emotionally wrung out after handling one of the worst calls in recent memory young. A woman, terrified and trembling, with a bomb strapped around her neck.
She’d died before the squad could stop it, knowing it was coming, that there was no saving her.
Tim and Lucy had just come from delivering that truth to the woman’s family. The silence between them afterward was thick, not in an awkward way, but heavy, full of thoughts neither wanted to speak aloud. That’s when Lucy’s phone buzzed.
Chris.
“Hey,” she answered, voice low.
“I saw the news. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, a little too quickly. “It’s crazy out here.”
“Okay, look…If you don’t have time, I get it. But a realtor friend of mine just slipped me a listing, and if you like it, I think we should move on it.”
Lucy exhaled sharply, glancing toward the floor, discomfort flashing across her face. “Well…”
“Chen!” Tim barked from across the room, sharp and perfectly timed. “Chat with your boyfriend on your own time.”
That was all it took.
“Well,” Chris said, clearly catching the edge in Tim’s voice, “He’s in a mood… I’ll let you go, just text me and let me know what you think.”
“Yeah,” she replied, already ending the call, “I’ll do that.”
Then she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
“Thanks,” she muttered quietly.
When she finally hung up, Tim didn’t say anything, but his face showed a thousand different emotions.
Lucy exhaled and gave him a wary glance. “What?”
“Nothing.” He replied, begrudgingly.
She raised a brow. “That didn’t sound like nothing.”
Tim shook his head once. “I didn’t say anything.”
“But you’re thinking it,” she snapped, arms folded. “So why don’t you go ahead and say it.”
He looked at her for a long second, something flashed in his eyes , maybe frustration, or just disappointment.
“Just seems like a weird time to plan a future with someone when you don’t even seem happy in the present.”
Her mouth opened, stunned. “Excuse me?”
“I’ve been watching you fake your way through this relationship for months, Lucy.”
“Wow. Okay.” She blinked, stunned and not quite believing what she just heard, voice turning defensive. “Are you really trying to tell me what I feel?”
“I’m just telling you what I see,” he shot back. “You used to light up when you talked about things that mattered. Now you flinch when his name comes up. That’s not love. That’…”
“Safety,” she cut in. “It’s comfort. Stability.”
He looked at her sharply.
She folded her arms, trying to pull herself back together. “I’m not asking for your approval.”
That hit. Harder than it should have.
He didn’t respond, but the tension in his jaw was answer enough.
Lucy knew she’d struck something.
“…That wasn’t fair,” she muttered.
“Maybe not,” he said, voice low. “But maybe it was honest. At least I never asked you to be someone you’re not.”
The words hung between them like a live wire.
Lucy blinked. “And I did?”
He didn’t answer, the silence said enough.
She broke it first. “This is not the time.”
“Right. You’re right,” he muttered, turning back toward the next location. “You’ve got a house to buy and a boyfriend to pretend with, who has time for a little honesty?”
She followed in silence, heart thudding in her chest, not from the bombs or the insanity of the case they’re seeing today.
But from him.
Always him.
———— * ————
The rest of the shift was a minefield of silence.
They worked like pros, efficient partners that they were, clearing site after site, calming panicked victims, moving efficiently. But beneath the surface, their chemistry crackled like exposed wire.
Tim always watching her too closely, Lucy answering him too sharply. They weren’t yelling, they weren’t even talking beyond the extreme necessary.
But they were fighting, and the air between them was charged like lightning.
By the time they got ready to leave the station, the sky was ready to burst.
Lucy pulled her jacket tighter around herself as she walked towards the exit, the first drops of rain already starting to fall.
Tim walked beside her, quiet, but not calm.
“You gonna say something?” she finally asked.
He stopped just outside the doors.
“I just don’t get it,” he said flatly.
“Get what?”
“This clearly isn’t working out, I don’t know why you’re holding on to something that clearly doesn’t make you happy.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You think it’s that simple?”
He shrugged. “It should be.”
“No, it’s not. Not for me. Not when the one person who actually made me feel like I could be myself also spent the few months pulling away.”
His expression didn’t change. But his voice did.
“I had my reasons.”
“Yeah? Like what? Ashley?”
“That’s not fair.”
She took a breath, heart racing. “We kissed. Real or not, we kissed, Tim, that changed a few things and you know it. And then you told me to go to UC school and just… acted like it never happened.”
“You had a boyfriend.”
“Who I never loved.”
That slipped out before she could stop it.
His eyes widened, and then dropped to her mouth.
But they were still standing on the steps of the station, and she wasn’t about to cry or scream in front of anyone, not here.
She swallowed hard, voice calmer than she felt. “I have to go.”
Tim said nothing.
Lucy turned and walked away, barely hearing her own footsteps over the crack of thunder overhead.
———— * ————
It started with a message.
Nothing elaborate, nothing emotional. Just a few words, typed too quickly, deleted, retyped again multiple times before gathering the courage, or the impulsive decision, to send them.
“Are you home?”
Lucy had stared at the screen longer than she should’ve, still numb from what she’d done. From what she’d finally ended.
Chris’s hurt hadn’t been loud, it had been quiet, defeated. Like he’d always known, like he’d been waiting for it. It made her feel worse, in a way. Not because she regretted it, but because she knew exactly what it felt like to be the person left behind.
Her reply to Tim was just as simple.
“Yeah.”
His answer came seconds later.
“You wanna talk?”
She didn’t, not really, but she couldn’t say no. Not to him. Not when everything she’d just done had been about him, whether she was ready to admit it or not.
So she drove across town. Rain slicked the streets, the air heavy with the kind of tension that came before something broke.
And it did, but not right away.
———— * ————
The door opened as soon as Lucy reached it, like Tim had been waiting on the other side the whole time.
She stepped in, still a little damp from the short walk to his porch, hair curling from the humidity.
His house was dim, warm and quiet. No one said anything at first, both to ashamed of their earlier behavior and scared of what would come out once they opened their mouths.
So for a moment it was just a long, tense silence.
Then he said, voice low and careful, “Thanks for coming.”
Lucy offered a tight nod, shrugging off her jacket, suddenly unsure of what exactly she was doing here.
They stood in the kitchen for a while, he poured her tea like he always did, automatic and thoughtful, her favorite kind he has bought a few months ago. He wasn’t sure why he had a full stock of it in his house if he never drunk it, but then he remembered how she smiled every time he offered it to her, and her sweet small hums she did while drinking it, and it all made sense again. The small rituals that somehow never stopped meaning everything.
And for a minute, it was fine.
Until it they started talking again.
“I just…” Tim leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms. “I feel like I’ve been watching you slowly disappear.”
Lucy blinked. “Excuse me?”
He looked down, then back up. “I mean with Chris. You’re not… you anymore, you smile less, joke and laugh less and I feel like you don’t talk to me the same way.”
She stiffened. “You’re really bringing this up now?”
“I didn’t plan to.” He shrugged. “But I watched you today, and I couldn’t ignore it anymore.”
“You don’t get to comment on my relationship like that.”
His tone sharpened. “You’re not in it anymore. At least not fully, you have to admit to yourself that you haven’t been for a long time.”
Lucy’s eyes narrowed. “That’s none of your business.”
“I think it is,” he said. “Considering how much we pretend we’re not… what we actually are to each other.”
Her chest pulled tight. “Jealousy, really? That’s rich coming from you.”
He scoffed. “Yeah? Then what does it look like on you when you bring up Ashley every time you get defensive?”
She laughed, bitter and low. “Oh, so this is what tonight is? You venting about the girl you couldn’t care less about?”
He stepped forward, tense. “Don’t act like you aren’t doing the same with Chris.”
“Chris was kind, he wanted a future with me-”
“But you don’t want one with him,” Tim bit out. “You only stayed with him because he was safe.”
“And you stayed with Ashley because she wasn’t me.”
The silence that followed was razor-sharp.
He exhaled, heavy, his voice rough. “Yeah. I did.”
She faltered for a breath, stunned he admitted it, she took a guess with that affirmation, one she was never sure about and thought she could never say it out loud. But he didn’t stop there.
“I stayed because I thought it would make everything easier. Because wanting you, loving you, felt like the riskiest thing I could ever do.”
Lucy’s lips parted, stunned. “You don’t get to say that.”
“Why not?”
She stepped back like she’d been slapped. “Because you don’t say things like that and then do nothing. You don’t tell me to move on, tell me to leave, and then stand here and act like you want me.”
“I told you to move on because I thought it was what you needed!” he said, voice rising. “I thought I was holding you back. You wanted to go to UC School, that’s something you love doing and you earned it, and I didn’t want to be a reason for you to stay.”
He rubbed a hand over his face, like he could erase the last few months. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
Lucy shook her head, rage giving way to hurt. “You always talk about what I deserve. You know what I deserved, Tim? I deserved to know where I stood with you. I deserved someone who would fight for me instead of pushing me away to feel noble.”
He swallowed thickly. “You deserve better than noble. You deserve someone who’ll push you. Who’ll challenge you, hold you accountable, and make you laugh even when you don’t want to. Someone who will love you with every inch of their body and every corner of their heart.”
She stilled. Her breath caught. Her voice was barely a whisper. “And who would that be?”
He didn’t answer.
So she laughed, low and humorless. “You don’t get to say stuff like that and not mean it. You don’t get to throw lines like that at me and still expect me to go back to normal.”
“I’m not-”
“You don’t even see how unfair you’re being,” she snapped. “Yeah, maybe I pulled back too, but you were the one who started it, Tim. You shut me out, and I… I just followed your lead. ”
He blinked, about to speak.
“And you know what? I broke up with Chris!” she shouted, cutting him off like a slap across the face.
The words hit hard, louder than the thunder still rumbling outside, sharper than anything they’d said before.
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away.
“Tonight. Right before I came here.”
Tim’s breath caught. He looked like he’d been punched in the gut. “You… what?”
Lucy stepped back, eyes burning. “But I guess it doesn’t matter now.”
And then she turned, heart racing, blood pounding in her ears, and walked out the door without looking back.
———— * ————
The storm didn’t care about subtlety.
It pounded down like it meant to drown the city, thunder cracking overhead, wind slicing like knives. Water poured from the sky in torrents, soaking Lucy within seconds. Her hair clung to her face, her clothes heavy with rain, but she didn’t stop walking.
She couldn’t stop.
Not after what she’d just said.
Not after the way he’d looked at her, like she’d flipped the ground out from under him.
Behind her, the door slammed open.
“Lucy!” Tim’s voice cut through the storm.
He was chasing her again.
Like always.
Only this time, she didn’t know if she wanted him to catch her.
Not yet.
“Lucy!” His voice broke behind her, closer this time, feet pounding wet pavement.
She turned around hard, fast, fury flashing like lightning behind her eyes.
“What?!”
Tim stopped two feet away, soaked to the skin, chest heaving.
“You can’t just drop that and walk away!”
“I had to!” she screamed over the rain. “Because standing there with you, watching you look at me like I’d ripped your heart out. I couldn’t breathe!”
“You think this is easy for me?” he shouted, voice raw. “You think I haven’t been fighting myself every single day not to feel this?”
Lightning flashed above them, and the silence between thunderclaps cracked open like a wound.
“You told me to move on,” Lucy seethed, stepping into his space. “You stood outside my door, after Chris asked me to go to UC school, even after I said I woudn’t go with so much happening here, and you told me to move on. And I did, I left. I thought you meant us.”
Tim looked staggered. “I meant your career, Lucy.”
“Then why the hell didn’t you say that?” Her voice cracked, soaked and shaking. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I was scared!” he bellowed, rain crashing between every word. “Scared that if I told you how I felt, you’d reject me and I would lose our relationship. Or that you would stay here, for me. And I didn’t want to be the reason you gave up on what you wanted. Scared that if I told you the truth, I’d ruin us. You’re too important for me to lose, Lucy”
“What I wanted was you!” she screamed, chest heaving. “Over everything”.
“I didn’t know that!” he yelled back. “Because every time I got close, you shut me down. Vegas? The kisses?”
Her face twisted, furious. “Don’t.”
“No, you don’t,” he bit back. “I told you it didn’t feel like pretend. I told you those kisses weren’t fake.”
“And I panicked,” she shouted, eyes wild with tears and rain. “I gave you a bullshit answer because I was terrified. ‘Basic biology’? That was me lying through my teeth.”
“You didn’t just lie,” he growled, voice low and gutted. “You buried it, you made it a joke. And I thought, okay, she doesn’t feel the same. So I shut my damn mouth and tried to be your friend.”
“I felt it!” she cried, her voice breaking. “I felt every second of thoset kisses, Tim. I’ve been feeling it ever since.”
The rain poured harder, as if it could match the ferocity of their voices, their hearts.
They were both trembling, eyes locked like they could burn the truth into each other.
“You think I don’t regret what I said?” Lucy pressed, stepping closer, water dripping from her chin. “That I don’t hear ‘basic biology’ in my head every time I see your face?”
Tim looked at her like he could barely hold himself together. “You have no idea what it did to me.”
“You have no idea what you did to me!” she shouted back. “Standing at my door, pretending to care about my career when you were really just…”
“Just what?”
“Breaking up with me without ever being mine!”
The words hit like a thunder.
He took a single step forward, the ground splashing beneath his boots. “You were mine. You were in my mind and in my heart every day, every minute. I just couldn’t say it.”
“Why?” she asked, voice ragged. “Because you were with Ashley?”
He didn’t answer.
“That was easier, wasn’t it?” she pressed. “Someone safe. Just like Chris was for me. At least we could pretend with them.”
Tim looked furious and wrecked all at once. “I stayed with Ashley because it was easier than watching you build a life with someone else, easier than being rejected every time I tried to get closer to you!”
“And I stayed with Chris because I couldn’t have you!”
The rain roared louder, thunder shaking the sky.
They were standing inches apart now, soaked, shaking, wrecked.
Tim stared at her, rain dripping from his lashes, voice hoarse when he spoke again. “You broke up with him.”
She nodded, breathing hard. “Tonight.”
“Why?”
She blinked. “Because I couldn’t do it anymore. Because I’m in love with someone else and I can’t pretend I’m not.”
A beat of silence.
Then Tim said, his voice trembling: “Say it.”
Lucy looked up at him, face wet with rain and tears. “I’m in love with you, Tim.”
And it broke him.
His face collapsed, like the storm inside finally snapped free.
But he didn’t move. Didn’t speak.
So Lucy shoved him. Hands to his chest. “Say something!”
He blinked, stunned. “I’m trying to hold it in.”
“Then don’t.”
“Lucy…”
“Don’t!” she cut in, breath catching. “If you don’t feel it, tell me right now. And If you do, if any part of you still wants me, if you feel the same way I do, then say it.”
His jaw clenched, like every muscle in his body was straining.
Then softly, “I have always wanted you.”
Her breath stuttered.
“Every second, every day, through Ashley and Chris. Through all of it.”
The rain kept falling harder now, soaking them to the bone, and still neither moved.
“I didn’t fight,” Tim whispered, “because I thought I’d ruin you. That I’d burn everything we had down if I touched it.”
“We aren’t exactly acting out normal right now, things already changed,” Lucy said, voice trembling. “So you might as well do it right.”
His breath hitched, his resolve snapped. Then, finally he reached for her.
The moment his hands touched her, the world disappeared.
No more caution. No more pretending.
Just heat, breathless and desperate, even as the rain pounded down around them.
Lucy gasped the second his fingers curled around her jaw, the calloused pads of his thumbs brushing the water from her cheeks like he needed to see her, really see her, before the world cracked open again.
Their eyes met. Wrecked, unguarded, and in that breath between thunder and lightning, everything held.
And then collapsed.
Tim kissed her like it was the only thing keeping him alive.
Like her mouth was the answer to every prayer he never thought he deserved to say out loud.
It wasn’t gentle or soft.
It was everything they’d been aching for.
She met him with equal fire, her hands fisting in the front of his soaked shirt, pulling him into her like she could melt him down to the bones and wear him like a second skin.
Rain poured over them, seeping through their clothes, dripping from their hair, their lashes, sliding down their necks and mingling with the heat between them.
His lips moved with desperation. Urgent, almost feral, felt like he was trying to undo years of holding back with every brush of his mouth, every clash of teeth and tongue.
Her hands gripped his jaw, fingers threading through his wet hair, anchoring herself to the only thing that had ever felt like home.
The kiss deepened.
Lucy kissed him back like it was a promise, like she could put every “what if” and “almost” and “too late” to bed with the way her lips pressed to his like they’d never part again.
The storm raged around them, wild and furious, but they only heard each other.
Only felt this fire and the relief of finally giving in.
Lightning flashed overhead, thunder echoing through the sky, and it was like the entire universe cracked open around them, weeping for the years they’d wasted.
And still, they kept kissing, it was like they couldn’t move back, scared it was all a dream and the other would dissapear if they stopped.
Tim pulled her closer, hands flat on her lower back, sliding up beneath her soaked shirt, needing to feel skin, to ground himself.
Lucy moaned against his mouth, and the sound shot straight through him, sharp and electric, like lightning down his spine.
He pulled back just enough to whisper her name, voice wrecked, reverent.
“Lucy…”
She opened her eyes, rain running over her lashes, breath trembling against his mouth.
“I’m here,” she whispered, like it was the truest thing she’d ever said.
And then she kissed him again, slower this time, showing Tim they had all the time in the world now, like this was just the beginning.
They kissed until nothing else existed but the feeling of his mouth on hers, the rhythm of his breath, the solid weight of his body, the deep, unrelenting ache of a love that had waited too long and refused to be denied a second longer.
This was no ordinary kiss.
It was the kind that left you trembling.
The kind that burned through every inch of you, fingertips to toes, ribcage to throat.
The kind that said: You are mine. And I am yours.
They didn’t separate right away.
The last kiss broke gently, not with regret, but with reverence. Mouths parting slowly, with a few pecks to ease the ache of being separeted again, breath catching like neither of them quite knew how to breathe without the other anymore.
The rain still fell in steady sheets, cool and cleansing.
Tim’s hands stayed firm on her waist, holding her close like he still wasn’t sure this was real, like if he let go, the whole thing might collapse into mist.
Lucy’s palms pressed to his chest, the beat of his heart thudding steady beneath her fingertips, fast beats, but so calming to her.
It was the first time in a long time that she felt like she could breathe.
The storm had passed inside her, even if the sky above them still rumbled.
When she opened her eyes, he was already watching her like she was something he’d been waiting to see for years.
He looked wrecked, devastated in the most beautiful way. Like a man who’d been holding his breath too long and had just now remembered how to breathe.
“You okay?” she asked, voice barely above the rain.
He nodded, a little laugh huffing out of him. “I don’t think I’ve been this okay in years.”
She smiled, shaky and real. “Yeah… Me neither.”
They stood there for a beat, breathing the same damp air, letting the cold sink into their bones, not caring.
“You really left him?” Tim asked, his voice cracking even though he already knew the answer.
Lucy looked up at him, rain still falling on her lashes, cheeks pink with cold. “Yeah,” she said. “I left. For me. And maybe… for you, too.”
His breath hitched.
“I couldn’t keep pretending,” she added, “when I knew what I really wanted.”
He swallowed hard. “And what’s that?”
Her eyes softened.
“You.”
The word landed in his chest like a heartbeat.
Tim pressed his forehead back to hers, exhaling like he’d finally stopped running.
“You know,” he murmured, voice hoarse, “this thing between us… it’s not going to be easy.”
Lucy smiled again, small and certain. “Since when have we ever done easy?”
A low laugh rolled out of him, quiet but real.
She leaned into him, arms slipping around his waist now, her wet cheek pressed to his soaked shirt. He wrapped her up in an instant, arms holding her tight, like he could absorb her through sheer proximity.
They stood like that for a long time, the rain softening to a mist around them, like the storm had spent itself and now the world was finally at peace.
Lucy spoke again, quieter this time.
“I think I’ve been falling in love with you since the day asked me to save you a dance.”
Tim closed his eyes.
“And I think,” he whispered, lips brushing her hair, “I’ve loved you since the moment I realized I couldn’t watch you walk away without wanting to follow.”
Silence fell again, except this time it didn’t feel heavy, just whole.
Then Lucy pulled back, eyes brighter than any sun could’ve made them, and smiled through the drizzle.
“So… what now?”
Tim looked at her like the answer had always been simple.
“Now,” he said, tugging her back into him, “we stop running.”