Work Text:
Made by Kay
The call came in from a group of highly distressed kids. Baby stuck in a storm drain. It immediately sent a Code 3 immediate response to all available responders, everyone from police to firefighters were on route.
Tim and Lucy were only a block away when the call came in, so they flicked on their lights and booked it around the corner.
The street they arrived on was a residential street that included a community park. They quickly noticed three young girls kneeling at the edge of the sidewalk, their gazes fixed on the covered storm drain at their feet.
Tim skids the shop to a stop and Lucy is the first to fly out of the vehicle.
The girl at the end of the huddle, the shortest of the three, broke from her friends when she noticed the police car and ran to meet Lucy halfway.
She practically fell into Lucy’s arms, barely giving Lucy time to catch her.
“The call said a baby was trapped?” Lucy asked.
“Babies!” The girl corrected and yanked on Lucy’s arms, pulling her towards the drain. “You have to help them!”
Babies? Plural?
The sergeants shared a look. A mix of “Oh, fuck!” and “What?” scribbled across their features.
Still, with pounding hearts and minds ready for the worst, they follow the girl back to the storm drain. They reach the edge on the road side and drop to their knees. With their hearts now beating in their throats they look down and see…
“Ducks?”
There, below the metal bars covering the storm drain, were a small picturesque huddle of yellow ducklings. With their tiny little bodies all squished together, and their heads looking up. They were squeaking and chirping and sporadically fluttering their wings and dancing on their feet.
Tim screwed his face and fell back on his heels, his hands pressed into his knees. He looked at the girls, who all wore looks of genuine panic and fear and watched Tim like he was waiting for them to save the day. Then he looked at Lucy….
“Aww!” She exclaimed and leaned forward even more to get a better look through the metal bars.
If Tim was hoping to find solidarity in Lucy, at the absurdity of this whole thing, he was fresh out of luck.
“There’s six of them,” the middle girl said, “we counted.”
“And that’s the mum!” Added the last girl and pointed away to her left.
Lucy followed the direction and saw nearby, mere feet away, an obviously anxious Mama Duck. She waddled back and forth on the spot and occasionally made hushed quacks as if speaking to herself.
Tim rose to his feet and pulled his radio from his belt as he did. While glaring at the girls, he stood down all responding units and relayed the truth of the call to dispatch. He returned his radio then and pressed his hands firmly against his hips.
“Alright, girls,” he started, with the best Dad voice impression he could manage, “you can’t 9-1-1 for things like this.”
Lucy looked to him then, but before she could speak the smaller of the girls spoke up.
“Who else were we going to call!?” She scolded, with such an intense level of sass Lucy immediately bowed her head to keep from laughing.
Tim rolled his and pushed his hands to his hips. He looked to his partner, his fellow sergeant, his wife, his person… and found no support. He shifts on his feet then and fixed his gaze on Lucy until she was compelled to look up at him.
When she did, she softened her expression into one of empathy and pleading. “We have to help them, Tim,” she said simply.
“This is what animal control is for.”
She shrugged a shoulder lightly, purposely playing in her doe eyes and charisma she knew would work on him. “But we’re already here.”
Between the sassy pre-teens and Lover-Of-All-Things Lucy (whom he was a total sucker for), this was a battle he was never going to win. With a sigh, he caved. He dropped his hands and rolled his head as he turned and headed back to the shop.
He dug around in the boot and retrieved the halligan bar he always kept in the back. But when he rounded the shop and headed back to the drain, the girls took one look at the metal object and flew into a panic.
“No!” One of the girls screamed.
“You can’t kill them!” Another added.
Sensing the panic, Mama Duck chimed in with her own protest - quacking, squawking, and flapping her wings at Tim.
Tim stopped just a few feet from the drain, his brows furrowed and his hand raised in an attempt to cease the chaos.
“Can you relax?” He held the halligan up. “It’s to lift the grate. They’re heavy.”
He shook his head and kneeled beside Lucy who, by now, had completely given up concealing her laughter at the situation and was actively giggling to herself. She met Tim’s eyes at a glance and, at his complete annoyance of the situation, moved from a giggle to a laugh. Her cheeks, rosy from smiling so much, pushed up into their perfect round circles.
Tim wedged the halligan between two metal bars and pulled. The grate lifted and Lucy helped move it away from the train.
All five of them now sat on their knees, balancing on their hands, and peered into the drain.
The ducklings were still huddled together in the middle of the drain, chirping at the faces above them.
“Alright,” Tim said and looked to Lucy, “so how do we get them out?”
Lucy gave him a big toothless smile and patted his arm. “You’ve got long arms.”
Tim grumbled and groaned but ultimately gave in to the silent command. He readjusted some things on his belt then shimmied down until he was lying flat on his stomach. Then, he reached into the drain and lifted each duck from the huddle one by one.
As he rescued each duckling, he handed them off to Lucy.
Lucy cupped each duckling in her hand for a few seconds and checked them over for any obvious injuries, then passed them off to each of the girls - giving them each a turn at returning the ducklings to their mum.
Mama Duck had been hovering nearby, anxiously waddling closer and then scurrying away. She’d seemed to understand these humans were here to help her but still kept her distance. As her babies were returned to her, though, she forego all worries of these strange humans and paid attention only to her babies.
As each duckling was returned, Mama immediately went to work cleaning their feathers and checking them over for herself.
“That’s six,” Tim said, with a strain in his voice, as he lifted the last of the ducklings out.
He pushed back up and sat on his knees. His head was pounding, all the blood had naturally rushed to his head and was now rushing away again.
Lucy watched him with pure love in her eyes. She’d just watched the love of her life, Mister Grumpy Cop 2025, rescue a family of baby ducklings.
“You did good,” she told him softly, quickly squeezing his wrist.
Tim exhaled, the redness in his face slowly fading, and gave a little chuckle. Yeah, he’d really just, more or less, hung upside down to rescue baby ducklings because of a single look from Lucy.
“Something’s wrong!” One of the girls said then, shattering the cute moment Tim and Lucy were sharing.
They looked ahead and followed the girls gaze to the family of ducks. Mama Duck was frantically pecking at each ducklings, like she was counting them over and over again.
“I think one’s missing,” the same girl added.
Tim balanced on the edge of the drain as he looked back down. He couldn’t immediately see any duckling but with all the debris it was easy for one to hide. He pulled his torch from his belt and shined the light down.
“There,” he groans a moment later and shines the light in the lower right corner. “Another one.”
There was no chirping from this seventh duckling, tucked under the soggy leaves and twigs, but the poor creature looked completely terrified - huddled in the corner looking between all the faces peering down at him.
Tim immediately laid back down on his stomach and reached in for the last baby. In a panic, the duckling bolted from his safe corner and darted in every direction across the floor of the drain, dodging Tim’s hand every time.
“Come on! Come here you little sh–”
Lucy smacked his shoulder.
A few more moments went by and finally Tim let out a victorious: “Ah! Gotcha!”
He lifted the baby and sat back on his heels, cupping the small creature in his hands. This time, he checked the bird over and looked for any obvious signs of injury. Nothing. Save for the clear anxiousness of the baby, he was alright.
“Aww, he’s smaller than the others,” Lucy mentions as she peered over Tim’s arms to see the duckling.
“Runt of the litter. Probably why he wasn’t with the others.”
“Is he going to be okay?” The smallest girl asked.
Tim looked up and smiled at the girls. “Yeah,” he said, and handed the duckling across the open drain into the safety of her cupped hands, “he’ll be fine.”
The girls release the final duckling a foot or two away from Mama Duck and watch as the last of the brood rejoins his family. Mama Duck immediately pulled the baby into her embrace, repeating her frantic clean and checks as she’d done with the others.
Then, satisfied he was alright, Mama led the family to the pond. Naturally, as ducks do, the ducklings formed a single line behind Mama with the smallest at the very top - sandwiched between Mama and his siblings.
They cross the rest of the length of side walk, trot over a strip of grass, push through a short garden bed and, after a moment, appear from beyond the waterside shrub gliding effortlessly over the water.
The girls run to the waterside to watch the ducks. Then, in her own way of saying thank you, Mama Duck directs her family to the edge of the water. They swim in a figure 8 in front of the girls, getting as close to the edge as they can without hitting earth.
Tim moves the grate back over the drain and joins Lucy on the sidewalk. Together, they watch the girls and ducks interact, soaking in the wholesome moment.
Lucy peered up at Tim then, and caught him watching the scene with a soft smile on his face.
“Aww, you big softie,” she teased, and pushed at his bicep.
Tim rolled his eyes, but the smile only grew. “Whatever.” He turned and headed back to the shop, adjusting his grip on the halligan as he did. “You’re writing the report for this.”
Lucy chuckled and shrugged her shoulders, following him back to the shop.