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“Tell me you didn’t rename it.”
Lucy’s voice carried out from the living room as soon as Tim had even made it fully inside after his walk with Kojo. Tim paused just past the doorway, placing his keys on the counter and slipping his shoes off.
“Rename what?” he asked, shutting the door behind him.
“Babe..why does your super fancy very serious mobile office show up on your phone as ‘stupid car’?”
That got his attention. He glanced at his girlfriend who was currently half-sprawled across the couch with his tablet in her hands.
“You went through my settings?” Tim sighed.
“The alarm for the sirens kept going off, apparently it doesn’t stop just because the car’s off.” she shrugged. “Now.. answer me”
He moved further into the house, not quite looking at her. “It’s a stupid car.”
“That’s not what you said this morning, if I my memory is good I think you called it a ‘SuperShop’.”
“This morning it hadn’t tried to spill out my personal life to the entire station.”
“Hmm..I don’t know, I thought it was funny.”
He gave her a look from the other side of the kitchen right as he reached for two beers. “Don’t.”
“Just saying,” she continued lightly “The whole station now knows you are a big softie.”
“I’m not a softie.” he gruffed, making a small pout that pretty much proved her point.
“You have a pop playlist, babe.”
“That doesn’t–”
“It absolutely counts.”
For a second, it almost lands the way it usually does, their usual teasing banter that was basically a love language.
But then Tim shook his head and exhaled looking away as he set the bottles down and sat on the couch beside her. “It’s a stupid car, the system is over-engineered. It syncs to everything within a five-mile radius whether you want it to or not."
“I know, you’ve called it a piece of crap three times since we left the station,” she went on. “Which is interesting, considering you were excitedly giving me a rundown of everything it could do just this morning.”
“..It’s got too much in it,” he said finally. “Half of it I don’t need.”
“You love gear.”
“Not like that.” he breathed in and out “It’s just... the 'Super Shop' is exactly what every cop should dream about. It’s a batmobile for cops, Luce."
And then she saw it, he wasn’t just angry at the incident at the start of the day or at the difficult technology. He was completely frustrated at the car and something else.
“You hate it,” she said.
Tim shook his head immediately. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He turned away from her and, for a second, Lucy thought he might shut it down and change the subject.
“I didn’t leave that car at all today.” he said instead, voice lower now, like he was letting out a painful confession. “Feels like I spent the whole day watching other people do the job.”
Hey..” she started, taking his hand on hers.
But Tim shook his head, already frustrated with where this was going.
“I spent six hours today inside that stupid car. Three of them were on calls for budget oversights and useless meetings, and the other three were spent approving overtime requests and dividing functions. And for the rest of the shift I had to go back to the station for even more meetings"
He looked at her then, and the frustration in his tone turned into something closer to desperate.
"I thought this was the clear next step for me. That moving up meant more impact, you know? Not..less.” He stopped, dragging a hand over the back of his neck before he forced the rest out.
“You hate this job.” Lucy said, her voice calm and she moved closer to him.
“I don’t hate everything about it, having the control over big decisions is nice but...”
Lucy tilted her head a little, studying him. “You hate most parts of it.”
And with that, he didn’t argue. He couldn't, once again, his girlfriend was reading like a book.
“It’s not the job,” she went on. “It’s the way you have to do it.”
“Well, I guess that’s the job.”
“Not all of it. You're great at leading people,” she said. “You always have been, that’s a part that is not a problem for you. But you’re not built to sit behind a desk all day and manage things from a distance,” she added. “You never were.”
“Yeah,” he said after a second. “I’m starting to see that.”
“You’re at your best when you’re out there on the streets,” she said. “I think..that’s why Metro worked, and that’s why patrol worked. You don’t like just watching the job happen, you love being in the middle of the action.”
“Watch commander’s supposed to be more than just sitting around.”
“Yeah, it is,” Lucy said easily. “But that doesn’t mean it’s where you’re at your best, I guess it’s still a mainly desk position, you can go on patrol sometimes but there’s other duties that you hate doing.”
There was no judgment in her expression as she said it, and that, at least, brought some comfort to Tim’s mind.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she went on, as if sensing exactly what was going through his mind. “You took the step up and you tried it. Now you know what it actually looks like.”
“And it doesn’t fit me.” he said, exhaling slowly and leaning more into her.
Lucy gave a small shrug. “Not the way you need it to. You’re not a desk guy, Tim.”
“Yeah,” he admitted, almost like a reluctant acceptance in his voice, even though he knew she was right.
He thought of the time he spent as Court Liaison Sergeant when they started dating, the restlessness and the frustration that never really had stopped and how his shifts dragged much longer than they used to.
And then he thought of how quickly that had disappeared the second he moved to Metro.
“I should’ve seen it coming.” he muttered.
“It’s not your fault” her hand brushed lightly over his arm before she leaned in and pressed a brief kiss to his temple.
Tim let out a breath, the heavy knots in his shoulders easing just a little at the brief contact, even if the frustration hadn’t fully gone anywhere.
“You didn’t know what it was actually going to be like,” she added. “Now you do.”
“Yeah, but it’s too late now.”
Lucy leaned back just enough to look at him. “It’s not like you don’t have options.”
Tim glanced at her, one brow lifting. “Like what? Beg Grey to take his job back?”
“I mean… Metro’s still a thing,” she said. “Nyla went back to the detectives after the Glasser investigation. People move around.”
That got his attention more than anything else had so far, even if he didn’t say it right away.
“Or something like SWAT,” she added. “You’d actually be out there and not stuck behind a desk all day.”
“It’s not that simple,” he said, looking down for a second as he thought of all those possibilities in his head.
“I know,” Lucy replied easily. “I’m not saying you should walk in tomorrow and switch units.”
“But there’s probably a middle ground,” she continued. “Something where you’re not carrying all the bureaucracy stuff by yourself.”
He glanced back at her. “Like what, exactly?”
“Maybe you could delegate more?” she said. “Get someone to handle the parts you hate for a while. An aide, maybe another sergeant or officer who’s better with the paperwork side of things?”
"An aide?" Tim muttered, considering the idea in his head. "I’d have to convince the captain that I’m not just being difficult."
“Stepping back and adjusting from this specific role doesn't make you difficult.”
He glanced at her like he didn’t truly believe in that, but didn’t interrupt.
“It doesn’t make you a bad cop either,” she went on. “It just means you figured out where you’re actually at your best.”
“You’re more useful out there,” she said. “And I think you know that.”
Tim finally reached out, taking her waist and pulling her against his chest. "When did you get so smart?"
Lucy let out a laugh against him. “I’ve always been this smart, you just finally got smart enough to start listening to me.”
Tim’s expression didn't stay light for long, though. His gaze dropped to his girlfriend, cuddled up on his chest, all his thoughts moving away from his frustrations to something far more specific to her.
"Actually," he said. "There’s something else I need to talk to you about. I had a meeting with IA today."
““IA? About what?” she asked, pulling back just enough to look up at him.
“Primm.”
The name alone was enough to shift something in her expression.
“What about him?” she asked.
Tim’s hand stayed at her waist, drawing grounding circles with his hand even as the conversation turned.
“They’re opening an investigation into him for score corruption."
Lucy froze. She felt like she was back in that exam room, getting berated with extremely specific questions after waiting for hours in a tiny room because her time had mysteriously changed.
How her test felt less like an evaluation and more like the man was trying to catch her slipping.
She knew the material, she’d studied for weeks on end. But the question felt… targeted.
Too specific, every answer she gave got turned into something else and tested for a weakness that wasn’t there.
She could never forget the way he’d looked at her across the table.
“They flagged some inconsistencies,” he went on. “And your exam came up.”
“Mine?”
“Yeah” Tim nodded “His scores were way off compared to the rest of the board. You had strong marks all around, except for his. The difference between his marks and the rest of the board was too wide to ignore and apparently he has done that against multiple women ”
“They want statements,” he added. “From both of us.”
Lucy pulled back from him fully now, not because she wanted distance, but because she needed space to think.
"What kind of statements? Tim, if I go on the record and this falls apart, he’ll make sure I never see a promotion again. He’s protected."
"Not anymore." Tim said, his thumb continuing those circles on her waist. "IA doesn't go after someone like Primm unless they already have the receipts. They have a pattern now, it wasn't just you, Lucy. It was three other women in the last two years"
"And they want you to testify because..?"
"I’m the current Watch Commander, they talked to Grey too. Wanted to know if we saw a change in your performance after his evaluation. I told them the truth, that his scores didn't reflect the officer I see on the street every single day. And I’m sure that’s what Grey told them too."
“What does that mean for me?” she asked carefully.
This was the part Tim had been thinking about all day.
“If IA confirms his scores were biased,” he said slowly, “they can throw them out, they might just remove his scores and recalculate the average. If they do that, your passing grade is already there. You wouldn’t even need to sit for it again."
Lucy’s eyes lifted back to his. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning your result isn’t accurate,” he said. “And they fix it.”
“They could let you retake the exam,” he added. “Or reassess based on the other scores.”
“So I might not have failed”
“You didn’t,” Tim said firmly, squeezing her waist. “Not really.”
The certainty in his voice grounded her again, even if everything else still felt unsure.
“You passed, Luce. Someone just tried to make it look like you didn’t.”
“I’m already a sergeant though.”
Tim nodded. “Yeah. So nothing changes right away. You keep working, same as now. And if the investigation goes through and they adjust your score… you just wait until something opens up, something that overlaps your rankings.”
“You’d be in a position to go for it. Sergeant detective.” he added with a smile on his lips.
"Sergeant Detective," she repeated, the title rolling off her tongue like something from a dream she’d tucked away ever since Primm tanked her scores. "I didn't even think that was a possibility after... everything."
“Yeah,” he said, watching her and seeing the shift in real thoughts happen in real time. “I know.”
“So..” Lucy said, reaching for her beer again. “I guess we’re both kind of figuring things out.”
Tim huffed softly, leaning back against the couch. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
He placed a kiss on the top if her head. “We’ll figure it out.”
They stayed there like that for a while, side by side just thinking about everything that could come next. Taking comfort in knowing that, whatever it was, it wasn't something they had to solve alone.