Chapter Text
Lucy floors it to the hospital, heart pounding painfully in her chest.
When day shift had been asked to report to the station early today, all she’d known was that there had been a shooting at a cop’s house. Vague, but more than enough to stir concern in her chest.
She’d been halfway to the station when her phone rang—a call from Angela.
The house was Tim’s.
The detective didn’t have any more details, but someone’s now in the ER in critical condition.
Lucy thinks she could throw up, her mind filling in the someone all too easily.
As the city speeds past, she pictures blood spattered across the hardwood floor, flecks staining the yellow couch cushions she’d helped pick out; a pool of red seeping into the rug she’d kept nudging to the left, even though Tim had insisted it looked fine.
She’d wanted that house to look perfect—she’d thought she was going to live in it someday.
Once she haphazardly pulls up and sprints across the parking lot, the hospital’s automatic doors can’t open fast enough. Lucy swears her footsteps echo off the linoleum as she runs, the sound quickly swallowed by the chaos of the lobby.
Her eyes dart around, looking for anyone that might be able to give her answers. She spots Grey almost immediately, his arms folded and expression severe. But before she can approach him, she hears a familiar voice.
“And what was Officer Penn doing at your house this morning?”
“I was, uh… I was asking him about playing in tonight’s flag football game.”
Tim.
Over in the corner, he’s sitting upright in one of the waiting room’s plastic chairs, back ramrod straight as a detective takes notes beside him. At a glance, he looks focused and determined, doing his best to answer the questions being asked, but Lucy knows him better than that.
She immediately zeroes in on the way his hands are flexing against his thighs; the way his gaze is absent as he stares at an imperfection in the linoleum flooring; how his body shivers with the inhale he takes in.
All the same, Lucy swears her legs could give out from relief at the sight of him. And that relief delays her comprehension of the words leaving his lips.
Wait—Officer Penn? Miles?
“What the hell happened?” She keeps her voice low as she approaches Grey, turning her eyes towards the Watch Commander. Beyond an initial raised eyebrow at her directness, her boss doesn’t look overly surprised to see her here. At least she doesn’t have to call and explain why she’s not currently sat in roll call.
“An armed man showed up at Bradford’s front door this morning,” Grey explains, nodding in Tim’s direction. If Tim has clocked her presence in any way, he’s not showing it—his eyes are still unseeing, even as he continues to talk to the detective. “Sounds like there was a brief exchange before the man fired a single shot at Penn and fled the scene.”
Confusion settles in next to the concern. “What?”
Grey hums, clearly as frustrated about the lack of explanation as she is. “Bradford couldn’t pursue the suspect because he was rendering first aid; Penn suffered severe bleeding. Paramedics think the bullet might’ve punctured his lung. They’ve just taken him into surgery.”
“Oh my God.”
“I’ve got every unit mobilised on finding this guy,” Grey says, probably sounding more assured than he feels. “Bradford insisted on giving his official statement while it was as fresh as possible. Here’s hoping it sheds some light.”
Lucy thinks of Miles, lying on the operating table, and her heart clenches. He’s still a rookie.
And then it occurs to her that he wasn’t even on the clock. He was at his TO’s house.
Why was a gunman at Tim’s place?
Was it just a fluke, some maniac picking a random house? Or was Tim a target?
Even though she’s staring right at him, and she has concrete, visual proof that he’s still breathing, the raw panic from her drive over surges through her again.
She can’t help but ask: “Is he hurt?”
Tim rubs at the side of his neck before his hand falls back into his lap. He shakes his head at something the detective asks, and she clicks off her pen with a firm nod.
“Not that I know of,” Grey responds.
Lucy supposes she can’t expect a more definitive answer than that, not when it’s Tim they’re talking about. But there’s something strange about his stillness, the way his eyes are slightly unfocused as they stare across the room, and it gives Lucy pause.
Tim doesn’t even completely acknowledge the detective’s departure as she stands and makes her way towards Grey. In turn, Lucy doesn’t hesitate to head for Tim, lowering herself into the previously occupied seat. She doesn’t need to hear the details from the detective; she’s sure she’ll be filled in in due time.
“Hey,” she says, keeping her voice soft.
Tim startles slightly anyway, and Lucy’s heart clenches.
“Hey,” he says, his head turning in her direction. “What are you doing here?”
Unable to help herself, she places a hand on his arm, running her thumb back and forth across his skin. Maybe the soft, intimate motion crosses the boundaries she’s still tentatively trying to keep in place—April Fools’ Day was a hall pass, not complete forgiveness—but he needs it right now.
“Just… keeping you company.”
It’s a purposeful echo of an exchange she knows they both remember, back when Tim was lying in a hospital bed. Back when they were all too aware of where they were headed, just unwilling to voice it.
Tim doesn’t pick up on it, though. He just swallows, his eyes drifting to the point of contact she’s created. She hopes it helps anchor him a little.
“I assume you’ll be staying here.” Lucy’s head shoots up to see Grey stood in front of them, and she tries not to read too far into her boss’ assumption. As far as he’s concerned, she’s just here supporting her friend. Co-worker. Whatever everyone thinks they are, at this point.
“Yes, sir.”
“Alright.” He leaves with a curt nod and a solid pat to Tim’s shoulder, which goes unacknowledged.
The concern winds tighter knots in her stomach with every passing second—if this were any other situation or case or day, Tim would be heading right back to the station, desperate to jump into action and help. In fact, he would’ve insisted on giving his statement there, rather than here. He’s never been one to sit in waiting rooms for hours, not while there’s still action to be taken.
But the Tim sat next to her isn’t so much as making the smallest effort to move.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
A few moments pass without a response, Tim’s gaze drifting back towards the far wall.
“He just… went down,” he murmurs. “For a second, I thought—I thought he was already dead.”
The words are quiet, almost blurring together at the edges. If the waiting room was any louder, Lucy doesn’t think she would’ve heard him.
Maybe it’s a good thing he isn’t itching to get out on the streets right now. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen Tim react to anything like… like this.
Just to be sure, she gives him another once-over. The only clear sign that anything happened at all is the small smudge of dried blood at the base of his thumb, and a similar fleck on the side of his neck. It must’ve transferred.
The absent look in his eyes is jarringly unfamiliar, and she hates it.
“Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
He nods, barely, staring down at his hands as he flexes them again, turning them over. Almost immediately, he clocks the same speck of dried blood that she had, and scrubs at it with his thumb until it flakes off, the patch of skin turning red from the friction.
“I’m fine.”
None of his demeanour says fine. It’s screaming wrong, wrong, wrong.
Lucy tries a different approach, finding she just wants him to talk, to seem a little more human, a little more like himself. It’s selfish, she knows, more of an attempt to ease her own anxieties, but she hates this.
“Did… did you recognise the guy at all?” She wonders if that’s why Tim is so off, if maybe he’s shouldering some kind of misguided sense of responsibility for this, but he shakes his head no. “Surprised you’re not already in a shop trying to find him.”
For a second, she regrets the words, wondering if they sound too judgemental. That’s not what she means—she just means that this, this stillness in the face of a problem to be solved, isn’t like Tim at all.
Either way, Tim doesn’t seem to notice, giving her a vague shrug. “Penn’s my boot,” he says simply, like he didn’t leave the hospital the second his wife was wheeled into brain surgery a few years ago, determined to hunt down the guy that shot her.
This is all wrong.
Silence falls again, stark and heavy and buried beneath the bustle of the waiting area.
Lucy feels the muscles in Tim’s forearm tighten beneath her hand as he curls his hand into a fist, relaxing again as he unfurls it. He repeats the motion a few times, and she watches his fingers tremble.
When he finally speaks again, it’s so quiet that Lucy only knows he spoke because she’s watching him.
“What was that?” she asks.
“It should’ve been me,” he repeats, voice barely above a murmur.
Her blood runs cold, eyes widening. “What?”
“If I hadn’t invited Penn over for something so stupid—”
“If you hadn’t invited Miles over, the only difference would’ve been you at the end of that barrel.”
Tim doesn’t even hesitate. “Better me than him.”
Lucy finds herself tightening her grip on his arm, like she can physically drag him away from that line of thinking. “Don’t you dare,” she says, her voice taking on a hard edge. “There are no ‘better’ alternatives here. What happened, happened—you’re not blaming yourself for this.”
Tim doesn’t have anything to say to that, and they lapse back into silence as Lucy tries to calm herself down. She’d really hoped Tim had worked past his need to somehow make himself responsible for every awful thing that happens.
It’s why they’re not together anymore, after all.
Once that thought materialises, she pauses, forcing herself to take a deep breath. It’s not fair of her to think like that—she knows Tim’s been in therapy, putting his pieces back together. He probably has worked on it, and right now it’s just the shock talking. She hopes that’s the case.
The minutes pass like most of the others, silent and hollow.
Tim spends the time staring into the middle distance, breathing shallow and shaky, while Lucy does her best to keep him anchored, tracing a gentle, steady track across his arm with her thumb. She feels oddly helpless against the weight of this—hospital waiting rooms have that effect, she supposes—, but if it makes Tim feel even the slightest bit more grounded, it’s better than nothing.
With time, he starts to lean into her side, his shoulder slowly pressing further into hers. She doesn’t think he even knows he’s doing it—it’s just muscle memory, carried over from when they used to be something more, his body gravitating towards something familiar amidst the chaos. But even with the shaky boundaries she’s tried to maintain, Lucy doesn’t mind. She’d carry any of this for him.
It’s not long before Celina comes by, footsteps hurried as she dashes through the entrance doors much like Lucy had earlier. She’s in her uniform, face tight with stress and eyes rimmed slightly red.
The second she spots them in the corner, she heads straight for them, not even waiting for the gap to close before calling out.
“Any news?”
Lucy shakes her head, expression twisting with sympathy. She knows Celina and Miles have grown close—suspiciously close, at times—and panic is written all over the younger officer’s face.
“They’d just taken him into surgery when I got here,” Lucy explains. “I think it’ll be a while; I’m sorry.”
The sigh Celina lets out is ragged, and she slumps down in a seat across from them. Her eyes soon slide over to Tim—the only person who might actually be able to give her answers, and he hasn’t so much as acknowledged her presence.
“What happened?” she asks him.
Tim’s shoulders barely shift, eyes still a million miles away. Somehow, he’s even less responsive than he was earlier.
Celina’s face pinches, a mixture of agitation and confusion crossing her features. To ease her friend’s mind, Lucy fills her in on the very little she knows—Miles was at Tim’s house discussing the flag football game, when some guy came to the door and fired a shot. Nothing Celina doesn’t already know.
If anything, she probably knows more than Lucy does—at work, the station would’ve started looking for the guy by now.
“Are there any leads on the shooter?” Lucy asks.
Celina shakes her head, defeat and frustration exuding off her in waves. “Neighbour spotted a car around the time of the shooting, but couldn’t give us a good description. Couldn’t even tell if it was one she’d seen before. Red sedan in a suburban neighbourhood, that’s what we’ve got.”
Lucy sighs. She’d expected as much, but it still doesn’t feel good.
“CSU haven’t found anything useful from the scene either. Just—just a lot of blood,”—Celina’s voice wavers slightly—“and the bullet case. It’s from a standard handgun. Nothing we can use to trace our suspect.”
Celina’s probably been helping Angela out while Lucy’s been here, keeping her ear to the ground on every element of the investigation. It makes sense—Miles is her friend. This is personal.
The train of thought is lost when Lucy feels Tim tense beside her. It’s only slight, but it’s the most movement he’s made in a little while.
“Hey,” she starts, leaning closer to him. “Are you—?”
Lucy freezes when Tim stands suddenly, her hand falling from his arm with the force of it. His chest rises and falls with a little more intensity than usual.
“Tim?”
He doesn’t look at her, but he does hold out a shaking hand when she makes to stand too.
“I’m fine, I just… I just need some air,” he murmurs, striding towards the entrance before she can process his words. He runs a hand roughly through his hair as he disappears outside.
The knots in Lucy’s stomach get tighter as she watches the doors slide shut behind him, fighting the urge to follow. She doesn’t like anything about this.
After a moment of stunned silence, Celina’s the one to break it, her voice quiet. “Is he okay? Did he get hurt?”
Lucy pulls her bottom lip between her teeth. The answers feel less certain every time she considers them. “Apparently not,” she says. She figures it’s an adequate response to both questions. “I think he’s in shock.”
Celina hums, sympathetic. “I guess a shooting at your home will do that.”
Lucy’s face contorts, but she nods her agreement all the same.
The waiting room slowly starts to foster an anxious buzz as the morning continues to slip past. A few officers stop by, one by one, asking for updates, for answers, for anything on Miles. It seems that, even as a rookie, his Texas charm has captured people.
Lucy’s just thankful Grey comes back soon enough, able to field their questions so she doesn’t have to.
She would’ve hoped that, at some point, people in their line of work would get used to no updates. That’s part of the job—chasing down leads with dead ends and waiting on doctors who just shake their heads and shrug. But somehow, not a single officer, including her, seems to have built up that patience over the years. And when it’s someone you know, someone you call a friend, every second without any discernible progress feels like wading through wet sand.
The investigation is going nowhere. The gunman seems to have dissolved into thin air. Chances are, their guy is a professional, but that information in isolation doesn’t help them all that much.
Why would a gunman come to Tim’s house and shoot Miles? As much as she hates the thought, why not Tim?
Nothing about this makes any sense, and it’s putting everyone on edge.
Amidst the bustle of people, the relentless questions, and one trip to visit the nurse in search of answers that Lucy doesn’t receive, half an hour slides past in what feels like a single blink.
And Tim still hasn’t come back.
Lucy doesn’t let her anxiety get the better of her too quick—it’s well-known that Tim relies on his alone time to process things sometimes, even if it’s not always in his best interest. It’s hard to shake habits that are decades-old, worn into the very fabric of who you are.
Isolate, recuperate, come back without anyone knowing you’ve suffered. That’s how Tim has always functioned—well, before her, anyway.
When they got together, Tim started learning how to lean on her. It was a slow process, but they were getting there, step by step. She’d thought so, anyway, until the break-up, which marked a backslide in more ways than one.
Even if him being gone for this long isn’t too out of character, it doesn’t stop Lucy from stepping outside to check on him. Just because he pushes the company away, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t need it.
Her eyes scan the paved area just past the entrance doors, expecting to see Tim leaning against a wall or sitting on the ground.
He’s nowhere in sight.
Before she can start to panic, Lucy remembers how he’d seemed to be getting wound up when he left, and she figures he probably went for a walk.
It’d be quicker to call him than search the entire lot.
The call rings out. No answer.
She swallows reflexively, and begins to walk, following the perimeter of the hospital, footsteps turning hurried and anxious as she casts her gaze out across the parking lot.
There’s no sign of Tim anywhere. No shadow pacing between the cars, no figure sitting on a distant bench.
Hands growing increasingly unsteady, Lucy’s fingertips start to fumble as she tries his phone again. It rings, and rings, and rings, before—
This is Bradford. You know what to do.
—and that doesn’t make sense. Even if Tim had wanted some space, he wouldn’t have gone far, and he wouldn’t be ignoring her calls on purpose. Not right now, not when they’re still waiting on news about Miles.
A weight settles in the pit of her stomach, and she gives into the anxiety that she’s tried to push into the corners of her mind, the bad feeling that’s settled deep in her bones since she first laid eyes on him earlier.
Something feels wrong.