Chapter Text
“Tim, please, we need to sit down and finalise the guest list tonight. The save the dates need to be send out tomorrow, and we cannot send them out unless we have a guest list!”
He looked up at the ceiling, then back at Lucy, reaching out and squeezing both her shoulders gently. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. We’ll sit down tonight and finalise the guest list.”
Despite his insistence that the save the dates absolutely did not need to be sent out tomorrow, they actually could wait probably another month, Lucy was beyond stressed about the guest list for reasons he couldn’t really fathom. They had been engaged for a total of two months, one month of which they had spent being held hostage by Heath Everett, but focusing on the wedding made Lucy happy, which made him happy, too.
So he went along with it.
She visibly exhaled in front of him, looking up at him with her big, honey brown eyes that never failed to make him cave on something he should absolutely have been able to say no to.
Like that fluffy blanket that was way too expensive that she had insisted she needed after she moved in. (To be fair, they do use it nearly every night).
What can he say? He was completely and utterly powerless around her. Sometimes, he thinks about the days when he was her T.O., and he’s reminded that he hasn’t been able to say no to her for a long time. Like, far longer than is appropriate to admit. (He’s also been in love with her for far longer than is appropriate to admit, but that’s not something he’s bringing up in front of people they know. Well. Maybe the wedding. He’ll see.)
It was their first day back at work today after the kidnapping.
They’d both been in intense therapy regimes for the past month, separately and together. (Mostly together. They were a little codependent, but they just brushed it off whenever someone raised that particular fact.) They’d both passed psych evals and physical evals and were deemed fit to return.
On the days when they weren’t so exhausted from therapy they could barely feed themselves, they started wedding planning. Lucy pulled out the Pinterest board and the collages she’d been curating since she was nine years old. (He’d rolled his eyes, but it was kind of cute.)
He’d kissed the side of her head as she’d laid them all out on the dining room table, and turned to him with a toddler-like excitement, talking a mile a minute about colour schemes, flower arrangements, venues, dresses, bridal parties and other things that escaped his mind.
First and foremost, Lucy had wanted to sort the guest list. So, they’d sat down and begun a preliminary guest list. They’d picked a date, and made a timeline for save the dates, and real invitations. (He’d had no clue what a save the date even was. He didn’t think it was necessary, but she’d insisted. He’d gone along with it.)
Lucy seemed particularly on edge today. The same sort of on edge she was whenever they talked about the guest list. So, he doubted that it was entirely going back to work causing her to be this wired. Work probably didn’t help, though.
The day went weirdly.
Everyone looked at the two of them like they were fragile and made of glass, which Lucy hated. She made it her absolute mission to prove that she was not fragile, thank you very much, and that she did not need special considerations or favouritism or any of the things she anticipated people would give her.
Tim just watched her. He didn’t say anything when she probably pushed herself a little too hard, trying to manage too many crises, because he was a hypocrite and she’d tell him that without blinking. He’d scheduled three meetings, two staff follow-ups, and half a day of patrol.
Both Tim and Lucy ended their days getting stitches side-by-side at Shaw Memorial.
Grey didn’t say anything when they came back to the station to change. He just gave them both a look, and they bowed their heads and went to their respective locker rooms.
They didn’t talk about how they’d both gone beyond their limits today. They didn’t need to. They’d both talk about it in bed when they inevitably couldn’t sleep or woke up from nightmares or panic attacks.
But that was a problem for later.
After they’d made dinner together - salmon poké bowls, Lucy’s current obsession - they showered together, changed into their pyjamas (or in Lucy’s case, one of Tim’s shirts and a pair of Tim’s track pants), and took a seat on the couch, Lucy holding a steaming mug of camomile tea.
Tim sat in front of her with the notebook they’d used for everything wedding related - it was full of scribbles, random notes, doodles (from Lucy) and flirting (from Tim). He opened the page to the preliminary guest list. They needed to cut it down.
“We agreed, only thirty to forty, right?” she asked.
He nodded. “We need to cut a few off here. Do we need everyone from the station?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Tim. We can’t invite some people and not invite others. Plus, aside from your sister and your mom, neither of us have big families, so we need our…other family there. Work family.”
“I still don’t think we need everyone from the station.”
“Okay, so who do we need, then?”
He looked at the list. “Well obviously, Lopez, Grey, Harper, Thorsen, Juarez, Nolan, and Penn. Then Webb, Pine, Enriquez, Smithson and Jan. And Percy West.”
“And Smitty.”
Tim exhaled. “Lucy.”
“What?”
“We are not having Smitty at our wedding.”
“Tim. He’s going to come regardless. He’s going to bribe Penn or Thorsen or someone to be their plus one. We may as well just invite him.”
“We’re cops. We can arrest him for the weekend, so he doesn’t come to our wedding. Then, when we’re married and it’s all over, we can release him.”
Lucy laughed. “Okay. Let’s come back to Smitty.”
“Alright, so that’s all the people from the station. That’s 13, and then their partners, so Wesley, Luna, James, Rodge, Bailey, Lucille, Sophia, Dan, Elise and Michelle.”
“I cannot believe you remember all their partners’ names.”
He rolled his eyes. “You’re a good influence.”
She giggled.
“Anyway, and then we have to give Thorsen, Penn and Smithson a plus-one.”
Lucy nodded, mentally calculating.
“That’s already twenty-six people, Luce,” Tim said. “Do you want all of them there?”
“I guess we could take Webb off. And maybe Smithson. But Enriquez stays. Jan stays. Johnson stays. It’s up to you whether you want to invite Pine.”
He paused. “Yeah. I think I do. We’ve been on good terms lately.”
Lucy nodded, smiling. “Good. You sure you don’t want to invite any other metro people?”
Tim nodded resolutely. “We’re good.”
“Okay. So that’s all the people from the station. Then we’ve got your mom, Genny, Tyler and Austin, Rachel, Tamara, your two friends from group therapy, and your army buddy Sam.”
Tim nodded. “That’s….thirty-one people. And then if you account for plus-ones for Rachel, Tamara, Zain, Joe and Sam, that’s thirty-six people.”
Lucy bit her lip. “Mmhmm.”
Tim paused, and then put the notebook down, looking at her.
“I know…I know you don’t have the greatest relationship with your family,” he began softly. “But who do you want to invite?”
Lucy looked down, fidgeting with the blanket in her lap, and then picking up the notebook from the coffee table so she’d have something to stare at. “Definitely my aunt Amy. And her husband. So forty people.”
“Your parents?” he asked quietly.
Lucy was silent for a minute, contemplating. She wrote down Amy Lin. David Lin.
She took a deep breath, inhaling and exhaling, before speaking again. “I don’t know if they’ll come.”
“Do you want them there?”
She shrugged. “I guess,” she mumbled.
He took her hands, and met her eyes. “Luce,” he said quietly. “You don’t have to have them there if you don’t want them. This is your wedding. You deserve to be happy, okay? If your parents being there are going to detract from that, then don’t invite them.”
She let go of one of his hands to brush a tear off her cheek. “I–I just…ugh,” she laughed wetly, but there was no humour underneath. “I always had this vision, you know, that my dad would walk me down the aisle? I would be in my dress with chrysanthemums in my bouquet and my dad would walk me down the aisle and my husband would cry, and it just–that can’t happen anymore, you know?”
She shrugged, wiping underneath her eyes. “He’s not going to walk me down the aisle. There will be no father-daughter dance. I just–even if I invite them, and even if they do say yes, they’ll come and they’ll criticise every tiny little thing until I forget that it’s meant to be the happiest day of my life.”
Tim didn’t say anything, just rubbed circles over her knuckles with his thumb. Lucy reached for a tissue and wiped her nose.
“I want to invite them, I think,” Lucy sniffled. “Just because…they’re my parents. But I’m not expecting anything from them.”
Tim nodded. “Whatever you want to do, baby.” He reached for her, and pulled her into his chest, pressing kisses to the top of her head as she continued to cry silently.
After what felt like another hour, Lucy sat up, wiped her face, and looked up at Tim.
“That’s forty-two with my parents.” She said.
Tim scribbled that down in the notebook. “You good with that?”
Lucy nodded once. She went silent for a minute as he reached out and carded his fingers through her hair, and they stayed like that for a bit.
Tim glanced down at the notebook. Lucy hadn’t written her parents down in the notebook.
“You realise that in order for us to invite them, you have to put them on the list?”
Lucy groaned, leaning into his chest. He let out a half-laugh.
Lucy reached for a pen and paused for a moment.
She wrote their names down. Vanessa Chen. Patrick Chen.
Their names looked strange amongst the list of people she considered her actual family. The people that had shown up for her when the family she was born into had fallen short.
She placed the pen and the notebook down on the table again, her face twisting slightly as she thought about her parents. Then she looked up.
A mischievous smile crept up on her face all of a sudden.
Tim quirked an eyebrow.
“We’re inviting Smitty,” she said, with way too much joy in her voice.
Tim groaned, leaning back into the couch.
“Please, Tim. Please.”
Tim shook his head in mock-disappointment. “For the life of me, I cannot understand why you want to have Smitty at our wedding. But if it makes you happy, that’s okay.”
Lucy giggled. “He’s gonna cause so much chaos.”
Tim closed his eyes. “Is that why you’re inviting him?”
Lucy nodded, her eyes sparkling. “Yes.”
Tim took a deep breath in, his jaw twitching. “You’re gonna be the death of me.”
She laughed again, and he reached out and tickled her sides, manoeuvering her so she was on her back and he was hovering over her as he bent down and kissed her neck. She attempted to push him off, laughing all the while, but was unsuccessful, and eventually he stood up, lifting her up bridal style taking her by complete surprise and carrying her to their bedroom to get ready for bed.
He kissed her gently as he placed her down on the bed, and she leaned into the kiss, pulling him next to her. “I’m so happy we’re getting married,” she whispered.
“You don’t regret it? Even though I wouldn’t let you invite Smitty at first?”
“Well you gave in, didn’t you?”
He rolled his eyes as she giggled.
“I love you,” she whispered quietly.“I love you too,” he murmured into her neck.