Archive of Our Own

1. Tim’s jacket

It’s her idea to take a walk after they pay the check.

This evening has been perfect, from the food to the wine to the laughter they’ve shared, and Lucy isn’t ready for it to end. Plus, the park nearby have woven fairy lights into the trees for the holidays, and they’re like constellations lighting the footpath.

Lucy will admit, she’s not exactly dressed for the night air, her dress and open-toed heels doing little to protect her from the cold, but she doesn’t care all that much. She has her arm tucked into Tim’s as they walk pressed into each other’s sides, and even as the wind starts to intensify, its gentle breeze now eliciting a sharper chill, the last thing she wants to do is turn back to Tim’s truck.

Turning back means the night is over. After getting to the truck, Tim will drop her back to her apartment, walking her to her door where she’ll have to sneak in so she doesn’t wake Tamara, and then she’ll spend an hour or two researching a convincing enough lie to tell their friends tomorrow morning when they ask what she did tonight.

She’ll take a little cold for the warmth of getting to stay here, with Tim. There’s no pressure to talk, or perform, or do anything except relish in each other’s steady presence as they stroll through the park, the night serene around them.

The sharp shiver her body gives is entirely involuntary.

When Tim pulls his arm from hers, Lucy is the coldest she’s been all night. She thinks he’s about to turn them around and insist on taking her home, his protective instincts probably worried about her risk of developing hypothermia or something, and she’s already opening her mouth to protest.

But then he slips out of his suit jacket, stepping closer and draping it over her shoulders.

Her heart warms along with the rest of her, enveloped in the lingering warmth of Tim’s body heat and the woody scent of his cologne. Everything about the jacket is too long, the sleeves falling past her fingertips and the body grazing the hem of her skirt, but it’s comforting to pull around herself, shielding her from the bite of the wind.

All the same, Lucy can’t help her giggle as she looks up at Tim. “You, Tim Bradford, are a walking cliché.”

A soft smile adorns his expression as he just gives her a shrug, pressing his side back against hers. “You weren’t going to admit you were getting cold. What I am is a problem solver.”

It’s said so matter-of-factly, and the thing is, he’s absolutely right on all fronts.

Looping her left arm back through his as they keep walking, Lucy tucks her free hand into the pocket of his jacket to keep it warm. Immediately, it knocks into something nestled inside—a small, lightweight box. She pulls it out, curiosity getting the better of her before she can consider the ethics of rooting around someone else’s pockets.

It’s harmless, just a container of breath mints. She recognises it as the same box she’s caught glimpses of in Tim’s glovebox and his kitchen cupboard, the same brand he’s bought for years. There’s something strangely intimate about finding it in his jacket pocket while she’s wearing it, though.

“Can I have one?” she asks. She’s usually more of a chewing gum person, but Tim finds it impractical as a concept. It’s something they’ve debated at length in their shop.

Tim lets out a light chuckle, curling his arm tighter around hers, uncaring that she’s blatantly rooting through his possessions. “Go for it.”

The lid opens with a satisfying click, and Lucy places one of the small mints on her tongue.

She can’t help her instantaneous smile. Peppermint. It tastes like kissing him at her front door.

“You changed your mind on breath mints, then?”

Sometimes she swears he can read her mind. “Never,” she insists, trying her best to tamp down her smile. It doesn’t work.

Sliding the small container back into his—her?—pocket, Lucy feels around for anything else in there. She’s not expecting to find anything overtly interesting, but a person’s pockets can provide new levels of insight, she realises—the items they choose to have on their person, easily accessible when they leave home.

But to her surprise, aside from the mints, the pocket is empty.

Now that her curiosity is piqued, Lucy wants to check the left side, but her left arm is wrapped around Tim’s upper arm, and she doesn’t particularly want to let go. It’s nice having him this close, and without him held against her side, she’ll just get cold again. Not to mention, she’s not sure how much she trusts her heels with the three glasses of wine she’d had over dinner.

However, the jacket is big enough that she can pull the left side pretty far across her front, so it’s only slightly awkward to reach her right arm towards the pocket. She feels around inside, and—nothing.

Next to her, Tim chuckles, brows drawing together as he eyes the confusion on her face. “What are you doing?”

“You don’t have anything else in your pockets?” she asks, incredulous. Reaching for the inside pocket, she once again finds it empty. “Where are your keys? Your wallet? Your badge?”

“In my jeans,” he says like it should be obvious, and—okay, maybe she should’ve thought of that.

Still, her face scrunches. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why not in your jacket?”

Tim shrugs. “You know how easy it’d be for someone to grab the jacket off the back of my chair, or out of a cloakroom? You never know with these fancy restaurants. I prefer for my stuff to be as close to my person as possible.”

Lucy can’t help her giggle, even if he’s not exactly wrong. “Surely the back pockets of your pants are less secure,” she reasons.

Tim frowns. “Pretty sure I’d notice if someone was reaching into my back pockets.”

Even as she hums in agreement, Lucy wonders if he meant for it to sound like a challenge. She reads it like one all the same, filing it away for later.

The conversation fades back into comfortable silence as they keep walking, and Lucy wraps Tim’s jacket even further around herself as she leans her head against his shoulder.

All too soon, though, the path loops back around to where they started, and Lucy can see Tim’s truck parked at the far end of the street.

As he does after every date, Tim walks Lucy to her apartment, their footsteps slowing as they approach her front door.

Lucy squeezes his hand where it’s clasped in hers. “Thank you for tonight. It was perfect.”

“Thank you,” he replies, tugging on her hand until she’s facing him.

Grateful for the extra height her heels offer as he pulls her closer, Lucy slides both hands around Tim as their lips meet.

His hands wrap around her waist, pulling her impossibly closer, and Lucy smiles into the kiss as she’s struck with an idea, his words from their walk forming a lightbulb in her mind. Running her hands down his back, she feels the smooth fabric of his shirt against her fingertips.

She deepens the kiss, and Tim lets out a soft, satisfied hum. As one of his hands moves to tangle itself in her hair, Lucy slips one hand into his back pocket, and sure enough, her fingertips grasp the cool metal of his badge.

Got it.

The kiss tastes like victory as she loses herself in it, trying to bite back a smirk.

And then a hand wraps around her wrist.

“Caught you,” Tim mumbles against her mouth, clearly uninterested in pulling away to gloat.

Letting go of the badge, Lucy slides her hand back around to his chest. “What are you going to do about it?”

He just laughs into the kiss, moving to grasp at the fabric of his jacket still draped over her shoulders.

“Just wait ‘til I get to stealing your clothes.”

Letting out a laugh of her own, she pulls away for a second. “They won’t fit you.”

Tim guides her backwards until she’s pressed against the wall, her head cushioned by the back of his hand as he wipes any memory of personal space from her mind. It only takes one look at the fire in his eyes for Lucy to realise she’s misunderstood.

“You think they need to?” he whispers.

Oh.

And as he surges forward, kissing her like she’s everything he’s been looking for, Lucy knows that if she didn’t have a roommate in the apartment behind them, she’d be expediting that process for sure.

2. Lucy’s scarf

Tim’s always been indifferent to the cold.

He’s LA born and bred, knowing nothing outside 48-degree lows and a sharp breeze in the coldest days of December. His parents never took him and Genny on vacation as kids, so his first experience of another climate was when he finally left home at 18, setting foot in the dry heat of Afghanistan.

Admittedly, LA’s slightly cooler nights are a refreshing change of pace from the summer’s relentless heat, but Tim is more than happy to reside in the warmth of his home, settled on his couch and listening to the wind rattle the windows while he puts a game on.

Lucy, on the other hand, couldn’t disagree more. She loves everything about winter. The colder nights, the hot cocoa, the clothes—especially the clothes. She pretty much waits for the day it dips below 50 and she can take her favourite coat from the closet, along with her orange scarf—burnt orange, she always corrects him. And now that they’re together, she drags him out on her evening walks through the city a few times a week.

Even if he doesn’t love the slight chill in the air, and definitely doesn’t see the point in leaving the house and making yourself cold on purpose, he does love to watch the content expression on her face, the small smile stretching across her flushed cheeks.

The difference in their attire never fails to amuse him, though. One slightly cooler evening, Lucy is beside him in her coat and scarf—the latter being more of an accessory than a practical choice in LA—and he knows for a fact there’s an unnecessary pair of gloves in her pocket because she loves the print. On the other hand, he’s donning a light jacket he’d pulled off his coat hook before leaving the house.

“How are you not cold right now?” she asks.

Tim just gives her a gentle shrug. “I run warm; you know that. Plus, this is LA. It isn’t that cold. You could traverse the Arctic in that.”

“Alright, Mr. Space Heater,” she mumbles. He rolls his eyes with a smile as she continues, “but don’t you just love the cosiness of a scarf?”

His lips curl as he shakes his head. “Can’t say I’ve ever seen the appeal.”

Lucy mouth falls agape, and she tugs her scarf tighter around herself as though it might’ve taken offense at his words. “How? It’s like a wearable hug. Even when it’s not the coldest out, it’s nice to have.”

Tim doesn’t know if he wants his hugs to be wearable. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“Nope.”

His face scrunches at the adamance in her voice. “What do you mean, ‘no’—”

But Lucy’s already untying her scarf, pulling it from around her neck, and Tim barely manages to get any kind of protest out before she’s looping it over his shoulders.

He instinctively dislikes the sensation, that much weight and warmth on the back of his neck feeling indescribably wrong. It doesn’t help that when Lucy crosses one of the ends across his front, tossing it over his other shoulder, a loose thread winds up in his mouth.

His face contorts as he tries to pull his head away from the material—to no avail, obviously, since it’s wrapped around his neck.

Lucy lets out a giggle when she realises, pulling at the thread. “Oops—” She tosses the offending scrap to the ground with a smile, patting down the fabric so it’s not as close to his mouth. “Sorry.”

Through her laughter, she doesn’t sound particularly sorry.

Resting both forearms on his shoulders, she brings the end of the scarf back around to his front, shifting the whole thing slightly and pulling it into some strange knot so it’s secure. When she’s satisfied, she gives it two pleased pats before stepping back from her masterpiece.

And now, Tim is very much stuck.

From what he can see of the knot, he has no idea how he’s ever taking this thing off. It’s probably just part of him now.

Even though he can breathe just fine, he feels a little like he’s about to be suffocated, and his hands almost move up to try and pull the scarf off somehow, even if all he’d likely accomplish is cutting off his air supply sooner. But he can already imagine the look Lucy will give him if he doesn’t stick this out for more than a fleeting moment, so he forces himself to take a slow inhale.

As he does so, he’s hit with the scent of Lucy’s perfume. Sweet and floral and unequivocally her.

Suddenly, the experience becomes that little bit more bearable. The weight against the back of his neck morphs into more of a comfort, and he swears the material gets softer by the second, enveloped in Lucy.

When a sharp breeze whistles through the street, he doesn’t get that cold sting against the back of the neck. He feels strangely… protected.

“So?” Lucy asks, looking and sounding pleased, as though she can read his mind. Knowing her, she probably can.

“It’s… not terrible,” he settles on.

Lucy beams. “I told you.”

“‘Not terrible’ isn’t exactly a glowing endorsement.”

“It is from you.”

He rolls his eyes, biting back a smile at the glee on her face.

Lucy’s had this scarf longer than he’s known her. He remembers seeing it the first time she was late as a rookie—he’d zeroed in on her dashing through the station to the locker room, meeting his annoyed glare with an apologetic wince, pulling the scarf from her neck as she went.

Looking down at it, he runs the woolly material through his fingers. It’s soft, only slightly coarse, with thinner patches in places where time has worn away at it.

“Where did you get this, anyway?” he asks, lifting one of the ends to eye its slightly frayed tassels.

“It was a gift after I dropped out of college,” she says.

Tim arches an eyebrow, raising his eyes to meet hers. “People don’t usually get gifts when they do that.”

A breathy laugh passes Lucy’s lips, her mouth tilting into a smile. “My ex gave me this scarf the day I was heading home, after I’d mentioned I might do some spontaneous travelling across the country. She wanted me to be at least somewhat prepared for unpredictable climates.”

“Well, she wasn’t wrong.”

“No, she wasn’t.” Lucy smiles as she smooths the end of the scarf over Tim’s jacket, memories flickering in her eyes under the moonlight. “This scarf was my saving grace sometimes. Kept me warm on some of the colder nights, and served as a reminder that there are some really good people out there.”

Tim nods, before his lips quirk up in a playful smirk.

“Gift from an ex that you’ve held onto all this time, though?” he observes. “Can’t help but feel like I should be worried.”

“Oh, you should be terrified,” Lucy deadpans. “If she walked past right now, I’d drop you in an instant.”

“Good to know,” he laughs. It’s nice that they’re both secure enough in this relationship that they can joke like this.

Lucy’s smile widens again, the deadpan splintering with her joy.

“In all seriousness, though... this scarf is just a reminder of where I’ve been, of who I was before the life I have now,” she says. “Plus—more importantly—it’s cosy and comforting, and really, really cute.”

The longer he wears the scarf, the more Tim thinks he could settle into Lucy’s way of thinking. It is kind of cosy. He doesn’t think he’ll ever seriously describe anything as ‘cute’, though.

All the same, he hums like he’s about to refute her statement, before grinning at the indignation in her expression.

“It is cute,” she insists.

Tim frowns in contemplation as he looks at it. “I think it looks better on you than me,” he says eventually, looping his fingers into the knot to untie it.

However, as he pulls on it, he somehow just ends up making the whole thing tighter.

“What the—?”

Lucy giggles, her hands coming up to rest over his. “Let me.”

She unties the knot effortlessly, and Tim tries to wrap his head around it, trying to follow her movements and make sense of them.

As she pulls the scarf from his neck, he immediately feels the loss of the material from his skin, swearing the wind has gotten colder in the last couple of minutes.

When Lucy tosses the scarf back over her head, Tim grasps both ends before she can, lifting them in question.

“May I?”

Lucy nods her permission through a gentle laugh. Yeah, his attempt at untying the knot has probably given her little faith in his scarf-wielding abilities, but he just watched her do this—albeit in reverse. It can’t be that hard.

He tosses one end over her shoulder and back around the front, shifting it to make sure it’s not too tight. Step one down, easy.

Then he tries the harder part: the knot. He’s pretty sure he’s got it, wrapping one end around the other, reverse-engineering Lucy’s movements as he pulls the end up and through the hole he’s created, and—okay, nope.

All he manages to do is create a tangled mess of woolly material.

Giving up, he drops the ends with a defeated huff. Lucy giggles, eyeing his failure.

“You tried your best,” she coos, moving to fix his mess with ease. “I can teach you how to do it, if you want. Let the student finally become the teacher.”

Tim makes an overexaggerated face of distaste at the idea, and when Lucy tries to swat at him, he takes her arm and pulls her back into his side.

“I think I’m good. Guess I’m just not a scarf person.”

As they keep walking, Lucy scrunches her nose in that way she does when she’s pondering something. Tim doesn’t trust it.

“So, you don’t like any winter accessories?” she eventually asks. “Scarves? Beanies? Fluffy socks?”

Tim thinks on it for a second. “Beanies are okay. I just don’t see why you’d need any of that here—”

He cuts himself off when Lucy pulls something from her pocket. “What about gloves?”

She offers them out to him with a deadpan expression, and Tim eyes the far-too-small fingers on the pair of gloves as she straightens them out. He can practically feel himself losing blood flow to his fingertips already.

“Yeah, I’m not trying those on.”

4. Tim’s t-shirt

When Lucy wakes up, she doesn’t need to open her eyes to know Tim’s already up and out of bed. She can hear him in the kitchen, a pan clinking as he sets it down on the stovetop.

The smell of coffee and pancakes drifts into the bedroom, and her stomach rumbles as she stretches, the cold air beyond the covers raising the hairs on her arms.

Lucy smiles at the domestic picture forming in her mind. This is the first time she’s stayed at Tim’s place—and sure, he’s cooked breakfast at her place before, but she’s never seen him at home and in his element like this.

As she throws her legs over the side of the mattress, the chill of the room hits Lucy’s bare skin before she remembers that her top is on the living room floor. Well—that’s where Tim tossed it last night, anyway; he’s probably put it in the laundry by now.

Wrapping the bedsheets around herself, Lucy shuffles over to Tim’s dresser, finding his t-shirts neatly folded in the third drawer down. She grabs one of his old academy tees and slips it over her head.

After freshening up, she pads into the kitchen with a yawn, greeted by the soft rumble of the washer and the sound of a whisk against a glass bowl.

Hearing her footsteps, Tim glances up with a smile, and immediately clocks his shirt draping over her frame, reaching mid-way down her thighs. Lucy watches his brain bluescreen in real time.

“Good morning,” she says, tone nonchalant, walking into the kitchen and propping herself against the counter.

Tim just stands there, frozen, lips parted. “Yeah.”

Lucy swallows her laugh. Leaning over, she plucks a blueberry from the bowl beside the stove before he can stop her—not that he tries, or even so much as moves a single muscle.

The berry bursts on her tongue. “Ooh, it’s sweet,” she says.

Coming back to himself, Tim sets the whisk down and steps closer, crowding her against the counter.

“Is it?” At her nod, he leans down to kiss her, sampling the sweetness lingering on her lips. He hums before pulling away. “You’re right.”

Eyeing the bowl in her periphery once more, Lucy reaches past Tim, her chest pressing against his, and grasps another berry. “Better test another one, just to make sure they’re all up to scratch.”

“Of course.” The words have barely passed Tim’s lips before she’s pulling him back in, the sugar of the blueberry mixing with black coffee.

This time, he doesn’t pull away, opting to mumble his review against her lips. “Still good.”

Lucy couldn’t agree more.

One hand surging up to run through her hair, Tim’s other hand finds her bare thigh below his shirt, trailing its way upwards, the shirt riding up as the hem catches on his wrist. The soft touch tickles, and Lucy giggles as his hand ghosts over a sensitive spot on her stomach before coming to rest on her waist, flaring warmth across her side.

When they separate to catch their breath, foreheads pressed together, Tim’s gaze is dark with heat.

“My clothes look so much better on you,” he says, eyes trailing down her body. One hand hooks its fingers into the collar drooping over her left shoulder, and he brushes his fingertips along her collarbone.

Lucy grins. “Does that surprise you?”

He doesn’t hesitate, nor does he lift his eyes to meet hers, enamoured by the way the way his shirt hangs from her frame. “Not even a little.”

“You know, you’re going to have to get used to seeing me in your shirts,” she says, amused and more than a little turned on by his obvious distraction.

Tim just barely swallows his groan. “Can’t fucking wait.”

And then he’s grasping at the fabric, using it to pull her back in for a kiss that’s far less gentle this time.

His hands explore her thighs, her hips, her waist, her stomach, like he doesn’t quite know where he wants to settle, roaming every inch of her skin as he takes her bottom lip between his teeth.

A soft moan escapes her and Lucy’s hands trail up Tim’s back, relishing in the strength of the man who was just making her pancakes, marvelling at how seamlessly the picture of soft domesticity has transitioned into this. She’s not complaining in the slightest.

Her hands continuing their upwards path, she tangles her fingers in the strands of his hair, tugging slightly and eliciting a low groan.

When Tim breaks away, shifting his hands to the backs of her thighs, Lucy wonders if he’s going to lay her back right here against the counter. But then he lifts her up and begins to carry her out of the kitchen, latching his lips back onto hers, and she wraps her legs around his waist.

She doesn’t track where they’re going, letting her eyes fall shut as he walks them across the room. They don’t go far—soon, he’s tilting her backwards, and the couch cushions are soft against her back as he lays her flat.

When he leans over her, Tim’s hands crawl beneath the shirt again like he can’t stop touching her, his fingers ghosting over her the same way his eyes do.

In this moment, Lucy feels like she’s being revered, marvelled at like artwork in a museum. She’s never felt as limitlessly and openly adored as she does by the man on top of her.

Tim presses his lips to hers again and again and again, before moving to the corner of her mouth, and then her cheek, and then her jaw.

“What about the pancakes?” Lucy giggles, but Tim is clearly very much focused on his new task.

“They’ll still be there in fifteen minutes,” he mumbles against her skin.

“Fifteen minutes, huh?” The end of her question is all but lost to a breathy moan as Tim’s lips trail a tempting path down her neck, lingering on her tattoo.

He hums to confirm, and it blows warmth across her skin. “Something else I want first.”

Even if Lucy is hungry, it’s hard to disagree with Tim’s line of thinking, especially when he starts to suck a bruise into the skin just above her collarbone, his hands still splayed across the bare skin of her stomach.

“You know how good you look in this?”

She lets out another moan as his mouth trails its way back up to her jaw, one of his hands slipping lower to grasp at her hip, and—yeah, she thinks she has a pretty good idea, if the heat flooding her veins is anything to go by.

She doesn’t get to voice that thought, though, any and all words dissolving when Tim’s hands push the hem of the shirt all the way up, his mouth travelling lower.

Breakfast sounds good, but when Tim is pulling his shirt over her head, forming a new pile of clothes on the living room floor, Lucy decides it can definitely wait.

4. Lucy’s pyjama shirt

Without Lucy beside him, their bed feels like a chasm. Too empty, too big for one. It even smells wrong, only the ghost of lavender shampoo still lingering on her pillow.

Tim gives up on trying to sleep after a couple hours of tossing and turning, the cold side of the bed reminding him too much of the long, agonisingly quiet weeks stretching out in front of him—Lucy only left for Baja this morning.

Climbing out of bed with a defeated sigh, he slumps on the couch and throws on an old highlight reel from last week’s Rams game, just to have something else to occupy his mind.

It doesn’t work. All he thinks about is Lucy.

He’s always like this the first night she’s away on UC—unable to sleep, no matter what he tries. It’s just his body adjusting to the absence, to the sheer distance, to the not-so-quiet rumble of anxiety that’s going to live under his skin for an indeterminate stretch of time.

He knows he’ll be fine, and he is. Even if Angela shoots him a pitiful look when he walks into work the next morning and downs two more cups of coffee than usual, he’s good to go.

The next night isn’t any better, though. Not even a little.

It takes him by surprise, somewhat. He always feels the heaviest in the first week, he knows that, but usually he manages to steal some sleep after a day or so. But nope—he’s still wide awake after a few hours, everything still feeling wrong.

He knows what’s different about this op, having had plenty of time to dwell on it. It’s not the op itself. Lucy’s as safe as she could be—Harper’s right there by her side, and Juarez, Grey, and Elena are all a few feet away if anything goes sideways. Not to mention, she knows how to handle herself. He’s seen it first-hand, she’s an excellent UC.

No, this feeling has nothing to do with where she is—in fact, it’s the opposite. It’s this place.

This is their home, now.

This arrangement isn’t him sleeping over at her apartment, nor has she just been crashing here for a night or two. Lucy’s supposed to be here, now, all the time. Her things are here, in the drawers and on the shelves, her presence bright and warm in every corner. This space was built around the two of them, crafted for them to share. It doesn’t make sense without her.

She picked these bedsheets when she moved in, chastising his ‘boring’ grey ones. He doesn’t know this floral pattern without her form nestled beneath it, her hair draping across the pillows.

At 3:25, he sits up, resigning himself to another night of staring at the TV without watching it. Maybe he’ll opt for a Dodgers game, this time. He’d better switch it up if this is going to keep happening for a while.

He doesn’t get that far, though. Instead, he’s barely swung his legs over the side of the bed before a strange silhouette atop the dresser catches his eye. Shuffling over, Tim squints at it in the low light.

It’s Lucy’s pyjama shirt.

Right. She’d left it there yesterday morning—and how was it only yesterday?—but he hadn’t had the heart to put it away just yet, like if he left it out she might turn their RV around and come home. Obviously, that didn’t happen, and it was never going to.

For reasons he can’t explain, Tim doesn’t fold the shirt and put it away. Instead, he brings it with him as he climbs back into bed, laying it on her pillow.

The silky material is smooth and familiar. It’s no substitute for Lucy, of course, but it’s better than nothing, settling something in his chest that had shifted out of place the second she’d shut the front door behind her.

With one hand resting atop the material, Tim’s mind finally starts to quiet, and he drifts to sleep.

One of the benefits of being Watch Commander is that it’s not hard for Tim to keep himself busy—there’s never a shortage of meetings or calls or fires to put out, even if he can’t seem to shut off the part of his brain that wonders if he’ll see Lucy every time he glances up at an officer knocking on his door, or the part that still unconsciously keeps an ear out for her voice on the radio, knowing it won’t come.

Another benefit is that Angela has to provide him with regular updates. She used to tell him what information she could out of friendly courtesy, but he was never entitled to it like he is now.

Safe to say, work isn’t too much of a problem, even if Tim still feels Lucy’s absence in roll call and in the gaps in the radio, filled in as they are by Sergeant Reeves.

And after a few nights of restful enough sleep, he puts Lucy’s pyjama shirt back where he found it. He’s gotten used to sleeping again, so he figures he’ll be fine without it.

He’s not.

When he settles in for another night, Tim finds himself tossing and turning once again, his mind spinning, the bed back to feeling miles wide. Even as he tells himself again that he literally couldn’t ask for Lucy to be much safer on an undercover op than she is right now, this time it doesn’t help him outrun the thought that no UC is ever truly safe.

Right now, Lucy and Harper are wearing fake identities, following in the footsteps of two young girls who ended up violently murdered by a cartel, essentially using themselves as bait to lure their killer in.

With that lingering in the back of his mind, he winks in and out of a fitful sleep. Dreams of Lucy and Harper missing a check-in, both of them getting maimed and tortured cartel-style before being shot point-blank, their bodies tossed beneath the Baja waves.

Tim startles awake, breathing hard, and before his brain can spiral too far into the darkness, he stumbles blindly to the dresser and grasps at the pyjama shirt, bringing it back to bed.

He doesn’t dream after that.

And that’s how it goes most nights, until he accepts that he’s unable to sleep without a piece of her next to him. His brain whispers something about co-dependency, but he shuts that down before he can overthink it.

Tim holds the shirt particularly tight the night after he gets to see her again, when Xi and Avery arrive back in LA for the drop.

He was in a stupid outfit, standing in a drive-thru window, and she was right there in front of him, alive and unharmed and okay, hair tousled from the salt air. He’d maintained every ounce of his composure, held back every part of him that wanted to jump through the window and hold her and never let go. He’d restrained himself to clasping her hand for a little longer than he should’ve, but she’d done the same, giving his thumb three small taps with her own. I love you.

Watching her drive away had somehow been harder the second time, and he grips onto her shirt as he drifts off, his chest aching with the enormity of her absence like it’s the very first night all over again.

After that, the shirt stops leaving their bed at all, its rightful place during the day becoming its spot folded up on Lucy’s pillow.

Some nights he can’t help but hold it close to his chest, while other nights he leaves it on her pillow, only brushing his fingers against the silk, its mere presence enough. Even those nights, though, Tim always wakes up with it clutched in his hand, as though he’s drawn to the feeling of Lucy even in his sleep. He supposes he probably is.

And after weeks of her shirt covering the black hole of her absence, soon it’s time for Lucy to come home. The morning she’s due back, she and Harper starting their drive back from Baja, he throws the pyjama shirt in the washer, carefully folding it and setting it back on the dresser where he found it.

When she finally gets home, exhausted and more than ready to sleep in her own bed after weeks of crashing in the back of a camper van, she throws that very pyjama shirt on, freshly washed and air-dried, and nestles herself against Tim’s chest.

As she tells him about ‘van life Lucy’, about dropping out of college and roadside burritos, he runs his fingers up and down her spine, before resting his hand against her waist and relishing in the warmth of the silk against her skin.

He doesn’t have any problems falling asleep that night.

5. Tim’s sweatpants

Lucy doesn’t remember the last time she painted anything, let alone an entire hallway.

She’s spent her entire life renting, and therefore mildly terrified of doing much more than hanging a picture on the wall. When Tamara had re-painted Jackson’s room, Lucy had swallowed the thoughts of her security deposit, willing to do anything to make Tamara feel more at home. And anyway, she knew Tamara would do a good enough job to make it worthwhile.

Her, on the other hand… she’s never been that artistically inclined.

Not that painting a hallway requires much artistic skill. But still, she’s very much out of practice at wielding any kind of paintbrush, which is why she hesitates when picking something to wear for her and Tim’s DIY task.

The thing is, she likes all her clothes, a lot, even the old, worn-out pieces. It’s stupid, but she dreads the thought of spilling paint over anything in her wardrobe. Especially with the peach colour they’ve picked out for the walls—knowing her luck, it’ll stain.

Tim is finding her indecision irritatingly amusing.

“We can’t put this off another week, Luce,” he jokes, coming up behind her as she roots through her drawers. “One of these days I’m going to trip over the paint cans in the garage.”

“Then maybe you should watch where you’re going,” she bites, stress seeping into her voice that she immediately regrets.

From behind, Tim places his hands on her shoulders, guiding her out of the way. “Alright,” he says, stepping forward and opening his own drawers.

He shuffles through the neatly folded pants for a second, before pulling out a pair of grey sweatpants and holding them out.

“Here. You can get paint on these if you want.”

Taking them from him, Lucy smiles, grateful that, even if he makes fun of her, her husband always meets her where she is. “Thank you.”

Tim heads into the garage to grab the paint cans while she changes.

Obviously, the sweatpants are comically large on her. She’s so used to their height difference by now that she almost forgets just how significant it is until moments like this. The drawstring pulls its weight, triple-knotted so it doesn’t come loose, and she rolls the hems a ridiculous number of times so she doesn’t step on them, securing them in each in place with a couple of hair ties. They end up looking like floatation bands around her ankles, but it’s better than her falling off a stepladder when the too-long fabric catches beneath her heel.

When she walks into the hall, Tim glances her way as he’s setting down the paint cans, and then immediately does a double take.

It’s definitely not the most attractive she’s ever looked, her space buns, slouchy tank top, and what are essentially clown pants leaving much to be desired, and she can read the amusement in his eyes plain as day.

“Okay,” he says, straightening up and eyeing the tyre-shaped rolls of material around her ankles, “most of my clothes look better on you, but…”

“Hey, I’m making these work,” she argues, posing with a hand on her hip.

He just chuckles, reaching for one of the paint rollers. “You look adorable. Now, can we get started?”

As soon as they start, it dawns on Lucy just how much of a task this is going to be. She knew their hallway wasn’t tiny, of course, but it’s never felt bigger than it does right now, as they start rolling paint up the walls.

Just like they’d planned, they work methodically, each of them tackling one half of the hallway, and slowly but surely the pale yellow paint gets replaced with the soft peach they’d picked out together a few weeks ago.

They’re through the first couple of paint cans pretty quick, and just as Tim heads into the garage to retrieve two more, there’s a knock at the front door.

Lucy pulls it open to see Angela.

“Hey!” she smiles.

“Hi…” Angela stares at her, looking oddly amused, and two seconds pass in silence before Lucy remembers that she’s dressed like a clown training for a marathon.

“We’re painting,” she clarifies. “Don’t judge.”

“Oh,” Angela draws out, casting her eyes back down Lucy’s legs before nodding her approval. “Smart. Better to get paint on your husband’s sweatpants than your own.”

Lucy’s glad that someone gets it. “Exactly.”

Leaning one hand on the doorframe, Angela peers over Lucy’s shoulder into the house. “Speaking of, where is he?”

“Garage.”

Turning her head, Lucy calls out to him.

“One sec,” she hears.

Leaving the garage, Tim sets down the paint cans before walking over, tossing his chin up in greeting.

“Lopez, what’s up?”

“You have that baseball glove you said Jack could borrow?” she asks. “His game is this afternoon.”

Tim heads back towards the garage with a raised finger and a nod, coming back with a small baseball mitt and handing it over. “Wish him luck from me.”

“Of course; we’ll get you guys over for dinner next weekend and he can tell you all about it,” Angela smiles. “Have fun with your painting, and don’t suffocate on the fumes.”

“We’ll try our best,” Tim responds dryly.

They wave their friend goodbye as she turns down the drive, closing the door to the rumble of her tyres on the gravel and peeling open the fresh cans of paint.

As they make more progress, the paint starts to change the way the sunlight feels, the hallway glowing with a softer, pinker hue, just like they’d wanted. Even dressed in her stupid outfit, and with Tim now sporting a smudge of paint on his sleeve that they both swear just appeared out of nowhere, and with the paint fumes permeating their brains despite every window in their house being open as wide as it goes, neither of them can deny how much fun they’re having doing this together. The first DIY task they’re tag-teaming in their home.

Of course, the fun can’t last too long without something interrupting it. Tim is up on a stepladder, in the process of removing a rogue screw they’d managed to miss, when his phone rings from their bedroom.

They both freeze, and Tim sighs quietly, stepping down. “One sec.”

Painting is a meditative task, Lucy realises as she keeps working, the repetitive motions of making something perfect. She knows Tim will be grateful for it in a moment—his phone call is beginning to sound more and more like a work emergency with every passing second, and she can hear his footsteps pacing back and forth across their bedroom floor.

When there’s another knock on the door, Lucy’s eyes widen in mild surprise. No one ever really knocks at their door—people tend to call first, at least—but here they are, two unexpected visitors in quick succession.

Lucy opens the door to see their neighbour, and shoots her a kind smile. “Mrs. Richards, hi!”

“Hi, Lucy, dear. I’m sorry to bother you—” Lucy doesn’t miss the way the old woman’s sentence fractures as her eyes flit down to Lucy’s outfit, before remembering what she’s here for. “I couldn’t trouble you for an egg, could I? I’m making a cake for my grandson’s birthday, and I didn’t realise I was one short.”

“Of course,” Lucy smiles, heading into the kitchen. “Let me get one for you.”

When she returns to the doorway, a small container in hand with an egg inside, Mrs. Richards is unashamedly staring at Lucy’s pants, mild confusion—and that’s probably a bit of judgement she sees, too—in her eyes.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to keep up with all these new fashion trends,” the lady chuckles, taking the container Lucy offers her with a grateful nod.

Lucy laughs, and she’s proud when it comes out only slightly forced. “There’s no trend here, I’m afraid. These are just Tim’s; we’re painting our hallway.”

“Oh, I see,” Mrs. Richards drawls. “How lovely. Well, thank you so much for your help, darling.”

“Anytime.”

Tim steps out of the bedroom as Lucy closes the front door, stress barely beginning to tighten the corners of his expression.

“Everything okay?” Lucy asks.

“Yeah, should be now, I hope,” he exhales, nodding towards the front door. “Who was that?”

“Mrs. Richards. She needed an egg for her grandson’s cake.”

Tim nods. “Oh, right.”

“She judged my sweatpants, too.”

Tim pulls a face with a laugh. “Well—let’s start with the fact that they’re my sweatpants. Pretty sure that’s most of the problem. Second, who cares? This is your house, you can wear what you want.”

“Easy for you to say—you’re not the one opening the door looking like you’re hiding tyres around your ankles.” Grabbing the stick of the paint roller with a huff, she points it in Tim’s direction. “Next time someone knocks, you’re opening the door.”

He chuckles at her frustration, but doesn’t argue the point further. “Yes, ma’am.”

Of course, when the third knock comes a while later—and, seriously, three in one day?—it’s while Tim has been summoned back to his phone with a resurgence of the earlier work emergency. She’d think he’d orchestrated this as some kind of prank, if the stress on his face at the sound of his ringtone wasn’t so genuine.

This time, Lucy flings the door open with more aggression than required, wanting to get ahead of whatever judgement is waiting on the other side. “Hi there. Yes, I’m aware my outfit is dumb. We’re painting. I didn’t want to get paint on my own clothes, so these are Tim’s. What do you need?”

Poor Miles is stunned into silence on the front stoop, his mouth agape.

Coming back to her senses and wondering what the hell just came over her, Lucy pinches at the bridge of her nose, scrunching her eyes shut. “Sorry. I think the paint fumes are getting to me. What’s up, Miles?”

He blinks a few times, and the look on his face would almost be comical if Lucy didn’t feel a little bad. “Uh… I, uh, I was just wondering if I could hide this here.” Stepping to the side, he gestures towards a large cardboard box sitting on the ground just behind him. “It’s Celina’s birthday present, and I can’t find anywhere safe to keep it in the apartment where she won’t find it.”

“Aww,” Lucy coos, her lips forming a pout. “Of course! Come on in.”

“Thank you, I appreciate it.” Miles lifts the box with a grunt and carries it through the doorway. “Sorry for just showing up like this. I tried to call Sergeant Bradford ahead of time, but—”

“Yeah, his phone’s been tied up with a work thing,” Lucy explains. “It’s no problem, really.”

She directs him to set it down on the dining table, navigating through empty paint cans and the contents of their hallway.

As he’s leaving, Miles sneaks a glance at the paint job. “It’s a lovely colour,” he says. “You guys have done some pretty fine work.”

“We have, haven’t we?” Lucy agrees, impressed with their handiwork.

“And, for the record,” Miles goes on, looking at her, now, “if anyone was going to pull off that pair of rolled-up sweatpants, it’s you, Sergeant.”

That’s… sweet, she thinks, even if it’s slightly strange. She almost doesn’t know whether to thank him, but decides to anyway as he leaves.

Tim emerges from the bedroom a few minutes later, once Lucy’s halfway done with the next section of the hallway.

“Did I hear someone else at the door?” he asks, incredulous. “Since when do that many people come by our house?”

“I know,” Lucy huffs. “It’s like the world knows I’m in a ridiculous outfit today. I swear, if one more person knocks on that door, I’m changing pants, paint stains be damned.”

Tim just retrieves his paint roller with a laugh and a gentle shake of his head, even though she’s being dead serious.

Well, she was.

Since the universe has a sense of humour, Lucy ends up eating her words not ten minutes later, when she’s lifting a freshly dipped paint roller up to the top of the wall and drips peach-coloured paint down herself.

Typical.

Tim’s the first to break her stunned silence, of course, Mr. Chuckles over there with his charming laughter at her expense. But when she looks down, marvelling at the sheer amount of paint she’s managed to cover herself in, she finds she’s able to laugh at it, too.

Turns out, borrowing Tim’s sweatpants was a great idea on all fronts, even with the mild embarrassment of having to face their visitors. This is her home—if there’s anywhere in the world built for her to carry out DIY projects and wear ridiculous clothing and laugh with the love of her life as paint drips down her pants, it’s right here.

+1. Their clothes

When Angela had brought up wanting to spend some time with her niece—her own classification, even if it’s not by blood—, Lucy and Tim had been more than happy to head out for a day to themselves, giving Angela and their daughter free reign of the house.

After spending the afternoon going at their own pace for the first time in a long while, savouring the luxury of sipping coffee in a nice café and strolling around a few stores without needing to tick off an itemised checklist, they return home to a strangely quiet house.

“Hey,” Lucy calls out. “We’re back! Anybody home?”

Angela walks out from the hallway with a grin, looking suspiciously excited. Andie is nowhere to be seen.

“Hi, mom and dad,” Angela says. “How was your day out?”

Lucy glances over at Tim, watching his eyes narrow slightly.

“Angela.” His voice is dripping with suspicion, unsure of how concerned he needs to be. “What did you do?”

The detective claps her hands together, making Lucy jump. “I’m so glad you asked,” she beams. “Andie has something she’d like to show you.”

“Okay…”

An excited giggle comes from their bedroom as Angela ushers them over to the couch, hitting the lights on the way. She lays a flashlight on the floor, propping it up so it’s pointed at the space in front of the couch, where the coffee table is noticeably absent. Lucy looks to Tim, pointing at the empty space with a confused frown, and he shrugs.

His mouth opens, presumably to ask his best friend where she’s put their furniture, but he gets cut off.

“Andie, you ready?” Angela calls out.

“Ready!”

Their daughter sounds thrilled, and Lucy’s heart warms before anything even begins.

Tim leans back into the couch cushions, and Lucy follows suit.

“What are we about to watch?” he murmurs.

“I have no idea.”

When music begins blasting from the speaker on the kitchen counter at full volume, Lucy startles again, and Angela winces apologetically before assuming her position behind the couch.

“Ladies and gentleman,” she announces, cupping her mouth to give her voice a booming quality. “I now present to you… the newest fashion masterpiece from Andie Chen-Bradford!”

Small, clumsy footsteps shuffle down the hall until their daughter comes into view, and Lucy lets out something between a surprised giggle and a coo at the sight she’s presented with. Beside her, Tim’s own chuckle is light with adoration.

Andie is dressed in one of Lucy’s floral yellow minidresses, the fabric draping past her knees and over a pair of familiar shoes—an old pair of Tim’s, dress shoes which are far, far too big. Somehow, though, her little feet manage to carry her across the floor with confidence.

One of Tim’s brown jackets is slung over one of her shoulders, and she’s gripping onto it as best she can with her small hands, but one of the sleeves is brushing across the floor behind her all the same. Her opposite wrist is adorned by one of Tim’s watches, which is barely managing to stay on, and one of Lucy’s necklaces glints under the beam of the flashlight.

God, she’s adorable. The perfect mash-up of her parents.

Lucy lets out a cheer as Andie shuffles towards the couch, eventually coming to a stop in front of them. There, she strikes a pose, her lips forming the cutest pout Lucy’s ever seen, before switching to a smile, her hand landing on a clumsily jutted hip.

They applaud the spectacle, their daughter’s beaming smile only growing wider as Tim whoops and Lucy claps until her palms hurt.

Of course, Angela chimes in from behind the couch, making Andie giggle. “Work it, girl! Work it!”

The little girl strikes a few more poses before Angela calls out for her to twirl, and she gives them an awkward, charming spin before striking her final pose. And then she’s casting them a wave like the princess she is, heading back towards the hallway. Lucy and Tim wave back before applauding once more.

When the music cuts out, Lucy can’t help her laugh. “Oh, she’s the cutest.”

Angela straightens up, leaning her forearms against the back of the couch and resting her chin atop them. “Didn’t she look good?”

“She looked perfect,” Lucy says. “Did she come up with that on her own?”

“The pieces were indeed hand-picked by the model, yes,” Angela deadpans. “She crafted the outfit independently, in line with her vision and based on the options available; although a fashion advisor did have to veto a pair of stilettos due to safety concerns.”

“Yeah, coming home to broken ankles wouldn’t have been nearly as fun as this,” Tim quips.

Angela points a finger at him in agreement. “See, that’s what I figured.”

“Smart.”

They’re interrupted by a small voice calling for “Auntie Angie!” and a stressed rustle of fabric from their bedroom.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me—” Angela puts a pause in their conversation with a raised hand, pushing herself to stand and switching the lights back on as she strides down the hall. “My client needs me.”

By the sounds of it, Andie has gotten a little stuck in the oversized outfit. Lucy scrunches her nose at the thought, leaning her head against Tim’s shoulder, still unable to wrap her head around just how adorable their daughter is. Even after five years, Lucy is still constantly amazed by her.

When Angela finally makes it out of the bedroom, Andie trailing behind her in her t-shirt and leggings, the two share the biggest hug goodbye.

“You’re welcome to stay for dinner,” Lucy offers, pulling their friend in for a hug of her own.

“Thank you, but I should really be heading back to my own kids. Wesley’s been working from home today; he’s probably losing his mind.”

“If you’re sure,” Tim says, and Angela nods. “Thank you for that, by the way,”—he nods towards the living room where the fashion show had taken place—“Andie really does love hanging out with you.”

In fact, when the three adults look down, the little girl in question has latched herself onto one of Auntie Angie’s legs.

“And I love hanging out with her,” Angela says, crouching down to give the girl one last hug.

When she heads towards her car, she turns suddenly, like she’s forgotten something.

“Oh, by the way—your room’s a bit of a mess,” she winces. “Sorry.”

Lucy waves the apology off. “Don’t worry about it.”

In hindsight, maybe worrying about it wouldn’t have been entirely unreasonable.

When Lucy and Tim step into their room, it’s like the place has been ransacked. There are clothes everywhere. Shirts, dresses, jackets, tops, shoes, accessories—when Angela said Angie picked her outfit based on ‘the options available’, she really meant options.

Tim’s eyes widen at the sight. “Sometimes I forget just how much of a slob Angela is.”

Lucy swats at Tim’s arm. “Do you have to be so mean?” she chastises. “She was helping a child pick out clothes—”

She’s cut off by the sharp, insistent shake of Tim’s head. “No, no, no, I mean it. I crashed at her place not long after we both became P2s and found a slice of pizza in the shower.”

Oh. “Ew.”

“Yeah. So really, it’s on me for not remembering her definition of mess.”

Well, Lucy’s almost scared to look too close at anything now. “Should I be worried about finding a sandwich somewhere in here?”

Tim grimaces at the thought. “God, I hope not.”

Great.

Resigning herself to the possibility with a shrug, Lucy moves to pick up the first item she sees—one of Tim’s shirts—and slides it onto a hanger. “There’s only one way to find out, I guess.”

And that’s how they spend the next hour of their afternoon, folding and hanging their clothes before putting them back in their rightful places.

It ends up being a walk through memory lane, of sorts. Lucy finds the grey sweater she had on for their first kiss, and hangs up the blue floral piece she’d worn on their interrupted first date with a smile. She folds the burnt orange scarf an ex-girlfriend had gifted her before she’d set off on a road trip across the country, and recalls wrapping it around Tim’s shoulders in the middle of the street one winter.

Meanwhile, Tim holds up the jacket he wore the first time they’d danced together at Nyla and James’ wedding, and the one he’d lent to Lucy on one of their first dates. He can’t bite back his slight grimace at the chequered shirt he wore as Jake when they went UC, even if it’s the gaudy shirt he was wearing when he clocked the depth of his feelings for her.

“Never realised what a treasure trove of memories this closet was,” Lucy observes, hanging up the green dress she wore to the failed attempt at Angela and Wesley’s wedding, when Tim had raked his eyes down her like he was seeing her for the first time before asking her to save him a dance.

“I know,” Tim breathes. He picks up the dress and the jacket Andie just wore for her fashion show from where they’ve been discarded atop the dresser. “And now we can remember these clothes by the memory of our daughter’s first fashion show.”

Lucy smiles at the sentiment, the thought that every item in their closet has memories woven between each thread, no matter how trivial or devastating or heartwarming. They get to read their closet almost like a history book, every piece holding its own story that they’ll be able to tell their daughter someday.

“Perfect,” she beams.