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Tim can’t trace exactly when the pit in his stomach started to form.
Maybe it was when he first woke up this morning, the world outside their windows feeling almost too still. Or maybe it was when he checked his emails over coffee and didn’t have any urgent notices. It could’ve been when there was nothing actionable in the handover from night shift, or when he checked his calendar and there was nothing logged in today’s forecast.
It could’ve been anywhere, at any point—all Tim knows is that now, it’s there, it feels like it’s always been there, and he can’t shake it. He hasn’t felt this uneasy without anything actively being wrong in a long time, and definitely not since he became Watch Commander.
Today is arguably the worst day for it. The thought of sitting through all the meetings piled into his schedule is already unbearable, but the thought of doing it with the inexplicable dread swirling in his stomach is even worse.
Sat in his office after roll call, he’s supposed to be preparing for his first meeting. But when he spots Lucy and Juarez heading out to set up their shop, his unease is exacerbated, and he can’t explain why. Slamming his laptop closed, he makes a decision, running for the station doors.
“Lucy,” he calls out the second he sets foot outside.
She turns, a mild look of surprise on her face. “Hey.”
“Uh, do you need me to leave?” Juarez asks.
“No.” It’s an instinctive response, because it’s not like this is anything overtly personal. But then he realises what he’s about to ask, and—“Actually, maybe.”
Both women look at him expectantly.
“Look, I just—I really do have a bad feeling about today,” he admits.
Lucy smiles at him. “Tim Bradford listening to his feelings? It’s almost spiritual.”
She turns to look at Juarez, who hums in agreement, but Tim refuses for this to be boiled down to… that.
“Oh, God forbid,” he murmurs. “Look, there is nothing spiritual about the intuition a cop earns from years on the job, or a soldier in the battlefield. When you’ve been in enough dangerous situations, you know when things feel off.”
“I completely agree,” Juarez says. It’s not the reassurance she thinks it is. “You can argue it’s experience over spirituality, but—I mean, a bad feeling is a bad feeling.”
He rolls his eyes. This isn’t some woo-woo bullshit, he knows that, but maybe they’re not going to be convinced. “Why do I even bother?”
Lucy’s eyes soften, her lips tilting into a smile. “You know why.”
He looks back at her, at the love in her gaze, and… “Yeah. I do.”
As much as he tries to be objective at work, as much as he tries to keep in mind that Sergeant Chen is on the same level as every other one of his officers out on patrol, it doesn’t change the fact that he loves her, that she’s important to him in a way no one else has ever been. And just the thought of anything happening to her is—
“Look, I just think maybe I should ride with you today,” he continues. “Put Juarez in a solo car.”
“What? No,” Lucy says, her face scrunching. “You have a bunch of Watch Commander meetings you can’t miss. We’ll be fine.”
“We’ll be better than fine,” Juarez adds on. It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, especially not when he watches how she has to jump to close the trunk of the shop.
Juarez is a good cop, but… she’s not exactly the solid backup he wants Lucy to have when he feels like this. Deep down, he knows he doesn’t wholly trust anyone but himself to be at her six.
Tim knows how he sounds, and he should give in—this is entering the realm of unprofessional.
Pulling his lip between his teeth, he takes a deep breath, trying to get a grip and just let his sergeant head out on patrol with her aide. His schedule is wall-to-wall today, and he should go back inside and get on with it. Plus, he’d be rolling his eyes at anyone else presenting him with this argument.
But the mere thought of heading back into the station right now makes him feel sick, and it’s like his feet are rooted to the ground.
As the silence lingers, as Tim just stands there feeling like he’s about to cave in on himself for the pit hollowing out his stomach, Lucy’s eyebrows draw together, concerned. Maybe she can read the anxiety that must be written all over his face.
“Hey,” she says, stepping closer and putting a hand on his arm.
He can’t voice this feeling, but he knows he fucking hates it. “I… I just—”
“Okay,” she cuts in, nodding. “Okay.” Giving his forearm a gentle squeeze, she looks over at Juarez. “You good to ride solo today?”
Even if she looks mildly surprised that Lucy is entertaining his inexplicable anxiety, the officer nods. “Of—of course.” She juts her thumb in the direction of the station. “I will go retrieve my own shop. You guys have a good shift.”
“Thank you,” Lucy says. “Be safe.”
As Juarez heads back inside, Lucy turns back to look at Tim, running her thumb back and forth across his forearm.
“Sorry,” he murmurs, shaking his head at himself. “I know this is… but—”
“Hey, no. Like Celina said, a bad feeling is a bad feeling,” Lucy says, before a smile pulls at her lips. “Plus, it’s kind of sweet that you’re worried enough about me to cancel on those meetings.”
Yeah, the brass aren’t going to be thrilled with him about that. Sorry, I’m going to have to reschedule—nothing’s happening right now and I’m anxious about it.
He doesn’t care one bit.
“I would’ve cancelled on those meetings if it so much as rained,” he jokes, trying to see if it tamps down the swirling unease in his stomach.
Lucy tuts at him through a laugh, and it helps.
They both head for the driver-side door, and Lucy’s shoulder crashes into his arm as they come to an abrupt stop.
“I have the keys,” Lucy says, holding them up between her thumb and forefinger.
“I’m the one that drives,” Tim counters.
She narrows her eyes at him. “I would’ve been driving if you hadn’t wanted to ride with me today.”
They stare each other down for a few moments, but Tim concedes before long, because she does have a point. “Fine.”
He slinks around to the passenger side as Lucy pulls her door open, grinning at her victory.
Tim has never wished to be wrong so badly.
After an uneventful morning that’s only served to heighten his anxiety, they’re now reporting to Westview Hospital after Harper, Penn, Nolan, and a goddamn ride-along—a kid, no less—have failed to respond on the radio.
Some part of him knows that this is what his subconscious has been bracing for. The officers were sent to carry out a welfare check on a missing remediation crew who’ve been working at the site for six months, cleaning it out for demolition. Their supervisor stopped hearing from them yesterday and sent another crew in this morning to check in, but no one’s heard from them, either.
Westview seems to be swallowing people alive.
From the moment they pull in through the rusted gates, the air feels wrong. The hairs on Tim’s arms stand on end, the bad feeling clawing at the pit in his stomach until it becomes a black hole.
As they pull up, they try raising their missing officers on the radio again, wondering if the proximity will do any good now they’re at least in Westview, but all they get in response is more static.
Before they can try again, though, a figure sprints across the front of their shop and into a building. It’s not any of their missing officers—the figure’s clothes are white, stained red.
“Blood,” Lucy murmurs, already unbuckling her seatbelt.
“I see it.”
Lucy transmits to Control that they’re Code 6 to investigate—well, she tries to; it’s hard to say whether it’s received through the static—and they climb from their shop to follow.
Everything about the building they’re approaching does nothing for his unease—the vandalised, broken windows, the scraped paintwork, the rusted railings lining the stairs. Nothing about it feels safe in the slightest, and as of right now, they have no backup.
The door is ajar, and Tim clears what he can see from the entryway before Lucy steps inside first. In front of them, a hallway stretches out into shadows, several doorways lining the walls.
They don’t get far before they see something else that sets every alarm blaring in Tim’s head. A person lays still in one of the doorways, and Lucy reaches down to check for a pulse. After a moment, she catches his eye and shakes her head, grabbing her radio.
“We’ve got a dead body.”
Before she can put her radio back in its holster, a sound comes from the door they’d just entered through. Tim draws his gun just in case, his every instinct screaming at him that this place is more dangerous than they know.
A figure appears in the doorway. A man, wearing a hazmat suit. Bloodstained. It looks similar to the blur they’d seen running in front of their shop.
“Stay back,” Tim calls out.
The man doesn’t listen, taking a step forward.
Lucy holds her hand out in front of her, placating. “Sir, just—just stay where you are.”
The words have barely left her lips before another figure in a hazmat suit runs up behind the figure, slamming him into the doorway, the both of them letting out feral grunts.
The rest seem to materialise from nowhere, and what Tim can only describe as a horde starts to run towards them, feral and bloody and violent. They smash into the door and the doorframe and scrape against the walls, more like creatures than actual humans.
The only coherent thought in Tim’s mind is that they need to run.
Lucy’s in front of him as they sprint further into the building—it might not be strategic for an actual escape, but they don’t have any other choice. Animalistic growls echo off the walls, rapid and terrifying footsteps impacting the floor far closer than he’d like.
Neither of them spare a single glance behind them, but the sounds grow distant as they pass through doorways and beneath flickering lights, and soon Tim dares to think that they’re finally making some kind of ground. That’s when another horde leaps from the darkness, more bloodstained shadows tackling them both into the walls. Terrified and already exhausted, there’s nothing they can do but try to defend themselves, dodging frantic blows and blindly throwing hits back where they can.
Tim tries his best to get a better look at their attackers between blocked swings, and the first thing he clocks is that their eyes are strangely hollow. They’re feral and angry, but empty. Void of any recognition of what they’re doing, almost void of any real humanity.
It doesn’t make sense. They’re in hazmat suits—this must be the remediation crew. Normal workers, normal people, here to do the same job they’ve been doing for six months. What happened to them?
Tim’s in the process of delivering a sharp blow to one of his assailants’ heads, knocking him out cold, when Lucy calls his name. As she wrestles an attacker off her, she tilts her head towards a nearby door with a stairwell sign hanging above it.
A glance down the hall only reveals more workers running for them, probably attracted by the commotion and chaos, and Tim knows if they don’t get the fuck out of this hallway, they’re going to end up even more outnumbered.
Without thinking twice, they both run for the door the moment they can, Tim ushering Lucy through first.
As they sprint down the stairs, the door they just came through slams open against the wall, footsteps stumbling and clamouring through the narrow passage as the horde follows them. Distant footsteps have never sounded more foreboding.
Lucy leads them to the right once they hit the hallway and, knowing they’re in need of a hiding space, they duck into the first room they see. It looks like a laboratory of sorts.
For the first time in what feels like an age, it’s silent, the stillness only broken by their short, sharp gasps as they try to catch their breath.
It doesn’t last.
All too soon, a figure darts past the doorway in a blur, and they both duck away from the door’s line of sight in opposite directions, hiding behind metal tables covered in equipment and hazardous chemicals.
Their eyes meet across the gap. Tim can see some of his own horrified fear in Lucy’s eyes, all the questions he’s been asking spinning through her head, too.
He nods, a familiar, comforting motion, but amidst the fog of adrenaline he’s not sure exactly what he’s trying to convey. It’s a combination of a lot of things, he supposes. I’ve got you. We’re going to be okay. I’m scared, too.
Their eye contact is broken when more sets of distant footsteps echo down the hall, closer and closer. The horde seem to have split up, and Tim finds himself holding his breath.
When footsteps enter the lab, Tim and Lucy retreat further into their hiding places, further from each other. Looking around, they both review their options, fast running out of time, and Tim’s heart stops when the figure slinks into Lucy’s half of the room, clearly searching for something—for them.
Lucy’s eyes are wide with fear as she keeps backing away, putting as much distance between herself and the hazmat as she can. She keeps moving until she’s just out of sight around a corner, and Tim’s pulse pounds heavy in his ears. He wants to follow her, but he’d be putting himself directly in the line of sight of that… that thing, and it’d probably only put Lucy in even more danger.
With no choice but to stay in his hiding spot, he listens as Lucy disappears, hearing the jostle of plastic sheeting before the sound of her footsteps grows muffled and fades entirely. Holding his breath, Tim tunes his attention to the figure walking around, waiting for any sign that he’s heard Lucy or him.
It doesn’t seem like he has, thank God, and eventually he leaves the way he came. Tim’s about to allow himself a momentary sigh of relief, when—
There’s a distant crash, and a scream.
Lucy.
Her name tears from his lips before he can think better of it, shattering the silence and pushing past the veil of plastic sheeting she’d run through. At the sounds of a violent struggle, Tim calls her name again as he ends up in a tunnel, shadows shifting in tandem with the watery light on the wall.
Lucy is on the ground, grappling with a woman with unkempt hair and hollow eyes as she slams her head into the grating.
“Lucy!” Tim unholsters his taser while he’s still registering what he’s seeing, and the feral woman is down in an instant, slumped over and twitching.
He runs over, putting a hand on Lucy’s arm as she stays kneeled on the ground. “Are you alright?”
There’s a red mark on her forehead that’s definitely going to bruise, and he tries to inspect it closer in the low light, but she waves him off.
“I’m okay,” she says, wincing a little.
He doesn’t have the time to tell her he doesn’t believe her, because a second later, another set of footsteps is rushing into the tunnel from the way Tim came in.
Tim stands in front of Lucy as she tries to push herself upright, but he’s already used his taser, the probes still attached to the woman on the ground. The man charges for him, and Tim tries to brace himself for a fight, but the man has the advantage of catching them off guard.
He grabs at Tim with an unrestrained ferocity, bloody fingers digging into his arms like claws. As Tim struggles to gain any kind of upper hand, he’s thrown into the wall, his head slamming against the brickwork.
Sparks flare in his vision, but he doesn’t miss the man launching for Lucy next, nor does he miss the light glinting off the weapon in his hand.
A knife.
As the world warps, Tim’s blood runs cold, and he moves to drag the man away from Lucy. But he’s barely a man, more like a creature—a wall of unhinged, unrestrained strength—and Tim just gets a sharp blow to his cheekbone that snaps his head to the side, more stars forming in his vision as he stumbles against the wall.
Amidst the commotion, Lucy manages to push herself to her feet and reach for her taser, but she can’t pull it free before the man is spinning around to face her, his arms flailing. Her eyes widen as she staggers back a few steps, a startled shriek breaking from the back of her throat.
But then the man is turning back to Tim, lurching forwards to grab at him again. His tall frame crowds over Tim’s crouched form, blocking his view of Lucy as he tries to get his feet back under him, tries to do anything. The man grabs at his shirt, and Tim braces himself for another blow.
But before it comes, the man looming over him freezes. Spasms. Folds. When his body hits the ground, it reveals Lucy stood behind him, her discharged taser in hand, breaths coming in harsh pants.
Catching his breath and finally managing to blink some of the stars from his vision, Tim moves to handcuff their assailant.
“Thanks,” he breathes.
Lucy doesn’t respond.
Once the cuffs are secured, he looks up—just in time to watch Lucy sway and stagger backwards against the wall.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he says, pushing himself to his feet and running over.
For a moment, he thinks it’s the head injury, the image of the woman slamming Lucy’s head into the grating burned into his pounding skull. But as he closes the gap between them, the shifting light catches the darkening patch of red staining the torso of her uniform shirt. One split-second glance at their assailant reveals what he should’ve noticed already—the blood staining the knife in his grip.
Oh, God.
“‘m okay,” she murmurs, but it comes out strained.
“You’re okay,” Tim echoes, trying to hide the tremor taking root in his voice. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
With one hand moving to pull nitrile gloves from his duty belt, the other reaches for his radio.
“Officer down,” he transmits. “I repeat, officer down. We need RAs for three injured in the basement of the north building. I repeat, three injured in the basement of the north building.”
All he gets back is static, but he doesn’t have time to try again. He just hopes that someone heard him.
Snapping on the gloves, Tim lines his hands up with her wound and presses down. Hard.
Lucy screams.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” The apologies tumble from his lips, shaking and guilt-ridden.
A tear rolls down her face alongside a bead of sweat.
“Tim—” she chokes out.
“I know, baby, I know. This part sucks.” He’s trying for levity, for anything to make this less awful, and it seems to work.
The corner of Lucy’s mouth lifts, if only barely. “Little bit,” she breathes.
Sparing a glance down the hallway, Tim realises that he doesn’t know what happens if another person runs through here and attacks them. He’d struggle to get up and fight as it is—and that’s not taking into account the fact that he’s not removing pressure from Lucy’s wound until the paramedics get here. Right now, they’re sitting ducks.
They just have to hope that it’s over. There hasn’t been any sign of life beyond this tunnel in a while, so maybe it’s a possibility. Or maybe it’s his head injury conjuring up a false sense of optimism.
After a minute, Lucy’s head lulls back against the wall, eyelids fluttering. Tim’s heart rises to his throat, and he presses down harder.
She groans, and when her eyes squeeze shut even tighter, Tim exhales with relief, even as his chest caves in from guilt at exacerbating her pain.
“Hey. Lucy.”
“I’m awake,” she pants. “I’m awake.”
He nods, quick and frantic. “Great. Can you keep your eyes open for me? Please.”
She must hear the trembling desperation in his voice, because when pinched brown eyes meet his, there’s an apology in them.
“Just—just try and keep talking for me, okay?” he pleads.
Lucy pulls in a few slow, shuddering breaths before she speaks. “I’m glad you’re here.”
A lump forms in his throat, terror ripping a hole in his chest at the thought of what could’ve happened if he wasn’t. “Me too.”
“This hurts. A lot.”
“I know,” he nods. “I know. The RA is on its way.”
Despite everything, she huffs out a dry laugh. “Is it?”
He fucking hopes so. The blue gloves are growing slick with Lucy’s blood, and her alertness is already faltering again, her blinks getting slower with every passing second.
“Yes,” he says anyway.
If he says it with enough conviction, maybe he’ll believe it enough for the both of them. Because if there’s no one coming, if there was no one at the other end of his radio transmission, there’s really only one outcome here. And Tim refuses to spend a single moment dwelling on it.
He doesn’t know how long they stay there. It feels like an eternity.
With every passing minute, Lucy’s breathing grows shallow and fast, her head lulling back against the wall more than once. She fights to blink herself awake each time, but it’s clearly getting harder, and Tim knows shock is taking hold.
The distant commotion entering the lab makes Tim’s breath catch, his entire body tensing. It’s not over. He tries to swallow his fear, tries to think—
“Bradford? Chen?”
His relieved exhale comes out more like a groan, and he thinks he could sob.
Finally.
“We’re in here!” he calls out.
The friendly footsteps grow nearer, and part of him flinches even though he knows they’re safe, his head pounding in time with his heartbeat. He takes a second to press his forehead to Lucy’s, and her skin is warm and clammy.
“They’re here, baby.”
She gives him a weak nod, her eyelids fluttering again. “‘kay.”
“Stay awake, okay?”
“I’m awake.”
It’s becoming less and less true by the second, but he knows she’s trying her hardest to hold on.
Heavy footsteps echo off the grating, and Harper and Penn’s eyes widen at the carnage, at the sight of Lucy slumped against the wall, at Tim’s bloodstained hands.
“We’ve got them!” Harper calls behind her.
Paramedics rush in. Two of them come for Lucy, taking over from Tim. The others attend to their assailants, still laying cuffed on the metal grating, but Tim pays them little mind beyond that.
He peels his bloody gloves off so he can take Lucy’s hand, only letting go when they move her onto the stretcher. Even then, he runs alongside it as they transport her from the tunnel, never leaving her side.
Even if it makes his head ache, Tim has never been so grateful to see daylight. The darkness of that place felt like it was sinking into his bones.
Outside, they place Lucy’s stretcher onto a gurney and lift her into the ambulance. When Tim tries to climb in behind the paramedics, his vision fills with stars, and he catches himself against the van’s open door.
“Sir? You good?” Penn asks.
The memory of his head impacting the wall resonates through Tim’s skull, as well as the blow he’d taken to the cheekbone.
“Fine.” It doesn’t come out as convincing as he’d hoped, especially not while he’s still blinking away stars.
“Hit his head.”
Tim’s head whips round to look at Lucy in the back of the ambulance, her voice slurring with the painkillers they’ve administered. The movement doesn’t help his case, more stars appearing that he tries to blink away, but his chest constricts all the same.
Even sedated and injured, Lucy’s still looking out for him.
At Lucy’s words, the paramedics try to force Tim into the other ambulance so their colleagues can check him over. He waves them off, obviously, climbing into the back of Lucy’s ambulance—gingerly, this time—and taking a seat on the bench.
He’ll get checked out at the hospital once Lucy’s taken into surgery and he physically can’t be near her anymore. Right now, though, he’s not leaving her side for anything.
As the adrenaline wears off, the pain in Tim’s skull intensifies.
According to the doctor, he might have a concussion. He knows the drill—constant monitoring and being bothered for the next 48 hours to make sure his brain’s not about to crap out on him. So, really, despite the doctor’s protests, the hospital waiting room is the best place for him to spend the next God-knows-how-long, waiting for news on Lucy with the others. Angela brings him a change of clothes, since his uniform was stained with Lucy’s blood, and every couple of hours she asks him tedious questions like his name, and her name, and where is he right now. Like he could ever forget being here.
The wait is torturous. Tim is filled with restless energy that he physically can’t expel—he tried pacing the floor an hour ago but almost passed out in the process, and Angela had to yank him back into his seat as stars flooded his vision.
No matter how hard he tries, Tim can’t outrun the thought of what would’ve happened if Lucy was alone in that tunnel today, if he’d attended those meetings and let her ride with Juarez as planned. That horde was vicious and strong—she and Juarez probably would’ve been separated, Lucy running for the stairwell alone.
His mind cycles through flickering images of her bruised, broken, bleeding out in that tunnel, body splayed across the grating. Or maybe she would’ve had to use the assailant’s own knife against him, and left that tunnel changed forever.
He’s also agonisingly aware that his presence may not have made a difference. Lucy might be in the right hands, but she’s not out of the woods yet.
Time crawls with a painful slowness, the only sign it’s passing at all being Angela’s phone alarm sounding every couple of hours, at which point he gets to play a round of twenty questions. In reality, it’s five questions at most, but the tedium makes it feel like more.
At one point, Juarez comes to sit with him. Neither of them say anything, but they don’t need to.
The officer’s eyes are blown wide with anxiety, and she’s clearly been pondering the what-ifs the same way Tim has. Today could’ve turned out so different, they both know that, and every iteration of possible events spins through his mind. All they can do is hope that this is the good ending.
When the doctor finally comes by hours later, Tim stands so suddenly that it makes his head pound, the stars returning with a vengeance. Angela places a steadying hand on his back, but he waves her off so he can focus.
The surgery is finished. Lucy’s pulled through.
From the sounds of it, it was as simple as it could’ve been, the knife avoiding any major organs or arteries. Barring any unexpected complications, Lucy should be able to come home in a couple of days, and with a few weeks of recovery she’ll be fine to return to light duty.
This is the best outcome they could’ve hoped for.
By the time she’s been settled in her room, it’s the early hours, and even though she’s asleep, Tim insists on going up to sit with her.
As he slumps into the chair beside her hospital bed, the weight of the day settles on his shoulders. The relentless anxiety that’s plagued him since morning. The pounding adrenaline as they were attacked by what felt like human zombies. Watching Lucy flicker as she bled beneath his hands.
He’s exhausted.
He wants to stay awake in case she wakes up, and tries his best to fight the pull of sleep. God, he tries. But the lights are dimmed, and his mind is the quietest it’s been in hours, and Lucy’s right here, and soon he’s dragged under against his will, clutching her hand as his chin falls to his chest.
When he opens his eyes, Tim is back in the tunnel.
He’s at the entrance and Lucy’s further inside, stood with her gun drawn in his direction. She doesn’t seem to see him, though, but when he tries to walk towards her, he hits an invisible wall.
His heart stutters as the silhouette appears behind her. He pounds on the wall, trying to break it, trying to scream for Lucy to watch out, but nothing gets through.
She’s alone in there.
The woman runs up behind her and tackles her to the ground, the element of surprise working to her advantage. She grabs Lucy by the hair, and Lucy cries out as her assailant slams her head into the metal grating over and over and over. Tim flinches, a cry tearing from his throat.
Eventually, Lucy manages to twist herself around and land a disorienting blow, before kicking the woman’s body into the wall. At the force of the impact, the woman slumps to the ground, incapacitated.
But before Lucy can catch her breath, the male attacker is sprinting past Tim, through the invisible wall, charging at her with a shout.
Tim can’t breathe.
She throws the man over her head, but he still manages to pin her down, the knife in his grip all the more terrifying as he drives it towards her with reckless abandon. When she forces his hand off its trajectory, the knife almost gets stuck in the grating next to her shoulder, but he yanks it free.
Then he’s driving it down again, this time towards her chest. Lucy doesn’t give up, but neither does her assailant, and her hands and arms are shaking with the effort of trying to stay alive. Tim is struck with the realisation that he might be about to watch her die, the knife inching closer and closer to her chest, the fear blowing her eyes wide, until—
“Tim.”
Someone squeezes his hand, and he opens his eyes with a start.
Blinking a few times into the darkness, Tim sees Lucy staring at him in the low light, brown eyes wide with stress as she grips onto his hand.
Immediately, he snaps himself into alertness and pulls himself upright, shaking off the fog of his nightmare.
“Hey. Are you okay?” he asks, inexplicably breathless. “What do you need? Water? Painkillers? Let me call the nurse—”
Pulling his hand from hers, Tim is halfway to the call button when Lucy grabs his hand back, pulling it close to her chest.
“It’s okay, Tim. I’m okay.” Her voice is rough from sleep, but painstakingly gentle.
“What—?”
She runs her thumb over the back of his hand, the same motion she’d used this morning. “You were having a nightmare.”
Oh.
Right.
After he gives her a once-over, Tim slumps forward, his elbows resting on the mattress.
“You’re okay,” he murmurs, trying to remind himself. Even as he says it, he checks again to be certain.
Lucy’s eyes pinch at the corners with sympathy and pain. “More than a little sore, and my head is killing me, but yeah. I’m okay.”
Despite himself, Tim huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, turns out we got matching concussions.”
It kind of just slips out, and he doesn’t realise what he’s said until it’s too late to take it back. Lucy freezes, her eyes widening.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Tim.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” she stresses. “Did you get checked out?”
He nods, trying to reassure her, but it’s undermined by the wave of exhaustion that crashes over him, the day landing heavy on his shoulders all over again. He drops his head into his hands, scrubbing roughly at his face in some attempt to pull himself together.
Lucy runs her hands through his hair, the soft, gentle motions trying to ward off the tendrils of his nightmare and his pain.
“Are you okay?” she asks. He knows she’s not asking about the concussion.
He wants to say yes, because she’s the one in the hospital bed, she’s the one who got stabbed, she’s the one who had her head slammed against metal grating over and over and—
But his hands won’t stop trembling, and he can’t shake the images his subconscious had conjured up in his nightmares. This could’ve ended so much worse.
“What if I hadn’t insisted on riding with you today?” he scrapes out, his voice rough as he lifts his head to look at her. “What if I hadn’t been there? What—what if—?”
“Well it doesn’t matter, because you were,” Lucy interjects.
He’s been trying to tell himself that same thing for hours. It hasn’t worked. “I know, but—”
“You have good instincts, Tim.” Lucy takes his hand again, giving it a gentle squeeze.
He exhales ruefully. “They’re hard-won.”
Lucy’s face twists with sympathy. “I know.”
The room is cloaked in silence after that, and Tim tries to find some peace in the lightness and relief of Lucy’s presence in front of him. She’s alive. She’s going to be fine.
When she shifts slightly beneath the covers in an attempt to get comfortable, her expression pinches, and Tim pushes himself back upright.
“Do you need anything?” he asks.
“Some sleep, probably,” Lucy admits, her gaze landing on the covers as she rubs at the space between her eyebrows. “I don’t think I’m going to get it, though.”
Tim takes one of her hands in his. He knows the feeling.
“We—we got attacked by human zombies, Tim.”
He nods. He’s had hours to think it over, and he’s barely managed to wrap his head around it.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “Sleep. I’ve got you.”
“You should get some rest too.”
He huffs out a laugh. “You saw how well that went.”
When Lucy pulls her hand away, Tim figures she’s trying to get herself comfortable again, and reaches for her pillows to help her out. It’s only when she begins to shift herself to the far edge of the hospital bed that Tim realises what she’s doing.
“Lucy—”
She ignores his protest, pulling back the corner of the covers on the now-empty side. “Get in.”
He freezes. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“As long as you don’t touch here,”—she ghosts a hand over her lower-left torso—“I’ll be fine.”
As much as he wants to, he’s hesitant. “Lucy…”
“Tim, I’m serious,” she doubles down. “This is the only way either of us are going to get any sleep, and you know it.”
The thing is, he does know it. And he’d be lying if he denied the fact that all he wants to do right now is hold her.
With an exhale, Tim gently lowers himself into the bed beside her. He’s barely pulled the cover over himself before Lucy is relaxing into him, settling the back of her head on his chest as he wraps an arm around her shoulders.
“Is this okay?” he murmurs.
Lucy hums, content. “Perfect.”
Despite Lucy’s reassurances, when the room falls silent again, all Tim can ruminate is the what-ifs—all the other forms this moment could’ve taken had he not made the decision he did this morning. He could’ve been completely alone, her body lying cold and still in the morgue; he could’ve been holding her in their bed, helpless as she’s haunted forever by the act of taking a life; or she could’ve been battered and bruised beyond repair, too fragile to wrap his arms around.
But no—Tim made the right call, because he has Lucy in his arms, steady and healing and whole, and he couldn’t be more grateful.