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By the time Lucy’s sitting in the driver’s seat of a stolen car with Dahrio Salonga and some henchman named Half Life, Nova Lin feels more than familiar. She’s spent more than a week in that dusty motel room with nothing to entertain herself except Nova’s mannerisms and routines and clothes and backstory, and it’s given her ample time to ensure Officer Chen is tucked neatly inside her box, squared away in the back of her mind. Her one tether to herself has been her 9 a.m. and midnight check-ins with Harper, brief, to-the-point and, until now, of absolutely zero substance.
Things went from zero to one hundred before she could even blink. One minute, she’s bringing her fake laundry basket back from the communal machines, the next she’s handing over her phone to the people she’d been starting to think weren’t going to show and being herded out into a car where, thus far, her only instruction has been to drive straight.
Now that she’s managed to get her bearings, Nova knows she needs to scope out her situation, get some kind of a hold on it.
“As the driver, it would be helpful to know where I’m going,” she says, eyeing the familiar streets. It’s hard to undo the muscle memory, her gaze flitting to the sidewalks as though she’s driving a patrol beat, the part of her that’s tucked away missing the reliable presence of chatter on the radio.
“You seem nervous,” Half Life observes from the backseat. He looks like he’s a guitarist in an indie rock band, and Lucy’s met more intimidating eight year olds, so it’s just as well that Nova Lin isn’t scared of him, either.
She rolls her eyes, glancing up in the rearview. “Nah, it’s every girl’s dream to drive to an undisclosed location with two armed men.”
“Relax,” Salonga says. “We just need to pick up ingredients for the cook.”
The cook. There’s no pre-amble, then, no build-up. Looks like she did her job right in that motel, they trust what they’ve been observing for the last week, and now they’re jumping right into it.
It’s good that they tentatively trust her already, but ideally, she’d have some way of communicating this development to Harper.
“‘Pick up’,” she echoes. “You mean steal.”
“Just keep driving straight.”
Even as Nova reluctantly follows her instructions, she does her best to talk her way out of it in the way that a chemist out on bail would, trying not to get her hands dirty in a heist, while the cop in her tries to avoid getting any innocent people tangled up in it, offering an alternative solution to their current plan. But the men in the car aren’t swayed, and she’s still driving blind through the city to an unknown destination when the clock starts ticking in the back of her mind.
If the cops respond to a 911 call or silent alarm while they’re robbing the place, this op is over before it’s even begun. She needs to think of something.
She draws blank after blank after blank as she speeds down the street, slowly beginning to resign herself to the possibility of this op being an irritating dead end—until she spots the shop pulled over on the sidewalk up ahead.
Perfect.
Making a split-second decision, Nova puts her foot down, accelerating through the intersection and getting too close to an oncoming car, before making a show of swerving back into her lane. Just like she’d planned, the red and blue lights now in her rearview start to flicker instantly, the siren a familiar, comforting song as the shop makes a U-turn in pursuit.
She rolls her eyes for the benefit of her audience as she pulls over, glancing up at her mirror.
“Damn it,” Nova mutters, even as relief courses through Lucy’s veins at the familiar faces. It’s Jackson and Tim.
The sense of relief is quickly shattered when the click of a gun catches her attention. She turns her head to see Salonga pointing his weapon towards the door.
“Lean back in your seat,” he says.
Lucy doesn’t move an inch, ice flooding her veins. “What are you doing?” she hisses.
“You’re out on bail, Half Life’s got a warrant, and this ride is stolen,” he says simply. “There’s no way these cops are gonna let us go.”
No. No, no, no. Absolutely the hell not.
Salonga flits his gaze to the backseat, directing his next instructions to Half Life. “When I pop this guy, bail out and cap his partner—”
“Wait—!” The word slips out far too quick, before she even has a plan, but she can’t let this happen. Lucy tries to swallow some of the desperation in her tone as she tries to think. “Wait, wait, wait. Before we start shooting cops in broad daylight, can we… just—let me try something, okay?”
Salonga doesn’t look convinced. “What?”
“Flirting,” she blurts out. Salonga’s eyes narrow with uncertainty, but when she glances at her side mirror to see Tim climbing out of his shop, she relaxes a little. “I haven’t gotten a ticket since I was sixteen; I know how to get out of them, okay? Just trust me.”
She manages to wrestle her voice into something convincing enough that Salonga settles back in his seat, his gun lowering into his lap, and Lucy exhales. As Tim approaches, she lowers her window, her heart pounding.
There are two armed criminals in the car with her, using Nova Lin as a pawn to reach their endgame. They might need her, but she isn’t exactly valuable to them, and she can’t afford to let her guard down for even a single second. Lucy Chen cannot slip through the cracks. The cop approaching Nova is a threat to everything she’s trying to rebuild.
But against her better judgement, Lucy lets herself relax in the familiarity of Tim’s presence, just a fraction, just for this fleeting moment. He knows the game they’re playing, and he won’t let anything go wrong while he’s at her side.
A small, polite smile settles onto Nova’s expression. “I’m sorry, Officer. Was I going too fast?”
It’s strange, being on the receiving end of Tim’s sternness as an ‘offender’, and not his boot, or his friend. No doubt it’s weird for him, too, but he remains remarkably steady. “Yes, ma’am. You almost caused an accident.”
She leans forward, placing her hand on the door. “We’re in a hurry,” she says, letting her voice soften audibly. “It’s my brother’s birthday, and I haven’t gotten any party supplies.”
She doesn’t place any emphasis on the message, but she trusts Tim will convey it to Harper all the same. They’ll be able to put two-and-two together.
Meeting her right where she’s trying to steer their interaction, Tim leans forward too, glancing at the other occupants of the car as he rests his own hand on the door. “License and registration, please.”
“C’mon,” Nova says, folding her other hand over his. “You don’t really need that, do you?”
To his credit, Tim plays the part surprisingly well, his gaze flitting down to their hands for a brief moment as he visibly hesitates.
“You should come to the party after work,” she continues. “We’d have fun.”
He shifts on his feet like he’s considering her proposition, gaze returning to their hands. Lucy lets herself cherish the contact, the brief connection to her real life while it’s still, literally, in her hands. As soon as Tim gets back in his car, as soon as they both drive away, there’s no telling when she’ll see him again, or when she’ll be Lucy Chen again. It could be days, it could be weeks… there’s no certainty, so selfishly and foolishly, she wants this moment to last as long as it can.
In the wake of that reflection, she probably holds their eye contact for longer than she needs to.
Over the years, she and Tim have exchanged thousands of conversations in complete silence, a quick look or a pointed stare simply another part of their shorthand. By now, his eyes are a steady, familiar anchor—an ocean blue lightning strike of familiarity that she shouldn’t feel as Nova Lin. As soon as she catches herself leaning into it, Lucy tries to seal herself back in her box, letting the chemist play her game as she waits for Officer Bradford to make his final move.
By the time she’s registered the crack of the gunshot, he’s already staggering backwards.
His hand slips from beneath hers, and Lucy has to swallow the cry of his name that almost rips from her throat as he yells out in agony. Blood blooms across the front of his uniform, navy wool darkening sickeningly quick as he folds like a ragdoll, hitting the ground like it’s her second day all over again.
She’s paralysed, her blood freezing solid as her hearing cuts out. Red is already spilling onto the asphalt beneath him, his life weaving between the cracks. In her blurring periphery, Lucy clocks the flecks spattered across the window and the car’s worn interior.
Jackson’s yelling pierces through the ringing in her ears as he sprints around the back of the car, the world widening just enough for gravity to hit.
Officer down. Officer down.
Lucy’s hand is reaching towards the door before she even thinks about it.
Tim.
“Drive!”
Slammed back into reality at Salonga’s shout, she blinks. Remembers where she is, what she’s doing, whose identity she’s supposed to be wearing.
“Hey!” He shoves at her shoulder, forcing her back against her seat, the air pushed from her lungs. “Are you deaf?! Move!”
Nova puts her hands on the wheel, pressing her foot down, and the tyres screech at the same frequency as the alarms blaring in her skull as she leaves Tim behind.
As the blocks pass by in an incoherent blur, all she can hear is the incessant pounding of her heartbeat in her ears. Lucy tries to claw her way back to Nova Lin, but—but Nova Lin’s skin has Tim’s blood on it. She clocks it staining the back of her hand where it had been resting over his, follows it down her arm, flecks of red marring the sage green jacket. She swears she can feel it on her neck, too, and fights the urge to scrub at every inch of her skin until it’s raw.
In the corner of her eye, Salonga’s gun catches the sunlight where it still rests in his lap, and Lucy swallows. She knows all too well that she needs to pull herself together. Nova doesn’t know Tim, or Officer Bradford—it doesn’t matter that Lucy does, because right now, she’s not Lucy. If any part of Nova slips, she’s as good as dead, and Tim got shot for nothing.
“What the fuck did you just do?” she bites.
“I just saved our asses,” Salonga says. “Now keep driving.”
“You—you—” In spite of her best efforts to get her head back in the game, the panic is a hand crushing her windpipe. Even though he’s blocks away by now, the streets widening between their car and the distant ambulance sirens, every time Lucy glances up, she watches Tim’s eyes roll back in the rearview mirror, his body a retreating mirage, crumpled in the middle of the street. “You could’ve shot me,” she manages to finish.
Salonga isn’t fazed. “I told you to lean back, didn’t I?”
“And I told you not to go shooting cops in broad daylight,” she spits back, grateful that her overwhelming anxiety is coming out the same colour as anger. “I was handling it.”
“Not quickly enough. Watch your tone.” When he shoots her a cold side-eye, Salonga’s gaze sticks on her for far too long, and Lucy’s skin prickles under the weight of it. She tries to keep her eyes on the road, trying not to let it show on her face how she can see Tim folding to the ground just outside her window in her peripheral vision.
His hand had been steady beneath hers, there, just like he always is, and then it was gone.
What if leaving him wasn’t the right idea? Should she have pulled the plug to help him? God, he could be dying, or—or already fucking dead, and here she is, soldiering on, none the wiser.
Tim could be dead.
Her breath catches against her will, and she swallows the wave of nausea crawling up her throat.
“You get used to it,” Salonga says suddenly, his voice startlingly calm. Nova jolts, glancing over to see him looking out at the world beyond the windshield, like Lucy’s didn’t just change.
“Used to what?” she says, her voice tight.
“Watching people go down.”
As Lucy, she should be used to it by now. She’s seen it enough times; hell, the first person she ever saw get shot was Tim, so this isn’t a new experience in any respect. There’s just something about the close proximity, how his eyes had been on hers before they’d screwed shut in agony, how she’d been holding his hand before it slipped from under her grip, how Tim means something different to her now than he did all that time ago, how this was entirely preventable if she’d been smart enough to not trust the criminal in her passenger seat.
The guilt is a cresting tidal wave, seconds away from dragging her into the undertow and swallowing her alive.
But Nova can work with the assumption.
“Never seen it up close like that before,” she exhales. “I’m—I’m a chemist, not a killer.”
The Freudian slip makes her head spin. A killer. Like Tim’s already dead.
Salonga’s face stretches with a sickening, pitying smile. “You’re a cook. There’s not that much in it.” He settles back in his seat. “Consider yourself lucky he was just a cop.”
Her hands tighten around the wheel, knuckles turning white. “What do you mean?” she forces out.
“Lot harder to swallow when it’s someone you know.” Salonga keeps staring out the windshield like he hasn’t just hit the nail on the head, and Nova shifts her hands on the wheel, trying to force them to relax.
But the tension in her hands just makes the flecks of blood on her skin stand out even worse, and her stomach turns again.
She’s still second guessing her decision to leave the scene. Even if it’s not necessarily too late to make a U-turn, it’s been long enough that she’d get a bullet to the skull before they made it even close to that intersection. Not to mention that Tim’s probably already in the ambulance by now—if he made it inside in the first place.
He better have. No case is worth her life, is what Harper had drilled into her, and if that’s true, then no case is worth Tim’s, either.
Paying attention to Salonga’s drip-fed directions as she drives, Lucy fights against her every instinct screaming at her to turn around until they’re pulling into the loading dock of Sutherland Chemical.
For half a second, she lets herself be relieved at the idea of a reprieve. She’ll get to stay out here ‘on lookout’, taking a moment to properly pull herself together while Salonga, Half Life, and the men that have been waiting for them rob the place.
Her dream is shattered when Salonga hands her a plastic mask. “Alright. Here we go,” he says.
She freezes. “Why do I have to go in? I can just write down what I need. I’m a cook, not a crook.”
“You’re whatever I say you are.” Salonga’s tone leaves no room for argument, and Nova takes the mask reluctantly, curling her fingers firmly around it in the hopes that they stop shaking.
“If anybody gets hurt, I’m out.” She recognises the futility of that when her gaze lands back on the bloodstains on her sleeve.
Tim’s blood.
She’d been stupid enough to trust that she’d talked Salonga out of his plan. She’d been holding Tim’s hand, her guard lowered an irresponsible fraction, and now—now she has to wear the agonising proof of her mistake for the rest of this op.
The spiral is already threatening to pull her all the way back under when Salonga huffs. “If you hadn’t noticed, we’re past that already. And that’s not how it works—you can’t only be in the game a little. Now, come on.”
Knowing she doesn’t have a choice, she climbs out of the car, trailing at the back of the group as they break inside.
For a few minutes, the familiar jolt of adrenaline is enough to block out the past. She convinces herself the pounding of her heart rattling her ribcage is just the rush of the op, and has nothing to do with the panic clawing a black hole in her stomach at the memory of the blood blooming across Tim’s shirt.
She pays just enough attention to clock the security camera by the door, Officer Chen’s voice murmuring from her box that she can’t cross the threshold with stolen property. She has enough wherewithal to abandon the barrel and grab Half Life, leaving Salonga to commit the felony.
While they’re leaving with their supplies, the spatter of blood that she spots on the driver’s side door means Lucy doesn’t clock that they’re abandoning their old car entirely until she sees the masked men loading the trunk of their switch vehicle. Yanking open the door, she folds herself into the driver’s seat as the car shakes against the weight of the trunk slamming shut.
Ripping her mask off, Nova sets both hands on the wheel, the empty seconds giving her enough time to stare at the blood on her sleeve. The edges of her vision warp at the sight of it, the panic pressing down on her chest, and she moves to adjust the side mirror in some attempt to tear her focus away—only to catch her reflection and find that there’s blood on her face, too.
The nausea becomes a screaming, deafening roar, and her heart begins to slam against the confines of her ribcage again. Lucy tries to wipe at the mark with her sleeve, the sleeve that still has his fucking blood on it, too, and it just makes it worse, the blood smearing, and, God, Tim—
“Still squirming over a little blood?” The slam of the passenger side door sends a jolt through her, and Nova whips her head around as Salonga pulls a rag from the glove compartment, exasperated. It’s dusty and old, but it’s not bloodstained, so she accepts it from him with a roll of her eyes, trying to stay in Nova’s skin, overplaying the disgust to mask her desperation as she scrubs until her skin is turning red of its own accord. “We’ve got what you need. Time to start thinking about the cook.”
He’s right—even if it’s for the wrong reasons. She needs to keep her head in the fucking game. She already pushed her luck inside the chemical plant, refusing to push the chemicals the rest of the way out the door, and she knows she’s one wrong move from Salonga catching on.
She’s too far into this. She can’t mess this up now, and not just for her own sake. When she drove away, in some way she chose this op over Tim’s life. If she fucks it up and he’s dead when she resurfaces, it would’ve all been for nothing. She’d never forgive herself.
The last thing he would’ve done was touch her hand.
This time, Lucy really does almost throw up at the thought, and switches to scrubbing at the fabric of her jacket like it’ll do anything. Some of the blood crusts off, but the stain remains exactly where it is.
“Ruined a perfectly good jacket,” she snaps, tossing the rag into the footwell.
Salonga just shrugs, uncaring. “Once you’ve done what we’ve asked, your cut of the money will buy you a hundred more.” His words are punctuated by the slam of the back door as Half Life climbs in. “Alright, let’s move.”
When she turns the key in the ignition and the engine roars to life, she forces it to drown out the worst-case scenarios plaguing the back of her mind as she pulls away.
There’s no clock in the run-down lab they’ve provided her for the cook, but Lucy knows midnight must have come and gone a while ago. Harper must be beginning to worry, but she can’t risk calling for her check-in. There’s a man with a gun posted up just beyond the plastic sheeting, there to make sure she doesn’t run off with their precious product, and it’s too quiet in here to have any hope of disguising a phone call.
A small part of her can’t deny that it’s probably for the best. If she hears Harper’s voice, she’s going to want to find some way to ask about Tim, and if she can’t do that, she’s going read too far into the detective’s tone, or the words she uses, drawing conclusions to fill in the blanks of the worst-case scenarios already spinning through her mind.
As she works methodically and slowly, her mind flickers back to that moment with every other blink, the silence not doing anything to quash the memories. The warmth of Tim’s hand beneath hers; the steady weight of his stare; the sound of the gunshot slicing through her skull as the bullet sliced through him; the way he’d crumpled like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
She swears she can still feel his blood on her skin even now, even after she’s washed and scrubbed and dried her hands and arms and face and neck relentlessly. Tim’s her person, the one who keeps her steady, and grounded, her reliable anchor, and now…
Now he might not be there whenever she makes it home.
He could already be in the morgue. Maybe he never made it off that street. Maybe the flecks of blood soaked into Nova’s jacket are the last pieces of him Lucy will ever get to keep.
The thoughts obscure themselves in the shadows, avoiding the thin strips of moonlight stretching across the floor, materialising in the split-second moments of darkness when the bulb above her head flickers. They loom at the edges of her vision, curling in closer with the exhaustion as it starts to fog her mind.
It’s getting hard to focus. She’s supposed to be moving slowly for a thousand different reasons—to stall the product making it out; so she doesn’t blow anything up; so she doesn’t miss anything going on outside—but stacked beneath the exhaustion and her mounting anxiety and the fact that her mind has been spinning at a million miles an hour since this morning, she knows they must be growing suspicious.
Her theory is confirmed when Salonga comes to check on her in what must be the early hours of the morning. The first thing she clocks is the gun tucked into his waistband, the one that had pierced a bullet through Tim, and at the sight of it, her exhaustion and fear become almost overwhelming in their enormity. Nova is recklessly short with him, and ends up taking an elbow to the face.
Everything goes south alarmingly quick after that.
Gunshots sound from outside. Bodies fall. La Fiera materialises, and somewhere amidst the chaos, Lucy murmurs a hurried message into her phone before stashing it. Everything after that is blurred by the rush of adrenaline—Salonga goes down, and Nova almost manages to talk her way into cooking for La Fiera, when the woman’s gaze lingers on her for several moments too long, looking at her with a little too much familiarity.
“You look familiar to me,” La Fiera says, taking a slow step closer.
Lucy’s stomach drops, dread swirling into a hollow pit as ice winds through her veins. “I can’t imagine why. We’ve never met.”
The woman’s steely gaze narrows. “I’m not so sure.” With one flick of her wrist, Nova finds herself swallowing against the pressure of a gun pressed to her jaw. “I have a very good memory for faces,” she says.
Nova raises her hands, slowly, carefully. “I—I swear, I’d remember you. You’re unforgettable,” she stammers, making sure to not meet her eye. “I’m just a nobody.”
The tension is broken when more noise comes from outside, and with the distraction, Lucy snatches her opportunity, taking the gun and turning it around.
La Fiera raises her hands, frustrated. “You’re not a nobody, are you?”
“No,” she pants. “I’m a cop, and you’re under arrest.”
“You stole my line,” Lopez smiles as she pushes her way in, followed by Harper and half a dozen cops.
At the promise of imminent safety, Lucy’s adrenaline begins to ebb almost instantly, and her shoulders slump as she blows out a breath. Harper comes for her right as Nova begins to slip.
“You okay?”
She’s exhausted, and her heart is pounding uncomfortably fast, and she’d probably been about three seconds away from having her brain matter painted across the concrete ceilings.
“Fine,” she says dismissively. Now she’s back in Lucy’s skin, the box tucked in the back of her mind flies open, her mind screaming for one thing. “Tim,” she gets out. “How’s Tim?”
Harper’s face softens like she knew this was coming, and a gentle hand lands on her shoulder. “He’s alive,” she promises. “He’s okay.”
The vice that’s been clenched around her heart for hours finally loosens some of its grip. “Can I—can I see him?”
“He just got out of surgery not too long ago,” Harper says. “I’ll run you over to St. Stephen’s after your debrief, if you want.”
Right. Debrief. Goddammit.
She nods adamantly anyway. “Please.”
She has to wait a little longer, but Tim’s alive. That’s enough to keep her going.
By the time Nyla drops Lucy outside Tim’s hospital room with a pat on the shoulder and one final—denied—offer to take her home for some sleep instead, it’s somewhere around 6 a.m. It’s been well over 24 hours since she last slept, and her adrenaline is taking one hell of a nosedive, her hands trembling for a thousand different reasons as she shuffles into the room.
The corner of her mind that’s been screaming for Tim for hours finally falls quiet at the sight of him. Even his six-foot-two frame looks uncharacteristically small in the hospital bed, his skin pale against the stark white linens, his commanding presence dwarfed by wires and monitors.
But there’s something about the sunrise creeping in through the gaps in the blinds that makes him look peaceful, too, and when Lucy finally slumps into the chair at his bedside, some of the tension in her chest unwinds.
She doesn’t plan on falling asleep. She intends to sit down and wait until he opens his eyes, wanting to talk to him for the first time in almost two weeks and see for herself that he’s okay. The steady monotone beep of his electrocardiogram is a surprisingly reassuring lullaby, though, and the concrete reminder that he’s safe and alive drains the last of her adrenaline until she’s pulled into a dreamless sleep against her will, curled up in the plastic chair.
When she wakes up, Lucy isn’t sure where she is. She’s enveloped in a thick fog, and a lot of things are making a lot of muffled noise. One of them might be her alarm, or a family outside her motel room, or distant traffic, or—
She jolts awake when a distant door slams.
A low, tired chuckle comes from beside her. “Morning.”
Lucy’s head snaps up at the familiar voice, her neck protesting immediately, but the ache is dulled by the blue eyes looking right at her.
“Tim,” she breathes.
He’s still pale, blinking slowly against the sunlight now glaring through the windows. She must’ve been asleep for a while. Her neck definitely feels it, and she rolls it with a wince, trying to rub away some of the tension.
“Harper told me you missed your check-in last night,” he says. “Tried to get them to let me join the search, but…” He gestures to all the wires with a huff. “You okay?”
She almost scoffs, but she’s also pretty sure she could cry with relief at the sight of him. Of course he’s worried about her when he’s the one in the hospital bed. “I did,” she confirms, “but—but I’m fine. Are you?”
He shoots her a small, tired smirk. “Sad I missed that party.”
Lucy huffs, a smile pulling at her lips. “Probably for the best; the cops showed up and shut it down anyway.”
Tim starts to laugh before immediately wincing, his hand flying up to press against his side.
“Hey.” She leans forward, settling a hand on his bed, already searching for the call button. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” he grits out, trying to breathe through the wave of pain. Lucy finds she wants to reach out and smooth the pained lined forming on his pinched expression. “I’m fine. Just… no more jokes.”
This time, her laugh comes out slightly strained. “Got it.” She waits until Tim settles back down before voicing the guilt that’s been eating her alive. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t stop him. I tried to talk him out of it—I—I thought I did, I—”
Tim cuts her off with a sharp shake of his head. “No, Chen.” His voice is firm and insistent, her training officer creeping back in at the edges. “If you push too hard as a UC, you end up dead. You did the right thing.”
“The right thing got you shot, Tim.”
He shrugs, far too blasé for the situation at hand. “I’m still alive, aren’t I?”
She glares at him, and his gaze softens.
His eyes sparkle in the sunlight, and it’s only in that moment that Lucy realises that at some point, her hand has found his again, her fingertips gently covering his. For a split second, the weight of the memory almost makes her flinch, but they’re not Nova and Officer Bradford anymore.
She could pull away, but… she doesn’t want to. Not right now.
If Tim has noticed the contact, he hasn’t given any indication. “Look,” he says, blue eyes boring into hers. “Two major drug traffickers on your first solo op? You did good, Chen.”
She smiles at the unexpected compliment. “Thank you.” She blows out a slow breath. “Honestly, it—it’s a miracle I made it through the day. I spent the whole time wondering if I should’ve pulled the plug the moment you got shot.”
Tim doesn’t hesitate. “You did one hell of a job holding yourself together. And for what it’s worth, I’m glad you didn’t pull the plug,” he says. “It all worked out.”
She nods, trying to let herself believe it now that it’s coming from him. “It did.”
His hand twitches beneath hers, and Lucy freezes, waiting for him to pull away now that he’s noticed the point of contact. He doesn’t.
“Although I think Lopez might be moving her wedding to next weekend,” he says. “Apparently she refuses to have it without her ‘man of honour’.”
“Thank God,” Lucy exhales without thinking. She laughs when Tim gives her a funny look. “After today, I need to go home and sleep for, like, two days, minimum. The thought of being all dolled up for a wedding tomorrow is unbearable.”
Tim nods in understanding. “Fair enough.”
“Plus, it leaves some time for this to heal.” She gestures to the ugly bruise beside her eye where Salonga had elbowed her, and she catches the moment Tim clocks it for the first time, his eyes blowing wide. She cuts him off before he can voice his worry. “And, you know, burnt toast theory and all.”
Tim just gives her a slow blink. “The what theory?”
“You know, burnt toast theory. One unfortunate thing—burning your toast and being late for work, or you getting shot and your best friend moving her wedding—ends up avoiding a worse outcome.”
“Right.” He doesn’t look convinced. “Sure.”
She curls her hand a little tighter over his without even thinking about it as she smiles in soft exasperation, and Tim’s expression softens in turn.
“You look exhausted,” he says.
“You’ve looked better, too.” Tim just rolls his eyes, not allowing her the deflection, and she sighs. “I’m fine.”
“Go get some sleep, Chen.”
“I did.”
“I mean at home, in your own bed, not a plastic chair.”
She should. She’s beyond exhausted, and her own bed sounds amazing right now, but for some reason, she doesn’t want to leave. She’s just spent the most hellish twelve-plus hours of her life thinking Tim was either dying or dead, and now that he’s finally in front of her, alive and awake, moving from his side is the last thing she wants to do.
She shakes her head. “I’m good right here.”
“I bet your neck begs to differ.”
Well, it does now that he’s brought it up, but there’s no need to voice that. Instead, she just shoots him a look and moves on. “They tell you how long you’re going to be off work?”
The corner of his mouth raises in a smirk. “Missing me already?”
Yes. “Looking forward to getting back to normal,” she says. “And, unfortunately, my version of ‘normal’ includes you.” Her exhaustion smooths out every hard edge of the snark she’d been hoping to portray, the sentiment ultimately coming out far too honest.
“Now you’ll know how I’ve felt for the last two weeks.” The pain meds are clearly creeping up on Tim—the pair of them really are a sight for sore eyes. “Think they’re keeping me prisoner for a few more days, and after that it’s sounding like desk duty for a few more weeks.”
“But you’ll be alright for the wedding?”
“I’ll be upright,” he says, “but I might have to put a raincheck on any dancing.”
“That’s fine,” Lucy says, the involuntary grin stretching across her face. “You can write me an IOU.”
Tim’s smile matches hers as he chuckles. “Duly noted.”
As their quiet laughter fades, their eyes find each other again, and Lucy becomes overwhelmed with gratitude that she didn’t lose this, that she didn’t lose him. Her person. Tim’s still here, still breathing, a steady presence at her side, and she finds herself praying that he really is as indestructible as he seems to think he is.
The silence becomes a comforting blanket draped over the two of them, and it’s only then that she realises her hand is still curled over his, and neither of them have made to pull away.