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They’d been sent in on a 10-66. At worst, a 459.
Suspicious Persons and Burglaries were the meat and potatoes of the job, and Tim wasn’t necessarily a fan of anything so bland, but after the extreme highs and lows of recent events, he figured a little middle-of-the-road monotony would help them settle back in.
Things between them were still… tingly.
The smothering heat of wildfire season had entirely permeated the city, and he’d long since given in to blasting the AC on high in the shop. It dried off their sweat between calls, but it did nothing to reduce the fizz in the air when she caught his eye; the sharp burn when her arm brushed against his over the centre console; the warmth that beat through his veins when his mind wandered back, back to the op, back to her apartment…
So he’d taken the burglary call.
The house looked nice from the outside, and the neighbourhood was relatively upscale. There were no cars parked in the drive, and a suspicious person breaking into a home like this would certainly catch the attention of any keen-eyed neighbours.
They’d swept the perimeter and called out, but no one had responded. The side door had opened easily when Lucy tried the handle, and he’d given her a quick nod before following her inside.
She’d announced their presence as they separated to clear the rooms, and he felt his brain split into its situational personas: Gun Tim was on high alert, sweeping every corner and crevice in the room for anything out of the ordinary; Cop Tim was planning ahead, compiling all the information he was seeing and presenting possible scenarios in rapid succession; and Tim Tim was, as usual, listening out for Lucy, catching her shadow as she crept through the rooms, begging one of the other Tims to stay ahead of her, to send her back outside, to get the two of them out of any potential danger and back into the shop. To take her to the food trucks and grab dinner and some drinks, where the biggest threat to either of them was a burned mouth from the fiery chilli tacos and a mildly bruised ego.
He hated that part of himself.
He completely trusted Lucy.
He knew she was an excellent cop.
He would never compromise her integrity - or his own - by backing either of them out of a situation without very justifiable reasons.
And yet.
No matter what he did, what he knew or how he berated himself, that little voice never fully went away. He’d always had it with his rookies - the worry of sending them off into the world underprepared. In one way, having a rookie wash out before promotion was a better feeling: at least then he wasn’t responsible, however indirectly, for anything that happened to them in the future.
But, of course, with Lucy it was always different.
There was no particular moment he could pinpoint as the start of it all, though there were many he remembered in vivid and horrifying detail - slamming the door in her face in the quarantine house; yelling at her in fear at the scene of Officer Rios’ murder; chasing down every pointless dead end while she suffocated slowly in that barrel…
And he’d never even been able to shake her.
He’d made a lame attempt to dodge assigning her as his aide, desperately avoiding reading too much into either Grey’s suggestion or his own reluctance, and breaking down under her persistence nonetheless. And to be honest, he was glad.
He’d never really had a partner, working his way up from rookie to P3 in patrol with a varied assortment of TOs and boots, and thinking he’d been so much better off than the detectives - tied to one other person and their desk, and attached to their cases until the bitter end. Patrol was so much more freeing and straightforward: take the call, catch the bad guys, clock out at end of shift.
And then in waltzed Lucy Chen, and suddenly he was studying for the Sergeants exam, ranking eighth in the state, promoting his last rookie and leaving the FTO programme. And she should have been gone, but she was still there, still beside him every day, and he could argue technicalities until he was blue in the face, but in every way that mattered, she was his partner.
She’d fit into a space in his life that he hadn’t even realised was there, and the few times she’d been missing, her absence had felt like a hole in the very fabric of his existence.
None of these thoughts were particularly new to Tim, floating through his consciousness in pieces at irregular intervals over the last few years. But in light of recent events they’d coalesced into sharper focus, weighing heavily on his mind and in the pit of his stomach, and thumping through his veins with the beating of his heart.
You…Love...Her…
You…Love…Her…
A floorboard squeaked and her elbow brushed against him.
“You okay?” Her foot was on the bottom step of the stairs, but her eyes were on him, concern in the furrow of her brows.
“Yep. Got your six.” He turned to scan the room behind them, following her up the stairs in reverse, burying his thoughts back underneath the priorities of the current moment. She had his back, and he had hers. Just like always.
Dispatch radioed while they climbed the steps - the house belonged to a wannabe app developer that had hit the big time in crypto, pumping and dumping his assets, and leaving his investors in the hole for hundreds of thousands of dollars. He was suspected to be in the Caribbean, living it up on his riches, and only returned to this neighbourhood when he needed to deal with the physical profits of his business.
At the top of the stairs, Lucy signalled left, leaving Tim to take the right. He had only two rooms to clear - a box room and small bedroom - and he was soon tailing Lucy again, quickly scanning a large and cluttered office, and meeting her at the entrance to the master bedroom.
The door was partially open, and a small breeze blew through, stirring the loose strands of hair along her cheekbones. She glanced over at him and he nodded, readying his stance and his gun. It had occurred to him before that some might find their silent communication unusual - at this stage they barely even needed hand signals. But surely that was just the sign of a good working partnership? Someday he’d remember to ask Lopez if that’s how it was with her and Harper. Maybe.
Lucy shoved the door open and he ploughed in, quickly sweeping the whole room, then moving towards the en-suite as Lucy followed behind him. An open window beside the bed was the source of the breeze, and she checked outside, measuring the drop with her eyes as he emerged from the bathroom.
“There’s nothing,” he said, re-holstering his gun as Lucy did the same.
“Dispatch, show us Code 4 at our 459. House was open but nothing appears to be tampered with. No residents present.” Lucy clicked her walkie back into place, leaning over the window sill again. “That’s gotta be at least a twelve foot drop.”
She straightened back up and shook her head, frowning at the open window frame.
“Why break into someone’s house, go all the way upstairs and open a window… then leave without taking anything of value? I mean, we’ve passed computers, TVs, at least three VR sets-”
“Who cares.” He cut her off, gesturing towards the door. “Homeowner’s gotta request an investigation, and it’s up to detectives and forensics after that. Let’s go.”
She rolled her eyes at him, turning and skimming her fingers along the fabric of the bedcovers. He had almost smiled, knowing how it frustrated her when cases weren’t clear cut, and already envisioning a lunch break consisting entirely of wild theories concocted between her and Nolan.
But then he heard the click.
Clearly, so did she, and she froze - thank god she froze - where she stood on the fluffy rug beside the bed.
His entire body had gone rigid, his knees locking in place and his hands extended towards her. His jaw was so tight that his teeth actually hurt, and as his eyes travelled up from her boots on the rug to her outspread hands, mirroring his own, he had to consciously remind himself to breathe.
“...Tim?”
Her voice wavered, and he knew she was forcing herself to stay professional, to stay focused, but it was his name and it was in her mouth and it was asking for everything she wanted him to tell her, and he couldn’t - he couldn’t …
…
He couldn’t give in.
He wouldn’t.
With tremendous effort, he unlocked his seized joints, reaching for his radio and holding her eyes steady with his.
“Dispatch, change our status to Code 6. Suspected 10-79. 7-Adam-100-B is 11-99.”
His brain was working on autopilot, the buzz of acknowledgment from dispatch fading into the background as the codes flashed through his mind.
Stay Out of Area. Bomb Threat. Officer Chen Needs Help.
He pulled the knife from his duty belt and flicked it open, dropping to his knees at Lucy’s feet.
“Tim. You need to stay back.” Her voice was sharp, her hands towards him, fingers spread as if to keep him back. He ignored them and started slicing through the edge of the rug.
“I need to see what’s under this.”
“Tim-”
“It didn’t go off as soon as you stepped on it. Either it’s broken or it’s more sophisticated than it should be. I need to see it to know.”
He was sweating heavily as he sawed at the rug, trails of salt stinging his eyes, the air from the open window making the room hotter rather than cooler around them.
She was maintaining her composure well, but up this close he could see the tremor in her knees, at the tips of her fingers, and he threw the torn-up material of the rug angrily behind him as he bent low to see beneath her foot.
A flat yellow disc, faded Cyrillic scrawled along the edge that disappeared into the shadow below her. He had encountered these before in Afghanistan. Anti-Personnel Mines. Russian or Eastern European. Now sold on the dark web with poorly translated instructions, and available to anyone with a wallet full of crypto.
Only it wasn’t the crypto-thieves that were going to suffer.
It was Lucy.
He swallowed and knelt up, pulling out his radio and calling in the details to dispatch. Sirens shrieked in the distance, the sound getting louder as they neared. No one else could come in until the bomb squad arrived, and there was no knowing how long that would take.
He was supposed to leave.
“You have to get out.”
She was reading his mind again, and he glared up at her, requesting an immediate ETA on the bomb squad over the radio.
“Tim.”
“10-23.”
That’s all they could say to him. 10-23. ‘Stand by.’
“Tim.”
“I know,” he growled, shoving himself to his feet and glaring down at her instead.
“7-Adam-100-A, Bomb Squad ETA is 30 minutes. Advise you to leave the property if safe to do so. Confirm? ”
“7-Adam-100-A, safety of property is unknown. I’m staying put for now.”
“Tim!” Lucy’s eyes were angry, and she almost leaned forward, stopping just as he reached out to halt her, their fingers linking inadvertently in mid-air.
He felt the fury drain from him immediately, replaced by the cold weight of fear, squeezing heavily against the warmth he always, always, felt now when he looked at her.
He knew her well enough to recognise the same reaction in her; her scowl disappearing as her face dropped and her eyes widened. Her fingers curled around his, latching on to him, and he tightened his grip in response.
“You have to go.” Her voice was breathy, her words at odds with the way her fingers clutched his hand.
“You know that’s not going to happen.”
Her eyes grew bright, tears shimmering along her lashes, and for a second he thought she might suck it all up and yell at him. Instead, she dropped her head, the tears sliding down her cheeks and dripping heavily to the floor.
“Please. Please, Tim.” She was whispering to the ground, and he had to move closer to even hear her. “Please don’t make me be responsible for this… for you-”
She didn’t want to finish the sentence, and he wasn’t going to let her.
“Shhh.”
He skimmed his fingers along her jaw, barely touching her skin, but she raised her face to him, and there was no shock or surprise there. Only sadness.
Her face was so familiar to him - the smooth lines of her jaw, the bright rise of her cheekbones, the gentle arch of her eyebrows. Her warm, perceptive eyes. Her full, smiling lips.
Without realising it, he was brushing his thumb along her lower lip, and she closed her eyes, leaning into his palm. It could have been a kiss, what she pressed into his hand, but it was light, so light; as light as his fingers against her cheek, and he wasn’t going to ask any more of her.
The sound of sirens had finally ceased, but now there was the burble of voices outside the house, squad cars pulling up along the street as the area was cordoned off. No one was likely to come in yet, and with a lurch he remembered that their bodycams were probably accessible now to anyone in the area with clearance. Fortunately, they were standing close enough that all that should be visible would be the other camera, but he still tipped a finger against her chin, inclining his head towards the device on her uniform. She nodded, closing her eyes and slowly lifting her head away from his hand.
Their joined hands would be out of frame, and neither of them made a move to let go of the other, even as Tim took a half-step back from her, his eyes never leaving her face.
“Bradford, this is Grey.” The walkie on his hip crackled loudly, and he reached for it with his free hand. “Troops are outside your location. Are you still inside with Chen? ”
“Affirmative, sir.” His eyes held Lucy’s, and she set her jaw stubbornly as she watched him. “The house seemed clear on our first sweep, but I’m not taking any more chances.”
“Understood. Keep our girl calm, help is on the way.”
Tim almost felt smug as he tucked his radio back into his belt, and there was a hint of humour under the sour look Lucy was shooting at him. He shrugged mildly at her.
“What? Grey agrees with me.”
“Yeah, well, Grey doesn’t know the whole story.”
She went rigid at her own words, her mouth slightly open and her eyes wide and locked on him. He was a little surprised himself, but she wasn’t wrong. She wasn’t wrong.
He squeezed her fingers gently.
“Grey’s been doing this job a long time. He knows enough.”
It was true. Tim wasn’t an idiot, and Grey certainly wasn’t either. There was no way the Sergeant hadn’t picked up on Tim’s uncharacteristic attachment to his last rookie, or hers to him. They were always professional, especially in public, but there had been more occasions than Tim cared to remember when Grey had thrown him a deeply inquisitive side-eye after catching them in yet another provocative verbal sparring match.
“Why didn’t it go off?”
Lucy’s quiet question pulled him from his reverie, and he followed her gaze down to the ragged remains of the rug below her feet.
It was a good question. Mines were supposed to explode on contact, not give you an opportunity to escape. He knew from torturous experience that their very purpose was to maim and injure as many people as quickly as possible, so the fact that both he and Lucy were still here and still whole lead to more questions than he could even begin to think of right now.
“If we’re optimistic, it means it’s a dud.” He squeezed her fingers again, and she lifted her head to look at him. He felt her grip tighten around his hand.
“And if we’re not? If we’re pessimistic?” She had pulled herself together after the initial shock and tears, but he could still see the fear swimming in the depths of her eyes.
“C’mon. Lucy Chen is never pessimistic. She doesn’t even know how.”
That warranted a resigned smile, a breath that might have been a chuckle. He had her knuckles raised to his lips before he even realised what he was doing.
Her eyes fluttered closed and her grip relaxed in his. He decided he didn’t care anymore if anyone was watching their cams, and he pulled her hand into his chest, close over his heart.
“Tim…” Her voice was just a breath, and he closed the small space between them again quickly. She shook her head once, eyes still downcast, words barely a whisper.
“You have to get out of here.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Tim.”
“It’s not happening, forget it.”
“Tim, stop-”
“Lucy-”
“No!”
Their voices had raised gradually in volume, and she shouted her last words at him, startling him with her frustration. There was a flush creeping up her cheeks, and she was glaring at him angrily.
“I’m not going to be responsible for you getting blown up. Just get out of here, now!”
He squinted at her in confusion, shaking his head irritably.
“What do you… I’m responsible for you. I’m not going to just leave you here.”
It didn’t escape his notice that despite both of their words, neither of them had let go - or even loosened - the fingers in their joined hands.
Lucy blew out a long breath, her unfocused gaze directed somewhere at their feet.
“Tim…”
“7-Adam-100, be advised, Bomb Squad is less than 10 minutes out.”
He yanked out his radio and quickly acknowledged the message, struggling for a second to shove the device back into his belt without breaking eye contact with Lucy. She followed his movements, her mouth set in a stoic, flat line.
“Tim.”
The way she was looking at him was worrying. He was the one with her hand on his chest, but the way she said his name, the look in her eyes… It was too much.
“Can we not do this now?” he asked, half in resignation, half in fear of what she was actually going to say.
Her face didn’t change, but something flickered behind her eyes.
“Tim…”
He moved as close as he dared, leaving nothing but a sliver of air between them.
“I know.” He took in her upturned face, her bright eyes, the small breath that escaped her lips. “Me too.”
***
The Bomb Squad arrived exactly when they were supposed to, but sending in first a recon drone, followed by a heavily suited research technician took almost another hour. No-one suggested that Tim leave, or even that he release Lucy’s hand, which surprised him more than anything. Back in the Middle East, his job would have been to immediately reduce the amount of potential casualties in the vicinity. He didn’t know if it had something to do with Grey, or if it was just new protocol, but if they weren’t going to ask him, then he certainly wasn’t going to offer.
He stayed holding her hand as a second technician arrived, the two of them rooting around under the rug and snipping off as much of the material around her foot as they could.
A series of unsophisticated metal bars and sandbags were brought in, slowly replacing the weight of Lucy’s body on the pins of the device until, with a communal intake of breath, she removed her foot entirely from the rug.
For a moment, all was still and silent.
Then, the first technician: “Officer clear.”
He hadn’t intended to, but Tim found himself leaning over, wrapping his arms around her and lifting her bodily over the device and the heads of the two technicians. Her arms clasped easily around his neck, and when he turned to set her down, he felt her weight drop heavily against him as her knees gave out. He swung her up into his arms, hoisting her above the clumsy bulk of his duty belt, and all but ran with her out of the room, crossing the upstairs landing in a few quick strides and dropping the two of them onto the bed of the small guest room on the opposite side of the house. He leaned up on his elbow, kicking out with his foot at the door and slamming it closed against any potential explosion, before collapsing back onto the bed beside her, his breath short and his heart hammering in his chest.
She was safe.
She was alive.
She was here.
…You…Love…Her…
Without thinking, he reached up and unscrewed the bodycam from the centre of his chest, tossing it carelessly to the ground beside the bed. For one moment, their eyes met, held, the air still and heavy between them.
Then she did the same, throwing the camera across him and swinging her leg over his hips.
He didn’t have time to lift his head before her mouth was colliding with his, her lips and teeth insistent against him. He didn’t resist, opening up to her and pulling her face even closer with the hand that had somehow wound its way in through the tight bun of her hair. He could feel tears somewhere, the salt sharp against their tongues, and they might have been hers, or they might have been his, but he didn’t care. She was alive and breathing and whole and she was here, in his arms, and she was his.
When the immediate heat of the kiss wore off, she tucked her face silently into his neck, wisps of hair tickling his jaw, and he held her tight against him, one arm wrapped under and around her, the other stroking the soft skin of her cheek. Her leg was still curled over his hip where they lay on the bed, and as the stress of the afternoon bled out of his body and exhaustion crept in, he felt as if he could lie there with her forever.
Eventually the call came in.
All clear.
The bomb had been a dud.
She sat up first, slowly disentangling herself from him and smoothing back loose strands of hair behind her ears. He followed suit, staying close to where she was curled on the bed, her feet tucked under her. He watched her for a moment, then turned to reach down for their bodycams, but her hand on his shoulder stopped him.
Her lips wavered, for once no words coming out, and he reached up his thumb to rub a small smudge of mascara from under her eye.
“I know,” he said, leaning over to press one last, soft kiss against her lips.
Then he stood, and so did she, and they left the room to a flurry of uniformed activity, their friends and colleagues grappling them into bear hugs and firing questions at them from all directions.
They’d understand that he was tired. That she was shaken.
They’d give them space. They’d give them time.
And besides, the only thing he could clearly hear was the thumping of his heart in his veins:
…You…Love…Her…
…You…Love…Her…