Chapter Text
‘Officer Chen, a word, please.’
If there’s one thing he still knows how to do, it’s using his voice to elicit the exact reaction he needs from her. It’s not so much what he’s saying, as the way he says it. He’s able to ground her, startle her, comfort her, alert her, motivate or discourage her with only the slightest change of intonation. Now, he pulls the stern voice card, his TO voice, making her stop in her tracks as she makes a beeline to the locker room. It’s not that he wouldn’t follow her in there. Right now, there’s no doubt in his mind he would do exactly that. But as he passes the interrogation rooms, he thinks better of it. They’ll have more privacy like this. And if anyone sees them taking a minute to talk privately in here, they probably wouldn’t think anything of it. Or, more accurately, they wouldn’t think anything more than they already do.
If Thorsen’s comments lately are any indication, he’s pretty sure he’s doing a shit job of hiding how he feels. People are probably aware that both him and Lucy are single right now, which makes the CI undercover story weak at best to cover for their first date. And he can’t help being drawn to her whenever she’s nearby. To be fair, he always has been. But he can’t seem to stop flirting with her now. He tries to conceal it with their usual banter and bickering, but even that just hits different now. He knows he’s different. He can’t bring himself to act stand-offish with her anymore. Can’t even pretend he’s not into every little thing about her. He catches himself smiling throughout every single conversation he has with her for fuck’s sake. Even when he’s making an actual effort not to. It’s pathetic, really. So, if he’s speaking a little more sternly, a little louder, just in case anyone overhears, that’s just as well.
She has stopped, just like he expected her to, but she hasn’t turned to face him. He can see her struggle, so in tune with every little movement she makes that he doesn’t even have to see her face to know exactly what she looks like right now. He can imagine every detail of it. And he’s also sure she’s contemplating ignoring him to make a run for the locker room anyway.
‘Now,’ he says, his mind filling in the word he’s not saying. Boot. It’s like she’s hearing it as well, and it makes her give in. She turns around, facing him, without actually facing him. Her eyes are directed at the floor, the walls, the print on the wall behind him, anywhere but him, really. He nods sideways and walks ahead of her towards the interrogation rooms. He pushes at the door, before she even rounds the corner and he waits, holding it open, meanwhile channeling the impatience and slight annoyance he thinks would be typical for him. Except… he’s not entirely sure anymore what his natural reaction would look like if he wasn’t, well… for a lack of a better word: totally gone for her. If he really thinks about it, maybe all of his behavior has been manufactured since as long as he can remember. And then his lips touched hers for longer than a split second and all of it – all of his walls and barriers, his strictly professional boundaries and carefully put in place protective armor – got blown to pieces. Damaged beyond repair.
She’s still carefully avoiding looking him in the eye as she moves past him into the observation area of the interrogation room he picked. He shuts the door and right away words are spilling out of her. Her voice shaky and slightly pitched, the way she sounds when she’s overwhelmed, spinning, thoughts running a hundred miles a minute and unable to process it all.
‘I’m so sorry, Tim. I know I acted weird. I just need a minute, and I’ll be fine. I promise. Just… I need a second, and I’ll be better. I didn’t mean to–’
‘Lucy…’
He’d spotted her the moment she entered the bullpen, minutes earlier, worry edged on her face, scanning the place frantically until her eyes landed on him. She halted, catching Thorsen in the midst of a highly exaggerated description of him singlehandedly holding the shop back by brute force, effectively saving Tim’s life. Tim locked eyes with her, and Lucy all but bolted. And now here they are.
He steps forward, interrupting her ramblings. ‘I’m okay.’
He notices a thousand minuscule things at once. The quivering of her bottom lip, those huge brown eyes shining with tears threatening to spill, how hard she’s trying to fight them back. The way she fidgets with the radio on her belt. He knows she immediately reaches for it every time she feels anxious, even when she isn’t wearing her belt, even when she’s not in uniform at all. It’s a post-barrel thing. Like she’s reaching for a lifeline. An escape. He’s seen her do it constantly the other day, in the shop, when Chris kept calling her. Seeing her do it now, sends an overwhelming need to put her at ease through him.
‘I’m okay,’ he repeats, softer now it’s just the two of them. Maybe the TO thing was a little too convincing, judging on the confused expression on her face. Did she really think he pulled her aside to berate her?
‘You almost died,’ she replies, angrily wiping at a tear that manages to escape.
‘I got out. And I’m fine. See? I’m fine, Lucy. I’m not going anywhere.’
‘You could have…’
He steps closer. ‘I have other plans tonight.’
Her breath hitches. A tiny little gasp, somewhere between her not believing she’s hearing what she thinks she’s hearing, and a giggle. It’s fucking adorable and he can’t help himself.
‘You know there’s no way in hell I’m going to miss our first date, don’t you? Or, well, more like our second first date. I really, really want to go on that date.’ He reaches for her, wanting to cup her cheek in his hand and gently swipe away the tear that’s slowly, dramatically cascading down her beautiful face. But he never gets the chance, because she lunges at him before he’s closed the gap. And that’s three times now, he realizes. Three times she has grabbed his face exactly like this – the way he can’t stop thinking about – to pull him close as she reaches up. He makes a mental note to fix that soon, to step up and be the one that initiates the next kiss.
Then her lips touch his and his mind goes completely blank. Nothing registering except for having his arms full of Lucy Chen, his mouth full of Lucy, as he moves in to capture the fullest, softest, most delicious lips he’s ever had the privilege to kiss. She might have been the one to start this – again – but no one can accuse him of not getting on board pretty fucking fast. He moves his hands to her waist, pulling her body flush with his, one hand moving up her back to cradle the back of her neck, fingertips brushing against her tightly pinned hair. It’s startling for a second, which isn’t exactly new. Both times they kissed shook him to the core. But it’s different now, because he feels the familiar fabric of the uniform under his hands. And he’s not touching the loose waves of her hair in her apartment, or her silky, straightened hair in the airplane bathroom (in his mind he still sees a slo-mo version of the swipe of it over bare skin as she undresses). Instead his hand cups the neat updo Officer Chen wears when she’s on shift. He is kissing her at work and he is fully aware, as he drags her bottom lip between his to softly suck on it, that he has no intention whatsoever to stop anytime soon.
He almost fucking died today. He crashed through the railing of the rooftop parking structure, looking seven floors down, bracing himself for the moment when the slightest shift of weight, the tiniest movement would tip the scale the wrong way and plummet him and Thorsen towards their untimely and very messy demise. And it wasn’t until after, when he was back on solid ground, called it in and they were waiting for transport back to the station, that it fully hit him. He’s still shaky from the realization. He came close before. More than once, even. But it never felt this real. There was a moment, just before he got out, when a rush of fear went through him in a way he never really experienced before. Not for himself anyway. He had felt like that once, when he was looking across a desolate landscape stretched before him. Miles and miles of dry sand and no clue where to even begin looking. And then pulling her body out of that damn barrel. Lifeless and still. So un-Lucy-like his brain couldn’t even comprehend. Frantically forcing her heart to beat and her lungs to take the air he was breathing into her. He still has nightmares about it, waking up with a surge, feeling sick, wanting to hurl from sheer desperation. He’ll take dangling over skyscrapers over that feeling any day.
But he’s never feared for his own life like he had for a moment today, not even in the army when he was fighting an actual war. Not when he was a teenager facing his father’s violent anger, convinced this might be the time the man would finally snap and do something irreversible. Not the couple of times he got shot on the job and was barely hanging onto consciousness as he was severely bleeding with freaking pieces of lead lodged in his gut.
Not when he was exposed to an unknown virus leading to an agonizing death he had just witnessed firsthand. Not when just a couple of weeks ago a fragment of one of the forementioned bullets left him paralyzed on a hospital floor. It’s not that he hasn’t been scared before. But there has always been a resignation to it. It’s what he signed up for. He knows fear and he can deal with it. But today hit different. Today he realized he had something to lose. And he has no doubt it’s because of this. Her. He could have missed out on this. He could have died without having the chance to kiss her one more time. To kiss her for real, the way he wants to, desperately so, and has been wanting to for longer than he will ever be willing to admit to anyone including himself.
Something changed a couple of days ago. It had already been changing slowly, steadily ever since that one day Grey assigned him their hotshot rookie in rollcall. He should have known he was in trouble from that first look. He’s aware now, that he has been gradually gravitating towards her ever since. But the other day, talking to her outside the precinct, she told him – flat out and fearlessly told him – he was the most important person in her life.
That’s when it happened all at once. He made a decision right there, that he knew he wasn’t ever able to come back from. Because as he was staring at her, and she told him it probably wasn’t worth it, a realization crashed through him. He was staring at her, at this beautiful face he knew better than his own, and in that moment, he saw their future children.
Up until then, when he thought about having kids with Isabel, it was a vague idea. He figured they’d be blond like Genny’s kids were when they were newborns. He pictured them that way. Molded them after his nephews, the only image he could conjure up. But now he suddenly knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that his children will look like Lucy Chen. He can almost literally see it. Adorable little girls, a spitting image of her. Two of them, maybe? And a baby boy. They will have dark hair, her eyes, the shape of her pretty face. He’s sure of it.
So, he sat there staring, took a breath. And decided. And that’s where he’s at, where he’s been at, since. He can’t stop thinking about it. He can’t wait to start their life together, to start the rest of their lives. He can not wait to take her out on another freaking date, to do it right, the way she deserves, so he can finally start. So he can finally look at her, really look at her. Be with her, just her and him enjoying spending time together. To tell her. Finally tell her. There’s suddenly so much he feels like he should tell her, and then it almost got yanked away right from under them.
But he got out. He’s alive. And for the life of him, he can’t tear himself away from her. Couldn’t stop kissing her even if he wanted to. And he doesn’t. He needs to hold her, feel her pressed against him, and take his fill of her. Over. And over. And over again. It’s as simple as that. So, he indulges. He deepens, and deepens, and deepens this kiss. Lets his hand drift over her body.
She’s shaking, her hand trembling as she holds onto his shirt for dear life. And their belts clash and dig into his body as he pulls her even closer, but he doesn’t give a flying fuck. And neither does she, so it seems. She clings to his shoulders, pulling herself up to better reach him and in a sudden moment of clarity a wonderful idea occurs to him. Next thing he knows, he’s reaching down. His hand travelling to places he hasn’t even dreamed of touching before. (Okay, so that’s a lie, sue him. A man can only have so much self-control.)
Then his hands are on her ass and of course she works with him beautifully, immediately getting his intention. He pulls her in and lifts her, and she jumps and wraps herself around him. And this is better, so much better. He can’t even begin to wrap his mind around how their bodies fit together.
She makes a soft, little, desperate sound as he turns slightly and her back hits the window behind her as he presses into her more. Her fingers are carding through his hair and digging into his shoulder and dragging across his cheek and back to his neck. Her belt is still between them, and he’s tempted to pull it off of her, but he’s not sure if he can stop himself from removing every single scrap of clothing on her once he starts. And this… this is already more of her then he’s ever experienced before and he’s losing his mind a little.
There’s that noise she makes again. He’s heard it every time they’ve kissed and it’s doing things to him. It reminds him of that pouty thing she does when she doesn’t agree with him but follows his order anyway. He always had some kind of reaction to it, if he’s being honest. But before the practice kiss, he knew how to push it down before it could really materialize. He knows he’ll never be able to again. He chases that sound. He works to pull it out of her over and over again. And she gives it to him time after time.
He’s not sure how long they’ve been kissing at this point. He needs to slow this down. Oxygen is going to be a problem if they continue like breathing is optional. And more importantly, (more than such a trivial detail as the human need to breathe) they’re still at work, even though he’s beginning to question if maybe he died after all and went to heaven. He moves his hand from the back of her head, angling her face to get better access and take control to slow the fuck down. And he does. He takes control. He slows down. But it’s not making them stop at all. Somehow it gets even better and hotter as he licks her upper lip and she opens her mouth and her tongue does sinful things to his. He’s instantly hard. In a way he hasn’t experienced since… ever maybe? Not since Highschool, that’s for sure. This is insane. And part of him thinks it might be an adrenaline thing. But it’s not. It’s a Lucy thing. Because he’s fairly certain that, had their kisses not been interrupted before, he would have had her pressed up to the nearest flat surface a lot sooner. He feels monumentally stupid for waiting this long. They could have been doing this for days now, weeks, months even. Why haven’t they? There were reasons, he’s sure, but he suddenly can’t think of any. Not a single one.
She’s sucking his lower lip, digging her teeth in a little and he’s catching her upper lip, perfecting an art he didn’t really know he was capable of. He needs to get her somewhere where he can do this for hours on end. He has no intention of ever stopping, actually. If he had waited until after their date to kiss her again, she would have been naked right now if it was up to him. He wouldn’t be able to reign this in, unless she tells him to. How is he going to get through dinner with her, knowing this is on the other side of it?
Finally, they have to break apart for a couple of seconds, but neither one of them is pulling away. He keeps her locked in place, nuzzling her cheek, her nose. They spend several long moments like that, just breathing the same air, until he spins her away from the glass and leans back on an empty table on the far end of the room. He sits down, with her practically straddling him. He just needs another minute of this. One more, before he’ll pull himself back together. Their eyes lock, and he tucks a piece of stray hair away from her face, brushes the back of his fingers against her face, tracing her bottom lip with his thumb.
‘Glad we got that out of the way,’ he manages to say and she laughs softly, pressing the tips of her fingers to the side of his face.
‘We never got to finish a kiss before,’ she whispers.
‘I’m not finished,’ he says. ‘Are you?’
‘Maybe not completely finished…’ She averts her gaze, like she’s suddenly shy.
‘Are you okay?’
She tilts her head up. A slow nod.
‘Good.’
‘I hate not being there. When you’re in trouble.’
‘I know.’ He hates it, too. Not being able to have her back when she’s out there. He moves his hands over her back in a soothing way.
Her lips brush against his. ‘But I like this. This, I could get used to.’
He’s pretty sure he’ll never get used to it, but the idea of it – making kissing her a regular occurrence – makes him smile. ‘Is it just me, or are we insanely good at this?’
‘We’re not bad,’ she teases, beaming at him. ‘You’re a good kisser, once you get going. Maybe even… one of the top five I’ve ever…’
He rolls his eyes, cutting her off with a mumbled: ‘I don’t know why I put up with this.’
She hums softly, tipping her head slightly. ‘Yeah, you do.’
He hums too, touching her cheek. ‘Yeah. Maybe I do.’
Her gaze drops to his shoulder, where her hand is resting, then back up at him. There’s a playful little smile lingering. The one she has when she’s messing with him, which is… basically all the time. What’s different though, is that he lets himself look. He looks at her and lets all that smiley happiness wash over him, lets himself just… soak it up. Her smile falters a little under his stare and she chews her bottom lip. Self-conscious, suddenly.
‘I’m so in love with you.’ The words just slip out of him, before he manages to catch them, but he can’t bring himself to care. An hour ago, he thought he might never have the chance to tell her. And even though he would have preferred to say it someplace else, at exactly the right time, in the right way, instead of after nearly dying, he mostly just wants her to know. He doesn’t want to walk out of this room without telling her how he feels. ‘I wasn’t planning on saying it already. It usually takes me longer than half a date.’
It’s not lost on him that he, in fact, has never said it like this before. He’d been deeply in love with Isabel, and he’d told her he loved her countless times. There’s been a time he believed he’d been in love with Rachel too, even though recently, he has come to realize some things he’d been too blind to see back then. How the things he liked most about her, were the things that reminded him of Lucy. How much they actually look alike and how physically attracted he instantly felt to her. He’s had a lot of time to deep dive into his innermost thoughts and feelings lately. More than he likes, even. And the irony is not lost on him, that the next girl he dated was a taller version of Isabel. Like he was trying to force himself back from wanting Lucy. He thinks, maybe, his last relationships were never about the women he was seeing as much as they were about the woman he was refusing to think about that way. It’s telling that after both break-up’s, he hardly gave either woman any more thought at all. Both times, he ended up missing Lucy more. Craving her. Wanting to be near her more. Going out for drinks after work, hoping she’d join. Thinking of her on his days off, trying to think of reasons to text her, wanting to make up excuses for her to come over – to walk Kojo with him, or watch some trashy real crime show. Just so he could casually spend some time with her and settle that hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. He never gave in, but he’s not sure how he’d missed it. How he didn’t realize that practice-kissing her would send him over the edge, until it was happening.
He’s seeing it clearly now, though. And this, the breathless way in which the words just slipped out of him, is new to him. So is the way he marvels at her, and the way his mind just blanks out sometimes. How he’s able to track her immediately in a crowded room. The shift of energy he feels whenever she walks in, even before he’s seen her. How he never feels right, or at ease, unless she’s close by. How fucking happy it makes him to just be in her presence. And now, he practically told her he loves her. Way to soon. But on the other hand, of course he does. He’s sure she already knows he does. The love-part can’t be much of a revelation. She must know he cares about her deeply. It’s the in love-part he wants her to be sure of now, too. Judging by the look of surprise on her face, it needed to be said out loud. She’s staring at him with the same amazed expression she had a couple of days ago, when after careful consideration he came up with his most eloquent response ever. Unless it is.
Her lips move, while she’s processing. ‘Tim…’
He leans in to kiss her gently. He doesn’t want her to feel like she should be saying it back if she’s not there yet. He wants to hear it when she feels like she wants to tell him. ‘I regretted not telling you sooner. In the shop… What scared me most was missing out on the chance to say it. So here I am, telling you. That’s all.’
She hugs him, buries her face in his neck and whispers: ‘Thank you.’
He closes his eyes and breaths her in, smoothing his hand up and down her back.
‘Is this really happening?’ she asks with a voice so soft he isn’t sure he was supposed to hear it.
‘I think it is,’ he replies anyway, lips pressed to the shell of her ear. ‘Ready to get back out there?’
‘No.’ She sits up straight and looks at him. ‘But I’ll go anyway. Oh, but wait. Do I… do I look like we just made out?’
He laughs, swiping his thumb over her chin, where the friction of his stubble irritated her skin slightly. ‘Only a little. Looks good on you, though.’
She moans in embarrassment, and it’s the sound of it, combined with her being on top of him like this, that makes him need to flex some muscles in his body to get the blood pumping elsewhere than where it’s currently rushing to. Which he didn’t think through, because she seems to like the tightening of his forearms around her. She puts her hand on him. And he needs something, fast, to distract himself from the tips of her fingers trailing over his skin. He grabs her hips and takes her with him as he gets up from where he’s sitting.
Her legs fall away from him as he lowers her to the ground and he waits for her to adjust
before letting go of her. She steadies herself with one hand on his biceps.
‘Want to go out first?’ he asks, tightening his fist to steady himself.
‘Shouldn’t we walk out together? I mean, wouldn’t that be what we’d normally do?’
‘You’re right. Good thinking.’
‘Thank you,’ she says, preening under his praise. He likes how much she likes it. Fuck, if he’s not going to praise the hell out of her all of the time from now on.
He smiles, taking another moment to gather himself before moving to the door and opening it for her. He lets her go ahead and falls into step next to her.
She looks up at him, as he glances at her, and she gives him a warning look. Her brow furrowed in that cute way of hers. ‘Don’t...’
‘Don’t do what?’ He asks confused.
‘Don’t…’ She lowers her voice. ‘Don’t look at me like that.’
‘I’m not doing anything.’ He knows they’re both smiling like idiots, but he can’t seem to quit.
‘You are. And if you don’t stop, I’ll have to...’
‘Okay, I’ll stop,’ he whispers, as they’re nearing the end of the hallway. He takes another look at her before turning the corner. ‘What is it with you and wanting to hurt me, by the way? I just nearly died. A little compassion would be nice.’
‘Well, for the record,’ she says sweetly, looking up at him as they pass by the rollcall room, ‘I’m glad you didn’t die. You owe me a redo on our date.’
‘It’s what gave me the will to live,’ he says, watching her try to keep a straight face now they’re surrounded by their co-workers, knowing very well what he’s saying basically made her jump him a couple of minutes ago.
‘In my mind, I am hitting you right now.’
He can’t help but glance another swift look at her. ‘Ah, that’s good to know.’ As he looks the other way, he can just imagine the pursing of her lips before he quietly adds: ‘I’ll pick you up at eight?’
He can hear her smile, when she answers him. ‘I’ll be ready.’
It makes him smile, too. ‘No, you won’t.’