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Lucy swears it was a gag gift.
The day starts as it will end: with rain. Tim is next to her in bed, arm slung across her stomach and face buried in the pillow. She rubs her thumb up and down his forearm as she watches droplet after droplet pattering against the window. The downpour oscillates between torrential and gentle in ten minute intervals that Lucy, still half asleep, lazily watches pass by. Her bedroom gets a little bit colder, but Tim’s breath remains warm against her neck and the blankets cover her where he doesn’t. It’s almost an out-of-body feeling, the sensation of such a perfect morning in bed without a mind alert enough to develop full awareness of it. For once, Lucy’s brain is completely shut off. She’s feeling intuitively, entirely outside the confines of her own chaotic mind.
Slowly, she comes to. The rain keeps falling, and Tim starts stirring next to her.
He starts with a low and tired, “Morning.”
“Mmm. Morning,” she hums. “Did you sleep well?”
“Barely at all,” Tim replies regretfully. “Storm kept me up.”
“I hate to break it to you, but it hasn’t stopped,” Lucy says.
That gets his attention. He lifts his head, leaning over her ever so slightly to look out the window. “You’re joking.”
“Nope. I wouldn’t be surprised if it keeps raining all day.”
“On our one day off. Dammit.”
“I know,” she huffs. “Nothing goes our way, does it?”
He groans in miserable agreement, but still leans down to kiss her. Things are always so much less miserable when he kisses her.
“Or maybe it does… in other ways…” she muses playfully when the kiss lingers for a moment too long.
Then, Lucy feels Tim’s lips start to push. She parts hers even wider, and his tongue brushes against the inside of her cheek on its way in. She finds herself so swept up in the sensation of it that she becomes barely able to breathe. Her chest moves occasionally to indicate she is, in fact, still inhaling, but it trembles when it rises and falls. Tim can feel her chest shaking underneath his and smirks into the kiss, and she hates how cocky it makes him almost certainly feel.
With her pride to save, she fights back extra hard to take his breath away. Slow, stroking motions with her tongue. He likes that. And then her hands and their unstoppable proclivity for roaming… down, down, down, over his shoulders, then one on his abs, then overtop the stone hard bulge protected only by the flimsy drawstring of his sleep sweats.
He grunts into the kiss, with her lips and tongue still pushing and pulling in rhythmic bliss. “Fuck.”
“Mm,” she hums in triumphant delight. “You like that?”
He pulls away and nods as she mounts him, keeping her hands exactly where they were. And then he’s looking up at her, and he’s got this look in his eye… this look . Oh, sometimes Lucy short circuits when he gets this look. Looks like these confuse her. Because she remembers the unbelievably skulking and taciturn Tim Bradford she once knew, and this look kills everything she thought she knew about him. There’s a want— a hungry, yearning want that darkens his eyes and blows out his pupils— but it isn’t just about the sex. When he looks at her like that, it’s a piece of intimacy. Intimacy he gives freely to her, a substance in his world so invaluable and rare that it feels like she’s being entrusted with national secrets or precious gemstones.
She can’t believe she was so wrong about him.
The only thing that pulls her away from his gaze is the immediate urge to make him unravel completely. Then she’s kissing him harder than ever, her hand stopping its quick strokes only to pull at the drawstring of his pants.
It’s near perfect. Underneath one hand, Tim’s melting, his shoulders sagging into putty. Underneath the other, he turns stiffer and stiffer.
“Wait,” he grumbles, though Lucy relishes in the struggle it takes him to push out his words. “Last night… used all the… my…”
“I might have some,” she says, kissing him hard once more before pulling away for good and removing her hands from his body underneath the covers. “In the drawer on my nightstand over there. Underneath the broken phone chargers.”
“This drawer is a mess,” Tim tells her as he contorts his body to stretch across half the bed and reach with one hand.
The drawer opens easily enough, but things come springing out as if the drawer had been overstuffed with miscellaneous junk. Half-empty packs of gum, a packet of ketchup from a particularly heartbroken takeout night years ago, a journal surrounded by fifty dried up pens, her broken phone chargers, hand cream. The list goes on and on.
“They’re not where you said they’d be. I don’t see anything.”
She frowns. “What about at the back?”
Lucy’s almost sure there was at least one or two condoms left in there from months ago, but Tim instead fixes his attention upon something else before she can get an answer.
“What the hell is this…?” He pulls out a box from the drawer, wedged in the very back, and holds it out in front of them.
The box, still wrapped in its cellophane cover, is bright red with clean, white, serif letters across the front reading ‘THE INTIMACY DECK’. The dreaded, profusely embarrassing gag gift.
He looks at her cynically. “A relationship questionnaire?”
“To assess the depth of your intimacy in a relationship,” she tells him.
“You kept this at your bedside this whole time?”
She rolls her eyes, already feeling Tim’s judgement. “I thought I sent you digging around for birth control.”
“Trust me, this is birth control,” he shoots back (and Lucy can just tell how proud of himself he is). “Talk about ways to kill a relationship instantly.”
“I happen to find it very instructive,” she tries arguing back, though her heart truly isn’t in it.
“You haven’t even opened it.”
Exasperated, she flops back onto the bed. “It was a gag gift for my birthday a few years ago. From Jackson.”
Tim’s whole demeanour sombers, along with the rest of the air in the room, at the mere mention of Jackson. There are mornings like these where it truly isn’t that big of a deal, and she knows she won’t lose her mind over a box of cards. The wound has scarred over, but the depth of its hurt is still there.
He stands there for a while looking at her. Lucy can feel his eyes lingering, studying. She tried to ignore it by staring at the ceiling, but everything about him and that gaze of his is so damn inevitable.
After a silent moment, he inhales thoughtfully. “Ok,” he decides. “Let’s do it.”
Lucy jolts to sit back upright. “What?”
“Let’s do it.” He taps on the box twice. “The cards. The game— or, whatever this is.”
She can’t help but smile as she looks him up and down. “Are you sure?”
“I mean, I can’t say I won’t squirm uncomfortably the entire time,” he argues, “but I’m willing to give it a shot.”
Picking emotional vulnerability over sex is a first for Tim. Lucy isn’t quite sure how to deal with it. For a minute, she just sits there with her jaw agape.
Then she sees the tolerance slipping from Tim’s face. “Okay say something before I change my mind.”
“Yes,” she blurts out, grinning and grabbing the box from his hands on the off chance he tries to put it away. With the box behind her back, Lucy leans forward and kisses him firmly. He pulls away breathless, which makes her even happier.
Her hands tear excitedly at the plastic wrap, tossing it to the floor before opening the box. She moves to pick one from the top of the deck, but Tim stops her.
“Ah ah,” he says. “Shuffle first.”
Lucy rolls her eyes but plays along. Shuffles the deck loosely, letting the cards fall where they may into the pile.
When the deck settles in her hand, she calls out, “Me first. A question for you.”
Then she picks one from the top.
“Oh, perfect. We’re starting off easy: ‘What’s your ideal romantic vacation?’” Remembering his time with Ashley, she hurriedly adds, “And if you say Hawaii I’m going to hurt you.”
That pulls a laugh from Tim’s lips. “No, definitely not Hawaii.”
“You do have a place in mind though?”
“Canada.”
Lucy frowns. “Canada? Cold and isolated Canada? I should have guessed.”
“I mean, Banff if we want to get specific,” he says, “but yes, Canada.”
She chuckles. “Canadians are too polite. You would lose your mind.”
“Well I never said I was going to talk to them. We would avoid the locals.”
“Yeah, I’m still failing to see the romance in this.”
“There are cottages and destination spots around there that let you see the northern lights even in the summer,” he explains. “We’d go up there, crack open a beer, see the lights, maybe take a swim or see some hockey. It’d be a great time.”
For that, she can’t tease him. It’s an odd answer, but the picture he paints could be romantic in a way. Snuggled up in the cold, or dipping toes in lakes as blue as gemstones. Seeing the northern lights swirling in the sky, greens and blues and purples and pinks all magically melting together on a starry canvas. Her heart melts at the thought of it alone.
“Okay, that doesn’t sound so bad actually,” she admits reluctantly— and even then her reluctance to admit that is a weak facade of petulance. The smile forming on her face wins in a landslide. She knows because Tim’s smiling too, and her smile is about the only thing to really make that happen. “Maybe that’s… in the cards for us sometime then. Ha? Get it?”
“That was so bad ,” he says, though he’s fighting back a grin.
“Aww, admit it! You liked it. That was a great pun.”
“Nope,” he chuckles, and bites his bottom lip to stop himself. “It was horrible. You’re the worst at jokes. Truly.”
“And you,” she adds, “are a big romantic.”
“I can be. When I want to.” He leans over to kiss her gently.
He deepens the second kiss he goes in for, and his soft lips with slight stubble is an intoxicating combo that she is tempted to get lost in forever.
After a minute of indulgence, she gets the willpower to pull away. “You’re stalling,” she tells him, grinning. “C’mon, next card. Ask me something.”
He sighs, and Lucy can tell that Tim’s mind is still on the possibility of there being a condom in her nightstand after all. But he plays by the rules and sticks to his promise, as she knew he would.
“Alright, here we go.”
He picks one up, reading it with a smirk.
“‘Share one thing I’ve done this week that has made your week better’.”
“Hmm,” she ponders, smiling as she thinks of her answer. “Oh! I know, okay. When you brought me those soup dumplings from the grocery store on Tuesday.”
“That’s it? Soup dumplings?”
“ Delicious soup dumplings,” she corrects him.
“Great, my big gesture this week was barely a grocery run. I’m a regular Prince Charming.”
“I don’t think you understood the gravity of the situation,” she tells him, her brows furrowing. “Did I mention it’s a dumpling that has soup inside of it?”
“You’re being polite,” he says. “But face it: with me back in Metro hours and you on patrol, I haven’t had much time to make your week better at all this week.”
“No! I mean it,” she insists, her hands flying to his face and caressing his cheeks. “I ran out of them, and I had dangerously low blood sugar so there was no way I was in the mood to go to a crowded store. You just somehow knew to stop at the store for that one little thing I loved and bring it over. And the jumbo package no less! Ugh, I swore when I saw you walk in with that bag of dumplings in hand I could have jumped you right then and there.”
Tim raises an eyebrow, and his whole face perks up from disappointment to intrigue. “Really?”
“Mhm,” she hums in the affirmative, leaning in until their noses touch. “It made me hungry for something else completely. Takes skill to do that.”
“I think I’m starting to like this game,” he whispers, a whisper that hits her lips almost instantly like sweet syrup.
But she never allows him the kiss. A promise is a promise, and frankly, she’s having too much fun with the combination of being drowsy and vulnerable and vaguely horny with Tim to ever switch their attention fully away from the deck of cards. Instead, she curls up by his side with the deck still in hand.
Now lying down and snuggled up and comfortable with the parameters of the game after round one, Lucy picks from the deck again.
When she reads it, she bites her bottom lip.
Shit. It really isn’t conducive to the whole “let’s delay sex and choose emotional intimacy instead” schtick she’s been feeling this morning. (But dammit if it doesn’t make her smile anyway.)
“Hm.”
“What?”
“It says ‘Describe our first kiss’.”
“First ever kiss? Or first kiss as a real couple?”
“First ever kiss,” she tells him. The undercover kisses certainly blurred the lines in terms of relationship milestones, but she knows now she was fooling herself for thinking those ones didn’t count or mean anything.
Tim rubs circles on her upper arm while he thinks.
“A sneak attack,” he decides.
“Wha-” Lucy gives a light backhanded smack to his chest. “Hey! It wasn’t Pearl Harbour, it was a kiss.”
“Yes. A kiss that surprised me. You cut me off in the middle of my sentence!”
“Yeah, well, you weren’t kissing me hard enough. I was being proactive,” she explains.
“Oh trust me, if I’d kissed you as hard as I wanted to I wouldn’t have ever left the apartment.”
Her heart stops. She sits up to face him, half elated and half dumbstruck. He’s just lying there, back against the headboard, smiling at her like it’s just any other suggestive remark. So smug, so adorably, ridiculously smug.
“You were showing restraint then, is that it?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe.” His eyes cloud over with something smoky and hungry just at the memory of it. It sends shivers down her spine.
Something occurs to her.
“When you came over that night, how long had you wanted to…?”
“Kiss you?”
She nods.
Tim blinks. “Honestly I don’t know. I was in the thick of it by the time my brain truly caught up. Whether I knew it or not, I’d wanted to. For a long time.”
“So it wasn’t new?”
“No. It was always sort of there, I guess. Like white noise. You get used to it.”
Lucy presses her lips tight together, and not even that could stop the onslaught of overwhelming love tugging at her cheeks demanding a smile. Fuck if she doesn’t have it bad for him.
“Always so full of surprises,” she says, shaking her head incredulously.
“Says the surprise kisser.”
“I wouldn’t call it a surprise. I would say it was… breathtaking. It knocked the wind out of me.”
“That’s a pretty glowing endorsement.” He raises a brow. “Is that what made you…?”
“No,” she assures him. “I remember the first time I thought about you and us. It was after Jackson died.”
That seems to surprise him. “Really?”
“Really. I was lying on your couch, failing miserably at getting some sleep. You hugged me. And there was this… moment? I don’t know what it was, but it lingered too long. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, of how comforting you were, and how I never wanted to leave. My best friend was dead, and all I could think about was you.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I was going to,” she admits. “I was on my way to your room when Angela called you. Then the guilt settled in, and I talked myself out of anything related to us, and the rest is history.”
It’s Tim’s turn to feel the shock. “I had no idea.”
“Yeah, well.” Lucy shrugs, suddenly feeling awkward and exposed. “There’s not much else to it.”
“I would have let you in,” he says eventually.
“Really?”
“I would have held you all night if you’d asked.”
Suddenly, relief. Waves of it, washing over her, soothing her tense shoulders and uncomfortable posture. She smiles, only a little bit sadly. “All that time we wasted. What were we thinking?”
“Nothing much, apparently,” Tim jokes, though he’s shaking his head and the joke appears more like he’s chastising himself for the truth behind it. “Alright, my turn again.”
He picks up a third card.
“‘If you could pick one year of your life to do over, which would you pick and why?’”
“Oooh.” She runs her palms flat against the covers as she thinks about it. “My first year as a rookie.”
“Oh come on!” Tim tilts his head skeptically. “Really? I was an ass, you were put through the ringer with training. You don’t need to pick the typical star student answer, this can stay between us.”
As much as she giggles, Lucy holds her ground. “I mean it! It might be fun going for a redo now that I have all the cheat codes. I’d know all your dirty secrets and vulnerabilities so your Tim Test threats would be completely neutralized. I would appreciate my time with Jackson more and do all the things we never got to do, maybe get some more advice and wisdom from Captain Andersen and even try to save her. I’d certainly break up with Nolan sooner.”
“Wait a minute, what?! ”
“Don’t worry, that’s not important,” she assures him, lifting a hand to lovingly pet his hair and hopefully ease him through that chapter of her past which she normally likes to forget, merely for the stupidity of that decision. “My point is, things would be different. Life might be easier, the goodbyes a little sweeter, the pain more manageable. I know it sounds stupid but it’s a pipe dream.”
He tilts his head down to look at her and then pinches her chin between his thumb and index finger, his smile wistful. “That’s not stupid at all,” he promises. “It sounds perfect.”
“Well it would be bad for you of course, you’d have to see me in all my glory and not be able to kiss me.”
“Yeah, because apparently Nolan was doing all that back then,” he grumbles. “What the hell is the story behind that?”
“Ugh,” Lucy groans. “We had gotten through the academy together, which felt insurmountable so I was on a natural high. And you know Nolan, he’s one of those guys without a trace of ego, so my psychologist brain just figured he was the healthiest and most stable option to enter a relationship with.”
“How romantic.”
“At the time I thought it was. But if it was fun at all, it stopped being fun the minute we came to Mid-Wilshire. All the secrets and disapproval from Talia and others. It wasn’t worth it. I liked Nolan fine, but I couldn’t even come close to being in love with him. Not in the way I wanted.”
Tim swallows hard and purses his lips until they’re practically blue, and Lucy wonders if maybe she has to worry about what else to say if he can’t stomach this information without feeling jealous or threatened.
But then he isn’t storming out, or yelling, or growing cold and distant. Instead, he bursts out into a laughter that he seems to have been containing.
“Wh—” she stares in bewilderment as he rolls around in bed, giggling and shaking his head. “What’s so funny?”
“The idea of you and Nolan,” Tim answers. “I mean, he’s so vanilla. It could be something out of a Betty & Archie comic, except Archie’s geriatric.”
“He’s not that much older than you,” she retorts, a little bit defensive now, out of pride.
“Older enough,” Tim says, still laughing. “What, did he take you to a five-and-dime for your dates? Maybe a soda shop?”
She bites her lip, but then admits, “Actually, yes, one time we did.”
Tim starts grinning and laughing even more.
“It was a nice time! I swear! Just… full of a very strange crowd.”
“Oh, I bet it was,” he sighs, laughter dying down finally and only once it elicits a reluctant giggle from Lucy too.
“You’re terrible.”
He shrugs. “You fell in love with me anyway.”
She smacks one on his lips, fierce and hard, just to shut him up. “I’m picking a new card now,” she says, satisfied with how stunned Tim looks after it.
The laughter has turned stomach muscles sore and the sound of the rain makes her drowsy again, but she’s having too much fun to fall asleep now. Powering through, Lucy plucks one from the top of the deck and reads aloud:
“‘Describe some times or areas in which you find it most difficult to be open and honest with me.’ Oh this should be interesting.”
Lucy grinds her teeth nervously.
Here’s the thing: it’s been a long time since the breakup. Almost eight months to the day, when she does the math in her head. But the subject of it still hurts when brought up. It’s a bruise long healed in their relationship, but the memory of its pain is real nonetheless.
She thinks about that time— mainly, of how sad she was, sad and angry that he could give up so easily. Angry that he thought so little of himself when she thought the world of him. That he refused to let her love him while he did the work to love himself too. But now he has, and he does. God knows it took them ages, but they’ve finally re-entered this beautiful, calm, loving place in their lives where, even when it’s raining, things feel kind of perfect. And so she’s cautious asking him this, but never afraid. There’s a trust between them that’s stronger than ever. It will hold fast, above all else.
Tim sighs warily.
“When I need to most,” he answers eventually, his words thoughtful and deliberate.
She shakes her head, and loves that she can almost laugh a little at it now. “You make no sense. It’s completely illogical to shut down when it is most beneficial. That’s like fumbling a football right at the end zone.”
“Ok, first off, you just accurately made a football reference and that makes me want to do some very bad things to you,” he points out, only half joking and with a spark in his eye that sends an exciting jolt down Lucy’s spine. “And second, I absolutely know it doesn’t make sense. That’s just how I operate.”
“Nuh-uh, not good enough,” she whines half-assedly, prodding at him underneath the sheets with her big toe. “Explain.”
He grunts, a little frustrated, but after all they’ve been through, Lucy feels verbalizing his thoughts is good practice for Tim. And for herself, too. Suddenly the gift doesn’t feel like such a gag at all.
“Sometimes, I just self-sabotage. I’m working on it— you know this of course.”
She nods, understandingly.
“I don’t know. I think I’ve never been able to just get sad. With all my demons and my past, to let myself feel everything as it comes means I spiral. So I’ve contained it.”
“By bottling it all up,” she fills in the blanks. It makes her sad for him, and all the times she could have been there telling him he didn’t need to. That he was safe to feel anything and everything.
“Yeah. And then you came along,” he adds. “You were the first person I could ever truly see myself letting him fully. That scared the shit out of me. So when there are times where I know you’ll tell me exactly what I need to hear or will know just how to help, I just… avoid it. Otherwise, the dam would break and the flood would come and it would never stop.”
“You struggle to be open when you worry you’d never be able to close again.”
“Exactly. I mean, Christ, your voice alone could make me crumble. You’d be everything I need, and I wouldn’t be ready to have it.”
Lucy nods, eyes drooping tiredly as they fight off tears. It overwhelms her to take in the mere sight of him: this man, whose first encounters with all kinds of love were rooted in violence and neglect. Tim, who never had anyone to tell him to let it all out. Tim, who sits here now, a deck full of silly couples exercises in hand indulging her in a game he never meant to play. Extending himself outwards like an opening flower, the way he never could before when shutting down. She loves him for it— ridiculously so.
“You’re ready,” she tells him, almost whispering it. “I know you are.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“If I’m wrong, I’ll still be here,” she promises. “That’s what you do when you love someone.”
She curls into his side once more and, with her head on his chest, can finally relax again. The rain patters against the window and eventually she can’t distinguish between Tim’s own heartbeat and the sound of gentle thunder.
Lucy knows it’s her turn, but her thoughts stray far from the card game. He’s been so open with her already and the lazy morning they’ve wasted away doesn’t feel so wasted at all— even when they’re still in bed, in their pajamas, without a single bite of breakfast.
Maybe they’ll have to face the day sometime soon. Find something to do, tackle the rain, make every moment of the rare time off they actually get. If only Lucy could shut her eyes just for a moment…
“It is,” Tim says finally. “And I feel good admitting this stuff. Especially to you. Is that weird? I don’t know. I guess sometimes it surprises me how different this feels than what I thought it— you know… love— was supposed to feel like. Maybe this game wasn’t a terrible idea after all.”
No response.
“I’m still holding out for the sex though,” he adds cheekily. She still doesn’t respond, but he swears he can feel the hot air of a scoff leave her lips and hit his chest.
“Ah, I’m just kidding. C’mon, it’s my turn to ask you.”
He picks the card hanging loosely from Lucy’s hand and pulls her even closer with his other arm, though she feels heavier and more limp.
Too focused on the card though, he reads: “‘What is something you believed when we met that you no longer believe to be true?’”
He smiles and waits for a response he’ll never get. It’s no use: Lucy’s already passed out next to him, breathing slowed and body relaxed on his chest.
Typical Lucy. Falls asleep during her own game. He laughs to himself.
Sighing to himself, Tim looks down at her wavy brown curls, the way the strands look more yellow where the light hits them, her soft fluttering lashes, looking peaceful and with her guard entirely down. This powerful, compassionate, ridiculously beautiful force of a woman in his arms.
He thought himself the kind of man who was beneath her once. Honestly, at times, he still does. But with the comfort he feels now, the space they’ve made to be themselves and love each other all the more for it, the good and the bad, he finds the concept almost silly.
“Alright, I guess I can answer this one then,” he says, snuggling further into the embrace and pressing a kiss to her head. “That I wasn’t built to be loved.”
He lets himself get tired again. And as the rain falls outside their window in a gentle pitter patter, the whisper of his answer, like a beautiful thing that isn’t meant to be spoken from damaged lips, washes away with the rain.