Chapter Text
Lucy and Tim get married first— it was agreed already their first time dating that they wanted to be married for at least a year before having kids. Once they're back together, they get married pretty quickly because, well, neither of them are young. In addition, if they ultimately opt to pull Lucy's eggs out of storage and get pregnant in-vitro; the younger she is, the better chance they will have of a successful pregnancy.
The ceremony takes place at a very specific estate in Kern County. The choice had been bewildering and a tad concerning to some of their friends, given all that had transpired there those many years ago. They wed on top of the very spot he breathed life back into her.
Lucy's favourite part of the reception hosted in John and Bailey's home—excluding anything specific to her husband—is when they and theirs are sharing remarks about the long hike that had been required to reach the wedding and she makes a joke which she thinks is absolutely hilarious.
"Oh my gosh, right?" She laughs when Celina bemoans the twin blisters on her heels. " I don't think I considered how trying the hike would be. I guess I didn't have much difficulty the first time I did it, what with the knife to my back and all. And for the way back, I was in a Medevac chopper, so there's that."
She buries her face in Tim's shoulder, snorting, and Tim guffaws into her hair.
When she finally looks up at their friends, all she sees is a sea of mildly concerned pale faces.
John breaks the silence with a joke about how his serial killer didn't get caught like hers did and was therefore of higher caliber, Angela boasts about the Egyptian cotton she got to sleep on in Guatemala, and Bailey makes a dry comment about the room's atmosphere being more suffocating than the chamber she'd drowned in.
Because the people present are all either friends of cops, married to cops, related to cops, or cops themselves; the conversation quickly turns rowdy again amidst the trading of war stories.
Lucy and Tim have always appreciated the candor and easy flow of casual conversation when they are with their friends. As officers of the law, having such a close and mature group of people with which to shoot the shit is something they're both incredibly thankful for.
There are times, inevitably, that certain conversations become uncomfortable or even distressing, although that is a natural occurence when you have healthy friendships.
As such, there is no out once the people in the two sergeants' lives start dropping hints, begin subtly questioning them as to when they are going to "get on with having children."
At this point in time, neither of them yet have actually accepted the fact that they do not want to have children. It's in the back of Lucy's mind; shoved so deep in Tim's thoughts that they don't ever speak about it.
Lucy would have to tell Tim when she is ovulating, but he's always been far better at tracking her cycle than she is. It's quite nice, actually; she'll start her period in the grocery store and panic, only to find Tim had placed tampons in her purse the day before.
They take turns initiating, but it happens like this: She will look at him, or he will look at her. If they both nod, they will come close and kiss until they take it to the bedroom. These times are different, full of emotions neither of them are willing to acknowledge. It carries a similar flavour of tension as their angsty hookups back when they were still broken up— they are both desperate for something and both of them are lying to themselves in regards to what it is they are desperate for.
Usually when they have sex, they hold each other through the aftershocks. They'll make out lazily, maybe go for another round if they feel like it.
When it happens like this, Tim pulls out as soon as they've both found their release. He'll pass Lucy a cloth, which she will use to clean herself. She will then rise from their bed, dress, and head to the bathroom to toss the cloth in the laundry and use the toilet.
When it happens like this, the sex brings them close in a way making love never does. It isn't more or less intimate, better or worse than any other time they're close. It happens on another plane entirely, a kind of intimacy that touches their souls in a manner that is fully unique; wholly them.
When it happens like this, it is distinctively painful. Neither of them have enough fortitude to broach the subject and have a real conversation, of course, because why would they ever make it easy?
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Because nothing can ever come easily for the Chen-Bradford household, Lucy's hand is forced a few days after taking a pregnancy test in solidarity with Rachel, of all people.
She had gotten the call while she was on shift, but had promised to come over once she was off work. She and Celina both decide to come, carpooling in the latter's crapbox of a sedan so Tim can take the truck home.
Rachel opens the door for them, Lucy doesn't say a word or ask a single question as she takes her weeping friend into her arms.
Glancing over her shoulder, she confirms Celina made it in and nods as she watches her former roomate close the door to Rachel's apartment.
"Do you have any tests here?" Lucy asks the other woman softly, voice barely audible above the sound of her cries.
Rachel sobs into Lucy's neck. "No…"Comes the muffled response.
On cue, Celina crosses the floor to the kitchen island and brings out the nearly dozen boxes of pregnancy tests the two women had picked up on their way over.
The sheer overexuberance is enough to shock Rachel out of her stupor.
Her eyes water. "I don't think I have enough pee for all of those…" She whispers with a quivering lower lip, withdrawing from Lucy and wrapping her arms around her torso.
The other two women exchange panicked, helpless looks.
"We could take one with you?" Celina offers hesitantly.
Rachel lets out a watery snort as she gestures to the multitude of pregnancy tests on the counter. "Or take several with me."
"We can always drop off the rest at a women's or homeless shelter," Lucy assures her. "One each, yeah? We'll take turns and put them on the kitchen island so we can look at them all at the same time."
Lucy hates taking pregancy tests, if she's being honest. She has taken them before; she has been taking them at least once a month for almost two of the three years she and Tim have been married. Negative every month. She gets this weird feeling in her stomach whenever she looks over at a test and sees the sole line, a feeling she hates with all her heart, but she wants to do this for her friend.
Ten minutes later, the three women are looking at one positive pregnancy test on Rachel's kitchen island and the two negative ones beside it.
Lucy and Celina drive in what she'd imagine Celina thinks is comfortable silence, yet Lucy's mind is anywhere but at rest.
Of course, of course she hadn't been surprised by the one pink line. It had felt, when she saw it, like this drawn-out shattering of her heart combined with tidal waves of relief.
It makes no sense.
She does want kids, doesn't she?
It just doesn't make any sense.
It especially doesn't make any sense when, four days later, Sergeant Chen and Officer Juarez are called back to the station for a visitor who is refusing to leave until she sees them.
They're just coming in through the sally-port when Tim waves them into his office.
"Hey," Lucy says as she follows Celina in, making sure to close the door tightly. "There's someone here for Celina and I? What's that all about?" Celina takes one of the proferred seats in front of Tim's desk, while Lucy opts to stand and hold the back of her friend's chair.
"Yeah, I'll send you on your way so you can see her in just a sec," Tim shakes his head slowly. "It's Rachel."
Confusion, and then understanding. "Yeah, I think we know what that's about," Lucy clears her throat and Celina nods her assent. "We'll go talk to her, where is she?"
Celina stands and Tim follows, walking around to the front so he can open the door for the roving sergeant and her aide. "Interrogation three, but…" Tim furrows his eyebrows. "She seemed pretty distressed, you sure you got this?"
Lucy scoffs as she and Celina walk out of her boyfriend's office. "When don't I?"
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Clearly, Lucy needs to work with Tim on his communication skills some more, because "pretty distressed" is the understatement of the decade.
Rachel's emotions are melting off of her like a river in the spring when her friends join her in the interrogation room.
"I'm not pregnant." Rachel blurts out.
What?
"I…" Celina splutters, "…but the test was positive."
Their friend opens her purse and nearly empties it onto the interrogation room's table in her search for… something.
"Is everything okay?" Lucy finally finds it in herself to ask.
Rachel seems to find whatever it is she's looking for, because she ignores Lucy and slaps a sonogram down on the table—a mental note is made to look into how often these tables are cleaned, because from this perspective they appear rather filthy—an empty sonogram.
Lucy's logical mind is able to comprehend what it is she's seeing, but she needs some help with her emotional mind.
"So you're not pregnant?" Is all she manages to say.
Rachel shakes her head.
Celina clears her throat, "We each took a test, one test…"
Lucy furrows her eyebrows. "Yeah, we did…?"
Her aide hesitates. "Rodge has a vasectomy, and on top of that, we haven't hooked up in almost three months. He's been on tour."
The two other women in the room understand what this means before Lucy does, and they watch her like a parent watching their toddler struggle to put the star in the star-shaped hole while they wait for the implications of Celina's statement to hit her.
"Oh." She says.
Oh, god. Oh, no.
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Lucy would have imagined that such a revelation would come all at once, crashing down on her like a tsunami, but the way it comes to her is more like the violently rising waters of the ocean.
The tide comes in, and the tide goes out. The tide comes in. There is a line in the sand, and everything beneath it is wiped smooth when the tide goes out again.
As the sea levels rise, so does the tide's reach. She makes a sandcastle: the structure stands firm throughout the year, its foundations just beyond what the high tide can swallow.
Next spring, the ice melts; the snow turns to slush, and the runoff loosens the limits of the waves.
When she visits the beach that summer, the sandcastle is gone.
The slowly swelling seas alone aren't themselves enough to trigger any alarms— Lucy doesn't even know that the beach is gone until she drives up to the coast one day and finds nary a grain of sand.
She tries denying it when the coast creeps inward.
She covers her eyes so she can pretend she doesn't see the water swirling around her feet.
It is only when the waves come crashing over her head that she finally, albeit belatedly, admits it to herself.
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For Tim, the grand internal discourse surrounding fatherhood had begun already when he was a child.
At the time, he told himself it was just a phase; a perfectly natural reaction to his father being, well, his father. He once heard someone say that when you grow up raising those around you, you develop into a person disillusioned of most—or even all—parenthood has to offer. It's not incorrect to say that about Tim, but it doesn't represent his stance on the subject with enough accuracy to make him feel comfortable using it to defend his position.
Tim would love to be a father. He wants it badly, in fact— but he would also be the first one to say wanting to be a parent so badly you'd do anything to become one is an incredibly toxic wherefore insofar as having children is concerned.
Is it because he is scared? Is he so traumatized by all the things his father did to him as a child that he has vowed to remain nullipatrius his whole life? Or is it a consequence of of his action as an adult— committing legal murder overseas for his country, turning a blind eye at the bodies of dead children he saw rotting in the streets? The unspeakable abuses he has witnessed in his own community as a police officer, now a sergeant?
This is all so strange to him. He remembers musing about nursery decor with Isabel and discussing baby names with Lucy, for God's sake,
He can't, for the life of him, determine when he came to this conclusion, can't possibly recall when exactly he became so staunchly resolute in his resolution to remain childfree forever.
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