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It’s not news to either of them when they move in together that Lucy’s never been in such a serious relationship, and that Tim’s the one with the upper hand, in terms of being prepared.
It’s not a surprise that there are adjustments, and growing pains, and new obstacles to face.
It’s not a surprise that sometimes she wants to strangle him and sometimes he looks at her like he’d rather be living alone on the moon.
What is a surprise, though, is that they don’t fight about anything she assumed they would.
Her friends warned her about a million things. He’ll leave the seat up and you’ll want to murder him. He’ll shave and leave hair all over the sink and you’ll think you live with a five-year-old. You’ll leave wet laundry in the washer and he’ll run out of clothes and it’ll be your fault. Your DVR recordings will drive him up the wall.
And yeah, all those things happen, and more than once.
But mostly, he puts the seat down. And he cleans up after himself, probably better than she does. And maybe it’s because he was married before, maybe it’s all those years in the military, the discipline. Maybe it’s just that he’s a good, good man.
And she definitely leaves laundry in the washer to spoil, but she’s the only one who blames herself. And he rolls his eyes at her mile long DVR list, but he’s the one who presses play on Real Housewives when they settle on the couch.
But none of it is as big a deal as her friends make it out to be.
They tease and play and banter about whose turn it is to pick dinner, or who needs to let Kojo out, or which of fhem ate the last of the emergency ice cream (her, it’s always her.)
None of those things surprise her. Maybe it’s because by the time they move in together, they’ve spent more time together than most couples have years into dating. Twelve hours together every day for a year is a litmus test. Confined quarters demand boundaries be respected and overstepped all in one fell swoop. So maybe they get lucky, because sometimes they do fight about those little things, but it almost feels fun, like they were built to do it.
And they’ve fought before, tensions heightened when she was his rookie, so eager to push back and challenge and impress, so she knows they can do it. She knows he’s not afraid to yell at her, to give as good as he gets.
And maybe that’s why she’s so unprepared.
Because when he’s really upset, when it really, really matters, he doesn’t yell at all.
——-
She’s exhausted when she trudges through the door late one night in early December. She just wants to crawl in bed and fall asleep to the rhythm of Tim’s even breathing against her, steady and easy, one of her favorite things in a long list of favorites.
Except he’s surprisingly still awake, and he stands when she walks in the living room. There’s a flash of something distantly familiar — annoyance, maybe, and she pauses.
“Hey, babe,” she settles on, finally, and she expects him to soften, to smile that sleepy, sexy grin that makes the hard days, the long hours in a shop with someone who isn’t him, so worth coming home to. But it doesn’t come, he doesn’t smile at all.
“You okay?” It’s quiet, it’s all he asks, and she nods, slightly confused.
“Okay. I’m going to bed. Love you.” It’s basically the same thing he says every night if he goes to bed without her, but it sounds different tonight, there’s no weight behind it. It doesn’t accompany a slow, sweet kiss she’s come accustomed to, one that usually makes her trail him to bed for more moments later.
“Tim—“ she starts, but he doesn’t turn around. “Love you too.” If he hears it, he doesn’t acknowledge it.
The sound of the bedroom door quietly closing may as well have been a slammed door for how much it rattles her.
She sighs. It’d been a long day, physically and mentally draining, and now it feels like it’ll be a longer night. She changes quietly in the guest room, where they each keep a few changes of clothes, to avoid having to wake the other when they work weird hours.
She digs her phone out of her purse to kill a little time on the couch. It’s dead, though, and she frowns.
“Fun night, huh, bud?” She whispers, scratching Kojo behind the ears as she gets up to plug it in.
It vibrates in her hand as it comes back on a couple minutes later, and her stomach sinks a little. There’s a missed call from Tim, and a text message from several hours prior, around when she’d normally be getting home.
Everything good?
No, apparently everything isn’t all good. It’s starting to make sense, and she wishes she hadn’t let him walk away so easily.
“C’mon, boy,” she says, distractedly, letting Kojo out in the backyard quickly for a last potty break before bed. His happy huff as he runs out makes her smile. She tries to remember the last time she’d checked her phone during shift. She knows the battery was low, and she’s always sent him a quick heads up if she had to stay super late. But the day had gotten away from her, like they tend to do, and she sighs as Kojo mercifully comes trotting back in quickly.
“Thanks, bud,” she smiles. “Bedtime!” She says excitedly, because he’s used to it, and his tail wags in anticipation, a feeling she usually knows all too well. She locks up the house quietly, the only sound Kojo’s tags jangling after her every step.
She pauses in the hallway, torn between taking the easy way out and crawling into bed in the guest room, or sleeping in her own bed with Tim.
Even though she knows she won’t sleep if she stays in the guest room, she heads there anyway, curls her legs under her on top of the comforter, and closes her eyes for a moment. She sees Tim when her eyes close, his strong, muscled back she knows by heart, the rigid way he’d walked away from her so unfamiliar.
She sighs and stands. She’s better, braver than hiding in a guest room because she doesn’t know what’s wrong. It’s the easy way out, and she doesn’t want their relationship to ever feel easy simply because they don’t address the hard things. She doesn’t want to lie awake in a bed that feels empty.
She eases the bedroom door open, trying to let in as little light as possible in case he’s already asleep. He’s facing away from her on his side closest to the door. Normally, she’d just crawl sleepily over his body, her knees and elbows digging into his muscle, because it’s easier and quick, and it makes him smile, and touching him will always be her preferred method in any situation.
But tonight, she walks around the bed to her side, and it feels like a hike. She slides in under the covers and watches him. His eyes are closed, but his body isn’t lax with sleep, his breathing isn’t as steady as she knows it should be.
Tension radiates off him in waves, filling the space between them with an electric charge that worries her. This isn’t how they exist in one another’s orbit, it’s not how they work.
He reaches out for her in the dark, like a reflex, like his hand on her hip is as automatic as his next breath, no matter the circumstance. It calms her racing heart, her worried mind slightly, like his touch always has. It’s enough that she feels brave enough to trail her fingers down his cheek, his jaw tense under her hand.
His eyes open slowly and settle on her, and she lets herself just look, just be looked at, in the dark. She’s studied his face, its lines and dimples, his smart mouth and quick smirk for hours longer than she can count. He’s so expressive, if you know what to look for.
And she does, she knows. She always has, she thinks, like it’s something she was just meant to be good at, a talent she barely needed to hone, something she was meant to spend enjoyable time doing.
In the dark, under her fingers, his features feel familiar, rough stubble and warm skin she’s kissed endlessly. And his face is a mix of emotions she’s seen before — anger, sadness, uncertainty, none of which she particularly likes.
And certainly none she understands the root of, currently.
“Tim.” It’s hushed, not even a whisper in the quiet room, and she wants him to have an out, needs him to know it’s okay if they have to go to sleep like this, but only if they have to, if she has no other choice.
He presses a kiss to her palm, an act so familiar to her now in their time together that she takes it for granted sometimes. She doesn’t, tonight.
“What’s wrong?”
When he doesn’t answer, she tries one more time. “Something’s wrong,” she whispers.
“I’m sorry,” is all he says, and she can hear in every note of the words that it’s true, she can feel it in the way the tension in the room dissipates just slightly, like he’s let a weight ease off his shoulders.
“I love a man who apologizes, but, babe, I don’t know what you’re apologizing for.” It gets a smile like she was hoping for, but it’s small. He shifts onto his back, and she lets him go, lets her fingers trail down to his chest and absentmindedly roam there.
He sighs. “Tonight, when you were so much later than normal, and you didn’t respond to my text or call--”
“My phone died,” she interrupts, and he nods.
“I figured as much. And logically, I knew where you were. But something about sitting on that couch, alone, waiting…” He trails off, but he doesn’t need to say anything else.
“It felt like it did with Isabel?”
“I think it felt worse, because now I know just how bad it is, when the waiting doesn’t stop.” Her heart breaks a little for him. She knows he’s over Isabel, but that a part of him will always love her, his first real love, no matter how much they went through.
She tangles their fingers together on his chest, letting the weight of her hand in his ground them both.
“Tim,” she says softly. She loves him in a way she wasn’t sure she was cut out to love another person, like she’d been walking around her whole life with a Tim-shaped piece missing, and he’d filled it before either of them ever realized. She thinks he knows that. And the idea that he thinks, even in some abstract way, that she’d ever be able to walk away from that, from him -- it’d be laughable if it didn’t feel so serious.
“I’m always going to walk back through that door, Tim, as long as I have a say in it.”
“That’s it, though,” he says, shifting to move their joined hands to her body, pressing them against the ink, the date, they both know by heart. “I know how it feels when you don’t have a say in it.”
She thinks about the date inked permanently on her body, a constant reminder, and the date she’d written at the top of all of her paperwork tonight, mostly why she’d been so late getting home. It’s just a few days away, and in some ways, it’s hard to believe it’s been two years.
She’d spent the first anniversary in this bed, too, so early on, everything new and exciting, so charged she’d barely had time to focus on the date, on what it meant.
“It’s soon,” she says quietly, and he nods. “Do you think that’s why this felt so much worse tonight?”
He shrugs, his thumb brushing against her palm. “When she left, I didn’t know what it was like to lose Isabel. It changed me,” he says, and she knows. She knows it did. “I have an idea what it’s like to lose you, sort of, and that’s not something I could do again, not for real.”
“Oh, Tim.” She lets his hand go so she can move closer to him to wrap her arm around his strong chest and comfort him, in the most basic way. “I couldn’t lose you, either.”
His chest rises and falls with a sigh under her touch and she presses a kiss to his shoulder.
“That’s why you were mad, when I wasn’t home like normal? You thought about what it’d be like, now that we have this, to lose it, to lose me?”
“I wasn’t mad at you. I was mad at myself, for going there, for jumping to the worst conclusions even when I knew they weren’t true, for letting myself play what-ifs.”
She wants to tell him it doesn’t sound like anger, it sounds like fear, and it’s okay, it’s natural, but she thinks he probably knows it, deep down.
“I don’t want you to be mad at yourself. And I’m sorry that I didn’t give you a heads up. I’d be worried if the situation was reversed,” she says, because it’s true, and she’d known he wasn’t mad, really. She’s seen him mad, and this wasn’t that. This felt worse, it felt scarier.
“That guy, the one who just walked away and didn’t tell you what was wrong, who let you think he was mad at you? That’s not who I am anymore. That’s not who I want to be with you. I’m sorry.”
“I know it’s not. I think maybe this was just… a lot of the past coming back to you at once. Old habits can be hard to break. I second guessed even coming in here, I was going to sleep in the guest room to give you space. You don’t talk about feelings, I second guess -- it’s what we do naturally. It takes work, it takes us holding each other accountable, to overcome those instincts.”
“I guess,” he says, and his tone tells her he knows she’s right.
“I’m right,” she insists, running her hand down his arm. “So, it’s settled. I’ll try not to second guess, you’ll tell me when something upsets you even if you don’t know why, and you’ll buy me a car charger for my phone, so I can call and tell you if I’m on patrol late.”
He presses a kiss to the top of her head and she smiles. “I was with you until you got to the part about me buying you something. Can’t buy it, don’t remember what it was.”
“I figured,” she laughs. She lets the teasing moment rest between them, gives herself a moment to sink further into the mattress, to calm her tired mind and body. “Thank you for asking if I was okay when I got home, and for telling me you loved me instead of yelling or accusing me of something. If we’re going to actually fight, I want it to be about important things, like when you lie and say you haven’t watched Real Housewives without me,” she says, and he scoffs. “Next time, though, just stay and talk to me.”
“I promise I’ll try,” he whispers, his lips in her hair. “Will you do something for me?”
“Yes, Tim.I’ll promise to try not to second guess everything, even if I think you secretly find it charming,” she says, in mock annoyance.
“Well, good. But, no. I was going to say -- will you get up?”
She sits up quickly, even though it takes effort. “Sure, what’s wrong?”
“Will you walk around over here?” She gives him a confused look, but stands and moves around the bed and stares at him.
“Beautiful,” he whispers, and she rolls her eyes to keep the blush at bay. “Will you do me one more favor?”
She nods, because he’d do the same for her, anytime.
“Will you please get back in bed, but do it the right way?”
“The right--?” She smiles, realizing exactly what he means. “Yeah, Tim, I can do that.” She moves, pressing her knee and elbow to the mattress to move over him, like she does every night, to her side, but his hands on her waist stop her, and she lets him pull her down against his chest.
“I missed your bony elbows and knees painfully telling me you’d come to bed,” he smiles, tangling his hand in her hair.
“I’m here now,” she whispers. She smiles at him, just watching the way he looks at her. It’s almost overwhelming, and she knows the feeling well. “Hey. Do you know how much I love you? How much I need you to always walk back through the door at the end of the day, how coming home to you makes it all worth it?”
He smiles, that big, easy grin that sunk her the first moment she saw it. “Yeah, babe. I think I know that feeling.” He pulls her closer, presses his lips to hers, and she’s smiling before she can even stop herself.
She pulls back, though, because, well, she doesn’t let him off the hook easily. “You’re not going to tell me you love me?”
She can feel his smile against her neck. “Lucy,” he whispers, “if there even are words for how much I love you, I don’t know them.” It sends a chill down her spine, it makes the hard day better, the confusing night near-forgotten. “But you know I”m more of a show ya kind of guy, anyway.”
He is, she knows. She closes her eyes, his lips already on her skin, in the dark, in his arms, in this world they’ve built, just them, and lets him show her exactly how he feels.