Chapter Text
MONDAY (early evening)
Damn it.
Lucy slowly dropped her gun, moving only as much as absolutely necessary. Not that she could actually move a lot; the spindly arm wrapped around her body dug painfully into her stomach.
What had started out as a call to check on suspicious noises coming from a family home had turned into a foot pursuit of a suspected burglar. Because of the confusing layout of the maze of back alleys they were pursuing him through, Lucy had called for backup, which had arrived in the form of Tim and Miles. More backup was on the way; there were simply too many ways to escape.
They had split up in order to funnel their suspect back to the main road where backup would be waiting to cut him off. Tim had sent Miles with Lucy, for whatever reason (although some sort of Tim Test was always a good guess), while he had taken Seth to approach from the other direction.
Lucy was pretty sure that Tim was regretting that decision. Also, if this had been a test, Miles had just spectacularly failed it. And now—because of his inability to stick to the plan—they had a situation on their hands that had the potential to turn really ugly really fast. For her, mostly, because she now stood in the middle of this smelly back alley with a knife against her throat, and wasn’t that just great?
She was angry more than she was scared, though. It had been that kind of week.
Damn it.
The knife pressed against her skin, cold and sharp. Not hard enough to draw blood—yet. But she stood frozen, not moving a muscle. There was nowhere for their burglary suspect to go. Tim and Seth were blocking his exit route to the left, guns pointed at him, demanding he drop his weapon; Officer Jan just came up running to the right. Lucy could practically feel the guy weighing his options as he loomed behind her, the edge of her knife sliding across her skin. This could go two ways. He could either be reasonable and surrender—or he could panic and do something stupid, believing he had leverage.
Where the hell is Miles? He should have been right behind her to avoid this exact situation. Lucy cursed herself a little for trusting Miles to follow orders and not paying closer attention to her six.
She glanced at Seth, who was staring at them a little wide-eyed, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously up and down. However, he seemed to be holding it together and handling himself as well as could be expected in this kind of situation. You never got completely used to seeing someone you knew being threatened with a weapon.
Tim’s face was calm, his voice steady as he repeated the command to drop the knife. But Lucy could tell he was pissed; his jaw was set in a hard, unforgiving line, his eyes slightly narrowed.
Penn chose that moment to make an entrance. He rounded the corner at breakneck speed, slipping a little when his boots hit a gravelly patch, then losing his footing completely. He went down, his angry yell turning into a muffled yelp. Groaning he rolled onto his back.
Lucy felt the suspect’s grip slacken as he turned his head, distracted.
She punched him in the face.
Predictably, he reeled back, howling in pain. The knife clattered noisily to the ground as he clasped his hands over his nose, blood trickling down his chin. “You bitch!” he screeched, but he was too concerned with his broken nose to offer any more resistance when Lucy twisted his arms behind him to cuff him. She handed him off to Jan as a neatly tied if profusely bleeding parcel and informed dispatch that they were now Code Four and that no additional backup was needed.
Up until this moment the adrenaline in her system had kept her going, carrying her through tasks that were automatic now after years of training. Now it faded, and once it did, she realised that this had been a close call. If Penn hadn’t shown up when he did (not that she’d thank him for it), things might have ended very differently.
Lucy made herself draw a deep, calming breath. She was fine, everything was fine, time to move on.
Sliding his gun back into its holster, Seth approached her. He looked a little green around the gills. “Are you okay, ma’am?”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
Tim looked at her, face blank; he gave her a quick once-over and once he was convinced she hadn’t been hurt stalked off to where Penn had picked himself off the ground, brushing gravel of his uniform. The fact that he was in long sleeves was his saving grace; otherwise, he’d have road rash all over the left side of his body. Seeing Tim march towards him, a sheepish grin crept into his face, hands thrown up in an apologetic gesture.
Lucy just stared. “What the hell?”
Did Penn have a death wish? He’d done stupid things before, but…
Seth gave her a confused look.
“Go wait in the shop,” she instructed him tersely, waited just long enough to make sure he was leaving, which he did, if a little hesitantly while casting nervous glances in Penn’s direction; then she hurried after Tim.
Tim wondered if today was finally the day that he would actually murder Penn. He’d been tempted before, quite a number of times, in fact. He had noticed that the urge to throttle his rookie had made a somewhat less frequent appearance in the last month or so, which he had regarded as some sort of improvement.
But today Penn had almost gotten Lucy seriously hurt. Worse, he could have gotten her killed, and Tim was pissed. And that grin! Tim wanted to wipe it off his face. Did he think this was funny?
To his credit, Penn’s face assumed a more appropriate expression once Tim stared tearing into him. After being on the receiving end of Tim’s yelling more times than she cared to count, Lucy almost felt sorry for Penn. Almost. Today’s mistake wasn’t just a minor slip-up – it could have had serious consequences. She brushed her thumb along the curve of her throat where she’d felt the edge of the knife. God, what a week. She couldn’t wait for the time off she had coming up in a couple of days.
Tim, however, seemed to be taking the fact that she’d been jumped and threatened worse than she herself was because, wow, he was really letting Penn having it. The rookie was shrivelling a little under the verbal onslaught, his usual cocky attitude abandoned.
But he couldn’t seem to help himself. When Tim paused for a moment, possibly because he’d run out of air, Penn actually opened his mouth to say something.
Lucy’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head. Do not talk back, she thought. Do not…
“Sir, I just thought…”
God, what’s wrong with him?!
“I don’t care!” Tim hollered, cutting him off. Penn flinched, snapping his mouth shut. Lucy could actually see a vein on Tim’s forehead start to throb as he continued berating his rookie, and she suddenly worried, just a little, that he might give himself a stroke. He didn’t like to hear it, but he was in his forties now, and strokes and heart attacks increasingly affected middle-aged men. He’s certainly had enough stress in the last six months.
Right. He was going to kill her, but what the hell? She could take it, she certainly had enough practice. Lucy stepped into Tim’s line of sight, and his mouth snapped shut, eyes narrowing. She gestured for Penn to beat it, and the rookie fled.
Tim just looked at her, his face unreadable. She fully expected him to yell at her next—but his words took her completely by surprise. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he demanded.
“What? Yeah, I’m fine.” She angled her head a little so that he could see the unblemished skin on her throat.
He exhaled forcefully at that, and while some of the tension drained out of his shoulders and he relaxed a little, she could tell that he was still strung up. It hit her then that he’d been scared, really scared, and had exploded on Penn because she could have been hurt. Or worse. Something stirred in her, tugged at her heart. “I’m fine,” she repeated softly. Before she could stop herself, she closed the distance between them, her hand curving over his forearm, the muscles and tendons taut and rigid beneath her grip. His eyes fluttered shut, and when he opened them again, he seemed calmer, more grounded.
Suddenly aware of how close they were, Lucy withdrew her hand and stepped back. “Was that really necessary?” she asked quietly.
“He screwed up! And it wasn’t the first time. I’ve been lenient so far, but that ends today. This,” he gestured at Lucy, “at the very least gets him a blue page. But frankly, I should just wash him out. I don’t know why I haven’t already. He’s certainly made enough mistakes to warrant it.”
“Agreed, but you didn’t have to turn it into a public spectacle.” She jerked her head toward Officer Jan, who had clearly been watching and enjoying the show—not to mention the heads that had appeared in the windows above when the action started.
“He almost got you injured.”
Lucy gave him a hard look. “May I remind you that I once got shot in the chest with you standing right next to me? You didn’t even ask if I was okay. You saw that I wasn’t dead, and then you moved on. That’s the job. You taught me that.”
“That’s not the same. Also, I was a little too busy at the time.”
“Maybe not exactly. But I was trying to make a point. That wasn’t the first time someone held a knife to my throat. It won’t be the last. And you can’t go off on everyone who gets me in trouble. Or,” she added, “who hits on me.”
Tim looked vaguely guilty. “I wasn’t…” he began, but she held up her hand to stop him.
“It’s not your job to worry about me. Not anymore.” And that was your decision, she thought, but there was no point in bringing that up now.
He didn’t meet her eyes when he said, voice rough, “I know.”
Lucy bit down a sigh. He had broken up with her. He’d ended it. He had no right to be jealous, just as he no longer had the right to be protective of her, although she understood that he couldn’t help the latter; protectiveness was in his nature. She didn’t know what to do with him—or about the way he had been acting around her for the last three months. Lucy hadn’t noticed it at first. But then, a few weeks ago, it had suddenly started to make sense to her, and it had come as something of a shock.
“You only just figured that out now?” Celina had asked, surprised and incredulous, when Lucy had mentioned it to her. “It’s been going on for months—ever since your stupid bet.”
But she hadn’t seen it. Now she did—and she didn’t know what to do with that. He had rejected her. He had put her through hell. He had broken them, and he didn’t get to decide to put them back together. But she hadn’t confronted him about it, and she didn’t know if she wanted to. That was, if not a shock, at least a surprise. Clearly, she wasn’t as sure of her feelings where Tim was concerned as she had thought. Even so, he had no right to pave the way toward reconciliation.
And yet…
“Tim?” she said, her voice soft.
His gaze dropped back to her face.
And, as she had many times over the past few weeks, she found herself blurring the lines instead of reaffirming them.
“I appreciate it, though.”