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Thorsen, to his credit, does try to stop her before she can get to the dumpster.
She’d only been a block away when the call came through, so she almost put her foot through the bottom of the patrol car with how hard she stepped on the gas, flipping her lights on and checking her mirrors on autopilot along the way.
“Lucy, wait,” He starts when she jumps out of the shop, nearly forgetting to put it in park before jogging towards the dumpster where he just found the body. He blocks her path and grips her shoulders. “You shouldn’t–”
“I have to, Aaron,” is all she can manage, her voice trembling. “You have to let me–”
He doesn’t have to let her do anything, as it turns out. Lucy shoulders past him before she even finishes her sentence by using her smaller stature to her advantage to duck around his side. She’d gone back to the station after the op had gone to shit, changing out of her Sava clothes and back into her uniform. Now that she doesn’t have to worry about high heels and too tight clothes, she’s back to her usual quickness.
Lucy gets to the dumpster and steps up on a crate beside it. Without giving herself a second to prepare, she pulls up to the edge and peers in, and–
Oh, God.
It’s Tim.
Her ears are ringing so loudly; she can’t hear any of the commotion going on behind her. She can’t see what happened to him either, at least not from this angle, but she sees the stupid disguise–the one she loved so much, the one she gleefully convinced him to wear, and the one she knows he only put on because of her. For her.
She sees the greasy hair, the neck and arm tattoos, the earring glistening in the ray of sunlight peeking out from behind the clouds, the blood trickling down his earlobe, the slight paunch added to his disguise after the mishap in Vegas–
Wait.
The blood.
She immediately looks again, squinting to see better from her vantage point. Aaron is pleading with her to get down from the crate while Lopez is taking command of the scene, moments after she’d pulled into the lot, tires squealing, just as fast as she had.
Lucy continues to ignore them, her eyes steadfast as they take in the blood at Tim’s earlobe, and she almost falls in when she finds confirmation of what she’s looking for. She turns and gets down from the crate, her legs giving out once she’s on the asphalt. She lets herself crumple to the ground against the side of the dumpster as a wave of nausea overcomes her.
“Lucy!” Aaron shouts, falling to his knees beside her, placing his hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Luce, we’re here.”
“It’s not–” she starts, but it’s all she can get out before a sob breaks free. “Oh my god, Aaron, it’s not–”
“No, I know, you’re right, it’s not okay, I’m sorry, and I–”
Lucy reaches up blindly to cover his mouth, shutting him up for a second so she can gather her fucking thoughts.
“It’s not–it’s–it’s not him,” she manages, but it’s just a whisper, her heart in her throat, pulse racing erratically as she tries to take a deep breath.
She lets Thorsen help her to her feet, but with her legs still wobbly, Angela is there, too, with a hand on her back.
“What are you saying?” Lopez asks, and Lucy leans over with her hands on her knees to catch her breath. Her whole body sags with relief as she fully realizes that it’s not Tim’s dead body in the dumpster, but Dim’s–or rather, Jake’s. It’s only then that she realizes she’s been chantingitsnothimitsnothimitsnothim under her breath like a prayer the entire time.
“Earring–his earring. Tim’s is fake. He wouldn’t–he wouldn’t let me pierce–oh my God, it’s Dim–I mean, Jake. His earring was ripped off, his piercing is real, Tim’s wouldn’t bleed like that,” Lucy reveals. As the person who reworked Tim’s disguise to fool even the best of them– down to the making it look like Tim somehow had the paunch that Dim sported– she was the only one who knew that his earring was fake.
If the turning in her stomach is anything to go by, the speed at which she’s felt a whole slew of emotions in the last thirty seconds is going to be catching up with her soon. She bolts for the alley to prevent contaminating the crime scene more than she’d already had.
Lucy heaves until there’s nothing left, bracing herself against the brick wall as she keels over to vomit up the crackers that she reluctantly accepted from Nyla a few hours earlier.
Eat this now, Harper had said in her own aggressively affectionate way. Who knows when the last time you ate something was. And you need to have something in your stomach if you’re insisting on staying to help us look for Tim.
All she can think about is the body in the dumpster, the despair she’d felt when she heard Thorsen’s call ring out over the radio, the utter relief when she’d realized it wasn’t Tim, and then the consequent guilt about that relief. Someone was still dead in there, someone with their own life and own people to miss them, but it’s not Tim, it’s not Tim, notTimnotTimnotTim.
When the wave is over, Lucy staggers a few feet further into the alley to get away from the growing crowd before she loses her mind completely.
Angela finds her slumped against the wall with her head in her hands a few minutes later. To her credit, she gingerly steps around the contents of Lucy’s stomach without a word before sitting down beside her.
After a moment, Lopez reaches out and rests a hand on Lucy’s back. “We’ll find him,” she says, rubbing Lucy’s back, and the tears she’s had at bay finally break free. She’s sobbing before she knows it, the complete and utter relief overwhelming her.
They stay back there for a while in silence. Lucy hears footsteps approaching at one point, but all it takes is a sharp tsk from Angela to send whomever it was retreating back down the alley.
Lucy sits bolt upright a few minutes later, so fast, her head spins a bit. The crying, throwing up, and absolute rollercoaster of emotions she’s cycled through probably aren’t helping the headache she’s had that’s been worsening all day.
“Oh my God, I’ve been sitting here relieved that that dead guy isn’t my dead guy, but Tim is still out there– I have to go back out and keep looking for him–”
“Nolan and Juarez never stopped,” Angela assures her, “and Harper just went out with the rest of the task force. You needed a minute. We’ll go back out in a few.”
“No, no, I’m good, I’m gonna go get back out there,” Lucy says frantically, standing up quickly.
“Okay, but you’re riding with me the rest of the day,” Angela orders, standing as well. She reaches out and squeezes Lucy’s hand. “You shouldn’t have been alone today, anyway.”
Lucy feels like she might cry again, but Angela yanks on her arm, looking at the scrape down the length of it.
“What happened?”
“I don’t even remember,” Lucy says, frowning as she vaguely recalls the sting of scraping her forearm on the brick wall.
“Let’s get you patched up first. I love you,” Angela assures, “but you’re not bleeding all over my shop.”
The familiarity and safety that comes with Angela’s sense of humor brings Lucy back to herself a little more. She nods and follows her back up the alley to the ambulance in the parking lot.
Before they leave, Lucy is called over to ID the body one more time. She tells the medical examiner to check for the surgical scars that would be on Tim’s abdomen and lower back and also for the little birthmark he has right by his belly button. Even though she knows it’s not Tim, Lucy holds her breath when the examiner lifts the shirt from the body. Her knees buckle just a bit with another wave of relief when the identifying markers the examiner is looking for aren’t there.
–
Having had no luck finding Tim over the course of the next few hours, Lucy, Lopez, Thorsen, Nolan, and Juarez were sent home by Grey to shower and rest. All had complied, except Lucy.
She couldn’t stomach the idea of leaving the station and going back to her place or his without Tim, so she texted Genny with an update and a request to check on Kojo again. Then, she took a shower in the locker room and made her way to Tim’s office to try to get some sleep.
Lucy turned her ringer up as loud as it could go before setting her alarm for two hours later, even though she knew someone would probably come get her sooner if there was any break in the case.
It was drafty and cold in Tim’s office, so she’d found one of his Metro hoodies in his locker and pulled it on–over the old Army T-shirt of his that she’d stolen prior to her shower– before making her way over to the couch. She’d curled up on one end, pulled the sleeves of the hoodie over her hands, and managed to doze off after twenty minutes of restless fidgeting.
Sometime later, she’s woken up by a gentle hand brushing her hair out of her face. Lucy leans into the familiar touch but keeps her eyes closed. She wills herself to stay in whatever dream state she is in, because it’s making her dream that she can Tim’s hand against her cheek.
“Luce,” she hears a familiar, but hoarse voice. She opens her eyes suddenly, blinking rapidly until Tim comes into focus.
“Oh my God,” she says, pulling him into her arms as close as she can. But her damn knees are in the way with Tim crouching down in front of her, alive and breathing and alivealivealive. She slides to the edge of the couch, shifting so her legs are on either side of his body and cradles him closer to her. “Oh my God, you’re here, are you okay? How are you here? Is this a dream?”
“I’m here,” Tim murmurs, his face pressed into the crook of her neck. His arms are wrapped around her middle, holding her just as tightly as she’s holding him.
“How?” Lucy pulls back enough to take in him and check for injuries. He’s got a scrape just above his right eye and a bruise on his jaw. And he’s also sunburned, but he’s-he’s okay. She reaches forward to touch his face, her fingers trembling against his skin. “How did you–”
“They drove me out to the middle of the desert and left me there. Said they didn’t wanna kill a cop, but they were okay with letting ‘nature do its thing.’”
Lucy lets out a whimper, and pulls him to her again. After a moment, she stands, keeping her arms around Tim. She doesn’t want to let him go, but she doesn’t want him to keep kneeling on the ground either. They readjust, Tim’s arms coming around her shoulders now. His hand cradles the back of her head as she presses her face into his chest.
He tells her the rest of his story, voice pitched low, murmuring against her ear. “I got out to the closest road and just started hoofing it. Found an abandoned gas station who knows how many miles down the road, but it still had a radio in it.”
“Oh my God,” is all Lucy can manage. She leans back, looking up at Tim. “Wait, how long has it been since you made contact? Hours? If you’re here, then–”
“A little under two hours. The nearest police station–the local PD that intercepted the radio call–was an hour by car, so Grey sent the airship. He said he tried to call you,” Tim explains and Lucy frowns, because she would’ve heard the ringer go off, if true.
She separates from Tim just enough to reach for her phone, press the home button, and realize that the damn thing had died.
Tim can’t help but chuckle when he sees it, knowing her phone had been on its last legs for months. He kisses her temple. “I don’t think anyone knew you were tucked in here, baby.”
“I told,–” Lucy pauses. Had she told anyone? Grey had been on the phone when she’d passed by his office earlier, and she didn’t want to fess up to the whole not being able to go home thing since she was technically disobeying a direct order, so she’d decided to send Angela a text with her location…which she’d completely forgotten to do.
She groans and leans against Tim’s chest again. “I figured I’d just stay here and wait–Wait, you came straight here?” She asks, pulling back suddenly. “Have you been checked out? We need to go to the hospital–”
“We’re going now,” Tim concedes with a sheepish smile on his face. “I told Grey I wasn’t going until you knew I was okay.” He wrinkles his nose before finishing his thought. “I had to see you.”
“ Honey,” she says, and damn it, she’s starting to tear up again. He gets abducted and stranded in the desert and he’s worried about her? “You should’ve let them take you!”
“It was non-negotiable,” Tim says, his voice firm. “He told me about Thorsen’s misidentification, and I–”
“That wasn’t his fault,” Lucy interrupts, knowing that Tim is probably thinking of quizzing Thorsen on all the steps of proper identification of a DB already. “It wasn’t. He didn’t know. About the earring, I mean.”
That startles a laugh out of Tim. He shakes his head at Lucy in disbelief, “Wait. That’s how you knew it wasn’t me?”
Lucy nods, looking up at him and reaching up to brush her thumb over his earlobe. “I’d never been so happy to see a ripped and bloody ear lobe in my life.”
Tim leans into her hand until it lands on his cheek. “I’m really okay, Luce. Grey’s just making me go for the paperwork,” he assures, tilting his chin so she can get a better look at the bruising on his jaw. “I scrapped with one of the guys, but this is the worst of it. And I think I might be sunburned–”
“Oh, you’re definitely sunburned,” Lucy shoots back, really taking in the redness of his face and neck for the first time since she’d woken up. “And probably dehydrated. How long were you out there?”
“A while,” he admits.
Lucy lets out a noise of displeasure at the thought of him out there alone and reaches her arms up around his shoulder to hug him again, making sure to mind the burn on the back of his neck. “I’m so sorry, I–”
“Hey, no,” Tim cuts in, his face buried in her shoulder again. She can feel the words against her skin, along with the roughness of his stubble.
He straightens up and looks her in the eyes. “You did everything you could. All of you did. Those guys that took Dim may be a bunch of idiots, but they’re a bunch of idiots who really knew how to cover their tracks.” Tim chuckles, “But, they were still dumb enough to not look at a map and realize they weren’t dumping me nearly as far out as they thought they were.”
Lucy nods after a moment, biting on the inside corner of her lip. Tim kisses her cheek before leaning back down into her embrace so they can hold each other a little longer.
He’d been just as worried about her, had been going out of his mind ever since they kidnapped him, because he never knew what happened to her cover as Sava. He’s pretty sure he made it out of no man’s land by sheer force of will. If they had her, he’d show up at their door and fight every single one of them again until he found her.
When the airship arrived, he asked Grey about Lucy first, who told him that they’d pulled her out of the op with more than enough time to spare. She immediately changed back into her uniform, insistent on joining the search for him and not taking no for an answer. Tim felt the terrible knot in the pit of his stomach loosen at Grey’s reassurance, finally able to take a breath now that he knew Lucy was okay.
Lucy breaks out of the reverie first, although she’s slow to pull away. She places a hand over Tim’s chest and leans back to look up at him. “Hospital time,” she says, raising an eyebrow when Tim starts to argue that he’s fine. She narrows her eyes at him and continues. “I’ll drive, since something tells me you also managed to convince Grey you didn’t need a medic or an ambulance?”
Tim lifts a shoulder in that little half-shrug he does, which is all the answer she needs.
Lucy laughs, shaking her head. “You’re ridiculous,” she tells him, before snatching the keys to his truck off his desk.
Once they exit the station with their hands intertwined, Lucy realizes that she has no idea what day of the week it was. The morning when they first reported to work together for the op feels like ages ago now, even though it’s most likely been a little under two days.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed your little klepto habit has struck again,” Tim says as they exit the station. He’s referring, of course, to the Metro hoodie she’s wearing. She does have a tendency, in fact, to steal his stuff when she wants something cozy to wear. Not that Tim minds now, or that he’s ever minded. He loves how she looks in his big hoodies, the sleeves too long on her and the hem coming halfway down her thighs.
“Wait til you see what I’m wearing underneath,” Lucy shoots back, and Tim barks out a laugh. She grins up at him as they walk, and he returns it, the both of them overwhelmingly grateful to be in each other’s presence again. She adds, a bit more serious- “It smells like you. I just needed-“
Tim doesn’t have to say anything, just squeezes her hand in reply when she cuts off.
In the station’s parking lot, she follows him to the passenger side of the truck to make sure that he gets in okay. He can move fine on his own, because he’s just tired more than anything else, but he lets her hover because he knows it makes her feel better.
Once she’s satisfied that he’s in the passenger seat all in one piece, she crosses over to the driver’s side and climbs in. Tim reaches across the center console for her immediately, placing his hand on her thigh while she turns the key in the ignition and throws the truck in reverse to back out of the parking spot.
He smooths his thumb back and forth over her upper thigh to ground her with his touch. It does as much for him as it does for her. Feeling the warmth of her skin under his palm, even through the fabric of her leggings, tethers him in a way he hadn’t known he’d been missing before she entered his life.
Once she’s on the highway, Lucy slides her hand into his, intertwining their fingers again and lifting their hands up to her lips so she can kiss his knuckles a few times. Then, she places his hand back over her lap, letting him spread his hand across her thigh again, while she puts both hands on the wheel.
“Lemme see your phone,” Tim says, breaking the comfortable silence. Lucy hands it to him and he plugs it into the charger, wondering whether the battery was dead or if the damn thing had just gone kaput.
By the time she’s taking the exit for the hospital a few minutes later, the phone still hasn’t turned on. Tim glances over, giving Lucy a sympathetic glance.
To be fair, the phone is old as shit. But Lucy is sentimental. Anyone who knows her is well aware of it, and the phone had been with her through a lot. So she’d been forgiving of the glitches, freezes, and yes, the occasional complete and total shutdown for way too long.
”It’s fine,” Lucy says. Her sentimentality hadn’t gotten her anywhere today, not while who knows how many people were trying to contact her, to update her, to let her know they’d found Tim- “I’ll go get it replaced.”
Lucy pulls right in front of the ER bay, where a nurse is waiting for him with a wheelchair, as she expected.
“Sit in the wheelchair, Tim,” she says before they get out of the truck, a plea and a command at the same time. She raises an eyebrow at him and purses her lips in a way that means business. “Please, for my peace of mind, let her wheel you wherever you need to go while I park the car.”
Tim sighs and nods, his eyes trained on the nurse who wheels the chair closer. They climb out of the truck, and Tim makes his way to the nurse. Once he’s sitting, Lucy leans in to press a quick kiss to Tim’s cheek. “Thank you, baby,” she murmurs, gloating a little in the process. “I’ll come find you in a minute.”
But before she can leave, he reaches out and grabs her hand to keep her close for a minute longer. She doesn’t need words from him to know that he’s rattled. The combination of being in danger, being abducted, and being left for dead in the desert, all while not knowing whether or not she was still in harm’s way, has shaken him up more than he’s let on. She’d noticed, though, when she looked into his eyes back at his station. She had been biding her time until he was ready to talk about it by keeping close and never going long without touching him in some way.
Without saying anything in return, she interlaces their fingers and leans down to press another kiss to his temple, then his cheek. “Get checked out and let me take you home,” she whispers in his ear.
He nods after a moment, acquiescing, and lets go after one more squeeze of her hand.
–
They’re sitting in Tim’s exam room, waiting for imaging results, when Angela and Nyla arrive.
Angela points directly at Lucy. “You,” she starts, standing in the doorway, “are getting a new phone. It’s time to give Old Faithful up. I’ve been calling you for two hours. One of you missing is bad enough, having to hunt down the other as soon as I get confirmation that the other is okay? Jail. I should put both of you in jail.”
“Lopez, Harper,” Tim chirps from atop the exam chair. “I’m fine, thanks for asking.”
Nyla inclines her head towards Tim in greeting from where she’s standing behind Angela, who doesn’t move a muscle while continuing to stare Lucy down.
“Tomorrow, I promise,” Lucy answers sheepishly.
Content with that , Angela flips her focus back to her best friend. “Hi Timberly,” she says, coming to stand at his side. Lucy is sitting in a chair on the other side of him, their hands resting on his lap. “Are you okay?”
Nyla walks closer to his bed and whistles lowly before Tim can answer. “Boy is buuuurnt.”
“It’s not that bad,” Tim objects, frowning at Nyla before turning to Lucy for backup.
“It’s not,” she says immediately, although she is very clearly trying not to smile. Her eyes flick to Nyla, who winks at her, making Tim sigh and lean back in defeat while he waits for the bag of fluids to infuse through his system.
“I cannot believe you’re already picking on me,” he huffs, but Lucy sees the way the corner of his mouth twitches in an effort to hide his smile.
“Please,” Angela snorts, “like you wouldn’t be doing the same exact thing.”
“She’s got you there, baby,” Lucy tells him sleepily, making no effort to pick her head up from where she’s been resting it on his leg.
Tim’s rebuttal is cut short by the doctor, who knocks on the door and steps inside the room. Lucy sits up, but keeps her hand in Tim’s.
“Sergeant Bradford,” Dr. Graves reads from his chart. He looks around the room at Tim’s visitors before fixing his gaze back on his patient.
“They’re fine to stay,” Tim confirms. “Everything okay, doc?”
There’s a pause while the doctor continues to look for something in Tim’s chart. It’s just a second or two, but those seconds stretch into eons, and Lucy’s ears start to ring again as the panic sets in.
“Sorry, we’ve got a new charting system, and I’m trying to find–ah ha!” Dr. Graves exclaims, brandishing a piece of paper. “You’re all clear, son. By some miracle, the sunburn is the worst of it, and hell, you just managed to miss elevating the burn to second degree. Once the bag is empty, we’ll send you on your way.”
He hands a different piece of paper to Lucy. “That’s a prescription for burn cream–yes, Mr. Bradford, you do need it—that will help it heal faster. We’re gonna send you home with a tube, as well, but that’ll help you get more, if you need it.”
Lucy pockets it before Tim can say anything to the contrary and takes the tube from the doctor. She’ll put more on him later, and she has no problem holding him down if she has to.
“How much longer on the IV?” Tim asks, turning to look at the bag hanging above his chair.
“Probably a little under an hour,” Dr. Graves answers. “It’s going the fastest it can, I promise.”
They thank the doctor, and he makes his way out of the room. Before anyone can say anything, there’s another knock on the door. They turn to find someone holding what had to be the biggest gift basket in the hospital shop. After a second, Aaron’s head pokes around from behind the behemoth.
“Hey guys,” he says, stepping into the room.
He moves cautiously, since he can’t really see, until he finds a table to set the basket down on. Once he’s freed his arms, he turns and looks at everyone.
”Hi,” Lucy responds belatedly, realizing that no one had said anything yet. They’d all been too distracted by watching Aaron trying to get into the room without knocking anything over.
“Lucy, I’m sorry again,” he greets, bowing his head a little in embarrassment. He looks at Tim then, and frowns, squinting. “Tim? That’s really you, right?”
Lucy lays her head back down on her boyfriend’s leg, too exhausted to laugh, but she knows without a doubt that Tim is glaring at Aaron and probably thinking of ways to Tim Test him about this later. She hears Nyla snort from over where she’s standing beside Angela.
Aaron glances around the room for a second. “What, too soon?”