It's a normal Wednesday, until it's anything but.
Tim and Lucy both arrive at the station and change into their uniforms when the first change comes.
"Chen, you ride with Bradford today," Grey says in a rush as he passes by, saying something about the logistics, about Penn riding with him today and something else they miss in the surprise of his assignment.
And that's how they end up riding together, solo, for the first time in a long time – no rookies or others tagging along with them, no special op to force them together, just a day on patrol. Together.
Like it used to be.
What used to be their everyday routine foryears, their normal, is now something out of the ordinary.
Beyond that, given everything they've been through, there's momentary doubt.
It will be the most time they've spent together in months, when not that long ago they used to spend every spare second together.
It could be weird, but it's not. They've gotten themselves into a good enough place that they're able to work together in peace, even consider each other friends for the most part.
Then, he lets her drive.
Definitely anything but normal.
Tim finds every chance he can get to try and do an act of kindness for her. Today, letting her drive seems to be the act of choice.
Lucy raises her eyebrows and scoffs. "I think it was more fun when you made it harder to earn."
Tim smirks. "In all our years together, I think I can count on one hand the number of times I got to be passenger."
"Got to be?" she snorts. "As if I was the one beggingyouto drive." She ignores the momentary sadness that hits her when she remembers that last time they rode together, just the two of them on patrol, and he let her drive.
When she was studying for her detective's exam.
"You wanna drive or not?" he retorts, trying to sound stern, but she knows his playful bark is anything but serious.
She grins. "Yes, please."
He gestures for her to head to the driver's side door and when she turns away, he smiles at her pleasure.
They're at some sort of stalemate. They've gotten past the worst days of the breakup, but the traces of hurt and regret are still there, always simmering just below the surface. Neither one of them can ever forget what could have been. Sure, he was the one that walked away. But the most confusing thing about their breakup was that neither one of them wanted it and they both feel the loss, never far from their minds. They can be around each other, talk to each other, joke with each other – but this seems to be where the storm has settled. Friendly exes who took a chance and got it wrong. Maybe this is where it will remain – tentative friends with a past full of remorse and regret.
He'd promised her to return all the kindness she had given him, and she'd accepted that – for the most part. But despite it being a meaningful gesture, it hadn't really taken them anywhere more than here.
And maybe that's all it was ever meant to do.
"Do I get to pick where we eat lunch, too?" Lucy chirps as he slides into the passenger seat and buckles his seatbelt.
"Don't push your luck, Chen," he grouses, but they both know she's going to get to choose.
It's a normal Wednesday on patrol, for the most part.
They respond to a traffic collision, pull over someone for speeding, respond to a domestic call that turns out it was a woman arguing with her cat, and then they're called to respond to a report of a pedestrian standing on the side of a bridge called in by the construction crew working on the bridge below. When they arrive, the pedestrian is nowhere to be found. They pull over, check it out, and call it in that the pedestrian is gone.
Lucy pulls the shop back onto the bridge and is only driving for a moment when they hear a loudBOOM.
"What was that?" she wonders.
"Explosion?" Tim questions, feeling the shop shake and hearing the same loud roaring sound that Lucy heard. He glances in the rearview mirror and sees a cloud of smoke. "Let me call it in."
Only he can't call it in, because the shop continues shaking so much that he can't grab the radio.
"Earthquake?" he wonders now, grasping the seat.
Lucy slows down, prepares to pull over and stop so they can figure out what happened and get a control on the shop when she glances in her sideview mirror and realizes what's happening.
"Shit. The bridge is collapsing."
"What?" Tim replies in disbelief.
"It's collapsing!" she states, voice confident despite her terror.
Tim looks into the review mirror and can see a chunk of the bridge slowly fall apart behind them, not far from where the work was taking place.
"Holy crap," he says the only thing that comes to mind.
Lucy is calm, despite their situation, a dark cloud of dust and debris is starting to appear behind them.
"What do I do?"
"Just keep driving," Tim states, although he has absolutely no idea what to do, but he knows stopping won't do them any good if the bridge is unstable. "You're not far from the end of the bridge."
"Tim."
"Do what feels right," he adds, fearful of instructing her too harshly and causing her to overthink herself. She'd always struggled with that as a rookie and she'd grown to become confident – but he remembers the clown crime scene in the back of his mind and he's afraid to do something to make her doubt herself.
"I trust you," she tells him, glancing at him ever so momentarily.
Tim takes a deep breath. "Just go at a steady pace. Don't look behind you. Stay as steady as possible."
She nods. "Okay."
In front of them the field vision becomes cloudy and she can't see where she's going anymore as the light fog of smoke starts to turn darker. "Steady. Accelerate into it but don't floor it. Just keep going through it. It's the only way out."
She nods again, focused.
"Lucy."
"I know," she replies softly.
"I'm sorry."
"I know," she replies again. "Iknow."
"I hope you know how much you mean to me. How much you've always meant to me. Through everything we've ever been."
She nods in understanding. They've been so much together. Training officer and rookie. Sergeant and aide. Friends. A couple. Exes.
"I do," she says. "You mean the same to me."
"You got this," he tells her softly. Tim glances behind them, can sense they're about to be overtaken by the collapse or the debris. "Floor it."
"What?"
"Floor it."
She does as he says, hits the accelerator and prays they're going straight despite the shaking and before she knows it, she sees a clearing through the darkness and then she can see the road ahead, faint, and realizes they've come across the bridge onto solid land.
Lucy continues to drive as far as she can before they find themselves at the edge of the scene where fellow first responders have already sprung to action and started to block off traffic. Another car pulls up behind them, and she wonders if they made it through, too. "My god."
They gape at each other for a moment before Lucy lets out a little laugh. "You did it," Tim says, momentarily covering her hand with his and giving it a squeeze of comfort.
"The one time you let me drive," she jokes and he lets out a huff of laughter in relief that they're fine.
Back at the station, they find out that the construction work on the bridge damaged a pillar and caused a section to collapse.
Grey gives them the rest of the day off.
Lucy steps out into the parking lot. It's mid-afternoon – they never did make it to lunch – and the sky is clear and blue with perfect fluffy clouds in the background. The plants and the flowers in the parking lot look crisp and bright, thriving after the rainy winter.
She remembers a night standing here in the aftermath of the rain.
Now things look a lot brighter.
"Hey," Tim's voice pulls her from her thoughts as he appears from the doors of the station.
"Hi," Lucy returns.
"Can we talk?" Tim says carefully.
Suddenly, she's transported back to another time in this parking lot. Another day she asked him to talk and everything changed. At the time, it felt hopeful, but it led them not only through some of the best days of their relationship but also straight into some of the worst.
"Okay," she agrees carefully. She's not sure what he wants to say, but she has been waiting for him to talk since the day he walked away from her and she's willing to hear whatever it is he's decided to finally say.
"I meant what I said in the shop. I'm sorry."
It's so simple, after everything.I'm sorry.
Lucy nods. "Believe it or not – I know you are," she says what she'd come to realize some months ago. "And believe it or not, somewhere along the way – I've come to understand why you did it." He looks at her, surprised. "But what do you want, Tim?" she asks, softly, and he doesn't have to ask what she means. "Where do you want to go from here?" She watches his face carefully as she sees him turn serious, his eyes turn sad with regret, teary as he speaks.
"I want to go back to that night and take it all back," he says, voice cracking as he tries to get out his words. "I just wantyou. That's all I've ever wanted. But at the same time, I know…" he looks deep into her eyes before he breaks contact. "I know that I was right, I wasnotthe person you deserve. Because you didn't deserve to be left like that."
"And do you think you are now?"
Tim shakes his head as if none of that matters past his one pressing concern. "How could you ever trust me again?"
"Tim," she says softly.
"I would understand if you couldn't."
"Do you remember the day we sat over there," she nods her head to the spot where he'd first asked her out, "and I was afraid it wasn't worth the risk?"
He nods, sadly, as it's a thought that he's been reminded of many times in the aftermath of their breakup. "I told you maybe it was. And then I ended up walking away and proving you right."
Lucy shakes her head. "Yeah, for a while there I thought – see, I was right. It wasn't worth the risk because we gave it a try and instead of being worth it, we lost everything we had before." Tim looks down at his hands, guilt lining his features. "But then I realized – I don't regret it."
"You don't?"
"No. It didn't go the way I hoped it would, but despite all that I don't regret a second of what we had. Even if this is it – if we stay just like we are right now, in this weird friend limbo that's not quite what we had before we got together, I'd never regret the time we were together. And maybe I was looking at it like I took a leap of faith and you let me fall. But maybe… maybe it's not over, you know? Maybe that risk was still worth it. Maybe we do this again and it's better and we're stronger for it. Maybe you were right – it's worth the risk. Maybe that included going through all this, risking going through the hard stuff to come out the other side. No one said it was a straight shot. Maybe this still works out for the best. You made a mistake and yeah, ithurt, but in all the years we've known each other, you've earned my trust more than you've ever broken it."
"You asked me before if I'm the person you deserve now." She nods. "I don't know," he admits. "But I'm trying to be. I'm learning how to be. I want to let you in more, I'm learning how to open myself up. I'm learning how to communicate better."
"Tim, I want you to understand something," Lucy says decisively and he looks up at her, surprised. "I'm so happy that you're finding success in therapy, that you're able to uncover things that have happened and begin to figure out how they've affected you, that you're allowing yourself to feel them and process them finally. I'm happy that you want to improve yourself, that you want to communicate better. I'd love for you to let me in deeper. But I need you to understand – that you have always been worthy, Tim. I loved you before and you were worthy of my love before. You didn't have to become better or fix yourself to deserve to be loved."
His eyes fill with tears, and he blinks rapidly to keep them at bay. "Thank you," he says softly. "I needed therapy. I needed help. But I'm sorry for walking away like I did. I wish… I wish I could've figured things out without taking you down with me. And I don't know if I'm the person you deserve, but it's up for you to decide. I get that now."
"We have a lot to talk about," she states, and for the first time she sees a glimmer of hope on his face.
"We can. We will."
"It's not going to be easy."
"Easy is overrated."
"We might need couples counseling."
"Absolutely."
"You have to be patient with me. I might have moments when something brings it all back and I get insecure."
"Patient withyou?" he asks, aghast. "God, after everything you'll have nothing but patience from me."
She nods. "Don't walk away again."
"Never," he says, then steps closer and takes her hands. "Lucy, Ipromise."
"We will be telling the grandkids aboutallthis and it's my version we get to tell."
He lets out a surprised snort of a laugh. "Fair."
"Okay, then… let's keep taking this risk. Together."
They stare at each other for a moment, as if they can't believe that on this ordinary, turned not so ordinary Wednesday they've just found their way back to each other and it all seems so simple. As if they both knew it was leading here.
Then again, that's the way it's always been with them. The day he first asked her out, neither of them were surprised that everything had led them to that moment. There was no sweeping declaration. Just a simple understanding that they both had known it was heading there the whole time.
"Are you going to kiss me, or do I have to do it first again?" she asks and gives him a smirk and he lets out a laugh.
"Come here," he says, tugging her closer by her hands and letting one of his hands slide up her side to cup her face, not even caring that they're in the Mid-Wilshire parking lot (yet again) and it's entirely certain that someone is watching them and about to report it to the gossip mill. "I love you so much," he tells her softly, leaning his forehead against hers momentarily.
She closes her eyes even as they fill with tears, warmth overtaking her at hearing those words again. "I love you too," she returns. A horn honks somewhere in the parking lot and she seems to be jostled back to reality, realizing that they're fresh off work in the middle of the day, on their way to their respective cars when they've just reconciled. "What… do we do now? Now what?"
"You want to get something to eat?"
She grins and nods. "Yes. I was promised I could pick lunch."
"I never promised that."
"Uh, I remember the words 'for the rest of my life,' in the elevator. Don't think I'm letting that go."
"Technically, I did kiss you first last time."
She rolls her eyes. "That little peck?"
He smirks. "Wanna drive?"
She rolls her eyes, shoves at him playfully and for the first time in what feels like forever they laugh freely and everything seems right.
"God, no."