Work Text:
One moment she’s fine, talking about the case and even smiling with Tim and Aaron, and then suddenly she can’t breathe. Suddenly, she’s back in that barrel, buried somewhere in the ground in the middle of nowhere, no way of escaping unless someone finds her in time. Suddenly, the feeling of running out of air, of suffocating, consumes her entire body, clogging her throat, and has her lungs constricting painfully in her chest as she tries to just breathe.
She just needs to breathe and force the images of that awful day from her mind, but it doesn’t work. Her eyes snap closed, trying to will the images away but still.. nothing. Nothing but all-consuming pain.
Everything around her fades away, so she doesn’t notice as Tim turns his attention away from grumbling about why the elevator stopped, toward her when he notices her labored breathing. Doesn’t see how his face goes from as relaxed as can be while on the job to absolutely terrified and concerned for her.
“Lucy? Hey, what’s- hey, breathe,” he says as he’s reaching for her in the semi-darkness of the elevator.
She doesn’t pull away from him, which is a good sign, but the physical contact and his encouraging words don’t help. She’s already in too deep to be pulled out quickly. She whimpers, subconsciously reaching for the collar of her shirt with a shaky hand, trying to get it out of the way but it won’t budge, while the other wanders to her side where the tattoo is.
Tim doesn’t even think about what he’s doing when he reaches for her body cam, turns it off, and then takes it off, letting it disappear in one of his pockets. Nobody should ever be allowed to see such a private, vulnerable moment. It really doesn’t need to be broadcast to the world.
He doesn’t care about any protocol, or rules, or whatever, or that Aaron is right there next to them; his only concern is Lucy.
Aaron, in turn, watches as Tim quickly opens the first two buttons of Lucy’s uniform shirt to allow her to breathe in a little more air because she’s still fiddling with it. The plates for her body cam find their way into one of his many cargo pants pockets shortly after as well.
Neither Tim nor Lucy notice when Aaron reaches for his body cam, too, almost on autopilot, and turns it off. He can’t do much, but he can do this. He knows what it’s like when it just hits out of nowhere, and he wishes there was something else he could do. He doesn’t hesitate to reach out when Tim holds out first Lucy’s duty belt, and then his. It makes him feel a little more helpful.
But it feels oddly intimate, so he averts his gaze, swallows the lump in his throat, and tries not to eavesdrop too much. As much as this tiny elevator will allow, anyway. So he has not choice but to listen as Tim tries to help Lucy through her panic attack.
Tim cups Lucy’s face in both hands, her hands now gripping his arms as he continues to encourage her to breathe. But the words don’t seem to register, the clouds of panic too thick. So he tries something else.
“Hey, hey. Luce. Hey. Can you look at me?” he whispers softly.
She doesn’t open her eyes, but he won’t push her. He knows that she might need a moment or two, but he knows she heard him, at least subconsciously, because she squeezed his arms, the same way she often did when she heard but didn’t answer him right away. But his heart breaks a little when he hears another soft whimper escape her.
“Hey, it’s gonna be okay. Breathe, baby. Breathe.”
He can tell that she’s fighting the panic with everything she has, that she wants to open her eyes and look at him, but she can’t. The panic’s making it hard to breathe, and she’s close to hyperventilating. So he does the only thing that’s helped in the past if the memory of being back in that god damn barrel and running out of air was too overwhelming.
He readjusts his hold and tilts her face up before softly breathing some air on her face.
He watches as the little gust of air registers and her eyes slowly blink open a handful of seconds later. He watches as a shiver goes through her entire body when the realization that she’s not alone, that, despite the relative darkness around them, she’s not trapped in that barrel, and that she can breathe, washes over her.
“Hi,” he whispers as her eyes lock with his.
“Tim,” she whimpers in response, a sob catching in her throat a moment later.
“Come here. Come here,” he whispers softly, pulling her against him.
One hand wanders from the side of her face to cradle the back of her head, the other goes around her shoulders, trying to shield her from the pain as best as he can.
She goes willingly, eyes falling closed again as she clings to him, hands fisting tightly in his Metro shirt at his back. He murmurs comforting words into her ear as he sways with her in his arms, letting her cry it out, sobs wrecking her body.
“It’s okay. You’re gonna be okay. Just breathe.”
She moans, still unable to slow down her breathing.
“Okay. Okay, try to match me then. In and out. Come on. In and out. You got this.”
She lets the words wash over her, lets his scent invade her senses, inhaling it as if it were the oxygen she so desperately needs, and listens to the steady beat of is heart right below her ear. That, and the feeling of having his arms around her, the knowledge of I’m safe with Tim is what finally allows her to breathe a little easier again after what feels like hours.
“Good, keep breathing. You got this, baby.”
He quickly glances over at Aaron, sees the younger officer looking on solemnly, their two duty belts in hand, visibly affected by seeing and hearing his partner fighting a panic attack. Aaron catches his gaze briefly, but looks away again quickly, swallowing hard, not wanting to intrude on an obviously intimate and emotional moment, but having no way of giving them some privacy because they’re all trapped in this damn elevator together. Tim turns his attention back to Lucy, promising himself to thank Aaron later.
“Okay, you got this. It’s gonna be okay.”
Lucy inhales deeply, sobs subsiding, but blinking against the tears still rolling down her cheeks.
“Just keep breathing. I got you. You’re safe.”
She lets her eyes slip closed again, the tears falling for a different reason now when she feels Tim pressing a kiss to the top of her head. Because he’s her safe place, her anchor, her hideaway when things get rough. He’s been the only true constant in her life for far longer than she’d allowed herself to realize. She feels so safe, so loved in the circle of his arms that she feels her body sag with relief and gratitude, and so. much. love.
She hates being weak, but she’s learned that it’s not so scary with Tim, when he’s there to catch her. And she knows that he’ll always be there to catch her, that he’ll always hold her up when she needs it. But she can’t help her next words anyway.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why-” she hiccups through her tear-clogged throat.
Tim’s already shaking his head, and quickly loosens his hold around her, cradling her face again instead, and making her look him in the eye for what he has to say.
“Hey, no. Stop, okay. Stop. Don’t ever apologize for this, okay? Ever.”
“But-”
“No but. You’re the strongest fucking person I know. None of this changes that. If anything, it reminds me and proves how strong you are. Trauma is trauma. And I know you wanna be ‘over it’, but we both know it’s not that easy.”
He wipes a few tears away with the pads of his thumbs before she hums sadly, letting her forehead fall against his chest gently, a shuddering breath escaping her. He pulls her against him once more.
“Thank you,” she mumbles against his chest, one arm winding around his waist again, the other hand finding a spot on his chest, right below his heart.
He shakes his head again.
“You know you don’t need to thank me.”
He’s just glad she accepts his help, that he can help her at all. That she allows him to try and shelter her from the rest of the world for a bit while she fights against the panic.
“Tim.”
He can hear in her tone that she’s a bit exasperated that he’s so reluctant to accept her gratitude. So he sighs affectionately, smiles, and whispers his next word against her temple.
“Always.”
They fall silent after that, swaying in each others arms as her breathing slowly returns to normal. She exhales sharply, emotionally spent from the last few minutes.
“Okay?”
“Yeah,” she confirms as she nods, the same thing echoing through her head over and over.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
But she doesn’t say it. The words have been on the tip of her tongue for weeks, months now. But actually saying them out loud is still terrifying. He’ll be the first and only guy she’ll ever say those words to. She wants to say them, but they remain lodged in her throat for another day. So instead, she looks up at him, stands on her tiptoes as the hand that had been resting on his back moves up to cradle the back of his head, and presses her lips to his, trying to pour everything she’s feeling into that kiss.
“Ok, I hate to interrupt, but I think I have to before this gets out of hand,” Aaron says after a very long moment.
Lucy pulls back abruptly, having totally forgotten that Aaron was with them.
“Oh, my god. I’m sorry. I didn’t even-“
“Hey, don’t worry. I’m just glad you’re oka- I’m.. are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she replies softly.
She leans against Tim again, her head resting against his chest once more, one arm around his waist again, her other hand fisting in the front of his shirt. Aaron’s not sure she even realizes she’s doing any of that, it’s just natural. And clearly indicative of how easily she and Tim can ground each other, how much they love each other.
“Thanks,” she adds a moment later with a grateful smile.
Before he can do more than smile back at her, the intercom crackles to life. A moment later, they hear a muffled voice starting to ramble.
“Hi, sorry folks. It’s been a shit show with this thing lately, we’ve been trying to fix it for weeks. It works fine some days, and then other days it just stops every other ride, and- anyway. Help’s on the way already, so we should be getting you outta there shortly. Hang tight.”
Aaron, being closest to the panel with the buttons, takes a step forward and presses the one to respond.
“Thank you! Very reassuring..” he mumbles.
Lucy scrunches her eyebrows together when she sees that Aaron is holding their duty belts, and glances down at herself and Tim. When had that happened? And where was her body cam?
As if he could read her mind, Tim reaches into his pocket to retrieve the plates for her body cam.
“Here, let me.”
He starts attaching them to her uniform shirt. She looks at him with soft eyes, because he doesn’t have to explain. He took it off so it wouldn’t bother her, so the weight on her chest wouldn’t add to that suffocating feeling. God, this man.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
She reaches up to button her shirt herself, but as calm as she may feel on the inside again, she notices now that her hands are still shaking. She groans in frustration when the buttons just won’t cooperate, and feels herself getting agitated because of it. She should be able to do something as mundane as buttoning her uniform shirt.
“Baby.”
The soft whisper of Tim’s calm, reassuring voice manages to snap her out of it, and she takes a deep breath to ground herself. She nods to answer the unspoken question she can see in his eyes, and returns his smile, grateful that he can ground her with one simple reassuring word — a word that had her heart fluttering wildly in her chest every time he said it, because he calls her baby now.
She finally manages to button up her shirt, and then takes the body cam from his outstretched hand and clicks it in place. Just as Aaron is handing her her duty belt, the lights flicker on, indicating that they might be getting out of there soon. She lets out a breath she hadn’t known she was still holding.
Tim’s right. She wants to be over it by now, but he was also right when he said that it’s not that easy. That trauma will always be there in some way, she knows it will, as much as it sucks. And she’s learned to live with it, but she will never be able to prevent something like this from happening.
It doesn’t happen often anymore, and she really has no idea why, when it does, she’s fine one time, and close to completely falling apart the next. Doesn’t know what’s different on those days when it does. Doesn’t know what triggers it.
She knows she can fight her demons by herself, but it’s a relief to know that she doesn’t have to. That Tim will always help her for as long as she lets him, and even when she doesn’t want his help. That he will always keep her securely held in his arms until she’s ready to face the world again.
She doesn’t know what they did to get to be by each other’s side, but she’s endlessly grateful that the universe forced them together as rookie and TO, and let them find their way to this, to them. Because in her entire life, no one has supported her, encouraged her, or challenged her the way he always has. No one has ever accepted her the way he does. No one has ever made her feel so safe and so loved before. She hopes that he feels the same way about her.
If the soft look in his eyes as he finds her gaze after she’s secured her duty belt around her waist is any indication, she’s pretty sure he does.
She can’t tell how much longer they wait before they can get out of there, but it’s not important. She’s not alone. She has Aaron, who starts some small talk with her about the latest season of The Bachelor — probably to get her mind off of everything — and who she should really thank later. And she has Tim.
Tim, whose heartbeat she can hear and feel right under her ear again as she leans her head against his chest, and whose hand has found its place on the small of her back, thumb drawing little circles over and over again. It’s such a small gesture, but it helps tremendously as she lets the last remnants of panic ebb away.
Tim, who’s.. well, just Tim. Her favorite person, her anchor, her one and done. Because she knows there will never be anybody else.
Yeah, she’s going to be okay. As long as she has Tim by her side, she’ll be fine. She’ll get through anything. She closes her eyes as she listens to Tim and Aaron start arguing — good-naturedly — about what’s right and wrong with reality TV shows. Why was Tim so passionate about that? And why did that make her love him even more?
She smiles to herself as her heart finally returns to beating normally again, the same words from earlier ringing in her ears once more.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
---
So keep me held in your hands
You’re my safe place
My hideaway
You’re my anchor
My saving grace
You’re my constant
My steadiness
You’re my shelter
My oxygen