Work Text:
Lucy was doing her best to tune out three conversations when the text arrived.
Nolan had been droning on for nearly eight minutes about plumbing fixtures for the bathroom remodel Harper hired him to complete. She couldn’t help but be a little bit resentful with all the talk of rain showers and heated towel bars when her landlord had recently switched all of the showers to low flow options. And honestly? If Bailey and Nolan weren’t a thing, Lucy might consider a friends-with-benefits-we-already-know-we’re-good-together situationship with John.
His shower was amazing. If she didn’t tune him out, Lucy was just going to spend the rest of shift grumpy.
Smitty was chatting loudly at another table to a horrified Jan, something to do with a crockpot meal that involved three kinds of meat (one of which was hot dogs) and cheese that came out of a squirt can. If she wanted to finish her salad, she had to ignore him. But seriously, poor Jan.
And Tim and Angela? God, she wanted no part of that conversation. Lucy had heard something about Wes and double dates at a fancy steakhouse and her stomach twisted worse than when Smitty said “hot dog, kielbasa, and shoulder stew meat”.
(Also, what was with Wesley and double dates? He kept trying to convince Angela to convince Lucy that she and Chris should join the Wopezes for supper. And Chris, in turn, wouldn’t drop the subject when Lucy had agreed to meet him for nachos the previous week.)
Thank god for the text.
The distraction was … wow.
“Chen!” Angela barked, nudging Lucy’s leg with the toe of her boot. “What’s got you so distracted?”
“Oh. Uh.” Lucy quickly minimized the text and glanced across the table at Angela (but most decidedly not at Tim, despite the fact that the two were sitting elbow-to-elbow at the smaller-than-their-usual-table). “Nothing. Just a text.”
The detective smirked and took a long draw from her soda before speaking again. “Clearly not nothing, Chen. You’re flushed.” Her teasing tone had drawn attention from Nolan and Harper, who also looked over at Lucy. “Oh God. Don’t tell me Sanford is sexting.”
“ANGELA!”
“Lopez, that is disgusting.” Tim shoved his basket of fries away and Angela reached over, pulling them to her. “We were eating.”
“Her eyes are glassy. She’s flushed and was grinning at just a text. Ergo, sexting.” Angela dragged a handful of fries through her leftover barbecue sauce. "Don't gotta be a detective to figure that one out, Bradford."
“We are not - I wouldn’t - we’re at work , Lopez!” Lucy also pushed her salad away, but Lopez clearly wasn’t interested in stealing it. This time she couldn’t help but glance at Tim, meeting his gaze for a half-second before looking anywhere else. Anywhere. “And we don’t do that.”
In that space of time, Angela reached for Lucy’s phone (cursing herself for the delayed auto-lock) and opened the message at the top.
“JESUS, CHEN! Warn a girl.”
“You stole my phone, Angela! How could I - just give it -”
Lucy reached across the table for her phone, but Angela held tight, turning it to display the photo to the rest of the table. “I know you said you stay friends with your exes, Chen -”
At that, Nolan coughed.
“- But I didn’t realize you meant friends with benefits.”
Lucy grabbed again for her phone, taking it back this time and locking the screen. “I’m not. Just … sometimes Emmett likes to send pictures.”
“He broke up with you over text,” Tim ground out as if Lucy wasn’t perfectly aware of how Emmett had chosen to end their … relationship? Fling?
Incredibly hot and athletic bedroom sessions?
Nyla gave a little shrug, smirking. “I think he’s making it up to her over text too.”
She drew her lip between her teeth, fighting the urge to unlock her phone and open the text once more. It was a particularly good photo and Lucy was grateful to both Emmett and the fellow firefighter who captured the image of him on the salmon ladder at his station’s gym.
His arms were fantastic.
Lucy didn’t want to encourage him, but she and Chris weren’t exclusive and a video of the same training session would definitely go a long way toward …
“That’s it,” Tim muttered. “Break’s over, Chen.”
***
Three months later
The mattress shifted slightly with his weight and Lucy sighed contentedly, turning over to snuggle against him. She loved Sundays.
She loved Sundays in bed with Tim.
How could she even worry about the Sunday scaries when she woke up to cuddles and pancakes and plans with her favorite boys? She couldn’t.
Lucy’s phone let out a ping from the bedside table, but she sighed into Tim’s worn Army shirt which smelled of pancake batter and his laundry detergent, not caring.
“You want me to get that, baby?”
“Probably should make sure it’s not something work-related. Can you grab it?”
No one would bother her on a Sunday unless it was work-related. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Chris had taken to trying to convince her that she’d made a terrible mistake in breaking up with him. (They’d gone on a total of five dates before Tim had gotten his head out of his ass, broken up with Ashley, and asked Lucy out. There was nothing for Lucy to end, but Chris wouldn’t stop trying.)
“Are you fucking kidding me.”
“What’s wrong?”
Tim didn’t answer, busy glaring at the phone. Lucy craned her neck to look, but he held it away from her, his scowl darkening as he poked at the screen before shifting away from her. She pouted.
He yanked at the hem of his tee-shirt, pulling it off in a swift motion.
Her pout disappeared.
The shutter sounded from her iPhone camera.
“You’re an idiot,” Lucy mumbled, rolling her eyes at Tim as realization dawned. He hadn’t let go of her phone, watching the text message go from DELIVERED to READ. “Can we have breakfast now?”
“Sure, but I’m keeping this.” He tucked her phone into the pocket of his shorts before rising and pulling her up from the cocoon of blankets and pillows. “Come on, babe. We’d better eat if you want to take His Majesty on that hike.”
Between the pancakes, the early morning make-out session that followed, and the hike with Kojo, Lucy managed to forget that Tim had taken her phone. It wasn’t until they reached the top of Mount Baldy summit and flopped down to re-hydrate and let Kojo rest that Lucy decided that she couldn’t miss the opportunity to update her Insta. She was almost too comfortable, though, sitting between Tim’s knees and leaning comfortably against his chest to worry about capturing the vista.
And then he drew her phone out, stretching his absurdly muscled arm --
(Lucy had long since deleted the video that Emmett had sent her of his salmon ladder exercise but that was okay. She did have a video of Tim doing curls saved to her iCloud and my god was it good. It was the hottest thing she’d ever seen and she got to see Tim naked. Regularly.)
-- Just as he slid his index finger under her chin to turn her face so that he could kiss her.
They kissed languidly for a few minutes before Tim drew back and Lucy snuggled in with a sigh. One arm banded around her, a comfortingly possessive weight, and she was almost too blissed out to realize what he was doing with his other hand.
Until she heard the sent whoosh.
“Timothy Bradford.”
Barely any time passed before Tim barked out a laugh.
“Emmett is a little bitch.”