Synopsis: Tim wakes up feeling under the weather, but insists he can still go to work. Lucy has other ideas.
Inc: Lots and lots of fluff, and slight angst.
Warnings: Mentions of grief and Tim's Childhood abuse.
Tim wakes up with a groan, wiping the sleep from his eyes, only when he does, he notices a tension in his body that wasn’t there yesterday. As he gets up to stretch, his head begins to feel heavy, pain rushing through and sealing his eyes closed. His hands reach for his forehead, trying to ease some of the pain. He realises the warmth on his face, it’s definitely not normal temperature; he’s sick. Tim sits at the edge of the bed, and grunts lowly, trying not to wake Lucy in the process.
Lucy wriggles when she hears Tim’s voice, opening her eyes slowly. Adjusting to the lights, she blinks several times before she registers that Tim is hunched over at the edge of the bed. She wonders for a second if he’s just woken up too, but when she feels the cold on his side of the bed, she knows he must’ve been up for at least 10 minutes. “Babe, are you okay?”
Tim lifts his head as high as he can to look towards her. “Mhmm” Lucy’s brows furrow at the definite lie. She shifts closer towards him, hands trailing up his back and down his chest. She notices the heat radiating off him and lifts her hands to check his forehead. “Tim, you’re burning up. You need to take today off”
“No, I’ll be fine. S just a little temperature” Lucy rolls her eyes at his stubbornness, moving off of the bed and stretching her legs to stand in front of him. “Tim, you’re not going to work. And neither am I” his head snaps to hers, wincing from the clear pain it’s caused him.
“Luce, you can’t take the day off work just because I’m sick. And besides, I won’t be here, because I’ll be at work”
At the utterance of his words, she sighs deeply and kneels in front of him, so she can face him at eye level. “Babe, you’re sick. And you’re not going to be any good to anyone at work when you’re like this. And I also know that you’re too stubborn to look after yourself so I am going to look after you. No arguments.” She leans down slightly to give him a small kiss on the cheek, pushing him gently back towards the pillows on the bed.
“Go back to sleep. I’ll call work for both of us and I’m going to make you some soup.” Tim looks at her adoringly, lips curving into a smile with the little energy he has. “You don’t have to do that Luce. I’ll be o-“
“Hush, I’m doing it, now, go to bed.” He knows at this point that’s there’s no use putting up a fight. When Lucy has her mind set on something, she’s going to do it no matter what anyone says. Besides, he finds it incredibly sweet. He’s never been looked after like this before. He was once sick when he was with Ashley, but as soon as she found out, she went home and told him she’d see him when he felt better. He did however get a delivery of warm soup on his doorstep, so that was something at least.
As Lucy leaves the bedroom, Tim rests his head back on his pillow and reaches his left arm out over Lucy’s side of the bed. It doesn’t take long before he’s back to the land of dreams.
Lucy hums whilst in the kitchen, rooting through the cupboards for the ingredients of her famous ‘feel better soup’. That’s what Jackson named it after she made it for him when he had the flu in police academy. The memory makes her smile and clenches her heart with a bittersweet feeling. She misses him, especially on days like this; if Jackson knew she was going to make her famous soup, he’d have ran home during his lunch break and taken some with him. He’d done it once when Lucy made some for Tamara.
Shaking her head of the memory so she doesn’t upset herself, she continues to search through the shelves, eyes scanning what’s there and what’s not. After around 5 minutes,she becomes aware that a trip to the grocery store is needed, so she gets out a small piece of paper and writes Tim a little note just in case he wakes up ‘Tim- needed to go get some more ingredients, be back soon, there’s some aspirin and a glass of water next to the bed xx’ she finishes her note by drawing a small heart below the kisses and leaves it taped to the bedroom door.
20 minutes after Lucy left for the store, Tim wakes up to the sound of his phone vibrating on the beside table. Groaning, he leans over to his side and fumbles for his phone, not even looking to see who’s calling him. “Hello”
“Oh my god, what happened to you?” Tim immediately recognises his sisters voice, not enjoying the teasing behind her tone. They’ve known each other for long enough to know when each other are sick, and Genny knew from the moment Tim answered the phone that he was feeling under the weather. It reminded her of when they were kids, only this memory wasn’t a particularly nostalgic one. She remembered the time that Tim got sick before a football game once; he had the flu really badly, chills, headache, his nose wouldn’t stop running and he just looked out of it. Their Dad forced him to go the game that day, telling Tim that he needed to ‘Man up’; he ended up fainting at the game and Genny never forgot about how weak and ill Tim looked. Their Dad yelled at him for ‘embarrassing’ him.
Genny sighs regretfully at the memory, wishing she could’ve done more to help him at the time. But she was scared of her dad too, so that never ended up happening. Now feeling guilty for teasing him, she softens her tone. “Are you okay ? You’re not going into work are you ?” She worries that he’ll have forced himself to go in, something that he has done every time he’s been ill since the day their Dad tormented him for it.
“I’m fine. Actually, Lucy has taken the day off work to look after me” the overwhelmed appearance of his voice doesn’t go unnoticed by Tim’s sister.
“You’re telling me that Tim Bradford, my stubborn big brother has actually listened to someone and stayed off work?! Wow, Lucy deserves major props for that one” she chuckles in bewilderment, and then a comfortable, thoughtful silence falls; Tim swears he can hear the cogs spinning in Genny’s head. Before he has time to ask what she’s thinking about, she interrupts him.
“You’re going to marry her, aren’t you ?” The smile is evident in her voice, a slight squeal of excitement releasing at the end of her sentence. Tim took a breath, turning his head to his right, eyes focusing in on a picture of him and Lucy that Lucy had framed on the shelf. It was a picture they took together on their second date after their first ‘real’ kiss. Lucy was adamant that they needed to capture the moment, and as Tim stared at the photo, he knew she was right. Every feeling he felt that night had come flooding back to him- the joy, the excitement, the laughter. The photo itself has become his favourite in the world; they’re faces are pressed so tightly together, Lucys arms wrapped around his neck lovingly, their smiles brighter than the sun- he hasn’t told Lucy yet, but he has it in the pocket of his wallet so he can look at it whenever he misses her when they’re not together.
Tim takes no longer than a second to reply to his sister, heart full, mind calm and certain. “Yeah, I am’.
Around 15 minutes after Tim’s call had ended, Lucy’s keys jingled through the door. Flinging herself through the opening in a slight rush, she lost grip of one of the bags and the contents scattered all around her. “And of course it’s drops on the floor!” She utters with a facetious timbre in her voice. As she bends down to pick them up, she spots a pair of legs making their way to her.
“Oh, hey handsome, how are you feeling ?” She looks up at him, her once annoyed expression dissipated and replaced with a warm, affectionate one. “I’m okay, but you’re clearly a little worse for wear” he teases her, joining her on the floor to pick up the shopping. “Timm, its not funny!" she retorts playfully "I just wanted to get back quickly so I could make you the soup. I got a bit held up though because the owner had a break in last night, so I was taking some information for him.” There it is again, he thinks. The empathy she has for other people. She could’ve easily called someone at the station, but she took the time out of her day to help him out herself. God, he loves her.
“Anyway” she snaps him out of his daydream “you’re supposed to be resting ! I can handle all of this.” Lucy stands up, places the ingredients on the kitchen island and wipes the few creases out of her trousers that they have sustained from kneeling on the floor.
“Yeah, I know, but you’ve already done enough for me, I just wanted to help you a little”
Her face softens, head tilting to the side. Tim watches the way her hair falls perfectly passed her shoulders, his trance causing him to miss how slight sadness crosses her features. Done enough ? In Lucy’s book, she’s barely even scratched the surface yet. She’s got a list in her head that grows by the second of ways she plans to take care of him and bring him back to his full health.
“Tim, you- you’ve never been properly looked after before, have you ?” He shrugs his shoulders, lips curling in an uncertain, almost numb line. “I don’t know, I mean, my dad was never affectionate in any sense of the word, and my Mom tended to just stay out of the way so he didn’t take his anger out on her.” Lucy swears she can hear her heart shatter. The thought of Tim being treated so badly has always caused her pain, but hearing even more about it just makes her want to break down into tears- he deserves the world. No words are spoken between the two of them, just knowing glances and sorrowful gazes.
Tim looks away for a second, the reminder of his childhood causing him some anguish. He’s swept away in thought until the warmth and softness of his girlfriends arms encases him in a hug; it reminded him of the one she gave him after he confronted his father; it was the first time he’d felt actually safe in such a close vicinity to him, the first time he felt truly free to be vulnerable around him. And that was because of Lucy Chen- the one who was currently gripping him so tight that he could feel his heartbeat push into her chest.
“I’m so sorry you had to go through that. You deserve love, you deserve vulnerability, you deserve happiness”
Tim’s eyes well up with tears, each one threatening to fall. He’s never heard such beautiful words in his life. And he’d never believed them until this moment. He sniffs slightly, the taste of salt falling into his mouth indicating that the tears did in fact, fall. Lucy wipes each one with a tender swipe of her thumb, giving him a kiss each place that his tears fell.
“You’re gonna get sick if you keep kissing me” he says, his head arching towards his shoulder, hiding the smirk that’s etched onto his face. “I don’t care, it’s worth it’ her words are shortly followed by her cupping his cheeks and planting a soft, adoring kiss to his lips. “Now go back to bed, the soup won’t take me too long.” The request couldn’t have come sooner, as much as he was loving the feel of her lips on his, his body had other plans, and they included another, much needed nap.
“Mhmm, yeah” he’d clearly only just woken up, eyes still partially shut and his hair was pointing in all directions, but he already had more colour in his face so that was a good sign. Lucy giggles slightly under her breath, perching herself at Tim’s bedside, resting the tray of soup on his lap.
Tim moans at the delicious smell travelling up to his nose, now more than ever being grateful that is girlfriend is an amazing chef. But when he looks at it, his mind starts running and his body can’t help but freeze. “Oh my god”
“What, does it smell bad ? I didn’t change the recipe!”
“No, no, it smells delicious, it’s just- this, this is the soup” Lucy furrows her brows in confusion, this illness of Tim’s must have really knocked him out. “Yeah, I’ve been telling you all day I was going to make it” Tim chuckles at her response, understanding that his words appeared rather vague to her. “No, I meant, this is the exact soup I had when I was last sick” Tim doesn’t miss the way Lucy’s eyes widen and how her gaze averts away from him.
“Ummm, I don’t know what you mean”
Tim can’t help but grin widely, his brain reconnecting dots that he thought he’d already connected months ago. It wasn’t Ashley that left that soup for him when he was last sick.. it was Lucy. He knows without a doubt; the smell, the consistency, the presentation- it’s exactly how he remembers it. “It was you that left the soup for me when I was last sick. Why didn’t you tell me ? I let Ashley take the credit for it.”
Lucy shrugs her shoulders slightly, a pink flush invading her cheeks. “I just wanted you to focus on getting better. And I told Ashley to take the credit. I bumped into her that day at the store- she told me you were sick and I figured you’d feel a bit better if you thought your girlfriend had made it for you”.
Tim can’t stop staring at her. Every day he thinks he’s gotten to grips with how big his girlfriends heart his, but everyday she just surprises him more. His fingers motion her to come closer to him. She leans forward and rests her hands upon his bare chest. Tim leans closer so their noses touch.
Lucy giggles, burying her head in the crook of his neck. She turns to look deeply into his eyes, the unspoken look of love dancing between them.
