Chapter Text
Later that same evening, after Lucy had gone to shower, Tim sat on the edge of the bed and pulled out his phone.
He could hear Lucy's voice through the bathroom door, singing something that might have been Fleetwood Mac. She'd been doing that since he came home, filling every room she was in with sound, and he'd realized after he'd been home a few days that she probably hadn't done it while he was gone. The house had been too quiet without him. Now she was making up for it, one perfectly on-key verse at a time, and he loved every note of it.
He looked down at his phone and keyed a message to Angela.
Going to hold off on NYE. After tonight I know I need to spend some time working through a few things before I ask her. But when I'm ready, I want your help planning it. I have an idea.
Angela's reply came in under a minute.
I'm here whenever you need me. She's not going anywhere Tim.
He read it twice. She's right. His sense of urgency was relative to his near-death experiences.
The ring could wait. He wanted to be standing on solid ground when he asked. He wanted to ask her because the timing was right, because he'd done the work. After all, she deserved the best version of him when he got down on one knee.
The shower turned off, and her singing stopped. Tim heard the bathroom door open, and then Lucy padded into their bedroom in his t-shirt, her hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun, damp tendrils framing her face, and climbed into bed beside him.
It felt so normal and domestic. Coming home to find Lucy living in his space. Now their space might have been his favourite thing about returning home if Lucy hadn't told him they were pregnant. Now, that easily became his favourite thing about coming home, even if it knocked his world off its axis.
Lucy curled into his side, pressing her cold feet against his legs, causing him to hiss.
"Your feet are freezing!"
"Your legs are warm. What's yours is mine."
"That's not how that works."
"Shh." She tucked closer. "I'm using you for body heat. Let it happen."
He put his arm around her, pressed his lips to the top of her damp hair, and thought about how seven months ago this bed had been the loneliest place in his house. How he'd slept in the middle of it for years after Isabel, not because he wanted the space but because sleeping on one side meant admitting the other side was empty.
Now Lucy's books were on the nightstand, her phone charger tangled with his, her cold feet against his shins and the faint smell of whatever she'd washed her hair with filled the air. His bed wasn't lonely anymore. The bed might be the best place in the house, or maybe it was the kitchen. He had time to figure it out.
"Tim."
"Mm."
Lucy leaned over and pressed a kiss to his mouth. "Get some rest."
New Year's Eve started with an argument about restaurants.
Not a real argument. It was more like a quiet debate, carried entirely through facial expressions, where Lucy would raise an eyebrow at Tim, and he would set his jaw and narrow his gaze. They would stare at each other until the other cracked up laughing.
Lucy had caught him looking at restaurants on his phone for the third time that morning.
"Can't we just stay home?"
Tim didn't object, but he still felt the need to try to plan something nice, even if it was last-minute.
"I spent two months missing you being in this house."
She was sitting beside him on the couch with her legs tucked under her and a mug of tea balanced on her knee, and she looked so much at home that it made his chest ache in the best possible way.
"I don't want to go somewhere loud with strangers counting down at midnight. I want us." Lucy said, her lips forming a slight pout.
"I was trying to plan something nice for you."
She looked at him over the rim of her mug. "Salmon and veggies on the grill. The firepit. You and me under the stars."
He studied her face for a moment. She was serious. She wanted to spend New Year's Eve in their backyard, and she was looking at him with those eyes, and he thought about all the New Year's Eves he'd spent alone, going to bed before midnight because there was nothing worth staying up for.
"Done," he said.
She leaned over and kissed his cheek. "Thank you."
"You're welcome. But I'm making the marinade."
"I would never presume to interfere with your marinade."
"You interfere with everything."
"That's fair." She took a sip of her tea. "But your grilling is always better when I interfere."
A snort erupted from Tim that he couldn't contain, "I need to amend that with, yes, as long as your interference happens before anything hits the grill."
Lucy tossed a pillow at his face, "Tim! It's not my fault you lost all self-control once you saw me in that blue bikini."
Tim groaned. "Enough, woman!"
Their laughter filled the room, reminding Tim once again that his life was no longer lonely or quiet. This was just the beginning.
Tim and Lucy spent the afternoon in the kitchen, which had quickly become one of the places they spent the most time in, next to their bedroom, of course.
It was always where they ended up. Where their best conversations happened, where Tim cooked, and Lucy perched on the counter offering commentary that ranged from helpful to deliberately provocative.
Tim was working on the marinade, his back to her, when the first potato disappeared.
He'd roasted them earlier, tossed them in olive oil and rosemary, and they were golden and crisp on the edges. He'd set the sheet pan on the counter to cool, turning briefly to look out the window and check the grill temperature.
When he turned back, Lucy was chewing.
"I can see you," he said.
"See me what?" Lucy said, trying and failing to hide the potato she was chewing.
"Lucy."
"These are potatoes, Tim. They are meant to be eaten."
"They meant to go with the salmon."
"I'm quality testing." She reached for another one. "This is important work."
He crossed to her and caught her wrist, just enough to stop the potato's journey. She looked up at him, her eyes bright with the type of mischief that had been getting him in trouble since July.
"If you eat all the potatoes," he said, "there won't be any for dinner."
"Then you'd better cook more."
"That's not—"
She popped the potato into her mouth with her free hand while he was holding the other one, and the look of triumph on her face was so complete that he leaned forward and kissed her, partly because he wanted to and partly because it was the only way to win this argument.
Lucy tasted like rosemary and salt. She kissed him back immediately, her free hand finding the front of his shirt. He let go of her wrist and put his hands on the counter on either side of her hips. Lucy hooked her fingers into his collar and pulled him closer.
Something had shifted between them since last night. She could feel it in how he kissed her. There was no edge to it anymore, no undercurrent of something unresolved. Since he'd told her about the close calls and assured her, after a long discussion, that he was going to talk to someone about it, something relaxed in Tim's mind. What had been feeling tense and knotted had loosened. He kissed her now and wasn't holding anything back. It was the version of him she'd been waiting weeks to find again.
"We have things to prep," he said against her mouth.
"We have all night."
"The salmon needs to rest in the marinade."
"The salmon can rest." She pulled him closer. "Are you seriously choosing meal prep over kissing me right now?"
He leaned back and looked at her face. Her cheeks were flushed. Her hair was in a messy knot on top of her head. She had a smear of olive oil on her chin that she didn't know about, and her eyes were filled with nothing but love for him.
"No," he said, "Absolutely not."
He kissed her again. The salmon marinated a little longer than planned.
By late afternoon, the backyard was ready for their private NYE together.
Tim had dragged the small patio table out from the garage and positioned it near the fire pit. He'd strung the lights he'd found in the Christmas boxes between the back fence and the lowest branch of the jacaranda, and when he plugged them in to test them, the whole tree lit up against the fading sky.
Tim stood back and admired his work. The table and chairs, the gas firepit set up with two loungers and the jacaranda catching the last of daylight through a canopy of tiny white lights.
This is what Lucy wanted; this is what she would get.
When Lucy came through the back door carrying their plates, she stopped.
She stood in the doorway and looked at the backyard, speechless for a moment.
Tim watched as she took in all the little details of how he'd set up the yard for them. He saw something move through her expression that reminded him of the first time she'd walked into his house. It was almost as if she was seeing something she'd been imagining and finding it better than what she'd built in her head.
"Tim," she said.
"Is it too much? You specifically said low-key."
Lucy bit her bottom lip, feeling overly emotional. "It's perfect."
They ate slowly. It was the perk of having no party to dress up for or a reservation to make. The salmon was cooked to perfection, and miraculously, there were enough potatoes for both of them to enjoy. As the sun set, the fire threw warmth across the flagstones. Lucy kept her feet tucked under her body in the chair next to Tim, wrapped in one of his sweatshirts, the sleeves hanging past her hands. Tim sat relaxed, his knees spread, his head tilted up towards the night sky, one hand entwined with Lucy's on the armrest of her chair.
Lucy noticed how relaxed he looked. After being home for a week, all of the tension from his high-stress, fight-or-flight situations while he was away seemed to melt out of his body as they sat there in the firelight. Laughter came quicker, and when the conversation hit a lull, his eyes didn't drift to a place Lucy might not be able to follow. Tim remained present.
Tim traced small circles on the side of Lucy's hand with his thumb when she cleared her throat, breaking the extended, comfortable silence.
"I want to finish my flight hours," she said. "Before I'm too far along. If I can get in a session a week through January, I can sit the written exam by early February."
Tim nodded. "You're so close."
"Closer than I've ever been." She looked at him, his face illuminated by the firelight. "Wade took me up while you were gone. He's been really generous with his time."
Something shifted in Tim's expression that Lucy recognized as pride layered with something that made her sad. The desire to have been the one taking her up himself, maybe. The knowledge that he hadn't been here, but the gratitude that Wade had made the time for her.
"Then we make it happen," he said. "Whatever you need. If you want me to take you up for those last hours, I'm there."
"I also want to start thinking about my commercial licence," Lucy admitted.
Tim raised his eyebrows, somewhat surprised that she was thinking about this already.
"Not immediately," she said quickly. "I know the timing isn't ideal." She rested her hand on her still flat stomach. "But I'm not shelving it. I did that with flying before. I let my parents' expectations push it out, and it kept sliding until it had been years." She met his eyes. "I'm not doing that again. Not with this."
Tim leaned forward in his chair, his forearms on his knees. "Lucy, we're going to figure it out. People further their education with kids all the time. You'll fly, and I'll be home. Or we'll work the schedules. Whatever it looks like, we'll make it work."
Lucy studied his face. He wasn't being reassuring for the sake of it. He meant every word. It was one of the first things she'd learned about him, back when his directness had felt so disarming. Somewhere along the way, it had become the thing she trusted most.
"Tell me what you want," she said. "Not for me. For you."
He sat with the question. She watched him turn it over in his mind. A week ago, his silences had felt different, but now they felt less guarded and more like the pauses Lucy had grown accustomed to.
"I want to be a good dad," he said. "That's the main thing."
"You're going to be an incredible dad," Lucy responded without any hint of doubt in her voice.
"You don't know that."
"I do, actually." She squeezed his hand. "I've seen how you are with the people you care about. You show up, you pay attention, and you are patient, even when it kills you." She paused. "That's most of it, Tim, and you have all of those traits in spades."
He looked at their hands on the arm of the chair. The firelight moved across his knuckles.
"My dad wasn't great." He said openly. Somehow, after he shared about what had been eating at him, the last of his walls came down. Lucy could feel it in every sentence. "He left when I was a teenager. It was for the best. I'd seen him a couple of times after that, but not in many years. My mom did everything."
Lucy held his hand and let him continue.
"For a long time, I thought that meant I didn't know how to do it. That I'd have to figure out fatherhood from nothing, with no good example to work from." He looked up at her. "But I had my mom. Joined the Air Force and met Wade. I had Angela." He paused, and she could see him thinking about each of them, how they'd shaped the man sitting across from her. "I've had people who showed me the meaning of family and unconditional love. I just need to continue putting it into practice."
"You already do," Lucy said.
He squeezed her hand tighter.
The fire crackled. The string lights moved slightly in the breeze.
"I want loud Saturday mornings," Tim said after a while. "In the kitchen, pancakes stacked high. Our kid is in their high chair, destroying everything within arm's reach. You are at the table with your CPL textbooks." He raised his eyes to meet hers, "I want this house to be loud and full."
Lucy felt her eyes fill.
"I want that too," she said.
Tim lifted her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles, and they sat like that for a while under the twinkle lights. A gentle breeze was blowing through the jacaranda, making it more fragrant.
Lucy broke their quiet as they'd both gotten lost in the faint glimmer of visible stars, even with LA's light noise. "I'm going to go inside and get a blanket from the couch and my phone so that we can track the countdown."
While she moved inside, Tim moved their chairs closer to the firepit, and when Lucy returned, she moved to his lap, pulling the blanket tight around them. His hand found her stomach on instinct. He had a feeling it would be one of the few things that might keep him grounded while he unpacked everything from his time away.
She liked the weight of his palm there. The significance of his hand resting there felt so comforting after weeks of worrying about him. His hand now went there the way it went to her waist or the back of her neck, without thinking, because the baby was already woven into the way he loved her.
"This time last year, I was on Angela's couch watching the ball drop," she said. "Eating cold nachos. Angela kept trying to set me up with someone Wesley worked with."
"How'd that go?"
"I said no a few times. Angela said I was being unreasonable. Wesley stayed out of it, which was the smartest thing anyone did all evening."
Tim smiled. "This time last year, I was asleep by ten."
"Of course you were."
"There wasn't anything worth staying up for."
The honesty of that truth landed between them. Lucy studied him as the firelight caught the angles of his face, the scruff he still hadn't fully shaved, the lines around his eyes that deepened when he smiled. She thought about how far he'd come from there. How far they'd both come.
"What were you thinking about?" she asked. "Last New Year's."
Tim spent a moment considering it. "I think I'd just come back from a three-day. Phoenix or Dallas, I don't remember which. I made dinner. Watched something I can't recall. Went to bed." He paused. "I was hoping Isabel didn't show up at the door or call, trying to pull me back in."
She reached over and touched his jaw.
"That's all different now," he said.
"Yeah," she said. "It really is."
They watched the neighbours' fireworks start early, popping and crackling across the rooftops. Lucy checked her phone. "Three minutes."
"What's your resolution?" he asked.
"Pass my PPL. Have a healthy baby. Be a good girlfriend to you." She looked at him. "Yours?"
"Deserve you." Tim's voice took on a deeper tone, rich with sincerity.
"Tim."
"That's my whole resolution."
She leaned across and kissed him, slowly. His hand moved to her jaw. His mouth felt warm against hers. Lucy could feel in every point of contact what had changed. His hands weren't searching for anything. His kiss wasn't urgent; he was kissing her because it was midnight. She was his, and he was finally fully present.
His thumb traced along her cheekbone while his other hand moved from her stomach to her waist, and Lucy shifted until she was straddling him in the chair, her knees bracketing his hips.
"Babe, you are so warm. I missed this while you were gone."
"My warmth, huh?" A low chuckle erupted from deep in Tim's chest as his hands settled on her hips and his arousal pressed against her.
"You're cold."
"Nuh-uh," Lucy kissed him deeper. His hands slid under the sweatshirt, flat against the bare skin of her back. She felt the warmth of his palms spread across her skin, and her breath caught.
"We should go inside," he said, his voice rough.
"No." She pulled back to look at his face. The firelight was behind her. The string lights were above them, catching in his eyes. "I want to stay right here."
He reached behind her and pulled the blanket up around her shoulders, wrapping them in it together.
She rolled her hips against him slowly, savouring the friction of his body beneath hers, and felt Tim stiffen.
His hands instinctively tightened on her hips as Lucy watched the realization slowly dawn on him, his eyes darkening when his fingers slid lower and found bare skin where cotton should have been.
"Lucy." His voice dropped. "Did you—"
"I may have made a wardrobe adjustment when I went inside for the blanket."
She watched his jaw flex.
"You love this about me, Tim."
"I do," he growled against her mouth, his hands moving to her bare thighs, his thumbs pressing into the soft skin at the crease of her hips, and his voice had gone rough, sending a surge of wetness between Lucy's thighs.
She pressed her lips firmly against his, and her tongue swept past the seam of his lips while she continued to rock her hips in a slow rhythm that demanded his reciprocation. His arousal was undeniable as his cock strained against his shorts, the only thing left between them, so she took her time with it. Allowing anticipation to build, allowing him to feel how wet she already was against him.
Tim groaned. His fingers curled into her thighs.
"Fuck," he said.
"Not yet." She reached between them and freed him from the confines of his shorts, wrapping her hand around him, and his head tipped back against the chair as he sucked in a breath. She stroked him once, root to tip, watching his throat work.
Lucy continued to stroke him, watching his restraint melt away with every languid movement of her palm over his cock. Not wanting to push him to the brink without feeling him closer, Lucy notched him against her entrance and held there, suspending them both in this moment that felt close to desperation for closeness.
"Lucy." Tim choked out a warning.
She sank onto him slowly. Taking all of him in one long, deliberate tilting of her hips. They both exhaled sharply, and Lucy pressed her forehead to his, both of them still for a moment. Lucy savours the stretch and feeling of fullness.
Then she started to move. Slow at first. Rolling her hips in a rhythm that was about feeling him as deep as he could go.
One of Tim's hands moved to her throat, his thumb pressed firmly along her pulse point, pulling her down to meet his lips. "So perfect," he breathed into her.
The blanket slipped from her shoulders as Lucy continued to move; neither of them reached for it.
When the night air hit her bare skin, Lucy gasped, but Tim's hands were already there, his arms wrapping around her, pulling her body impossibly closer. The warmth of his chest against hers, his mouth moving along her cheek, down her throat and across her collarbone. Lucy leaned back on her arms, her hair teasing at the tops of his thighs, beside her hands that were braced there.
She felt like she was offering herself over to him, on full display under the midnight sky.
Tim didn't hesitate.
His mouth immediately closed over one nipple, the bud taut from the cold, his tongue circled it slowly before his teeth grazed along the sensitive peak. Lucy's hips stuttered as she cried out into the open sky, Tim's arm tightening around her lower back, holding her steady while he moved to the other breast, sucking hard enough to make her clench around him, her whole body responding.
"Tiiiim." She was breathless. "Fuck."
Tim pulled her body back against his, her chest flush against his and his mouth seeking out her lips once more. This kiss was deep and felt all-consuming. Tim's need for her poured out with every swipe of his tongue along her lips and inside her mouth and with the way his hips started driving up to meet hers. Their rhythm shifted, faster now, the chair creaking beneath them.
The cool LA winter air surrounded them, and neither of them felt it. All Lucy could feel was Tim, the heat of his skin against hers, the way his hands moved across her back, her hips and her stomach like he was trying to touch every part of her all at once. The firepit had burned low beside them, and somewhere on the next block over, the last of the fireworks crackled and faded, and Lucy was riding Tim in their backyard on New Year's Eve and feeling nothing but the deep connection with the man below her.
She leaned her forehead against his.
"I love you," she whispered breathlessly.
"I love you so fucking much," Tim ground out, punctuating it between the rhythm of their thrusts.
Lucy's hand slid between them as she found her clit. She gasped, lost in Tim's eyes, as they darkened so that only a thin rim of grey remained around the black of his pupils.
"Keep going, baby," he rasped. "I want to watch you."
The tone of his voice combined with her fingers stroking her clit pushed her to the very brink.
"Tim, I'm close—"
"I know." His lips at her jaw. "I can feel you. So beautiful, coming apart for me."
His words gave her the final push. Lucy came quietly, a deep rolling wave that moved through her whole body. She dropped her forehead to Tim's shoulder, his name a murmur on her lips. Tim held her through it, his arms endlessly tight around her, tethering her to the moment. As her pussy continued to pulse around him, he followed her with a low groan that vibrated through them.
They stayed tangled together in the chair. The blanket pooled behind Lucy. Tim reached for it, pulling it back up around her shoulders, cocooning them once again. The crisp night air settled around the edges, but between them, there was nothing but warmth.
Lucy pressed her face against his neck.
"Happy New Year," Tim said against her hair.
She smiled into his shoulder.
"Happy New Year. Best one yet."