Chapter Text
All hell breaks loose.
A moment’s distraction, and the next thing Tim feels is explosive pain blooming on the left side of his face. The blow is strong enough to stun him, and he staggers backwards, completely losing his grip on the partially fastened pair of cuffs. The second time Tim sees it coming, Ghost Head’s meaty fist flying towards his face. Dizziness is a bitch to shake off, though, and his sight is too distorted, his reflexes too slow for him to block it.
Only for some reason, the punch doesn’t land. One moment, Ghost Head is almost on top of him, and the next, he’s not.
“...dford!” someone calls, and he needs to pull himself together. Now.
He shakes his head and blinks, keeping his legs shoulder-length apart and one foot back to keep his balance. Something wet’s trickling down his nose, and he wipes it with the sleeve of his uniform, the rough texture of wool doing him no favors.
For a moment, Tim almost thinks he imagined her. He’s seen Isabel’s face on a thousand different strangers since he returned from his tour. Hope would crest in his heart like a wave only to crash into nothing, dispersed onto the sand. None of them had been Isabel—they would have similar hair or eyes, but a second look never revealed the curve of her laugh, her smiles.
This time, though, when his gaze finally settles, it is her. She looks so… different. Skinnier, more frazzled, cheeks too gaunt, her eyes glazed.
But it really is her, and, like before, Isabel is there until she isn’t. The difference this time is that he sees it happen—she’s standing there, clutching a paper bag in one hand, and her gaze flicks several times between him and something else.
Then she bolts.
Tim almost follows, takes a step forward, ready to go after her, to check if she is alright, but as the ringing in his ear subsides, sounds start registering in his brain again, and he curses. There’s a scuffle nearby.
Of course, there is—Ghost Head had nearly knocked him off his feet. And, instead of doing something about it and properly restraining the guy like he was meant to in the first place, Tim left Chen to face him off alone, some six-foot-something dirtbag who wouldn’t stop leering at and making lewd comments about her from the moment they arrived.
There’s a big difference between letting her stand up for herself while the guy’s mouthing off and allowing him to get close enough to lay hands on her. The latter should never have happened, not for any reason, but definitely not because of Tim’s inattention.
He put her at risk. Put them both at risk, and for what? To stare longingly at his long-lost ex like some cheesy character in a soap opera?
Some cop he’ll be, getting this easily distracted.
By the time he goes to join the fight, it’s already over. Even though he’s almost twice her size, Chen has Ghost Head on the ground, one knee pressing against his back, and is snapping the remaining cuff to the wrist Tim didn’t secure.
Her mellowness led him to believe she couldn’t handle herself on the street, and he’s glad to find he was wrong on that count. Then again, she had to be, otherwise she wouldn’t have lasted long in this line of work.
Once Chen stands back up, Tim goes in, assisting her in dragging Ghost Head to his feet. Even if he doesn’t dare ask, shame pricks his gut over the fact that he was so out of it, he can’t tell even if his T.O. got hurt in the altercation.
Top-notch situational awareness, Bradford.
He looks her over—nothing stands out, but the uniform can hide a great many bruises. As she calls the arrest, it takes Tim a moment to place her expression. There’s a tightness around her mouth, her jaw clenched, and it dawns on him that this is the first time he’s seen Officer Chen look annoyed.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why, and he waits for her to rip into him, braces himself for it even.
All he gets is silence.
Taking the initiative of body searching and putting their suspect in the backseat of their shop is the only useful thing Tim’s done today, and he pushes Ghost Head’s head down a little too hard on the way in before slamming the back door closed. When Chen nods her head, beckoning for him to follow her away from the shop, he dutifully follows. It’s more consideration than he deserves given his fuck-up, which is on brand with Chen’s ‘teaching’ method—another T.O. would have berated him right then and there, the fact that it would be within earshot of their suspect would just be another humiliation to endure.
It would have humbled him, at least.
Now, he’s just pissed. With Chen, with Isabel, with the situation.
With himself, most of all. And Ghost Head, definitely with Ghost Head.
“What happened?” she asks when they’re far enough that their voices won’t carry.
His jaw tightens instinctively, shooting a flaring pain through his teeth and gums. Yeah, a punch—or elbow, most likely—to the face will do that. It’s almost as if remembering it makes it hurt worse, and the dull throbbing on his cheek and jaw intensifies to a very not-dull pounding.
The adrenaline must be wearing off. He doesn’t know what facial expression he pulls, but Chen must read it as unwillingness to talk, because she adds, “You froze on me, Bradford. I need to know why.”
“She was my fiancée,” he offers begrudgingly. Saying the actual words feels like chewing glass, and he swallows against the thousand tiny cuts.
Chen looks off in the direction Isabel ran, a furrow in her brow. “The blonde?”
“Her name’s Isabel. We’d been together for six years. I–we were supposed to get married after I came home from my last tour.”
Chen rests her hands on her police belt, expression softening into sympathy. “I take it she was the one who broke it off?”
“She vanished,” he says, and just as back then, he still can’t make sense of her actions. This is probably the most he has ever spoken in his T.O.’s presence, but no matter how much Tim hates having to share his personal history, Chen was right—she is owed an explanation. “Gave me a call to say she was done, and just… disappeared. I hadn’t seen her in over three years.”
“Until today,” says Chen.
“Until today.”
The words hang with the weight of his inadequacies, exposed for her to see, to pick apart. He couldn’t keep his own fiancée around, had driven her away not once, but twice now. She ran from him—how fucked up must a person be to inspire that kind of reaction? Maybe this will finally be the thing to show Chen that she should be a hardass with him, take him to task, put him through his paces.
No rookie deserves their training officer’s blind trust, but Tim? He deserves Chen’s least of all.
“Alright.” She nods. “I won’t tell anyone.”
Maybe it was seeing Isabel, maybe it was the blow to the head or frustration over Chen’s unending hope for him that makes him fall back into his mouthy platoon sergeant persona, but the words are out before he can clock his mistake, “Damn right, you won’t.”
First, neglect. Now, insubordination—oh, he’s clearly on a roll. Tack on another misconduct, and he’s washing out of the program before day’s end.
Apparently, even sunshine-y Chen has a limit, because she has incredulity written all over her face. “Excuse me?”
Tim straightens up almost instinctively, holding his hands behind his back. “Sorry, ma’am. That was out of line,” he says, then adds, You should add it to my blue page.”
“Your what?” she asks with a huff.
“I failed to do my duty. You need to write me up.” He shouldn’t have to explain that, but knowing every-stranger-is-a-friend-you-haven’t-met Chen, she’s probably never done it before.
“Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?” Chen asks, but before he can reply, she adds, “You don’t like me very much, do you, Bradford?”
“It’s not my job to like you, ma’am,” he says. “But it is yours to address my shortcomings.”
Chen raises her open palm in the air as though she can push his attitude away with it, but then she closes her hand. “Right. You know what? Just… get into the car.”
Tim almost tells her it’s not personal, his dislike of her. Although if she asked him to list the reasons why, it would sound very much so, so he refrains from saying anything else.
When he makes for the driver’s door, she calls, “Passenger seat, I'm driving.”
He obeys—his big mouth has cost him that privilege, it seems. Once they get inside, she turns on the engine and reverses onto the street.
The air is heavy in the shop, almost as if dragged down by her hurt feelings. Chen isn’t talking—there’s no excited blabbering driving him insane, no insufferable gentle teasing, nothing.
He'd deny it if asked, but it bothers him that he is responsible for it. It shouldn’t—it’s what he wanted, isn’t it? For her to be less friendly towards him. Less annoyingly bubbly. Tim has kept a running commentary in his head about all of Chen’s faults, what difference does it make that he let some of it slip out?
None. None at all.
So why does it make him feel like an ass?
Her gaze flickers over to his face as she drives, and Tim blames the blow to the head for the sudden, absurd wish to have her fingers trail it instead. “You need a hospital.”
“I’m fine.”
“Forgive me if I’m not inclined to believe you when you have a shiner starting to show and blood smeared all over your face.”
Tim grimaces. He forgot about that. He probably looks a sight.
“No, I’m okay.”
She mutters something under her breath that sounds conspicuously like stubborn manly men.
“What?” Tim asks.
“Nothing.” She flicks the blinkers on and pulls the shop to the curb. “Grab the war bag. If you insist on refusing medical care, I’ll clean up your face, and we’ll find you an ice pack to try and keep your face from swelling too much.”
When he hands Chen the first aid kit, Tim expects her not to be gentle about it. He did imply he doesn’t care for her or her methods right after she kept him from getting beaten up. Instead, she dabs the saline gauze pad gently over his cheek, brows furrowed in concentration. It’s the closest he has been to a woman in a while, and the fact that she keeps meeting his eyes to check if her ministrations are hurting him doesn’t help. By the time she’s done and flashes a light in his eyes to check for a concussion, he’s uncomfortable enough.
The two aspirins he downed better kick in soon. Even if they don’t, though, he’ll live. He’s had much worse than this. Hell, his dad used to give him worse on a ‘good’ day.
The shop falls back into silence. Even Ghost Head doesn’t dare run his mouth, not with his charges now including assaulting a police officer.
The radio crackles to life, and Tim has never been so grateful for it.
7-Adam-15 requesting additional unit to meet us at 1350 Bellview Street. Possible location of our BOLO suspect. We are en route, Officer Bishop's voice discloses.
Since Chen has the wheel, Tim’s the one who has to respond to it this time. He looks at her, awaiting her call.
She eyes him again. “That’s not far from here. Are you good to go?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Alright, then.” She pulls them back onto the road, turns on the sirens, and steps on the pedal.
Tim grabs the speaker microphone and presses the PTT button. “7-Adam-19 show us responding.”