Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tim’s first thought when he sees his new T.O. is that she’s soft.

The wool of his navy blue, long-sleeved uniform isn’t bothering him, nor is the fact that it’s the Mid-Wilshire precinct he’s ended up in. He couldn’t care less that he’s been stationed here along with legacy West and upbeat, clueless Nolan. But this… this matters.

He had clocked the T.O. trio going in, had watched their mannerisms after getting into his uniform. It’s just his luck, too, that out of the three women, he gets the one who’s the least compatible with him. Officer Lopez is mouthy and straightforward, while Bishop doesn’t seem to suffer through any nonsense.

Officer Lucy Chen, though… Well, she’s beautiful, for starters, not that it matters, but too sunshine-y for his taste—mellow in a way that would better fit a Kindergarten teacher rather than a police officer, much less one responsible for training recruits for the hardships of the job. It had never crossed his mind before, but now he wonders if he’ll spend the next 13 months of his life assigning speeding tickets and helping the elderly cross the street.

So, once roll call is over, Tim stays behind for a word with the Watch Commander. He stands aside as Sergeant Grey chews Nolan up and spits him out, and Tim can’t help but agree with his words about the other rookie. Nolan is too nice (and, to be blunt, too old) for the job, so Tim has reason to believe the sergeant will be sympathetic to Tim’s cause. If the older man can see how much of a hazard having Nolan around is, surely he can appreciate the incompatibility of pairing Tim with Chen. Tim was a soldier, after all, and he hadn’t joined the force to be coddled.

He waits for Nolan to clear the room before speaking, standing at attention with both hands behind his back. “Sir, I wanted to raise a concern regarding my T.O.”

Grey cocks his head. “I’m listening.”

“I would like to request a different one. I’d be good with either Officer Lopez or Officer Bishop, sir.”

“Is there a reason Chen shouldn’t be your superior officer? Any prior involvement I need to know about?”

The question throws him a little. Of course, she is beautiful, but to assume they had been involved? It’s a bit of a reach. His last relationship had been with Isabel during his Army days, and look how well that turned out. “No, sir. Respectfully, I don’t think we’d be a good fit. It seems Nolan or even West would be more up her alley.”

The sergeant hums, his gaze fixed on Tim. At this point, though, he’s used to being evaluated and doesn’t fidget under the other man’s scrutiny. “Is that so? You see, Bradford, I thought, given your stint in the military, that of all of the recruits, you would be the one who would give me the least amount of trouble.

“It would appear I assumed wrong. Go find your T.O., you’re dismissed.”

Years of drilled obedience make him comply—it’s a direct order, after all. It seems he didn't leave the best of first impressions on the Watch Commander, but he had to at least try. If he was doomed to have a mushy T.O. in charge of his training, he’d have to put extra effort off hours to learn how to do his job well. 

He meets Chen outside the bullpen, and there’s a soft smile on her lips. “Officer Bradford, everything okay?”

Tim clenches his jaw. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Great. Shall we?”

He gives her a curt nod in reply.

Nolan is dashing out, carrying two war bags and two shotguns as Bishop shouts at him to ‘hurry up, Boot!” near the sally port. Meanwhile, Tim’s own T.O. accompanies him to the equipment room, sharing pleasantries with the officer in charge as they wait.

She also offers to help Tim carry the bags, but Tim shortly declines, cursing his bad luck internally. It’s not her job to be kind—she should be putting him through his paces at the very least, calling him ‘Boot’ and making him work to gain her respect—but it seems everyone but Officer Chen is aware of that fact.

“This is our shop,” she says as they get to their vehicle. “Every day you’ll be required to check it for any exterior damage and log your findings, next you should search it for anything your suspects may have left behind, money, drugs, or anything that isn’t supposed to be there. Don’t worry, you can get it in writing later.” 

It takes all Tim has in him not to roll his eyes at her. He’s not supposed to take notes, he’s supposed to know it by heart already. That’s what the Academy was about—preparation. If not for the reality of the streets, then at least for the protocols of the job.

Chen continues as they go towards the shop’s trunk. “Then we move on to the shotgun safety check, though I assume, given your past, you’re more than familiar with this part?”

He nods again, verifying the gun's barrels to ensure it’s clear before loading it. It’s ready to go, so he closes the action and awaits further instructions.  

Chen tilts her head. “You know, Bradford, you’re allowed to use your words.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He can tell she’s waiting for more, but he’s not inclined to add anything else, so she continues. “Ooookay. Check the war bags. Make sure nothing is missing or malfunctioning. Lastly, turn on your body cam and test it.”

Begrudgingly, he says, “All good.”

“Then we’re good to get into the shop. Here.” She tosses him the keys, and that’s probably the only silver lining to this situation—that he won’t have to just sit and get bored out of his skull as she kiddy-gloves him to within an inch of his sanity.

“Turn on the computer and log onto it, then test the sirens and you’re all set.”

Once Tim does, she turns in her seat and asks, “How are you feeling?”

He grits his teeth—the last thing he wants is to discuss his feelings for God’s sake. 

“Fine,” he says, then belatedly, “ma’am.”

In an unexpected turn, her voice hardens just a bit. “Be sure of it, Officer Bradford. You’re going into the streets with a loaded weapon and people will depend on you to protect them. You need to be able to handle it.”

He meets her eyes for maybe the first time since their gazes crossed during roll call, they’re an intense but lovely shade of brown, steely, and he thinks that perhaps he had misjudged her. “I’m ready for duty, ma’am.”

She softens again and he thinks he must have imagined it. 

Tim starts driving and, as he turns onto a different street, he catches a small smile on her face. “Now tell me, why did you choose to join the LAPD?”

He already knows it’s going to be a long day.

Chapter Text

“Please stop the shop, Officer Bradford.” 

Chen’s voice is calm and Tim follows it as an order although it rings more like a request. He wonders if his T.O. has seen something he hasn’t, some incident that requires them to stay out of sight, so Tim scans their surroundings, looking for a drug deal or act of vandalism in progress.

There’s none. He throws a glance at his T.O., making sure she’s not having a heart attack or medical emergency of any kind, and she seems fine, too. Their shop is now in the middle of the street and he’s questioning his decision to join the police in the first place. If this is so she can point at another cute dog Tim might be the one ending up in a holding cell today.

“Ma’am?” His tone is borderline disrespectful which is part of why he's been trying so very hard to speak less not more in her presence. He discovered five minutes in that Officer Chen would fill the silence with endless, meaningless chatter regardless of any input from him. 

“Just making sure you were paying attention,” she says lightly, and he tightens his grip on the wheel in an attempt to keep from throttling her. Or maybe in a rehearsal for when he finally caves to the instinct, he’s not entirely sure which. Tim has had his fair share of aggravating superiors, but none quite like her. Some of them had been downright sadists, Chen is… bubbly. He honestly doesn’t know which one is worse. Before he can start feeling nostalgic over his Army bootcamp days, she continues, voice still soft, “Now, I’ve been shot. Where are we and what do you do?”

“Announce shots fired, call for backup and ambulance to 1053 Cloverdale Avenue,” he says in a flat tone, then raises an eyebrow at her. Is this really her idea of proper training? It’s a pathetic attempt at an exercise at best, its delivery failing to assess how he would respond under pressure.

She stares at him, her gaze holding his own before she shakes her head, a tiny grin fighting its way to her face. “You’re no fun, Bradford, did you know that?”

He scoffs, eyes back on the road. Yeah, because policing is all about fun.

The day gets progressively worse.

After a truck of Spanish-speaking gardeners with several violations made the stupid mistake of honking at a police car (but were lucky that their shop contained Saint Lucy Chen, defender of puppies and the downtrodden) and a lesson from his T.O. on empathy, of all things, the two of them answer an actual call.

They’re supposed to be backing up Officer Bishop and Nolan, and Tim is forced to watch the latter try—and fail—to de-escalate the situation instead of neutralizing the threat.

The guy taking a baseball bat to a car’s windshield like it personally wronged him makes a run for it and both rookies set out on foot pursuit.

Tourists—LA’s most precious commodity after entitled movie stars and annoying screenwriters—make the chase all the more difficult. Everything is a high, a potentially exciting thing they can document and share for views. Tim dodges people this way and that amidst the crowd of onlookers before he’s able to pick up the pace.

He has the man in full view—there’s noise to his left that he catalogues and dismisses as a non-threat before leaping into the air and tackling their suspect to the ground, the move a calculated and familiar measure.

As he’s cuffing him, their T.O.s arrive on the scene. Annoyance flares at him as Chen fawns over Nolan (the source of the noise Tim dismissed earlier), releasing him from where he got stuck on a chained gate. She places a hand on the older rookie’s arm and whispers some words Tim can’t make out but that bring a sheepish smile to Nolan’s face.

Great, now not only is she trying to ruin Tim with heal them with love bullshit, but her encouragement will keep Nolan from giving up and dropping out of a job he’s not cut out for.

Officer Bishop comes along to help Tim pull the cuffed man to his feet, her eyes rolling at the sight Chen and Nolan make, but when Tim meets her gaze to commiserate, her eyes narrow at him.

Right, he’s a rookie. Not really allowed to have an opinion yet.

Hey, at least someone understands that. P1s are lower than dirt, and for good reason, too. They are more hazard than asset until their training is complete and they’ll hopefully stop fucking shit up.

It’s the phone call that comes next that changes things. The man they apprehended is a father. And while he’s having a full-on meltdown either due to psychosis or drug abuse, there’s a little kid stuck inside a car somewhere while it’s almost 90ºF out.

Chen bites her lip, her brows furrowed as they listen to the car's description. Tim can’t really fault her for that—he’s not a monster. His own hands are clenched into fists at his sides, and she’s all efficiency as she hands their suspect to a different officer at the scene, an older one Tim hasn’t met yet, and gets into their shop, responding to the call and awaiting instructions for a grid search.

There’s a tension to her body now, their shop silent, and Tim almost wishes he hadn’t internally cursed her cheerful disposition non-stop for the last four hours if the thing that finally rids her of it has to be this. He’d gladly suffer any amount of annoyance if only they didn’t have to search the city for a kid who might be dead by the time they find him.

“All units be advised, we’ve found him.” Nolan’s voice crackles through the radio. “He’s okay. He’s going to be okay.”

The air that's been trapped inside his chest ever since hearing about the missing kid is slowly expelled, shoulders slumping ever so slightly, but it’s the bright smile lighting up Chen’s face that makes Tim feel relieved. 

Her light swat on his arm before she grabs the radio breaks him from that ridiculous train of thought. "7-Adam-19, roger that."

Once they’re back at the station at the end of their shift, their shop and gear accounted for, Tim finds and hoards the entire paperwork while his T.O. is distracted being greeted by half the station. He finds a secluded location to fill it in lest Chen decides it’s her job to help him with that as well.

There’s no sign of her when he’s finished with it, but when he heads inside the locker room to shower and change, there’s a bright yellow post-it stuck to his locker door.

Great job today :)

-LC

“Man, I wish she was my T.O.” Nolan’s voice comes from Tim’s right, it seems he was too slow to grab the note and crumple it in his hand. 

“No, you don’t.” At least, not if he is serious about being a cop. Tim opens his locker, hoping the action will be enough to discourage further conversation.

It’s not. Nolan never could take a hint.

“Are you kidding me? She told you her lunch order. Bishop gave me the evil eye for getting her a salad for more than an hour after our lunch break.”

“Chen seems cool,” West pipes up. And great, now it’s a three-way conversation Tim wants no part in. “I mean, I'm happy with Lopez, but I asked my dad yesterday, and while all three of them are great in their own right, I heard Chen’s on the lead to get the tap. You know, to become a detective.”

Chen as a Homicide or Narcotics Detective? “Yeah, right.” 

West and Nolan must finally get the message that he’s in no mood to talk because they finally leave him be.

Chapter Text

It’s only day 2 of his training, but Tim can already identify Chen’s laugh in a crowd. He’s heard it in the bullpen, in the break room, echoing from inside the women’s locker rooms. At one point, he even thinks he heard it coming from the Captain’s office, though he’s not entirely sure about that one—it's a little unlikely, and with the glass walls and the distance acting as dampeners, he might have imagined it.

It is, however, decidedly absent in roll call between the guffaws of the senior officers as Grey shows the room the bodycam footage of Nolan’s failed foot pursuit.

Tim himself would’ve laughed, except incompetence isn’t really funny. Had that guy gotten away from them because Nolan thought himself spry, little Lucas would’ve been dead.

When the video shows Tim tackling the suspect to the floor, accompanied by Grey’s reluctant admission of it being text-book perfect, however, Chen’s voice is the loudest amidst all the clapping and cheering.

Not that Tim’ll admit it, but the pride in her tone makes his stomach flip a little. Only… between her little post-it note the day before and this, he wonders again if she has any clue whatsoever about what she’s doing.

There’s a fine line between keeping morale up and inflating rookies’ egos. At this stage, when they have yet to prove their capabilities, it’d probably be beneficial to tip the scale of morale towards non-existent and let the weak wash out rather than have it the other way around. It’s dangerous to have cocky, inexperienced officers frolicking about, thinking they know everything just because their T.O.s are too nice to knock them down a peg.

And even if he did a good job, Tim shouldn’t be getting compliments for doing nothing other than his duty—this isn’t a football game and Tim doesn’t need cheerleading. What he needs is an instructor, someone unwilling to cut him any slack because doing so means lives might be ruined.

Tim wouldn’t complain, though, if they managed to get Superbowl Sunday off. He’s a Rams fan, not that he’d tell his T.O. about it. Not letting her know it’s something he’d be interested in doesn’t stop Tim from scanning the B.O.L.O. on Selby, just in case they stumble upon an opportunity to catch him.

After they’re dismissed, Chen insists on accompanying Tim to the equipment room again. Without the delay of having a word with the Watch Commander this time, this means both Nolan and West are there as well.

“Lucy!” Nolan greets her—just like that, as if they’re old friends instead of senior officer and subordinate. “Good morning!”

“Morning, John,” she says warmly, then holds a hand out towards West. “I didn’t have the pleasure yesterday, Officer West, but it’s nice to meet you. Welcome to Mid-Wilshire.”

It must be her friendliness—that a niggling part of Tim wonders could be some kind of reverse psychology bullshit to allow her to get under the rookies’ skins as a form of elaborate torture before he dismisses the thought for the insanity it is—that trips West up because it can’t possibly be her looks. They aren’t friends, but Tim knows West doesn’t bat for that team. The kid shakes her hand. “Um, right, I’m Jackson. West. But just Jackson. Nice to meet you, ma’am.”

Her smile grows amused but not teasing, like she finds whatever the hell that was cute instead of judging it for the embarrassing display it really was. “Just Lucy, then.”

“Right,” West says again, still a little starstruck, as he grabs the war bags and shotguns the equipment officer placed on the counter. “Gotta go, see you guys later.”

Once he leaves, Chen turns back to John, her smile now absent but her eyes softer. “Heard you had a hard end of shift yesterday. Are you okay?”

Tim’s gaze snaps to Nolan. He’d interacted with the older rookie after shift yesterday, but he’d been his usual annoying self. Or at least, Tim had thought so. Had the boy he rescued died despite their efforts?

Nolan swallows hard, and now that Tim’s paying attention, he sees the shadow cloud the older man’s face. Sees the way his gaze drops to the ground.

“Yeah, I… he died in my arms.” Tim’s heart plummets, but Nolan continues, voice a little hoarse. “We had been there earlier, thought the victim was the wife, except he hinted something about it being the other way round. I should have pushed.”

Not the kid—a different call, then.

It appears the pair of them forgot Tim was there, how with him being 6’2 is anyone’s guess, but the moment feels almost intimate. Like he’s intruding. Tim’s not quite sure if he should step back or not move at all and he hates feeling wrongfooted. Hates that they’ve created this little bubble of heartfelt feelings and didn’t give him the courtesy of doing it in private. Because he doesn’t have the full picture here, but having men die in his arms is something Tim’s more than familiar with, and he didn’t need the reminder of what the sensation is like.

“This wasn’t your fault, John. We can’t save everyone, and it’s harder still to save those who don’t ask for our help.”

Despite not being aimed at him, Chen’s words ring like total bull and Tim almost scoffs. Maybe it was Nolan’s fault. Maybe it was Officer Bishop’s. It’s their job to protect people. It’s too easy, too comfortable to exempt oneself from guilt. To just… move on and not hold yourself accountable.

He’s been lost in thought, far away from the precinct for a moment because the next thing he knows, he’s tensing at a touch on his arm. He stops himself from flinching, but just barely.

“You alright, there, Bradford?”

Their war bags and shotguns are on the counter already, and Nolan's nowhere to be seen. 

“Fine, ma’am.” If Tim grips the straps of the bags with more force than necessary, letting the rough feel of nylon ground him, Chen doesn’t seem to notice.

This time, she limits herself to grabbing their bodycams instead of offering to carry part of their equipment. Good to know she’s finally grasping her role in this, leaving the grunt work to the rookie, even if she still acts more like they’re partners.

Maybe she’s just lonely. But if that’s the case, it must be by choice—the entire station seems to adore her. He’d bet she bakes them cookies and never forgets their kids' birthdays. Unlike him, they seem charmed by her endless chit-chat, probably because they aren’t the ones who need to maintain focus on the job while she’s talking their ears off.

“Make a turn here,” Chen says, and his hearing filter might be improving because he’d blocked her last three sentences yet was still able to pick up on the command. “Park the shop.”

Tim complies, and contrary to the last time she’d told him to stop, this time he spots a plausible motive right away. There’s an exchange going on outside of a liquor store. Drugs, from the look of it.

“That’s Ghost Head,” Chen says. “Looks to me like he’s in violation of his parole. Hasn’t been known to carry firearms, but be careful.”

Tim nods.

“Officer Chen…” the guy—and what kind of name is Ghost Head anyway?—greets her as they approach him. “If you wanted my number, all you had to do was ask, y’know? Sweet little thing like you…”

The lewd look the guy’s throwing his T.O.’s way makes Tim’s skin crawl. The blatant disrespect… Tim may not like her, but the grounds for it are her personality, not some crap about her being a woman. He hates lowlifes who find pleasure in objectifying and demeaning women on principle, but he knows Chen can handle her own, at least when it comes to this, and he’d be doing her a disservice by punching this guy in the face. So Tim says nor does nothing.

Chen’s voice, when she speaks, is impassive, and devoid of any emotion it sounds almost wrong. “Search him, Bradford.”

Tim has barely taken two steps forward when the guy yells at Chen, “Hey, this is harassment!”

“No, sorry to disappoint, but this is a body search based on reasonable suspicion of unlawful activity.” Chen meets Tim’s gaze and nods toward the suspect before continuing, “You consented to them when you were released on parole.”

“Hug the wall,” Tim says, even as he ‘helps’ their suspect turn. If Tim’s a little rougher than necessary while conducting the body search, well, that’s just too bad for Ghost Head. The guy’s still large and unrestrained, so Tim’s prepared for him to try and fight him. Also for a scenario in which he tries to escape. 

What Tim isn’t expecting, however, is for the blonde woman leaving the liquor store to advance toward him. “Hey! Let him go!”

Her voice strikes him as familiar, but just before the small woman can reach Tim, he catches from the corner of his eye as Chen intercepts her path. “Ma’am, you need to step back.”

Tim already has one cuff around Ghost Head’s wrist and is preparing to slap it on the other when the woman speaks again, “No, let him go! C'mon, you've gotta let him go.” 

Tim’s head whips to his right, a name he didn't think he'd say again falling off his mouth, “Isabel?”