However Do You Want Me... || Chenford / The Rookie

Part 21

No. No. NO.

She doesn't even realize she is saying it out loud until she opens her mouth to scream for the medic again, and she can no longer hear the agony of her denial repeating in her head.

She crouches next to him — too scared to touch him, too scared to try and check for a pulse, too scared to even utter his name.

And then he groans. Relief floods her like someone has literally reached into her chest and lifted the crushing weight of dread off of her heart.

"Tim? Tim — don't move. You fell. You could have a spinal injury, and you're bleeding. Don't move," she repeats again, "The medic is on the way."

He groans again and begins to push himself up from the snow, and Lucy frantically reaches to stop him, but he pushes her away as he situates himself in a seated position.

"I'm fine. Just really fucking embarrassed that's going to be on TV," he grumbles.

Lucy stares at him in disbelief, "Are you sure? Tim — you fell a really long way." She reaches for him again, and this time he lets her examine his face and head as she searches for the source of the ominous stain in the snow.

"You were bleeding," she says in confusion.

Tim lifts his arm, where a bloodstained tear in his outerwear answers her question, "I think I caught a branch on the way down."

Lucy falls back into a seated position next to him, feeling suddenly overwhelmed by the intensity of the last few minutes, as she tries to process the fact that he did not actually crack his head open on a rock, "Shit."

Tim chuckles, "Are you pissed I'm not dead?"

"Shut up," she snaps at him, eyes filling with tears. "Shut up, shut up, shut up," she repeats as she struggles to calm herself, bring her breathing back to normal.

She knows she should be self-conscious about the intensity of her reaction, that she is no longer behaving in any way, shape, or form like a cop who should be able to handle her former partner getting injured or worse. But she doesn't care. This is different.

"I really thought —" her voice breaks.

He reaches for her hand, but she's already lifting it to tug down the zipper of his jacket, fingers trembling the entire way down.

"Lucy?" He asks in confusion, as she presses her hand to his chest, sliding it until she feels the consistent thump, thump, thump of his heart under her palm.

"Hey," he says softly, using his hand to cover hers. He leans down until his forehead is resting against hers, and Lucy finds herself immediately soothed by the simple gesture of comfort, soothed by just being able to feel the warmth of his skin against hers. "I'm okay," he breathes.

And Lucy nods, her body finally starting to believe what she can see with her own two eyes and what he's told her multiple times and what she can feel under the palm of her hand as her breathing finally slows to a normal rate.

She wraps her arms around him and presses her ear against his chest, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat continuing to reassure her as they wait for the medic, not caring for one minute about how clingy she's being, how over the top her reaction is to his cut arm and bruised pride.

They stay that way, Tim soothingly rubbing his hand up and down her back, reassuring her that he's fine and she's fine and they're fine until the medic approaches, and even then she continues to cling to his uninjured arm as the medic maneuvers around her, glancing at her and then back at Tim as if to say, "Is she okay?"