Chapter Text
All you think of lately is getting underneath me
All I dream of lately is how to get you underneath me
Tim likes to win.
Lucy likes to win.
They both like to win.
That’s part of what makes betting against each other so fun — only one person can win and both Tim and Lucy like to make damn sure that it’s them. The short sleeves victory went to Lucy, of course. She beat out Tim in the Mid-Wilshire shooting competition too — although by that point he knew Lucy’s skills well enough to hedge his bets with a TO side wager. But then Tim had won a bet about whether Kojo could actually be trained. (Okay, so it had taken longer than expected, but he’s a training officer for chrissakes, of course he could train her stubborn dog.) And Lucy had to buy him lunch at the food trucks for a whole month when he won their bet about how long Nolan would end up dating Bailey (John had a knack for attracting inexplicably hot women, but he could only keep them for three months). They’d had a rare draw at Angela’s second wedding reception, when Smitty had surprised them both by eschewing requests for the “Macarena” (Tim’s pick) or the “Cha Cha Slide” (Lucy’s choice) in favor of the “Chicken Dance” (a classic, according to Smitty).
Point is, Tim and Lucy both like to bet against each other and they both like to win, so over the past two years they had made all manner of wagers. Winning was fun (contrary to popular belief, Tim Bradford did know how to have fun thank you very much), but losing wasn’t half-bad either — it just made them both hungry for the next chance to one-up each other. It was almost second nature at this point, the instinctive way they both turned toward each other, a challenge on the tips of their tongues as soon as the flimsiest opportunity for a new bet presented itself.
But even Tim and Lucy both had to admit that their latest bet was… in a whole new realm of ridiculous. It was, perhaps, the most idiotically preposterous thing either of them had ever done. But that didn’t mean they were going to back down anytime soon.
The whole thing started during a night out at Los Torres with the Mid-Wilshire crew. Lucy was drinking tequila and Tim was drinking whiskey, and it’s not like alcohol was entirely to blame, but it probably didn’t help. Or maybe it was Jackson’s fault, actually, because he’s the one that got them started on the whole line of conversation by talking about yet another hot date he had snagged while out on patrol.
“You have to teach me the ways of your flirting game, Jackson,” Lucy moaned, taking a sip of her margarita as her roommate finished his absurdly charming meet-cute story. “I haven’t had a date in like two months,” she whined.
“I bagged a hot lawyer and made him my baby daddy,” Angela joked from her stool across the table. “I’m available for hire if you need some pointers on your game, Chen.”
“Harper dated two men at once,” Nolan interjected, pointing at his former TO with a grin. “Maybe she should be the one teaching classes.”
Nyla smirked. “A master never reveals her secrets,” she said, pretending to zip her lips closed.
“If we’re giving Lucy tips, we should probably save some for Tim too,” Angela said, waggling her eyebrows as she looked at her best friend with a pointed smile. “You’re going through a bit of a dry spell yourself, aren’t you Bradford?”
Tim rolled his eyes and took a long pull of his whiskey on the rocks. “I’ve been married before, my game is just fine.”
Everyone at the table — even Nolan, goddammit — all let out various forms of scoffing laughter.
“What the hell is so funny?” Tim groused. He swept his eyes around the table, from Angela to Nyla to Jackson to Nolan, but it was Lucy who piped in first, elbowing him playfully from her seat next to his.
“You married someone you went through rookie training with, Tim.”
“So?”
“So you didn’t have to try that hard,” Lucy explained, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You were already together all the time.”
Tim opened his mouth to protest, but Nyla cut him off.
“I bet Isabel made the first move too, right?” she smirked.
Angela laughed and nodded her head. “That’s an affirmative. Bradford really thought she invited him over to her apartment at night to actually study penal codes,” she snickered. Tim glared at Angela, but she just gave him a look like you know it’s true as she took a long sip of her beer.
“And your last relationship was with someone I set you up with,” Lucy pointed out.
“Yeah, well your last relationship was with a firefighter,” Tim countered, twisting his body to the left so that he was facing Lucy.
Everyone around the table except Nolan let out a chorus of ewwws and yucks.
“Okay, but in Lucy’s defense, he was very hot,” Jackson argued.
“Thank you —” Lucy started to say before Tim interrupted her.
“For a firefighter,” he said dismissively, wrinkling his nose like the mere mention of the profession was distasteful to him.
Lucy folded her arms across her chest. “You’re just jealous because I snagged a hot firefighter,” she leaned in closer to Tim, her eyes challenging. “And you have no game.”
His eyebrows shot up. “I have plenty of game, Chen.”
She tipped her head back and scoffed. “I’ve seen people flirt with you, Tim. You get all flustered and weird.”
“That’s just because I didn’t want to flirt back,” he responded, keeping his eyes on her as he set his drink down onto the table. Then he leaned in toward Lucy, closing the distance between them. Their faces were just a few inches apart when Tim dropped his voice down to a low whisper and said, “If I actually wanted to flirt back, you’d be blown away.”
Lucy smiled and cocked her head to the side, eyeing him thoughtfully for a few seconds. Her eyes were mischievous as she picked up her margarita and twisted her tongue around the straw to pull it into her mouth for a long sip. “I’d be blown away by your seduction game?” she said finally, a hint of a challenge in her voice.
Tim nodded, his eyes never leaving hers. “You’d be blown away by my seduction game,” he confirmed, his voice just the slightest bit husky.
Her gaze darted down to his lips, then quickly back up to his eyes. “You couldn’t seduce me if you tried,” she said haughtily. “I, on the other hand, would have you wrapped around my finger in no time.”
Tim shook his head and grinned smugly. “It would be so easy to seduce you, Boot.” He picked up his glass and ran his thumb over the condensation in slow, smooth circles before bringing it up his lips and finishing off the last of the whiskey in one long gulp. “If I wanted to.”
“What... the hell is happening right now?” Jackson whispered, his eyes darting back and forth between Tim and Lucy. They were still staring at each other defiantly, so focused on each other that neither one even registered his question.
“I think...horniness has broken their brains,” Nyla deadpanned in a low voice. Nolan snickered before catching himself and schooling his expression into something more neutral.
Angela silently held up one hand to stop the rest of the group from talking. “You guys should make a bet or something,” she called out across the table, her voice purposely casual.
Tim and Lucy both jerked their heads around to look at her. “A bet?” they said at the same time.
“Well, you both say you could seduce the other person first —”
“No question,” Tim interjected.
“Pshhhh, you wish,” Lucy responded with an eye roll.
“You two love making bets,” Angela continued with a sort of off-handed nonchalance, like the idea was just coming to her. “This seems like the ultimate wager.”
Tim and Lucy darted their eyes towards each other, then quickly back at Angela as the suggestion hung in the air for a moment. Then Angela shrugged and added innocently, “As long as you don’t think things would get weird.”
Tim huffed out a laugh. “You mean weird like a fake love confession on your last day as a rookie?” he asked pointedly, turning to look at Lucy with narrowed eyes.
“The look of horror on your face was totally worth it,” she replied smugly. “‘I'm flattered, um, you’re a great girl — woman’ ,” she teased, doing her best flustered TO Tim impression.
“Oh, so things were already weird...” Nolan whispered under his breath.
“Mmmm hmmm,” Nyla murmured, her expression just the slightest bit amused as she watched everything from across the table.
“You guys don’t even know the half of it,” Jackson said quietly, shaking his head.
“So the bet…” Angela said through gritted teeth, willing everyone else at the table to shut the hell up with a pointed glare.
“What would the terms be?” Lucy asked after a moment, her eyes still trained on Tim as she considered the idea.
Tim thought about it for a moment before his eyes lit up with a sly twinkle. “Loser has to cover the winner’s night shifts —”
Everyone at the table gasped. No matter how devoted to the job they all were, everyone hated night shifts. Nothing good ever happened in L.A. after 2 a.m.
“— and cavity searches —”
Another collective gasp went up around the table.
“For...two months,” Tim finished triumphantly.
Lucy’s eyebrows shot up, but she kept the rest of her face neutral as she absorbed the proposed terms of the bet. “You must be really confident in your abilities…” she said after a moment.
“I am,” Tim said simply. There was something about his steely-eyed confidence that made Lucy feel suddenly flushed.
She pulled her eyes away from him and ran a finger along the rim of her glass to gather the salt. Then she slowly brought the finger up to her lips and swirled her tongue around it. “I’m confident in my abilities too,” she said, grinning wickedly at Tim’s almost imperceptible intake of breath as he watched her.
Lucy’s finger was still wet from her tongue when she reached out to shake his hand. Tim looked down at her proffered hand for a few seconds. He swallowed, and Lucy’s eyes traveled from the curve of his neck down to his Adam’s apple, then back up over his stubbled jawline, before meeting his penetrating gaze. She couldn’t help the tiny gasp that escaped from her lips when Tim finally took her hand into his own and gave it a firm shake.
“May the best person win,” Tim said, keeping his eyes locked on hers. Then he swept his thumb ever-so-slowly across the base of her thumb and onto the inside of her wrist.
Lucy narrowed her eyes at him. “Oh, I plan to,” she promised before pulling her hand away quickly. Her traitorous pulse had quickened at his touch, but she’d be damned if she let him know that. She tore her eyes away from Tim and clasped both hands around her empty drink glass as a thought suddenly occurred to her. “Wait, how exactly will we know who wins?”
“Oh, I’m sure you two will be able to figure it out,” Angela said, an inscrutable smile pulling at the edges of her lips.