"Let me see."
"What?"
"You may not be curious, but I am. Now, let me see, Bradford."
He should've looked then, but he hadn't. Instead, Tim had kept his eyes up, not even risking a single glance down as Lopez read the countdown. Her eyes narrowed into a squint before going wide. Then, she laughed.
And laughed.
… And laughed.
When he asked what it said, Lopez had shaken her head. "If you really want to know, look for yourself."
That was last night. Tim hadn't looked. Not at the bar, not at home. Hell, not even that morning as he put his watch on after his shower. He was starting to realize he should have. No, it wouldn't have changed things, but at least he wouldn't have been surprised.
Surprised? Ha. As if what he felt was simply "surprised". He'd survived ambushes that caught him less off-guard.
This isn't happening, Tim thought as he shot to his feet. It isn't. This is not fucking happening.
The sound was jarring. It blared; it screeched. It hit him in the back of the teeth with its unpleasantness, like nails on a chalkboard or a knife on ceramic. It was an ugly noise, an annoying noise, and it was coming from Tim's left wrist. He was tempted to smack it, but he knew it would make no difference. There was no snoozing this alarm, no way to unring this bell, and it wasn't the only sound he heard, either.
Playing against it -mixing with it even as it contrasted it- was a melody. A short, five-note song had started sliding up in chiming quarter notes the second his eyes landed on the woman at the front of the room, and that's when he knew.
That's when he knew it was Her.
Timers weren't real. Well, they were real in the fact that they existed, but the thing they claimed to do? Connecting a person to their soulmate? That was bullshit. It had to be.
Yet, there she was anyway, spiting him with her presence as the world came to a grinding halt.
It was her face he noticed first, not that he'd had the chance to look anywhere else so far. It'd only been a second (and that second had stretched on for-fucking-ever), but still, his stare went no further than her eyes, her mouth, and her expression. Now that he'd seen her, everything else seemed sort of dim in comparison, as stupid and ridiculous (and, frankly, as impossible) as that sounded, even to himself. She was stunning. Beautiful in a way that knocked the wind clean out of him as she returned his gaze with her eyes wide and her mouth agape. He was almost overpowered by the impulse to round every table that separated them just to brush his thumb over her full, pink lips. Despite a span of fifteen feet or so between them, he could see her eyes were brown. Not a dull brown or a dingy brown, but warm and deep, like in the right light, they might look amber. For a moment, something about them made him think of the earth in autumn.
… Which, again, was so fucking ridiculous. He didn't even like autumn.
It was not just the feeling that the room had fallen away now that he'd seen her. He'd walked in with burdens, with worries, but everything that had been so pressing and important that morning faded into the background like white noise, overwhelmed by a single sensation. If he didn't know any better, he would have called it want. Not a sexual want, or lust, or… whatever. It was nothing like that, but it was just as powerful, and, fuck, also kind of intoxicating. He had to steady himself with one hand on the table as the ground sort of swayed beneath his feet. Something seemed to pull at the middle of his body; an invisible rope was tugging him towards her. He had no right to her, and yet the desire to get closer hit him as intensely as an instinct.
Hell, forget instinct. It was closer to primal, and it was complicated by the realization that a person he hadn't thought to miss, let alone need, was suddenly, finally here.
Some distant part of his brain knew it was unprofessional to continue staring, but he was weaker than his urges at the moment. He couldn't help himself, couldn't stop himself, so he continued looking; dumbstruck, dumbfounded. Just so fucking dumb.
This isn't happening, he thought again. It isn't. It isn't.
Except, it was. After two decades, Tim's timer had finally zeroed out, and Officer Lucy Chen- his newest rookie- was his match. He'd walked into the room sure soulmates didn't exist. He had written the whole concept off as ludicrous years ago.
Then he saw her.
And now?
"… Shit," he whispered. Now, he was not so sure.
