He didn't hate Christmas. If ever he was asked (which so far had been exactly zero times) Tim would make that point crystal fucking clear. He did not hate Christmas. In fact, he liked it quite a lot; or rather, he did the last time he'd properly celebrated it, which was… what, childhood? Yeah. Childhood. He'd been ten years old for his last "real" Christmas. It was the final year his mother had been well enough for them to go all out with decorating and cookie making. His memories of that Christmas all seemed to have either icing or glitter in them (and in one case, both, but that had been a craft). The following Christmas had been spent in the hospital while Faye Bradford recovered from surgery, and the only tradition they managed to keep intact was their yearly viewing of "It's A Wonderful Life" (Tim found it playing on cable and crawled into her hospital bed to watch it with her). The next year, she was gone.

Tim's dad had been a piss-poor holiday celebrator by comparison. His idea of Christmas spirit was making eggnog with an ABV high enough to clean rust off a truck engine. After that, from the time Tim was eighteen and all throughout his military career, every holiday had been spent either on deployment or in base housing. There'd been some excitement for the holiday when he first married Isabel, but she worked Christmases, too; a decision they'd made as a unit, banking goodwill for a future that had never (and would never) materialize. Nowadays, Tim offered to work on December 25th purely out of habit. Although he had friends who opened their homes to him (Dennis and Francesca offered to include him every year without fail), Tim always declined. Sure, he could have figured out ways to celebrate on his own; he could have decorated, for example, but hadn't gotten around to it this year or the year before. Besides, he wasn't sure which was sadder for a man that lived alone: decorating, or not decorating. At least not decorating required no clean-up.

It was just as well that he had planned on doing nothing for the holidays, as what little time he might have used working towards any sort of celebration was spoken for in the days after Isabel's surgery. Although she'd made good progress recovering, she still had a long way to go, leaving Tim to balance the responsibility of getting her the help she needed in his downtime. Despite the fact they were technically estranged, neither had ever formally filed for separation, meaning that Isabel was still entitled to certain benefits as his spouse; namely, she had access to the healthcare he received as an Army veteran discharged in good standing. Tricare wasn't the best health coverage, but it was better than nothing, and it would cover the hospital bills and help with physical therapy and a drug rehabilitation program. Although she'd gone through withdrawal at the hospital, Tim knew she'd need more than that if she wanted to stay clean and put this all behind her for good. Isabel's primary doctor agreed, but convincing her had been another conversation entirely. Tim spent almost all of his Christmas Eve visit accompanying Isabel on a slow, shuffled walk down the ICU corridors, trying and failing to convince her that entering rehab was a wise choice.

"I don't need it," she'd insisted. "I'm clean." When he responded that withdrawal was not the same as sober, she'd iced him out and said no more, not even wishing him a happy holiday before he left.

Yeah, Tim didn't hate Christmas, but there was no doubt that this year, maybe even more than in years past, his holiday cheer was at an all-time low. So, when Lucy greeted him on Christmas morning with a smile and a giddy, "Merry Christmas!" his initial reaction was -unfortunately- sarcastic.

"Is it?"

Her smile faded at once, her expression turning pensive. "I take it you don't celebrate."

"I didn't say that." Maybe it was bleak of him to think so, but what in his life was currently worth celebrating? What, and with whom, and when in the past few days would he have had the opportunity to feel cheerful? When, between his wife getting shot and realizing that the woman he was training was definitely without a doubt his soulmate -and with both experiences acting as catalysts for the largest paradigm shift of his adult life- would Tim have had the chance to grow a little Christmas spirit? He knew he had a reputation for being a hard-ass, but surely he could be forgiven in this instance. A lot had fucking happened in a very short amount of time, and it was damn near a holiday-fucking-miracle that he'd managed to keep his head above water.

No, not a miracle. He'd done it by effort alone, fixating on only what was absolutely necessary. He made it through by keeping his focus and ignoring the noise. Christmas, when there was nothing to do and no one to celebrate with, felt pretty fucking noisy. He had no presents to put under a tree and no tree for the non-existent presents. He hadn't strung so much as a strand of popcorn, and Christmas dinner? What Christmas dinner? The best he was going to get was a fresh, hot meal after a hard day's work, and following their shift, that was exactly what Tim did. As he defrosted chicken cutlets in the microwave and chopped bell peppers for roasting, he let "It's A Wonderful Life" play in the background. It was the only tradition he kept anymore, this yearly rewatch of an old classic; Tim spoke in sync with Jimmy Stewart as he tried to romance Donna Reed's Mary.

"What is it you want, Mary?" Jimmy's character George was saying. "What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down."

Lasso the moon, huh? Now, why is that familiar? The question -self-directed as it was- had been rhetorical. Tim knew why it struck a chord this time around when it hadn't in any year before. Hadn't he thought almost exactly that weeks ago, on the night he'd driven Lucy home from the doctor? She'd looked at him with those eyes, with that first-ever smile for him and him alone, and he could feel every last ounce of his resolve flounder.

If she ever figured out the hold she had on him, he was well and truly sunk.

The microwave had just dinged when Tim's phone buzzed. Setting the paring knife aside, he glanced at the screen, freezing when he saw Lucy's name.

You should go check your doorstep, she said.

He peeked around the corner to glance out the window. From where he stood, he saw nothing; not her car in the drive, nor sight of her visible through the bay window. Why?

Just do it okay? Merry Christmas.

He wasn't sure what to expect as he walked towards his front door. Lucy wasn't usually evasive, so he was tempted to err on the side of suspicion, but soon realized he was foolish to worry. She wasn't waiting to surprise him, wasn't trying to prank him or anything. He opened the door and realized she'd left him a gift.

Sort of.

On his welcome mat, Lucy had left a care package; a bag that Tim picked up and carried inside, placing it on his kitchen counter before looking through it. She'd left him a complete Christmas dinner comprised of honey-baked ham, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole. Several slices of pecan pie had been included, too, dessert for after he'd eaten.

Lucy, he realized as a lump formed in his throat, had brought him Christmas dinner. Sure, it was obviously leftovers from her own celebration, but she'd thought of him and made the effort, even though he hadn't asked or expected it of her. Her thoughtfulness kind of broke his heart.

You didn't have to do that. Thanks, he texted, then smiled when her response came through.

I know I didn't. You're welcome.

While his house itself was sound, aspects of the property had leaned towards the "fixer-upper" end of the spectrum when Tim first purchased it years before. The flowerbeds that lined the front were in decent shape but the backyard had been a wreck, and he'd sunk hours into getting both in better condition. The structure and interior had been well-maintained by the previous owners, but most of the fixtures were in need of an upgrade, and almost every room was overdue for a fresh coat of paint. He'd started work on the interior shortly before Isabel had left but had only gotten as far as updating the master bath. The rest of the house was clean but felt somewhat dated, and other than the common areas only the master bedroom was occupied. The house had three bedrooms, enough for a family to grow into, but the two extra rooms on either side of the hall remained empty. He could've used those rooms as storage space, but Tim loathed the idea of turning what was supposed to be bedrooms into storage, and that was how boxes had been allowed to pile up in the garage.

It wasn't like Tim was a hoarder. If anything, he just had a hard time letting things go (and yes, he realized that went both for things and people; at least he had that much self-awareness, thanks). There were touchstones from his past in those boxes, things from his childhood, and somewhere in there were his only remaining mementos of his mother. It had all been kept in a small storage unit when he left for the Army, and once he completed his final deployment and returned home, items from his time in service had been added to the pile. When he and Isabel bought the house, he closed out the unit and brought all the boxes with him. There were less than a dozen but, in a single car garage, there was no denying they took up valuable space. So, on New Year's Eve, that became Tim's focus. Over the course of an afternoon, he brought all the boxes into 'the living room, intent on taking stock of their contents while letting ESPN play in the background.

Not everything in the boxes was old. Ironically enough, the first box he opened had his and Isabel's Christmas decorations in it, which he labeled and set aside. The second box was filled to the top with football keepsakes. His junior varsity trophy was wrapped in the first jersey he'd worn as an eight-year-old, and as he withdrew it, Tim vaguely remembered packing this box himself. There were a few more jerseys in the box, too, and a couple more trophies for games he'd long ago forgotten. In the third box, he found photo albums his mother had assembled. Some were of his childhood, but some were from hers, and there was also a blue three-ring binder filled with his preschool artwork. He chuckled seeing it, remembering how painstakingly his mother had assembled art binders for the kids in her care as a preschool teacher. Of course, she'd done the same for him. He flipped through the folder, glancing quickly at the poorly done drawings, the jagged cutouts, the sloppy pasting. It was basically garbage, but it had passed through her hands however many years ago. For that reason, he couldn't bring himself to trash it.

So it went as the hours passed, with Tim going through the boxes, determining what to keep and what to toss. By six o'clock, he had made it through all but two boxes. Both were unlabeled, and when Tim opened the first, what he found was initially foreign to him. He vaguely recalled taking roughly the same shape and size from his dad's house the day he moved out. They were agreed upon belongings, things that had been his mother's; an inheritance of sorts, Tom Bradford had called it, and in the twenty years between then and now Tim had forgotten what was inside. Opening the box revealed a green and white tufted quilt. It appeared handmade, and some of the patches had yellowed with age. The squares of the quilt were fluffy, pillowy, and acted as perfect protection for the items wrapped inside. Folded into the middle of the blanket were family treasures. A walnut-wood shadowbox held a medal his grandfather had been given in World War II. There were more photos of Tim as a child, although these were in frames. Lastly, he withdrew a small, black velvet box that fit into the palm of his hand. He opened it to find a ring he'd known about but rarely seen. He marveled at the silver-toned band, the center stone sparkling as it caught the light. It had belonged to his grandmother and had then been passed onto his mother. Naturally, it would fall to him, with no other grandchild to inherit it. He labeled the box with his mother's name but did not return the medal and the ring to the container. The shadow box, he placed on a shelf above his Blu-Ray collection; the ring, he placed in his nightstand, tucking it towards the back of the top drawer.

The final box was also the last box he'd added to the load, containing his military history. There was the important stuff: copies of his enlistment paperwork, his DD-214, letters of recommendation that he'd used applying to the police academy, but it also contained a handful of sentimental items. His last ever dress uniform was inside. He also found his dog tags, and towards the middle, he came across the framed portrait of him in uniform. A few sleeves of pictures from deployments were stacked upright, pinned against the cardboard. It was what he found at the bottom of the box that gave him pause: a single 4x6 photo.

Tim didn't recognize it at first. Hell, he scarcely recognized the boy in the picture as himself. He was so much younger there, his face unlined, no creases around his mouth or beneath his eyes. Surrounding him in the picture were his friends; the people he'd served with on his last ever deployment, and almost every single person in his tent was on their feet in the photo. He was the only one seated, still crouching at the edge of his bunk when the candid was snapped. He remembered clearly the cheers and their excitement. The captain was captured in the picture beside him, and he'd been saying "About goddamn time" as he clapped a hand on Tim's shoulder and gave him a good shake while the picture was taken.

Of the men and women he'd served with in the Army, probably seventy-five percent had timers. Most of them had already met their soulmates. They had loved ones who called or sent care packages, pictures that were kept either on hand or displayed during deployments. Tim had no care packages, had no pictures. At the time, he'd been jealous, longing for that connection as months became years and his timer refused to start counting down. He got ribbed over his blank screen; sure, the jokes were in good fun, but they still stung. Suddenly, finally seeing numbers had jarred him, and Tim cussed loudly once he realized they had appeared. The rest of the story was clear in the photo.

Tim turned the picture over. Yep, it was just as he remembered; Connelly, the man who had taken the photo, mailed it to Tim a few months after he left the military. No card accompanied it, just a copy of the picture in an envelope, a message scrawled on the back in Con's wonky cursive.

Tim Bradford: proof every trash can has its lid.

Fucking Connelly, Tim snickered as he carried the photo to his bedroom. He placed it beside his grandmother's ring, staring at both for a long time before closing the drawer.

He was anxious for the new year to start. Anxious because, in the final hours of 2018, the year had decided to go out on a really weird note. In a truly strange turn of events, Tim spent the remainder of New Year's Eve in bed, researching drug rehabilitation facilities on Isabel's behalf. Despite her many protests to the contrary she had, in the days after Christmas, come around to the idea of a stay in rehab (or so she told him when she called that night as he ate a late dinner). It wasn't as simple as deciding to go, though. Not every rehab accepted his insurance, and anyways, Isabel could only go after completing a two-week stay in inpatient physical therapy where she would rebuild her strength. That, she was set to start on the second of January, so he was on a bit of a time crunch to both find a rehab and get her registered.

How nice of her to ask for his help at ten o'clock on New Year's Eve, Tim thought, but kept his snark to himself.

The facilities that accepted Tricare varied in quality, but he had narrowed it down to three pretty good options when his cell phone rang again, this time showing Lucy's name on the screen. A glance at the phone's clock showed it was almost midnight, and for a second, Tim froze. Late-night phone calls rarely brought good news, and he felt apprehension building as he answered, "Hello?"

"Hey, Tim. It's me. I mean, Lucy. It's Lucy."

"Why are you calling?" he asked, concern seeping into his voice. "Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, everything is fine. I was just calling to say Happy New Year."

He fell back against his pillow, relieved as he teased flatly, "This couldn't have waited until our next shift?"

"I'm trying to be nice here," she retorted. "You know what nice is, right?"

"Do you make a habit of calling people at midnight?"

Lucy was not receptive to either his worrying or his poor attempts at teasing. "It's not midnight yet, and if you didn't want to talk, why did you pick up?" She tried to end the conversation before he could reply. "Whatever. I'll see you next shift."

"Lucy, wait," he said. "Happy New Year."

"Happy New Year."

Her good wishes were interrupted by a rumble and a loud thud, followed by the unmistakable sound of a crowd. Jeers, to his ears, but it was distorted over the phone speaker and therefore harder to make out. "Where are you?" Tim asked. "It sounds like a war zone."

Lucy chuckled drily. "Close. I'm at a little shindig Cam and his friends are having."

He tried not to cringe at the sound of her boyfriend's name, feigning interest as he asked, "Oh, really?"

"Yeah. Picture a frat party, then add a dash of fancy."

He couldn't really conjure an image based off of those adjectives. A fancy frat party? What did that even mean? Were they doing keg stands in formalwear? Shotgunning beers in suits and ballgowns? Tim was tempted to ask, but didn't, only replying, "Probably a better night than I'm having."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that. What are you up to?"

"Sitting in bed and shopping for rehabs."

"Okay. You win." After a pause, her tone brightened slightly. "At least it's quieter there, right?"

"Yeah." It was definitely that. Quiet, he had no shortage of.

"And it's probably more comfortable than sitting in a bathtub."

Despite himself, Tim smirked. It was quite the mental picture, imagining her curled up in a bathtub, her phone pressed to her ear as she hid from the ruckus just outside the door. "Is that where you are right now? In a bathtub?"

"You weren't wrong with that war zone comparison. I saw my escape, I took it, and I regret nothing." He chuckled, falling silent just before Lucy said in a whisper, "I wish I were there. Where it's quiet, I mean."

He knew what she meant. Knew that space and silence were what she sought, not necessarily his company. He wasn't sure why she'd called him. Boredom? Pity? He supposed it didn't matter.

… But what if?

What if, by some miracle, Lucy's wish had come true? What if she were suddenly there with him; here, in the quiet, just the two of them? Tim realized he didn't deserve to wonder like that, to wish like that. He knew that, since he'd pushed her away from the start, he'd forfeited whatever space in her heart that she'd saved for her soulmate.

Tim knew all of that logically, but that did not stop him from replying with more feeling than he meant to. "Maybe next year."

Lucy agreed, her voice a whisper."Yeah, maybe."

They both fell silent then, and neither spoke again for several minutes. In that time, Tim slumped down further in bed, closing his laptop and turning onto his side while holding his phone against his ear, bringing his blanket up over his shoulder. He had just gotten comfortable when suddenly the sound of cheering pierced the air. "What's happening over there? It got loud again."

"Must be midnight," she replied. "Look at that. 2019." Lucy sounded almost wistful as she said it, but she did not get to linger long beyond that point. "The enemy has spotted me. Looks like I have to go."

"Okay," he said, then added softly, "Happy New Year, Lucy."

"Happy New Year, Tim." A smile was all over her voice as she said his name, the sound swelling on that single syllable. His eyes slipped closed to hearing it, envisioning the way laughter pulled at her lips and lifted them upwards. If the light were right, her eyes would look warm, that amber color that bordered on golden.

What is it you want, Lucy? You want the moon?

(Well and truly sunk.)

Should he have felt bad about it? Maybe. By rights, Lucy should have rung in the new year with her boyfriend. She should have counted backward from ten, tapped her champagne glass to his, and kissed him at midnight; the whole deal. But she hadn't. Instead, she'd hidden in a bathtub. She'd stepped away from the party and called Tim, and they'd greeted the new year together, even if they were separated by a little distance. He wanted to feel bad for hijacking a moment that should've been Cam's. He wished he could regret it.

He didn't. Not a bit.

This side of midnight, in the newly-welcomed 2019, maybe next year didn't seem like such a far-off promise.

A/N: I can't believe this story has crossed 50,000 words. Thank you all so much for supporting this story! I'll admit, I had a hard time getting this chapter finished. I got a comment on an older fic of mine that took alllllll of the wind out of my sails for a few days. No matter the fandom, please remember your fic writers are doing this for fun, for free, and for love of the characters. In fact, please be kind to all of your fandom creators (gif-makers, editors, artists, etc.).

I've started sharing fic recommendations on twitter, username meadow_suz. I'm only posting Chenford at this point but I may branch out to other fandoms, and it's possible I'll post previews for this story or others there if the mood strikes. If that sounds like a good time to you, come find me!

Once again, thank you so much for reading. Let me know what you think!