Maybe the can had been too small. It was only a few ounces, holding no more than what would come in a jar of soup. Maybe he'd simply done it wrong (it wasn't like the brand had included skunk instructions on the label) Either way, the juice hadn't worked at all, succeeding only in making Tim's bathroom tile look like the climactic scene of "Carrie" until the shower rinsed the rest of the big red mess down the drain. The smell of tomatoes briefly overpowered the remaining skunk stink, but that didn't last beyond toweling off and changing into a fresh set of clothes. Tim could still make out the odor on his skin, and he felt a fresh wave of irritation building as the doorbell rang.

He opened the front door to find Lucy on his doorstep. In her arms, she carried grocery bags, and the satisfied grin on her face fell only slightly when he asked in a tone that hinted at his aggravation, "What are you doing here, Lucy?"

"I'm here to help," she replied and gestured with the bags. "I brought supplies."

"Bishop gave me supplies." They hadn't done jack shit, but still.

"No offense, but I don't think one tiny can of tomato juice is gonna cover," with one hand, she gestured toward his chest in a circular motion, "all that. The smell, I mean. The smell." She giggled awkwardly before saying, "Can I come in? I brought dinner." After a moment's pause, he opened the door wider, allowing her inside. "Which way to the kitchen?" she asked. He pointed, and she headed towards it while he trailed a few feet behind.

"What did you bring?" Tim asked. In response, Lucy cast a look over her shoulder, shooting him a grin that bordered on cheeky.

"Just some things," she answered as she rounded the corner into the kitchen. A moment later, she deposited the grocery bags on the counter and began unpacking, explaining the contents as she went. Tim only half paid attention to what she said as he watched her, a combination of curious and amused. It was a strange sensation, welcoming her into his home (not that he'd imagined a scenario quite like this one, with him freshly skunked and her offering care). He'd expected it to feel loaded somehow; noteworthy, or significant. It didn't. It felt different, sure, but it was by no means unpleasant seeing her in his house, in his kitchen, moving about the space he alone had occupied for years as if it were the most natural thing in the world to her. Lucy checking on him, casually or by surprise, wasn't anything new. The lines of their boundaries had been blurring in stages, with their New Year's Eve phone call being only the latest example in a series. Now, they were more than co-workers, not quite friends, and soulmates for certain. In light of his conversation with Bishop that evening, Tim had no choice but to consider Lucy's actions (and maybe all subsequent ones) with a new perspective, with added weight. If Bishop was right -and that, he thought, was still a big if- then his soulmate's feelings, whatever they were, were at least as complex as his own. Strong, but unnamed. Deep, at least on his part, but undefined.

His thoughts were interrupted when she asked where he kept the measuring cups. Wordlessly, Tim gestured to a cabinet above her head.

"Ah," Lucy smiled again and reached for the cabinet door, "there we go." As her arm extended, the hem of her shirt rose, revealing the paler skin of her lower back. The slip upward allowed him a fleeting glimpse of her hips, of the dimples that sat just above the top of her jeans. He was reminded then of Lopez and her endless stack of photos, of white fabric tight around Lucy's figure; of the image of Cam's hands between her shoulder blades with no space between their bodies. Again, he felt that one-two punch of jealousy and desire, and although Tim had no right to either reaction, he nonetheless felt pretty fucking powerless to deny them. All of this, he wrestled silently. Meanwhile, Lucy, unaware of his struggle, concocted a paste containing peroxide, dish soap, and baking soda. The mixture fizzed when she stirred it with a fork, and she let it settle for a second while she unloaded the rest of her groceries. From the last paper bag, she withdrew a box of spaghetti noodles, two cans of tomato sauce, and a container holding a large salad.

"Your uniform will probably have to be thrown out," she said, setting aside the pasta and sauce before once more picking up the measuring cup. As she gave the mixture a final stir, she finished, "But a shower with this stuff, if I did it right, should get the rest of it off of your skin."

Tim took the cup when she offered it. "Lucy, this is really-"

"-Yeah, no, I know." She cut him off with another small wave of her hand, blushing as she guessed, "It's a bit much."

"No, it's sweet," Tim corrected her. He'd crossed paths with no fewer than three other officers on his way out of the building that night, and none of them had stopped to say goodbye let alone offer their help. He didn't blame them, of course; no one wanted to stick around the skunk smell for a second longer than they had to. Only Lucy had ignored the discomfort to risk proximity, first at the station, and again at his house. "It's really sweet," he said again and hoped his gratitude came through clearly.

The stuff she gave him worked. Where soap and tomato juice had both fallen short, whatever weird science shit Lucy made had fixed him right up. It was a little tricky to use; the peroxide made the paste bubble on his skin, and if he didn't scrub carefully the grit of the baking soda sloughed off more than the stench, but he got the hang of it soon enough. After rinsing off he used his regular soap, and when he stepped out of the shower (again; his third of the night), Tim was relieved to find that the skunk smell had finally, completely disappeared.

He dressed in clean clothes and returned to the kitchen. Lucy at the sink washing the dishes she'd used for cooking. Behind her, a full plate sat on the counter, steam rising off of the noodles. The spaghetti smelled delicious, but he paid little attention to the food once he took note of her demeanor. She did not smile when he entered the room. Hell, she didn't acknowledge him at all, and something in her posture had changed. No longer relaxed, she stood stiffly at the sink. While she'd walked in with her usual cheerfulness, it had at some point faded. Now her expression was strained. Tensed.

"You cooked. I can wash up," he offered, but Lucy shrugged him off.

"It's okay," she replied flatly. "I'm almost done.

"Lucy, come on." He tried a second time, but she again resisted, so he decided not to push it. Instead, Tim asked, "Did you eat already?"

"No."

"Are you going to ?"

She inhaled sharply, her mouth turning down into a frown as she shook her head. "No. Not feeling too great tonight." She said nothing more until the dishes were finished, and had just washed her hands when she said, "I saw the picture."

"What picture?"

"From your wedding."

Oh.

His first instinct was to explain. Tim knew he could say it was only up until he got to the hardware store, but Lucy didn't appear to be gunning for a response. Besides, he wasn't worried about covering his ass at the moment. His main concern was on dispelling the look on her face, the stress that had made her shoulders stiff, her spine rigid. The response he offered was, "If I'd known you were coming over, I would've taken it down."

"Why?"

"Believe it or not, Lucy, I don't love hurting your feelings." Then, in a poor attempt at lightening the mood, he added, "Well, off the job of course."

She didn't laugh, though. Didn't even crack a smile, her somber expression remained unchanged as she asked, "Did you know you can see your timer in it?"

"Lucy-"

"You know, you never told me why you got one."

"… Yes, I have." Hadn't he? After all that had been said between them, surely that had to have come out at some point.

At last, Lucy smiled, but it was distorted. Colored, not by anger (which he would have understood and half-expected), but by sadness. "No, you haven't. I'd remember it if you had." She shifted her weight from one foot to the other as she crossed her arms over her chest. "I know just about everything else, but not that."

"You really want to know?"

She nodded.

"Okay." After a deep breath, Tim began to explain this piece of his past. He'd joined the military fresh out of high school. His mom had died when he was a child, and he stopped short of describing his father's abuse, only alluding to the fact that he was better off not mentioned. When the time came for him to leave for boot camp, there was nothing and no one waiting for him at home. The timer had been the recruiting officer's suggestion. Even now, removed from it by two decades, Tim could remember that much in perfect clarity. He kind of owed a lot to that officer. After all, it was his suggestion that had led him to the nearest installment office, to the cheapest timer he could find; his suggestion that led him, for better or worse, to this very moment after twenty years of twists and turns. Something to come home for, the officer had said. Only with time and space away from his military service did Tim realize that had been a euphemism, and a poor one at that.

Someone to live for was what he had meant.

"I don't think he expected the damn thing to stay blank until a month before I got discharged," Tim said as he ended his story. "I know I sure didn't." He chuckled once before looking at Lucy, wondering how, now that she knew the whole story, she would react. Had his explanation wiped the grief off of her face? Did it satisfy?

It hadn't. For a moment, Lucy said nothing, but after a pause, she turned her gaze away. Not before he caught the gleam in her eye, though. She appeared to be near tears, and at first, her only response was a whispered, "Wow."

"What?"

"Nothing." She took a step back from him, a small, shuffled distance that immediately felt like a gulf. Her lip trembled over a huffed laugh before she bit out, "It's not every day you find out you were a coping mechanism."

He winced. "You make it sound like I used you."

"Didn't you? You got it to get you through deployments, and it served its purpose, right?"

He wanted to say no. He was tempted to say no, but he didn't.

… Mostly because he couldn't. Not without lying.

The timer had served its purpose; that was the truth, and Tim wouldn't dream of insulting Lucy by pretending otherwise just to spare her already wounded feelings. Her analysis -as much as it pained him to hear- was right. Even if he'd never thought of it that way before, he realized now that of course, she would feel ill-used. After everything they'd been through together -the dozens of misunderstandings (most of them his fault), the weeks and months of push and pull (again, mostly his fault)- Tim knew he owed her better than that. He owed her better than feeling like the thing she held dear was reduced to something transactional.

A coping mechanism. That may have been true at the start, but that was not true always, and it was not true now.

"Wait right here," he said, then went to his bedroom.

The picture was still in his nightstand drawer, stored safely beside his grandmother's ring. He reached for both, weighing the velvet box in his hand as he looked at the photograph. A moment later, he carefully put the box back in the drawer and returned to the kitchen, picture in hand.

Without a word, he gave the photograph to Lucy, placing it into her waiting hand. For a while he said nothing, just waited and watched as she studied the photo, her expression slowly morphing from the edge of heartbreak into something else. Her shoulders released their tightly-held tension and her lips gave up their frown, although a smile did not return to her face immediately.

"It's from my last deployment," he began, careful to keep his voice hushed, his pace unhurried. This was one story he did not want to ruin by rushing. "We didn't get much downtime. Had to take it in shifts. I was in my bunk at the end of the day. I think I was looking at a magazine or something… I can't remember exactly." A magazine was more likely. He wasn't much of a book reader, but Tim knew he'd been perusing something shortly before the photo was taken. The rest was more vivid, a moment that had been seared into his memory. "All I know is I reached up to scratch my head," he almost imitated it at that moment, so caught up was he in the retelling, "and as I brought my hand down, I noticed that my blank timer had numbers on it."

A smile covered Lucy's mouth. "What did you do when you saw it?"

Tim snickered remembering the panic his outburst in the tent had caused, however brief, and how quickly it was replaced by celebration. "I yelled 'holy fucking shit' and just about gave everyone in my tent a heart attack," he admitted. "They were all really happy that I was finally counting down. I got a lot of grief for having a blank timer, but they all went out of their damn minds when the numbers finally showed up." That was the truth, and it was possible he undersold it; the cheer that had gone up in his honor was deafening, whoops and hollers so loud and rowdy, they were better suited for a football game than a tent in the desert.

"And that's what this picture is." Understanding crossed Lucy's face then, and she sounded awed and maybe a little breathless as she whispered, "This is the night your timer started counting down."

Tapping the edge of the paper, he replied, "That is the moment that I knew you were coming," It was the first moment in time that he knew she even existed. Sure, she would've been out there well before her timer was installed, but after waiting so long for his countdown to start, the thought of her had become abstract, not a guarantee. Years of dashes had turned her from a when to an if. "You weren't this faceless 'maybe' anymore. You were somewhere out there. A real, living person with a name and a past and a future, and you were linked to me, and me to you. It made me feel less alone.

"I know I told you I didn't believe in soulmates." Tim recognized now that that was just as likely a scrambled, misguided effort to maintain the illusion of control over his life as it was a deep-seated truth. "I didn't, until I met you." How had Bishop described it that afternoon?

Every milestone, from the time she was a teenager until the day you met, you were on her arm.

As true as it would have been for Lucy, so too was it true for him. For the entirety of his adult life, she appeared first as a flicker of hope during the six blank years, and then as a promise once the countdown began. That piece of her was with him when he left the military, and there when he joined the police academy. It was there when he met Isabel. Even throughout the stretch of time when he denied soulmates' existence, it was there.

In darker years, he might have thought loneliness was the one constant in his life. Tim saw now it wasn't. The constant was Lucy.

"But I look at my timer now," he whispered, "and I realize that a part of you has been there for me longer than anyone else, long before I ever even knew you. If that's not a soulmate, what is?"

Lucy did not reply. Her eyes had scarcely looked up from the photo, and as Tim finished speaking, she continued to gaze downward, studying the picture intently.

"Turn it over," he instructed, and she did as he said. Her laugh was instant after reading Connelly's inscription.

"Wow. Nice friends you have." At least the joke broke the ice enough for her to again meet his eyes. "Am I the trash can in this scenario, or are you?" She once more turned the picture over, focusing on his younger self before saying, "It's okay. I won't be able to see that part once I frame this."

"Uh, excuse you? You're not keeping that picture." Tim reached for it, but she leaned away, holding it captive behind her back.

"Uh, excuse you? I'm absolutely keeping this. It's amazing." With her free hand, Lucy pressed against his chest, pushing him away with a gentle nudge that was more playful than it was forceful.

"I know it's amazing. Why else would I want to keep it?" He reached for it again, but she outmaneuvered him, snickering the entire time at his failed efforts. When he finally got the picture free from her grip (after a shameful amount of attempts; Lucy was surprisingly fast) he held his prize in the air well out of her reach.

"No fair," Lucy pouted.

He smirked, teasing, "Should I get you a step-stool?" but his gloating was short-lived. She hopped for the picture twice, then caught Tim off-guard when she wrapped both arms around his bicep and made her body go slack. They both nearly fell, and he muttered, "Oh, shit," just as his right hand caught her by the waist. His left joined it, encircling her as the photo fluttered to the floor, forgotten.

In the moment, the word that came to mind was revelation. He'd thought it multiple times over the last few weeks; every realization, every positive step in her direction had been a revelation of some sort or another. Some were large, others minor, and the term seemed to fit at the time. Not anymore. Not when Lucy's curves were finally beneath his hands, every inch soft and warm under his palms. This was revelatory, and every use of that word beforehand had been incorrect; an overstatement. The want that he felt the day they met -the primal urge, the instinct that pulled him towards her- returned with the gale-like force, and he moved without thinking, without pausing. Without caring. What little gap remained between them, Tim closed in a single step. Now, her body was nearly flush against his, and his hands moved of their own accord off of her waist to find her hips. Lucy's eyes looked up into his, wide and brown, brimming with unspoken emotion. Her full lips parted, and she was close enough that he could see a blush building beneath her skin, flushing her cheeks and neck a rosy pink. His fingers burned to trace her tattoo, to run a pattern over the black lines, and his hand almost rose to do so. He was already holding her. What harm would one more small touch do?

Tim could scarcely hear over the sound of his own racing heartbeat, but Lucy had pulled them back to earth. It was she who broke the silence, and although more had been said (he'd watched intently as that perfect mouth of hers moved over a stilted whisper) it was one word in particular that got through to him with the sharpness of a knife.

"Cam."

Right. Cam. Her boyfriend. The one with the perfect hair and the too-perfect teeth; the man that made Lucy happy, that kissed her and held her hands and probably did more things that made Tim's blood boil and his stomach ache to imagine. He heard little else as she brushed past him, hurrying to the front door as she quickly said goodnight.

"I'll see you tomorrow," were the last words out of her mouth before she shut the door behind her. As suddenly as she'd come Lucy had left him alone, leaving his untouched dinner and the warm memory of his hands over her hips as the only proof she'd been there at all.

He stood silent and crestfallen in the kitchen for an undetermined amount of time, the reverie breaking only when he heard his phone buzzing from where he'd left it in the living room. Tim ran to answer it, heart sinking slightly when it was not Lucy's name but Angela's on the screen.

"Hey, Lopez," he greeted upon answering, hoping his disappointment did not come across.

It didn't, or if it did, Angela was too distracted to pay it any mind. She opened the conversation with a giddy sigh. "Call me crazy, but I think I'm in love."

"With the lawyer?"

She chuckled. "It could be worse."

"Depends on the kind of lawyer, I guess," Tim replied as he took a seat on the sofa. "You said he's a defense attorney?"

"Yeah, a public defender."

A cop and a public defender? Tim wanted to laugh, imagining the potential for debates (and if he knew Angela at all, debates with her lawyer soulmate were all but a guarantee). "Yeah, I guess it could be worse, but not by much."

"Yeah, you're right." Lopez's chortle was sharp and snarky before she added, "He could be my rookie. What a nightmare, huh?"

"… I wouldn't call it a nightmare," he replied haltingly.

"You wouldn't? That's new. Has something changed?"

He looked with longing towards the closed front door.

"Yeah, Lopez. You could say that."