Work Text:
Kate had a thing for oversized white sweaters.
She wasn’t sure when or why it started - maybe it was that time she’d seen a woman on TV, curled up in a window seat with a steaming mug and wearing a sweater so big it covered most of her hands, and thought how cozy it looked; maybe it was her grandmother on her father’s side, who had worn a variety of cable knit sweaters and always smelled like peppermint when Kate hugged her; maybe it was that her sophomore crush had a habit of wearing an oversized white hoodie to their lacrosse sleepovers. Or maybe she just liked how she looked in them, so much less intimidating than her work suits; they made her look soft and sweet and not like the bad cop she had usually had to be. She couldn’t point to a single reason, just that she never felt more relaxed and herself than when she was surfing, spending time with Lucy, or lounging in their apartment in a big comfy white sweater.
The trouble was, she didn’t live alone anymore. Which wasn’t a bad thing; it was an amazing thing, actually, one of the best things that ever happened to her. After over a decade of loneliness, now she woke up every morning to Lucy’s smile - or her arm laying over Kate’s face or her hair in Kate’s mouth - and she’d never been happier. But Lucy, while not being particularly accident prone or sloppy, was kind of a hazard to white sweaters.
The first one she shrunk in the wash (“I swear, it said machine washable! I checked it twice! Wait, what do you mean ‘did I put it on cold?’”)
The second she had stained beyond repair. (That was at least partly Kate's fault. When Lucy came home covered in blood, Kate panicked and put her hands all over Lucy checking for injuries and hugged her close when she realized her girlfriend was okay. Fortunately, it hadn’t been Lucy’s blood and they'd had an important talk about either showering at work after beating half a dozen men literally bloody or at least texting your girlfriend to give her a head's up.)
And the death of the third sweater was a bit of a mystery, but it had something to do with Lucy sharpening her new throwing knives to distract herself from a cold and a particularly bad sneezing fit; a couch cushion, a lamp, and their toaster had also fallen victim. (They now had a ‘no weapons in the apartment while sick’ rule.)
It was a little annoying, but it didn’t bother Kate that much. She didn’t have a particular favorite sweater or anything, didn't have any emotional investment in them, she just liked having a couple around. She did prefer nice quality ones, though, so it was a bit of a financial burden, but not anything insurmountable, especially since she was good with money and they didn’t have any other particularly expensive habits. So Kate might’ve sighed a little as she ordered yet another new white sweater online towards the end of June after the throwing knives incident, but it wasn’t a big deal. She didn’t think about it again after she clicked ‘purchase now.’
Lucy, apparently, did. Lucy, Kate found out six months later, thought about it a lot and decided to do something about it.
*
The start of the mystery that would plague Kate for the next several months was a package that came to Lucy at work instead of their apartment.
Kai dropped it onto Lucy’s desk right as Kate walked up to them to take Lucy out to lunch.
“Hey, what’s that?” she asked. “Is it a case thing? Need any help?”
She’d never seen Lucy move so fast in her life, the package immediately disappearing into a drawer that Lucy slammed shut so hard her desk shook.
Then she smiled at Kate. “Lunch, right? I'm starving. Let me run this report down to Ernie and then we’ll go, okay?”
And then she locked the drawer before hurrying out of the bullpen.
Kate turned to Kai, her jaw hanging open. “What was that about?”
Kai shook his head, wide-eyed and clearly confused as her. “No idea. It was just my turn to grab everyone’s mail today.”
“So not a case thing?”
“Not as far as I know.” Kai slid closer and said in a low voice, “But I did see the sender.”
“Really? Who was it?”
“Michaels. Like the craft store.”
Kate blinked, trying to digest that information. “You’re sure?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“It’s gotta be a case thing. Or maybe her family, somehow? They’re the only thing she doesn’t like to talk about.”
“What would a craft store have to do with her family?”
“They’re doing business with them?"
"A big oil company doing business with a craft store?"
"Maybe? Probably not,” Kate deduced, more stumped than ever. “It has to be a case thing, right?”
“I guess. That or Lucy’s taking up crafting and really doesn’t want us to know about it. Maybe she thinks it's dorky or something.”
He went back to his desk and Kate just stood there, absolutely bamboozled. Because Kai’s suggestion made the most and the least sense. Why would Lucy not want Kate to know she wanted to do some kind of craft? But what case would both Kate and Kai not be in on? And what other possible reason would Lucy be hiding a package from Michaels?
She spent most of their lunch trying to get it out of Lucy, but all her girlfriend would say was that it was top secret and then change the subject. Kate eventually let it drop. Lucy was never very good at keeping secrets. She’d tell Kate eventually; all she had to do was wait.
*
They caught a triple murder a couple days later that drove the thought of Lucy's mysterious package out of Kate’s mind for a few weeks. Well, not completely, but enough that she didn’t press Lucy on it.
At least not until she came home to find Lucy in their bathroom cleaning blood off her hand.
“What happened?” Kate asked, taking the injured hand and inspecting it closely. It was just two relatively shallow cuts but they were still bleeding rapidly. She grabbed the Neosporin. “How did you do this?”
Lucy winced and pouted as Kate gently tapped the antiseptic on. “I was knitting and I got frustrated and pressed really hard and snapped the plastic needle and it stabbed me.”
Kate frowned, sure she’d heard wrong. “Sorry … you were what?”
Lucy froze, her eyes going wide. And then she smiled, wide and innocent.
Too innocent.
“Nothing,” she said, her voice higher and louder than usual. “I was just … knotting. Knotting my shoe. Um. Broke the laces.”
“You were tying your shoe and broke the laces and that cut your hand?” Kate repeated, flat and utterly unimpressed.
“… yes. It was that little plastic part on the end of the laces. Sharper than you think.”
“Uh-huh.” Kate pursed her lips as she started to bandage Lucy up. Lucy didn’t lie often, and usually when she did, all Kate had to do was wait her out.
Not this time. Lucy jutted her chin out definitely and stayed silent.
“Seriously? You’re sticking with the shoelace story?” When Lucy didn't say anything, glaring in mute defiance, Kate sighed. "You know I don't care if you have a new hobby, right? I'm not going to tease you for it, if that's what you're worried about."
More silence.
"And I know what you're doing anyway, you already said it. Pretending it was your shoelace is pointless, especially since you're wearing flip-flops right now. There is literally no reason to keep doing this."
Now Lucy's overly innocent smile was back. "Doing what? I'm not doing anything."
Kate barely stopped herself from walking over to their bathroom wall and banging her head against it. Instead, she took the slightly more mature and productive route of finishing off Lucy's bandage then saying, "No pizza for a month," before stalking out to the kitchen to make tofu for dinner.
And Lucy didn't even complain. She just ate the tofu like nothing was wrong.
It felt like Kate had somehow crossed into the Twilight Zone and she had no idea what was happening or why. But she was determined to find out.
*
After that, Kate started finding things.
Pieces of pink yarn stuck to her skirt after she sat on the couch.
An orange plastic knitting needle under the dining table.
And then there were … she wasn’t sure what most of them were supposed to be, but they were clearly some sort of knitting projects. A blue wool square stuck in the couch cushions with big holes in it. Something that might have been a very skinny scarf sticking out of the planter on their balcony. A sock with no heel under their bed.
Instead of asking Lucy about these very obvious home-knit creations, Kate left them in the same spot on their kitchen counter and watched Lucy to see when she took them. And Lucy did her best to wait until Kate was distracted before quickly removing them to parts unknown; Kate certainly never found the same piece of knitting twice.
So Kate knew something was going on, and Lucy knew that Kate knew; but Kate didn’t know what she knew meant or why it was being hidden from her, and Lucy was determined not to explain herself.
And so summer became fall and then winter, and Kate just got more and more confused. She and Lucy had always had interests that they didn't share; Lucy still wouldn’t do more than sit on the beach while Kate surfed, if that, and Kate only watched a handful of Cowboys games a year and still didn’t know which Cowboy played which position after dating Lucy for over three years. But they’d never hidden things from each other like this before, at least not since Cara, and it seemed utterly ridiculous that knitting of all things was what Lucy had decided to break that streak of honesty and trust over.
But it seemed equally ridiculous to start a fight about secret knitting, so Kate waited until she had a way to catch Lucy in the act and end this weird standoff once and for all.
*
The week after Thanksgiving, it finally came to a head.
Sort of.
Kate had noticed Lucy’s weird habit getting stranger and stranger the since mid-November. Lucy kept finding reasons to be at home when Kate wasn’t, or to go to Ernie’s when Kate couldn’t and staying there for hours. Kate had come home to a locked bedroom door more than once, and when Lucy reemerged, she was always vague about why it had been locked in the first place.
So when Kate had her last meeting of the day cancelled thanks to Curtis having a family emergency - apparently his youngest daughter hadn’t been faking a toothache to get out of a math test but actually had her wisdom teeth coming in and he’d been chewed out pretty badly by both the math teacher and his family dentist about the whole debacle - Kate decided not to tell Lucy she was heading home early.
She opened the front door as quietly as she could - only to find a lit but completely empty apartment. She frowned, looking through every room, absolutely stumped. She double checked her phone - no texts to say Lucy was staying at work late or heading to one of their friend’s or running errands.
Stymied, she gave up and called out, “Lucy? Lucy, where are you?”
There was a thump, then she heard the muffled sounds Lucy cursing, and turning her head towards the noise she finally saw her on the floor of their balcony.
She went out to see Lucy awkwardly pushing herself up and rubbing her back. "What are you doing lying on the ground?"
"I fell," Lucy grumbled, wincing as she straightened up. "I didn't think you would be back for a while, and I jumped when I heard you, and -"
She made a gesture from one of the chairs to the floor.
"Oh, sorry! I was just trying to -"
Kate stopped short, looking at the floor next to Lucy's foot.
Where there was a pile of white wool and a pair of bright blue knitting needles.
"I knew it!" she said, pointing at the evidence.
Lucy frowned, then her eyes went wide and she kicked the wool and needles under the chair.
"Too late, I saw it," Kate crowed in victory. "You can't pretend you aren't knitting anymore!"
Lucy opened her mouth, then stopped, apparently out of excuses.
Until her eyes lit up and she said, "It's not mine!"
Kate took a deep breath before asking, "What now?"
"Yeah, it's Ernie's. I'm just keeping it for him."
"I .. that's ... argh!" protested Kate eloquently.
She took another deep breath and tried again, almost pleading, "Lucy, please. This is driving me crazy. Just tell me why you're hiding this. Because it's one thing to want something just for yourself, but all this lying ... I don't understand it. Please, my love, just be honest with me."
Lucy's expression softened and she reached out to take Kate's hand. “Look, just wait a couple more weeks, okay?”
“Why? What’s going to be different in a couple -“
The lights of their Christmas tree, which was right next to the door to their balcony, flickered and caught her eye, and everything slid into place. The random timeline, the secrecy, why Lucy had suddenly got bit by the crafting bug.
“You learned to knit for me?” Kate asked, her heart feeling too big for her chest. Then she realized, “You’ve been working on my Christmas present since June?”
“I will neither confirm nor deny that I have been knitting,” Lucy said, smiling up at Kate, “but if I had, it would because I know I’m not that great at this kinda stuff and I don’t want to give you a bad present. And if I had been hiding things, hypothetically, it would be because I didn't want to give you a head start at figuring out what your Christmas present was going to be. Half the fun of gift giving is the surprise and I didn't want to ruin it."
"You mean like when I told you about your surprise party? Or when you guessed that Jesse was giving you the new Pokémon game for your birthday and you accidentally thanked him before you opened the present?"
"Exactly. We're both detectives now, Kate, I have to be sneaky."
"Sneaky, right, sure," Kate said, remembering the scarf-thing in the planter.
"Hey, I can be sneaky! It's just that I don't have that much free time and knitting takes a lot more work to learn than I thought. And the package thing was just bad timing." She paused. "If I was learning to knit and hiding it. Which I am of course not doing."
"Understood. Well, I can't wait wait to see what you made. If you made anything, which of course you didn't."
"Absolutely not."
Kate shook her head. Lucy could be the silliest person she knew, but she needed that sometimes, and she was also the bravest and strongest and sweetest, and Kate loved her so much she felt like she could barely contain it all.
So she kissed Lucy, because right then she really, really needed to.
Later, after they'd gone to bed together, then gotten out of bed to eat dinner, then gone back to bed for another round, and Kate had almost fallen asleep, she heard the balcony door squeak as Lucy went out to get her abandoned knitting project.
Kate squeezed her eyes shut and pretended she hadn't heard. She was willing to wait for her surprise.
*
Four days before their non-Christmas, a bulky, awkwardly wrapped, round-ish present appeared under their tree.
And the wrapping paper had a print on it like a knit Christmas sweater.
*
On the twenty-third, Lucy and Kate exchanged gifts, and the pile of presents under the tree got smaller and smaller, until only the bulky round-ish present was left.
"Open it," Lucy urged, biting her lip and jiggling her leg a bit.
Kate carefully tugged at one of the places where the paper met until it tore open, and a white ball of wool fell out. She picked it up and held it aloft.
Then she looked at Lucy with soft eyes. "You really made this?"
Lucy nodded, her knee still bouncing nervously. "Try it on?"
The sweater wasn’t the best one Kate had ever owned, objectively. It was pretty basic, no real patterns or interesting details, and there were a couple small holes. When she put it on, she noticed the right sleeve was slightly longer than the left, and both stopped shy of her wrists; and the v-neck was lower than she usually preferred, which she wasn't sure was a mistake. Lucy always did prefer the v-neck sweaters on Kate to the boat necks for a reason.
But it was so soft and the perfect comfy oversized size, and the look of hopeful pride on Lucy’s face made Kate melt.
“I love it,” she said, and it was true.
What she mostly meant, though, was that she loved Lucy and she hoped that Lucy continued to love Kate in her own specific weird and wonderful ways for the rest of their lives.
"I'm glad," Lucy said, beaming. "Merry Christmas, my love."
*
The Christmas sweater made it almost ten months, but then Lucy ate through their stock of Halloween candy a full week before Halloween, and she made out with Kate to apologize for it, leaving a series of sticky chocolate fingerprints all over.
“I’ll make you a new one,” Lucy said when the worst of the chocolate stains refused to come out.
And three weeks later, after two failed attempts, she did. This time the sleeves even matched.
But Kate didn’t get rid of the Christmas sweater, instead putting it on a shelf in the closet. She wore it whenever Lucy had to go out of town for a case or to visit her sister or that time she volunteered as chaperone for Jake's Boy Scout camping trip. It made her feel like herself, and cozy, but mostly it made her feel loved.