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“You can take the top drawer for now; we’ll find you some more space once we’ve got everything inside. Just toss my stuff on the bed!” Tim yells from the kitchen, his voice fading out as he heads back to the truck for yet another load of Lucy’s belongings.
It’s been a long three days of packing and moving her stuff and, honestly, Lucy has entertained the thought of becoming a minimalist more than once.
(“Yeah, right,” Tim had scoffed fondly, his lips twitching into a smile as she’d nearly tipped over from the amount of boxes she’d tried to carry at once. “And deprive me of the one million candles I’ve been preparing for? The knick knacks? What would I do without all the cozy pillows, Lucy? How would I survive?”
Lucy had rolled her eyes but hadn’t been able to keep from smiling.
“Fine,” she’d relented, bumping her hip against Tim’s as she’d walked past him. “But if you ever break up with me a second time, you’re the one leaving because I am never moving again.”
Tim had just watched her go without arguing, a besotted smile on his face.)
Lucy doesn’t bother replying since Tim is more than likely out of vocal range, and instead turns to his dresser, which —
Huh.
There are two top drawers.
Well, if he didn’t specify, she decides, lips quirking into a grin, then they must both be for her.
The left side is already empty and Lucy doesn’t waste any time dumping a box of socks and panties into it, but the second one is full of a variety of hoodies and henleys, and she hums as she takes out the carefully folded piles one at a time, her chest tight and warm because god, she even missed the ridiculous military way that Tim folded his stupid clothes.
She’s hopeless, really.
We both know what we lost, she’d said, and she takes a moment to feel the weight of that comment wash over her as she holds Tim’s hoodies to her chest, breathing in the slightly spicy scene of him.
She would have been fine if they’d never gotten back together, she knows, because she is a whole person outside of Tim with her own likes and interests, friends and family, but… god, she’s glad she doesn’t have to be fine without him.
“Hey, where do you want the candles?”
Lucy nearly jumps as Tim’s voice snaps her from her musings, and she shakes her head, smiling to herself as she lays down the stack of henleys on the edge of the bed.
Their bed.
It almost doesn’t seem real.
“Um, in the living room for now!” she calls out, because really, she might have just a few too many of them and she really does need to go through them and donate the ones she’ll never use and toss the ones that are nearly burned down before putting the ones she wants to keep away. “Just put them with the pillows!”
She needs to go through those, too, actually.
It’s a problem for later, though.
Right now she just wants to get the things that she’s going to need in the immediate future put away. She needs to have clothes ready and easily accessible for the next 48 hours, because as a newly minted sergeant she cannot be late for work and she knows herself, okay — she knows she’ll be panicking while trying to find panties and socks and Tim will laugh at her before being of any real help.
So, goal one: clothes.
The candles and pillows can wait.
Lucy nods to herself, resolute in her decision, and reaches for the last pile of henleys. Her fingers brush against something hard as she does, though, something pushed into the far corner of the drawer. And she knows, okay, that something hidden that far back, pushed into a dark corner and ignored, is either something you’re trying to hide from yourself, or something you’re trying to hide from someone else, and that she probably shouldn’t touch it.
But curiosity killed the cat or something like that, and she’s pushing the shirts out of the way and pulling out the small box before her brain has a moment to catch up and tell her no.
“Hey, Luce, do you go ahead and wanna order lunch from that one place we both lo—”
Lucy whirls around, caught red handed in her snooping, as Tim enters the bedroom.
They stare at each other for a long moment, barely even breathing in the charged silence as her fingers flex on the small box she’d pulled from his drawer.
The ring box.
“Um. Fuck,” Tim says, swallowing thickly as his eyes dart back and forth between the velvet and her face. “You, uh… I meant that you could have the, uh, the left drawer.”
“You probably should have specified that, then!” Lucy squeaks, her voice higher than she’d like as she holds the box in both hands, suspended in the air between them as if it might explode at any moment.
“Um,” Tim says, tongue darting out to lick his suddenly dry lips. “Would you like me to take that and pretend you never saw it?”
Lucy bites her lip as she stares at the dark blue velvet.
Does she want that?
“I don’t, uh… I don’t know,” she admits, her pointer finger rubbing gently along the crease where the box opens.
She kind of wants to see it.
But she’s also terrified of what it means.
“Did you…”
She trails off, clearing her throat as Tim takes a step forward, one hand reaching out to brush his fingers gently over her knuckles where they’re white with tension from how tightly she’s holding the ring box.
“Ask me anything, Luce,” he murmurs, blue eyes gently as he moves into her space. “I did promise I’d communicate better. Give me a chance to prove that to you.”
Lucy sucks in a shaking breath and nods again. “Okay. Okay. Then… did you buy it before or… or, um, after?”
Before or after you broke up with me?
Tim chuckles softly as his hand covers hers. “Oh, baby, I’ve had that ring since our third date.”
Lucy whines low in her throat, her eyes snapping to Tim’s with shock.
“Our third date? Tim, we weren’t even sleeping together then!”
Tim shrugs, smiling as he gently pries the box from her surprised fingers. Lucy lets him, her hands falling back to her side as he opens it and then closes it just as quickly, not letting her get a good look at whatever is inside.
“I know,” he admits, nodding. “But it didn’t matter. I knew, even then, that this is where we were heading.”
Lucy feels hot tears spring to her eyes at the absolute sincerity in his voice.
“I… had a plan,” he continues, his voice a low murmur as he remembers the painful days and weeks and months during the in between. “Before I… well, before, anyway. And then afterward…”
He trails off, and Lucy feels a single tear slip silently down her cheek as she imagines him shoving the box in the back of the drawer after he’d broken up with her, absolutely entrenched in self loathing.
“What was the plan?” she asks, reaching up a hand to shakily wipe away the tear. She sniffles, reaching out to slide her finger through Tim’s belt loop, needing to ground herself in him.
Tim just shakes his head.
“It doesn’t matter now,” he says, thumb rubbing over the top of the box.
“Oh,” Lucy whispers, her throat thick as she nods, because of course he’s not thinking about that right now. Not after everything. “Y-yeah, that… you’re right. It doesn’t, um, matter anymore.”
Tim chuckles as he reaches up, one large, warm hand cupping the side of her face, and Lucy sighs and leans into the touch despite the way her chest is tight and achy. “I didn’t mean it like that, Lucy. I meant that it doesn’t matter what the plan was, because I have already spent far too much time waiting for the perfect moment. I waited too long to ask you out. I waited too long to try and get you back. And I definitely waited too long to ask you to move in with me the second time. I’m tired of waiting for the perfect moment. Is it okay… is it okay if I just take this moment, instead?”
Lucy nods without really knowing what he’s asking.
(She knows what she hopes he’s asking, but she’s terrified of being wrong. She’s been hurt too much and too often, and she doesn’t want to get her hopes up too far).
“Y-yes,” she says, nodding, and Tim chuckles as he winks and sinks to one knee in front of her.
“Hold onto that yes for a second, sweetheart,” he murmurs, and Lucy officially loses the battle with her tears as he slowly opens the box, revealing the ring within.
The band is slim and gold, a small moonstone set in the middle with gold bands gently swirling around it, holding it in place.
“Lucy Chen, I love you,” Tim begins, but Lucy is already nodding, one hand pressed over her face to hide her tears. He holds her other hand in his, and the way he’s trembling in her grip helps ground her because he’s just as scared as she is. “I have spent so much time waiting for the perfect moment to do certain things, and because of that I have already wasted so much time. I wasted so much time, Luce, because every single moment I spend with you is already perfect. Every morning, every night, and every moment in between. And one day when we tell this story to our grandchildren, it’s not going to matter that I asked you in our bedroom only like seventeen seconds after you moved in with me, but to be fair, it’s not my fault you’re a relentless snoop and found it before I'd planned on proposing.”
Lucy rolls her eyes but laughs wetly, wiping at the tears slowly tracking down her cheeks.
Tim smiles at her, eyes soft and smile lines devastating.
“I know this is terrible timing and I just asked you a big, life changing question and now I'm asking another, but… but I suppose it’s appropriate, because I wanted to show you how serious I was about us, and moving in together is serious, but what’s more serious than a promise that I want to spend the rest of my life with you? We don’t have to plan anything now, baby. This can be a long engagement. We can do everything on our own timeline. But I want you to know that I’m all in. That I’m all yours. So, Lucy Chen…”
He takes a deep, steadying breath and offers her a smile that she aches to trace with her fingers.
“Sweetheart, will you make me the happiest man in the universe and marry me?”
Lucy nods, eyes wet and hands shaking.
She doesn't hesitate, because if Tim has wasted too much time waiting for the perfect moment, then she has wasted too much time hesitating.
“Yes, Tim. Yes, I’ll marry you.”
Tim’s smile widens as he drops her hand to reach into the box and pull out the ring with shaking fingers.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Yes. Yes!”
Tim nods shakily, slides the ring onto her finger, and then stands up so quickly that he nearly knocks her over in his excitement. He slides an arm around her waist to steady her, though, large hand splaying over the small of her back as he ducks down to kiss her, licking the salt from her lips as they laugh against each other's mouths.
Lucy pulls back from the kiss eventually, though, raising her hand between them to admire the ring. Her eyes sparkle and she bites her lip as she glances between the gold band and Tim’s smile, her hands sliding around his neck to gently scrape her fingers through the short hairs at the base of his neck.
“So,” she murmurs, letting her eyes roam his face and then down his chest. “How about we put off all of this unpacking and… celebrate instead?”
Tim’s eyes flash with heat, and she squirms in his arms, heat pooling in her stomach.
She knows what that look means.
“Sounds good to me,” he grunts, and Lucy laughs, loud and carefree, as he pushes her back onto their bed.
_________________
(She never does end up getting her clothing laid out and does, in fact, end up running around looking for socks and panties before her next shift while Tim laughs at her from the bed.
It sure is a good thing that she loves him enough to marry him, anyway)