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sgtbradfords · 3 years

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If you’re still taking prompts for Chenford I’d love “I really need you.” or « I don’t love you »💔

Ok anon, I hope you’re ready cause this is a DOOSY. I would call this an AU that takes place after 3x01.

WARNING: possible alcohol abuse, possible drug abuse, and possible suicidal tendencies. There is fluff but due to these warnings I am inserting a Read More link in case this is not someone’s cup of tea.

Lucy Chen had gotten good at hiding it until one day she didn’t. She could flawlessly cake on the concealer to hide the dark bags under her eyes and make it look natural, she could survive off a can of Bang or the strongest, darkest cup of coffee you could put in her hand. The only thing she couldn’t do? Was hide from her demons, because they will always catch up to her no matter how fast she runs.

She told him she was fine when they went to the Prison to visit with Rosalind Dryer, that she could handle it, that if she ‘could not handle dealing with Rosalind in the cage she shouldn’t be a cop’. She told him she was fine when they got back into the shop, that what that monster said didn’t affect her. She told him she was fine when they got off shift, that she was going to go home and have a large glass of wine. She told him, but she was everything but fine.

Tim Bradford had just fallen asleep, staying up later than usual knowing he didn’t have to work the next day. He got home as the sun set, letting Kojo out to run the backyard as he made chicken carbonara for dinner. He ate in-front of the TV, watching as the LA Kings pulled off a big overtime win to give them three points versus the Anaheim Ducks, pushing them closer to a chance to secure a spot for the Stanley Cup Playoffs. He during intermissions he worked on cleaning his house, threw a tennis ball around for Kojo and got ready for bed. His brain had finally relented from his thoughts, allowing him peace as he dozed off, only to be woken by the sound of his charging phone buzzing on the nightstand. He ignored it as it stopped vibrating, only to begin again.

He sighed “Bradford.”

“It’s West, I need you to come to the apartment.”

“Everything ok?” he asked as the threw the covers off, stepping into the sweat pants next to the bed, grabbing and slipping on the pullover hanging on the back of the door.

“It’s Lucy.”

“On my way.” He told the other officer before hanging up, his thoughts berating himself. Not that he was frustrated at his rookie but more at himself, he knew that after what she did today, she had lied about being fine. He had noticed the copious amounts of sugar and caffeine that seemed to be a constant in her hand the past few weeks. But he had held out hope that she would talk to him, tell him what was going on in that beautiful brain of hers, tell him the things she needed to get off her chest.

Tim grabbed his gun from the nightstand, slipping it into the waistband before he threw an old pair of tennis shoes on, moving to the foyer to grab his keys from the basket, glancing at the dog who was snoring away in his crate as he locked up the house and got into his truck. The drive was quiet and smooth for 11:30 of a night, the amount of traffic miniscule as he pulled up in-front of her building.

He locked the truck, punching in the code for the door before making his way to the elevators. He sent a text to Jackson, telling him he was here as he stepped on the car. The car slowed to a stop on the sixth floor, the doors opening to show Jackson standing in the hallway.

“What’s wrong?” Tim asked as he approached.

Jackson rubbed a hand down his face “She was fine when I left a few hours ago, and well I came back to this..” he said as he opened the door.

Tim stepped in, immediately noticing the almost empty bottle of tequila tipped over on the counter and the pills with no bottle that were scattered across the rock. His stomach plummeted as he began to think the worst.

“Did she take any?”

“I’m not sure, she won’t talk to me.” Jackson said as he pointed to the girl sitting on the floor with her back against the wall.

“Chen.” Tim said as he moved closer, crouching down in-front of her. She was staring ahead, tear tracks and a blank expression on her face. “Lucy.” He said softly, grabbing her chin in his hand. “Do you have your pen light?”

Jackson moved to his duffle bag next to the door, grabbing the small pen before walking back, handing the device over. Tim turned it on, shining it into her eyes when Lucy began to speak. “I didn’t take any.”

“Let me check.” Tim said as he looked into her eyes. “You know the drill.”

Lucy’s eyes followed the light as Tim moved it. He conducted his test, determining she was telling the truth, her eyes glossed from the alcohol. “I told you.” She told him as he handed the pen back to Jackson.

“I know, but I needed to know if I needed to call for an ambulance or not.” He said, his tone angry as he stood, walking over to the sink, taking a deep breath as Jackson joined him.

“What happened today?” Jackson asked quietly.

Tim grabbed a glass from the dish drainer, filling it with water. “We went to see Rosalind and she knew things she shouldn’t.”

Jackson nodded in understanding, “Listen, she’s talking to you and not me so I’m going to head to my room. Yell if you- yell if you need anything.” Jackson told the superior as he turned and walked away, glancing worriedly at his friend that rested her head on her knees sitting on the floor.

Tim grabbed the full glass, walking back over to Lucy, handing the water to her. “Drink, boot.”

Lucy drank the glass of tap water, handing it back to Tim as he walked to refill it again. “I didn’t-“ she stumbled over her words. “I didn’t try to-“

“I know.” He said softly, his fingers grasping the countertop, his knuckles turning white. “I know you didn’t.”

A tear made its way down Lucy’s face as she swiped it away. “I just want it to stop.”

Tim sat the glass on the coffee table, sitting down next to Lucy, kicking off his shoes. “Talk to me.”

Lucy stared down at the legs beside hers, “You know, I knew you were tall but your legs are like really long.”

“Chen.” He softly reprimanded as her head fell into his shoulder.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Never- never apologize. What he- what they did-“

Silence overtook them as his words drifted off. The glow from the LA nightlife filtered into the living room through the window pane, casting a soft light in the room. Tim had assumed that Lucy had fallen asleep, her arm tangled with his as her hand rested on his thigh. He thought back to things she had told him, her telling him that her comfort, her safety came from a forty-year-old chunk of metal. Him having to hear Rosalind sing the song that gave her hope, that kept her alive. The panic and distress of almost loosing her, neither of them knew it but he needed her too.

“I thought- I thought I was doing better. I stopped seeing my therapist, eased back on my meds. I can see now that was a mistake.” She whispered into the night. “But the nightmares started again and I just- I don’t want to close my eyes because every time, every time I do I see-“

Tim waited for her to finish. “You see what Chen?”

“It varies,” she told him as she wiped away the new tears, sniffling. “sometimes it’s Caleb, sometimes it’s Rosalind, sometimes it’s you.”

Tim startled, “Me?”

Lucy nodded, “Yeah. Most of the time, I can’t- I can’t find you, I hear your voice, but I can never catch up.”

“Lucy that’ll never-“

“Happen?” she finished for him. “Other times it’s a repeat of our first day together.”

Tim snorted. “You never expected to deal with a GSW on your first day did you?”

“No!” Lucy laughed as she turned to him. “Though with you I should know to expect the unexpected.”

Tim looked at her before whispering “Expect the unexpected huh? That’s what I always expect with you.”

Lucy tilted her head back as she glanced at his lips before focusing back to his eyes. Tim leaned in closer, his own eyes looking at her cherry red lips. Their lips a hair breadth away, so close their breaths were intertwining.

“We can’t.” Tim whispered against her lips.

Lucy stayed still, “I know.”

“We shouldn’t.”

“I know.”

“You’ve been drinking.”

“I know. But, I need-“ Lucy said swallowing her words before gaining courage. “I need you. I just need you. You don’t- we don’t-. Can you please just hold me?” She asked pulling back, unshed tears glistening her eyes. “Please.”

Tim Bradford could count on both hands the moments he could feel his heart break. This, his rookie, someone he shouldn’t be this close to, begging him for comfort was one of those moments, the pain in his chest growing heavier as the knife plunged deeper.

“Ok.” He whispered, moving to stand. Once he was steady on his feet he bent over, putting one arm behind her, the other going under her knees.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?”

“I can walk.”

“Not alone.” He told her as he carried her to her room, putting her in the middle of the mattress before he slid in beside her. Lucy grabbed her weighted blanket from the end of the bed, tossing it over her body before stretching her hand out, reaching for his. She knew it was inappropriate, what ever it was that was happening, that if word escaped the four walls of this apartment there would be ramifications but she trusted and knew with everything in her that the other two people in the apartment would never speak a word.

“Thank you.” She whispered, her eyes becoming heavy as her breath began to even out.

“Never say I don’t love you Luce.” He whispered into the night to no one

That night Lucy was able to finally sleep, her monsters locked away and buried in a hole, unable to escape their confinements for however long that may be. And Tim Bradford, never telling a soul, choosing to keep the secret to himself as he stayed up, his thumb rubbing circles on the back of Lucy’s hand in comfort, his own emotions fighting to the surface. His monsters and demons clawing their way out of their prison, getting the better of him in the quiet space before he could stop them. He stared at the darkness around him, save for the nightlight glowing from an outlet across the room. Lucy sighed in her sleep, her body moving closer into Tim’s side, one of her legs escaping its confinement as she threw it over one of his as her other hand landed on his chest. One moment he was staring at the woman curled into his side, the next he was fast asleep where he shouldn’t be, his thoughts relenting, allowing him the same peace that he was giving.

#the rookie fic #tim bradford x lucy chen #chenford fic #chenford fanfic #fanfic #chenford

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souslejaune · 5 years

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Auntie Dee Dee’s living room... (Folio 1: Part 2)

Auntie Dee Dee’s living room had the best view of an Accra sunset I had ever seen. Through the hand-polished clarity of her first floor sliding doors, beyond the fragrant haze of the flower-filled porch, the day performed its bedtime rituals.

Amorous cocks strutted their seduction in circles around hens as dust rose from beneath them. The cry of roving fishmongers rose to mingle with the faint smell of bougainvillea – orange and yellow. “Red fish. Last for the day. Cheap red fish.” Shrewd housewives emerged from their homes for these last minute bargains that made chop money last a little bit longer. There was sweat on their bead noses. They had been cooking.

Cooking is why I loved going to Auntie Dee Dee’s. I didn’t go there to see the sun give one last jaundiced wink before it turned steadily red as it submerged itself in the sea. I went there because Auntie Dee Dee was a sorceress whose spells lay in the texture of chopped onions, the mildly singed smell of fried plantain, the spicy tongue of chilli, the slippery kiss of oil… The food of her fingers was edible temptation.

In Ghana, it is understood that such a woman can have any man. A woman who befriends her is said to open the door of her marriage to discontent. But she was my mother’s best friend. They had known each other since they were knee high and my mother insisted that Dee Dee had never stopped eating in all the time she had known her.

Every Friday at 4pm my mother would yell, “Kids, are you ready?” From obscure corners of the house, my sister and I would scream, “Yes.” My father would already be in the car. His pride and joy. A navy blue Datsun 120Y gleaming in the relentless afternoon sun. Polished from roof to tyres. He closed his shop early on Fridays so that he could come home and wash it. He said he didn’t trust me to do it then – maybe later. Naana, my sister, liked to tease him about the car.

“Ei Daddy! Are we using the car today?”

My father would raise his arms in a mockery of prayer. “Dear God, let my next daughter be intelligent! Teach her what it means when I sit in my car and start the engine!”

Our mirth would explode in synchronised chaos. My mother holding her side, my sister shaking her head, me stamping like a victim of soldier ants.

It is not unfair to say my father was protective of his car, but it would be wrong to say he was miserly with it. Although he only used it on weekends he let my mother take it shopping every Wednesday. Women drivers were a rare thing so my mother was a minor star. She was the envy of the market traders who sat outside the main walls of Kaneshie Market and she liked the attention. She took pains to walk round the car, roll all the windows up and lock the doors as the traders chattered.

“O wu sumɔɔ o sane. What a man he must be! Will you buy some tomatoes?”

“Madam, me adamfo, how beautiful you look in your car, my friend. Do you want some Gari today? Only two cedis for one america.”

One america is a uniquely Ghanaian measurement that is equivalent to one full tin of an acceptably large size. It is standardised by neither weight nor volume. I learnt this on my first trip to the market with my mother when I noticed that some traders battered their tins so that they would contain less produce, which they sold for the same price. When I pointed this out to my mother she laughed, jingling the car keys as her dimples caught the attention of the sun.

“The trick is knowing whom to buy from.”

The traders in Kaneshie market shouted out their prices with competitive sideways glances at their rivals. Never missing an opportunity to sell, they could convince the smallest hunchback of their incredible height; such were their powers of flattery. My mother always came home on Wednesdays beaming with childlike smiles. Fully gorged on sweet words.

On Fridays however, we only had one destination – Auntie Dee Dee’s. Usually my father talked politics with her husband, Johnny, who was the Minister for Education, whilst my mother discussed sports and cuisine with Auntie Dee Dee. My mother and Dee Dee both sprinted for Ghana in the 1960s. At the 1965 All Africa Games – the first ever – Auntie Dee Dee made history in the 200 metres semi-finals, becoming the first athlete not to compete for dietary reasons. The food supplies she'd packed from Ghana had run out by then and she couldn't find the right kind of groundnut paste to make the 'reviving' soup she ate with rice or gari at least 10 hours before her race day began. She had hoped to make up for missing out on a medal in Bamako in 1969, but when the games were cancelled because of the overthrow of the socialist government in Mali in 1968, she retired. Often, while catching up with my mother by the earth coloured stove, Auntie Dee Dee would beckon me to her side, put her heavy arm around my neck, and smile down at me. She called me her little husband and liked to play with my unruly Afro, occasionally poking her little finger in my right-side-only dimple. From my vantage point beside Auntie Dee Dee, I could reach out and pilfer some achɔmɔ – sweet fried dough snacks that Auntie Dee Dee never seemed to run out of – and watch Uncle Johnny talking to my father. Uncle Johnny’s parabolic eyebrows made it seem like he was always asking a question. I didn’t talk much. I was six years younger than my sister and I loved to listen to people speak. I liked the sounds of some of the big words they used; like imperative and amralofoi. Sometimes, when I wasn’t enveloped by the mango- and cinnamon-fragranced body mass of Auntie Dee Dee, I watched the sun set with Naana and Uncle-and-Auntie’s son Junior. When the smells started coming from the kitchen, we went to Junior’s room to play games. We needed to. Our parents didn’t like us to run around the kitchen and we always seemed to lose our minds when the smell of fried onions started to waft.

._.

In the first few years of my life that was Friday for me. Sunsets and full stomachs.

I got an early birthday card for my seventh birthday. It came on November 15, 1981 – a week early. It was in a textured cream envelope with a glittering red star stuck on the V of the seal.

I had been in a low mood for a few days; I couldn't explain why and my mother had been worried about me. I was lethargic and completely disinterested in things which usually excited me – like football and throwing stones. She asked me if I was ill and checked my temperature – normal. But it was clear that did not satisfy her. Her round face had a pinch in it, like a balloon in the clutches of a clothes peg. Naana always said Mummy looked as though she was in labour every time one of us got hurt, or got into trouble – as though she was reliving the moments of our birth. With no clear symptoms for my condition, she forced me to take an aspirin just in case. A few minutes after she gave me the tablets, I got heartburn and she panicked.

“Oh, Kojo.” She turned to my father with a hand on her mouth, her voice shrill. “Have I poisoned him? Should we call your mother?”

My father, son of a nurse, responded with the calm of his mother. “Relax, Sarah, he probably took the tablet too quickly. He’ll be fine.” He turned to me. “Ebo, does it hurt a lot?”

I shook my head. Trying to be brave.

Naana and my father tried to cheer me up by making funny faces, but my laughter had lost its energy. I wasn’t even ticklish anymore. Eventually they all gave up.

However when the early birthday card arrived a day later, my eyes lit up; so, although my mother wouldn’t normally have given the card to me until my actual birthday, she handed it to me. I ripped the envelope with a fork from our kitchen and pulled out the card. It had Pink Panther on the front and one hundred cedis inside. It was signed, Your favourite Auntie, Dee Dee.

“Mummy look! One hundred cedis!” I came alive like a fanned fire. For the first time I noticed the red serial number on a hundred cedi note.

“Ooh, lucky boy, let me keep it for you.”

My mother snatched it from me with a smile.

She had a trick with money. You always managed to spend it before she was due to give it back to you. It faded into the background like a country's history. If it were in a forest, it would be one amongst the leaves that cushion the forest floor – you would know it was there, but who could find it? The money became the last pack of sweets you had, or the cost of the new socks you were wearing; I knew I’d lost that money forever.

“Mummy, can I call Auntie Dee Dee to thank her?”

“Of course.”

The telephone rang and rang. No one picked up.

My father came home crying that day. Within minutes my mother was crying too. The news and its companion tears soon spread to Naana and I.

Auntie Dee Dee had had a heart attack whilst cooking. She was alone at home and died. The next day my mother gave me back the money Auntie Dee Dee had sent me. She mumbled something about last wishes and how the dead always knew things. Blowing her nose with a tear-sodden handkerchief, she took out the battered address book she kept by her side of the bed, called the friends she and Dee Dee had grown up with, and started planning the funeral. With every call, she cried again, as though Auntie Dee Dee had just died. She relived her devastation with each memory of Auntie Dee Dee rekindled by another friend. By evening my mother looked five years older; she could barely do anything without sobbing, so my father became her. His grief was a warm silence. He served us food, held our hands and made our mother endless glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice with lime. It was all she wanted. The sight of food intensified her grief. Naana and I grew red-eyed from watching our parents cry, wondering what our playmate Junior would do without a mother. We went to bed with headaches.

People converged on Auntie Dee Dee’s funeral in migratory bird fashion. In shining red and black mourning plumage. Wax prints so fresh that you could still smell the ink on them. Dutch prints quickly learning the language of African sun as they soaked up the sweat of grieving bodies. The women had quarter pieces of cloth show-boated into elaborate headgear, which they bore as heavily as their grief. The men carried themselves with a grace that belied the casual toss of dark Adinkra cloths over their left shoulders. I looked for Junior in the dark forest of tearful bodies but he was nowhere to be found. Uncle Johnny sat by the dead body; shoulders bent, clad in black, fossilised by sorrow, his eyebrows at odds with his tears.

My mother made me file past the dead body. Not caring for my seven-year-old sensitivity. Ostensibly for my own good. The waache seller down our road, who was single-handedly responsible for daily lunchtime pilgrimages of men from the Industrial Area, explained it to me later.

“If you don’t see a dead person in their coffin, there is a possibility they will visit you.”

Actually, I wouldn’t have minded a visit from Auntie Dee Dee. I had questions for her.

Anyway, I filed past the body; keeping my eyes down, trained on the gleaming black traditional slippers the adults were wearing. I only got a glance. She was adorned in all her finery, gold rings and a stiff smile. There was a red handbag trapped under her left arm to match the red dress she had been stuffed into. Red was her favourite colour.

“Quel gachis!”

It was the first time I heard French spoken properly. Auntie Dee Dee’s grandfather was French, and one of her cousins had travelled all the way from Paris to demonstrate his love by shaving his armpits to wear cloth the Ghanaian way.

Quel gachis! My father translated it later. What a waste! It sounded so much better in French. English just didn’t have the right sound for it. I resolved to learn French.

—–

continued >> here << ... | start from beginning? | current projects: The City Will Love You and a collection of poems, The Geez

#novel #series #fiction #niiayikweiparkes

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