Shooting Stars, Falling Objects

Chapter 1

Tim had been broken up with Ashley for a week and no one else at the station had seemed to notice. He attributed that to two things: Lucy's absence, since she was always the one who was the most interested in his personal life and in tune with his feelings, and his general crankiness (perhaps caused by said absence) which had been keeping everyone at an even greater distance than normal.

Not that he missed her. He had been the one who insisted she go, after all. Things between them were getting too complicated and blurry and she needed to be focusing on her career.

It was hard to convince even himself, though, that his breakup from Ashley had had nothing to do with his former boot. They had gone out for dinner the night after he had gone to Lucy's to talk to her. They had made the date over a week ago, something about their schedules not lining up lately. Tim met Ashley at an Italian place they had been to a few times before and gave her a fairly platonic kiss on the cheek when she arrived.

He told himself this was the perfect time to enact the plan he had made for himself. Be normal. Forget about undercover. Don't think about Lucy. Admittedly that plan wasn't going very well so far but this date was the perfect time to kick it off.

And, he reminded himself, he really liked Ashley. She was fun and uncomplicated and independent. They were having a great time and she never pushed or cried or made him crazy. Unlike some other people he was definitely not thinking about.

During dinner they talked about their days and Ashley tried to ask him questions about how undercover had gone. He stammered out some (non Lucy related) details before switching the conversation very deliberately back to her job. By the time dessert arrived he felt like Barbara Walters, filling every momentary pause with another question.

He made the mistake of taking a bite of his strawberry sorbet which gave Ashley just enough time to ask "How's Lucy?"

He carefully schooled his features into a totally normal expression, which was easy because everything was totally fine! "She's good, she's about to start undercover school for a month."

"Oh, how fun for her! I'm sure she will be great. You'll miss having her around, though, I bet."

"No, I won't!" The words were barely out of his mouth before Time realized that his tone was not following rule number one: Be normal. He had practically shouted them at Ashley.

"What's going on? You have been weird all night." Ashley raised her eyebrows at him in surprise at his (very uncharacteristic) outburst.

Tim took a deep breath. This could still be following the plan. This had nothing to do with Lucy, right?

"We need to talk."