However Do You Want Me... || Chenford / The Rookie

Part 17

Author's Note: You are so, so welcome for the cringe-y visuals 😂

***

Their challenge the next day proves to be the cringiest yet — a cherry on top of the uncomfortable awkwardness that's solidified between them since their pseudo break-up the day before. Their host explains the 'Dirty Laundry' challenge, "Teams will be seated on a pole within a giant tub. The pole is coated with a bar of soap. Each team must use friction with their bodies (in a suggestive manner) to erode the soap and reveal the four numbers etched onto the pole beneath the soap. Once the numbers are revealed, each team will run towards their designated clothesline and a bucket full of T-shirts with numbers on them. The team must find and hang the four T-shirts with the correct numbers. The team that completes the task most quickly will win; the slowest two teams will be automatically eliminated."

Lucy's cheeks begin to heat even as the host is just explaining the challenge; the idea of grinding and thrusting in unison with Tim on national television is almost too much for her to bear. Tim was right; they absolutely should have thrown the first challenge and just gone home.

"What is wrong with these people?" Tim grumbles as he climbs onto the pole behind her, her leg automatically jerking when his knee brushes the underside of her thigh as he settles himself. She busies herself reaching down to splash the bar with water, telling herself that any type of conscious thought will be the enemy of progress in this challenge. She just needs to get it done as quickly as possible so that they can get off of this damn pole.

This challenge is the opposite of sexy — it's awkward and a middle school boy-girl party level of silly and more than a little physically uncomfortable. But somehow Tim still can't help but be hypnotized by her body as it moves in front of him, her hips rolling in a rhythm that is intuitively in sync with his own. Trying not to lose himself in the memory of what her body had felt like moving against his only a few short nights ago, not to think too much about how they would be so good together, which is painfully evident in how seamlessly in sync they are.

He tries at first to keep his distance, to give her as much space as possible as she works on one end of the bar and he works on the other, but inevitably they are forced to meet in the middle to tackle the remaining numbers - the synchrony of their rhythm only maximizing the contact between his front and her back, encouraging them both to move faster and faster, if only to bring this ridiculousness to an end.

With only a bit of soap left to go, Lucy hops off of the bar to splash it with more water, hopping back on in the angle she thinks will be most effective, only to realize her mistake immediately as she comes face to face with Tim. Their eyes meet, and she is certain she is flushing down to her toes as she forces herself to keep moving, keep thrusting, her chest and stomach just barely grazing his as she arches back in the movement.

Tim slows to a stop as his final number is revealed, turning his attention to Lucy as she works to finish hers, firmly gripping and guiding her hips to help focus her traction on the remaining bit of soap in a way that has Lucy thinking how much she wouldn't mind his fingerprints on her hips under a totally different circumstance.

Tim is scrambling off of the pole and planting his feet in the sand before Lucy even realizes the last bit of her final number has been revealed. He surprises her when he throws his arm around her waist, unceremoniously lifting her off of the pole and depositing her onto the beach, before he takes off for the clothesline at a dead run, a shouted "Come on!" thrown over his shoulder.

After the challenge, production pulls Lucy and Tim aside for a joint interview. Lucy buries her face in her hands, forgetting herself in the adrenaline of their victory as she tucks herself in towards Tim's bare chest. "I am so mortified that we won that," she laughs. Tim's arm comes up automatically to wrap around her, and both seem to realize what they are doing at the same time — Lucy freezing in a strange hunch and Tim awkwardly patting her on the shoulder.

"You two didn't seem to have any trouble establishing the right... rhythm for today; why do you think that was?" Lucy flushes as she straightens and takes a step sideways away from Tim, while Tim rolls his eyes at the over-the-top innuendo. He glances at Lucy before he responds, his expression soft in that way she knows means he is about to say something that is going to make her melt into a puddle on the ground. "I think it's because I have a really great partner... maybe even the best partner I've ever had."

Lucy looks at him in stunned silence, deeply touched by his words because she knows he wouldn't say them if he didn't mean them, and also because she knows he's talking about more than just their partnership in the soap-humping challenge.

***

Later that night, Lucy and Tim get to enjoy a private poolside dinner together as part of the reward for their win. With stars shining over their heads and the natural sounds of nighttime in the Malibu hills actually audible for once with the doors to the house where the rest of the cast is dining closed, it'd be disarmingly romantic if things weren't so uncomfortable between them.

Their eyes meet awkwardly as they eat their food and sip their wine, neither quite knowing what to say or where to go from where they had left things the morning before.

"That was really nice... what you said after the challenge, I mean," Lucy finally offers softly.

Tim meets her eyes, "I meant it." They each chew quietly, thoughtfully, for a few more moments before Tim continues. "It's part of the reason... why I —yesterday," he finishes haltingly, not wanting to revisit the conversation at all, and especially not in front of the cameras, but also knowing he can't leave the rest of what he has to say unsaid any longer.

He swallows, throat thick with emotion, "You matter to me, Lucy. Our friendship, our working relationship, our partnership outside of here, in the real world, it matters. And it — you — mean too much to me to keep... what we were doing... I just — I don't want all of this — anything that happens here — to ruin a really good, important thing in my life."

Lucy nods, eyes filling because she knows how difficult it is for him to open up like this, to be so vulnerable with her, and even if she does already know deep down how much he values having her in his life, it's absolutely what she needs to hear in this moment, exactly the confirmation she needs after the turbulence of the last few days has unsettled so much of what she thought she knew. She slips her hand over his on the table, meeting his eyes, "You matter to me, too, Tim."

He squeezes her hand, and they exchange sad smiles, and somehow it's simultaneously both more than either of them have given to each other before and still not nearly enough, but neither is brave or ready or sure enough to admit any more tonight.

He clears his throat, forcing himself to break the intensity of their shared gaze as he lifts his glass to his lips, "Have I told you about my nephews?"