Heyo, somehow two weekly challenge prompts in one happened purely by accident! Seriously, I'd given up on last week's since nothing was coming to mind and there was no way to live up to the standard set by rachelbee's 'six' anyway, but then this week's prompt got the gears turning a little and the lines from the other prompt just magically appeared in this one! But it was actually intended specifically for the week 5 challenge, in which Lucy shows up at Mason Industries a) with Wyatt and b) wearing his shirt, which doesn't go unnoticed…
This (and the Lucy and Wyatt in it) ended up a bit goofy, and possibly a bit out of character, but just pretend that's how they are a couple months after the finale once things have settled down into an (Emma-chasing) routine. They could probably use a little lightheartedness in there somewhere.
As always, please excuse any typos or awkward wordings!
Lucy could see it happening before it actually did. The little branch that ended up on the roof; the wobble of her travel mug; the pale, off-white of her sweater…
And then it happened. She slammed her car door shut and it played out even more dramatically than she'd figured. The mug, off-balance not only because of the sedan's sloped roof but also the stupid little twig that had had the nerve to be under the mug when she'd set it down went tumbling upon the impact of the closing door. It tipped over, somehow managing to hit and dislodge the lid, and because she was a stupidly awkward idiot, Lucy had reached to somehow catch it or stop it instead of jumping away to avoid the entire calamity.
Which meant that arm she'd reached out with? Was now decorated with a dark, wet stain splashed all over the pale knit from wrist to elbow.
"Shit," she mumbled to herself, inspecting the carnage and glancing helplessly around the parking lot. At least no one had seen her display of supreme klutziness. And she supposed at least she could be thankful for the fact that it was lukewarm at best given that she'd poured it much earlier and then managed to get distracted before leaving for Mason Industries. Because a burn all over her forearm would be the last thing she needed the next time she had to wriggle herself into some horribly itchy wool dress from eighteen-forty-whatever.
She crouched down, retrieved the bits of the offending mug, and pulled the car door back open with the intent to toss them inside.
But before she could do so, she was relieved to see a familiar vehicle pull into a spot across the parking lot. As soon as he climbed out of his car, she called out, waving, "Wyatt!"
Lucy shouldn't have been surprised that he was by her side almost instantaneously, gun drawn, his gaze darting about, paranoid. "What?" he asked with urgency.
It really was comforting to know that he'd become extra-protective of her since the revelation of her mother being Rittenhouse, but he did take it a bit far sometimes. Lucy stifled a laugh, instructing him, "Put that away. I just need a shirt," she added, holding her arm and dismantled mug out as evidence.
Wyatt lowered the gun, looking rather exasperated as he rolled his eyes at the situation.
"Do you have anything in your car?" Lucy asked, finally tossing the mug in the vague direction of the passenger's seat. "I have no desire to wear some hideously psychedelic 80's shirt from in there," she explained, nodding in the direction of the main Mason Building. "And don't think I didn't see you rolling your eyes. Don't even think about commenting on how I'm clumsy again. It's early and you saw that it was the coffee I spilled, right?"
At least he had the decency to raise his hands in mock surrender. "I didn't say anything," he pointed out, even as he smirked. Still, Lucy was grateful when he turned to jog back over to his car to rifle around for something for her to wear.
Just a minute or two later, Wyatt returned, holding out a bunched up wad of gray fabric. "Here."
Lucy reached for it, holding it out for inspection. It was a basic, well-worn hooded sweatshirt, with a big black ARMY emblazoned across the chest. It was going to be way too big – it looked like it would be big even on him – but she still set it and her purse down on the seat of her car and proceeded to yank the now-stained sweater up over her head. She didn't have to look to know that Wyatt's eyes would be on her, taking in the thin tank top she'd worn under the sweater and the pale blue, satiny bra straps beneath that. Let's be honest, she hadn't really minded him looking back at the Hindenburg; she didn't mind now. But, they did have to get inside, so she couldn't really mentally indulge in how her state of undress may or may not have been affecting him. So she reached for the hoodie and tugged it on over her head, mumbling a muffled "Thank you" from somewhere inside the shirt. Once she resurfaced, she attempted to tame her surely messed up hair and grabbed her purse once more before closing and locking up the car.
With a sigh she turned and regarded the Mason building. Looking over at Wyatt, she prompted with false enthusiasm, "To another day of research and waiting around for Emma to do something?"
Wyatt just snorted sarcastically in response, muttering, "Great."
But such was life following the theft of the Mothership by Emma and Rittenhouse, so they made their way across the parking lot and head inside.
They'd barely made it into the open span of desks adjacent to the Lifeboat when an odd sense of quiet descended and Lucy felt dozens of eyes on her.
She nudged Wyatt warily. "Is it weird in here?" she asked. "Just me?"
"No, it's weird," he confirmed, even as the low buzz of the work area swelled back to normal levels.
"Maybe everyone spilled their coffee?" Lucy quipped lamely. "Uh, speaking of which," she added, "I need to go find a replacement for mine."
Wyatt nodded an acknowledgement, rolling his eyes once more as he did so. "Later," he muttered absently, still scanning the sea of desks with curiosity as he headed off to wherever it was that he did whatever it was that he did on these off-days. Brainstorming with Agent Christopher about weapons or strategies or mission tactics, if she had to guess.
But that wasn't her primary concern at the moment. So Lucy headed off towards the staff lounge, hoping fervently that someone had replenished the stock of K-cups.
They hadn't, but digging through enough cabinets had revealed someone's hidden stash, so the second phase of her caffeine crisis was averted. Mug in hand, she headed back to the desk she'd been assigned to continue her efforts at poring over Ethan's files in an attempt to come up with any sort of logical connections to the times and places that Emma had traveled to thus far. By a couple hours later, she even thought she might have been making headway on a couple of leads, but she still couldn't shake the feeling that everyone was watching her. And even when they didn't seem to be, furtive whispers and giggles seemed to dominate the ambient noise in the large room. She'd even caught Rufus and Jiya sneaking glances at her from their desks across the platform.
It was no better late in the morning when everyone directly involved in the Rittenhouse mission convened in the conference room for a meeting to brief each other on any developments since their last trip through time. Lucy lost track of time and ended up being last into the room, with the last free seat in the farthest corner from the door. So of course as she slunk her way down the side of the room, she felt the weight of everyone's stares.
The meeting moved along quickly enough, but not without her catching more than a few people smirking at her. She shot an incredulous gaze at Wyatt a few chairs down, wondering if he'd been getting the same bizarre vibes all day too. He just shrugged in response, leaving her mildly frustrated for the rest of the meeting, still unable to figure out what the hell the weirdness was all about.
Thankfully the meeting didn't drag on too long, and, not wanting to draw any extra attention to herself, Lucy hung back, remaining in her seat as most everyone else filed out in search of lunch, or at least take-out menus.
Wyatt ended up being the only other meeting attendee to linger in the room, so she took the opportunity to gripe about the oddness of the atmosphere at Mason that day. "Why is everyone being so weird today?" She demanded, perhaps a little too aggressive, seeing as it wasn't his fault. "They keep staring. Is my hair crazy?" She asked him insistently, "Something in my teeth? Pen on my face? What!?"
He had the nerve to chuckle, nodding in her direction pointedly. "You're wearing my shirt."
"I spilled coffee on mine," she pointed out defensively, narrowing her eyes at him as she stood from her seat.
"…and we came in together," Wyatt continued leadingly, a smirk creeping across his face.
It had taken a second to dawn on her even once he'd mentioned the shirt, but now, of course, Lucy was catching his drift and knew exactly where he was going with his side of the conversation. But, suppressing her own smirk and crossing her arms across her chest, she countered logically, just to be contradictory, "We drove separate cars. You were just in the parking lot when I was; that's how I got the shirt."
He still smirked. "They think we're sleeping together," he shrugged, leaning back against the edge of the conference room table.
Lucy was now officially losing her fight to hold back a grin as she inched closer to him, challenging, "We are sleeping together."
Wyatt just shook his head with another chuckle, his smile widening. "I know that, but they don't."
"But that's not why I'm wearing your shirt today …and I wear your clothes all the time," Lucy shot back, mischievously combative as she walked still closer to him.
"Again, I know that, but they don't know that," Wyatt replied, widening his leaning stance ever so slightly. "They still think you're still staying in the hotel."
Lucy snorted a soft laugh. "Because we still take two cars. And that hotel lasted all of a day and a half," she pointed out teasingly, stepping between his feet, "Mr. overprotective-I-don't-like-you-staying-there-by-yourself."
Wyatt rolled his eyes with a sigh even as he grabbed for her wrist and tugged her closer to him. "I don't hear you complaining. Also, they don't know that."
Any semblance of her playful ruse was up by the time Lucy was fully between his legs, her hips pressed squarely to his as she leaned into him and admitted with a smile, "Yeah, but I like how you look when you're getting all exasperated with me."
Sliding her hands up over his chest, she looped her arms around his neck as she pressed her lips to his. She'd intended to keep the kiss quick, but when Wyatt tugged with his teeth at her lower lip, she didn't exactly have the willpower to deny him a deepening of the kiss; turns out he was rather addictive. She opened her mouth to him, sighing contentedly into his mouth as his tongue slid over hers. Amidst the kisses, his hands crept well up under her (his) sweatshirt, the roominess of the garment allowing him free rein to skim his fingers over her ribcage, pushing up her tanktop to get at skin. She shivered when his hands wandered even higher under the tanktop, his thumbs brushing over her nipples through the thin, silky material of her bra.
She was about to complain when he broke the kiss, but ended up practically purring instead when he leaned down to trail his lips up her neck. "And I like how you look in my clothes," he murmured between kisses pressed to her jaw, his breath hot on her ear. "I like the open button-downs better though, with nothing else, by the way."
Lucy grew warm at the words as they brought to mind the memory of the last time she'd been in (and then out of) such an outfit. But she still couldn't stifle her giggles, pulling back just a bit as one escaped. "Well, they'd definitely know if I wore that here."
Wyatt snorted a laugh in response even as he pulled her in again, capturing her lips with his once more.
But then he pulled away. "I told them we're not though," he informed her.
"Wh-" Still half entranced by the kisses, it took Lucy a second to realize that the unspoken part of that sentence wasn't just 'not sleeping together', it was that they weren't anything. "…oh," she replied dully.
Lucy had tried not to think about when they might get to this point, when she'd realized just how hard she'd fallen, especially once they were, for all intents and purposes, living together and then had gotten …physical. And that he might have a totally different view on what it all meant.
Now she was suddenly quite anxious about the fact that she'd fallen a little too hard, too fast; they'd never really discussed what was going on, they had just sort of morphed into something when he got too uncomfortable with her staying in hotel alone after Rittenhouse bust and the discovery about her mother.
She'd been rather shaken (and still was, if she let herself think too hard about it), so she'd agreed to forgo the hotel and stay with him (but only with the stipulation that he let her take the couch so that he wasn't kicked out of his bed, to which he'd only very reluctantly agreed).
And in the span of just over a week, platonic comforting hugs born out of emotional meltdowns and stressful Emma-chasing missions had in turn led to kisses dropped on the top of her head, which then graduated to kisses pressed gently to her forehead, and then to her cheek. And somehow quick pecks on the lips had followed, which had begun to linger more and more… Before she'd really realized or understood how they'd gotten there, they'd found themselves wrapped around each other in what could really only be described as a makeout session, complete with deepening, sensual kisses and increasingly wandering hands. Not that she'd been complaining that night. Nor had she complained when a couple days after that, she'd found herself in a stunned daze, collapsing against him on the couch, quivering and sated, his hand still snaked down her pajama pants, his fingers still in her. She'd attempted to return the favor, but he'd seen her eyelids drooping and demurred, instead just holding her until she'd fallen asleep, all despite his own pajamas tenting obviously. They'd been forced to spend the following two days (and nights) with Rufus close by in 1837, but once they'd returned home, they'd remedied any imbalance and stumbled down the hall to Wyatt's bedroom, where all sorts of favors were exchanged well into the night, and she hadn't slept on the couch since.
It had all just sort of happened, and it was wonderful, and they were still themselves, Lucy and Wyatt, just with sex. And some significantly amplified feelings. Or at least on her part, anyway.
But, she worried, now having heard his confirmation that he'd denied all the accusations their co-workers were making, maybe it was too much too fast, maybe it was too casual, maybe he still wasn't over Jessica, maybe they should have stopped and actually talked about it at some point, maybe it had all been a monumentally stupid idea.
She was pretty sure that she was wearing an overly apprehensive expression when Wyatt leaned in to press a soft kiss to her lips as he reached up to cradle her face with one hand. "Luce, we can tell them," he assured her, his thumb gently stroking her jawline. "I want to. I want people to know we're together, that we're-"
A shaky breath of relief, one she hadn't even realized she'd been holding, escaped Lucy's mouth in a whoosh. "-Lucy and Wyatt?" she finished for him, a soft smile creeping across her face as she did so.
"Yes, ma'am," he nodded, sporting a matching grin as he planted a hard, swift kiss on her lips before pulling her into a tight bear hug.
Lucy couldn't help but keep smiling as she wrapped her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder and breathing him in.
But Wyatt burst her happy bubble when he spoke up next, mumbling into her hair, "Just not for another two weeks."
Lucy frowned, her brow furrowed as she leaned back, pushing herself up from Wyatt's shoulders. "What's in two weeks?" she asked, confused.
"So I found out they think we're sleeping together," he began.
"You said that," she reminded him impatiently. "And we are."
He held up his hand to slow her down, explaining further. "Also found out there's a pool," he revealed, his eyebrows raised in something less than amusement. "Everybody took bets about when it would happen."
"'It'?" Lucy echoed, not 100% sure she knew what the 'it' was, also not 100% sure she wanted to know what 'it' was if it was crass enough to refer to just the sex.
"Us," he explained matter-of-factly.
"Ah," she replied with a facetiously sage air. But then she frowned, realization dawning, and she wondered aloud, "Wait, how obvious were we before… this?" she gestured vaguely to the space between them. "And when did they start it?" What she didn't say was that she was also now wondering how obvious she might have been, well before he'd even gone to try to get Jessica back. How pathetic would that have seemed to anyone that had picked up on it?
But Wyatt just shrugged in response, clearly less bothered by the timing than the bet's existence at all. "They don't know I know about the pool," he continued as his hands slipped back up under the sweatshirt, his thumbs absently caressing the skin along the waist of her jeans. "Or," he stressed, "that I know Rufus has two weeks from now. So," he explained further, leaning in conspiratorially, "we let everyone think we got together then; Rufus gets the cash. I tell him I know he bet on us, make him feel bad enough about exploiting poor little us to give us the money. But secretly," he amended, "so he still gets to keep gloating to everyone else. And," he finished, looking quite proud of himself, "we get a little extra cash and use it for a weekend together up in Napa."
Though the prospect of a weekend escape, away from the everyday world, as a real couple, sent a shiver of anticipation up Lucy's spine, the thought of keeping things a secret for another two weeks, especially now that she knew they were on the same page about things was less than completely appealing. Particularly once you threw in the fact that it also involved escalating from a little (…big?) lie of omission to actively deceiving people about facts. "You want to let them think nothing happens until two weeks from now?" she asked skeptically. "Even though it's been way more than that? Already what," she said, purposely tossing out a vague timeframe, "almost two months now?"
But Wyatt just smiled at her with a shake of his head, gently correcting her. "8 weeks, 6 days."
Lucy felt a flutter in her stomach at those words, and she was pretty sure her mouth fell open in surprise. He'd counted. She had counted, sure; she'd been waiting, hoping, for this since 1934, maybe even before that. He'd still had Jessica in his head until even after he'd gone to '83... But he'd counted.
She'd figured the first thing you could really count as them was when tongues got involved. Anything before that, even the quick pecks on the lips, could mostly be explained away to the outside world as just comfort and overprotectiveness between close friends, one of whom was in some combination of family crisis and a vaguely witness-protection-type of scenario. Tongues was 7 weeks, 3 days ago. It was even less if you only counted when they'd first tumbled into bed together as them being a them. (Not that she'd have admitted to counting at all when there had still been the possibility that he was thinking things were more casual than she would have liked.)
But not only did he want to let everyone know that they were a them, and not only had he counted, his count was actually more than a week longer than hers, meaning, to him, they were a them the minute she'd dumped her duffel bag on his couch instead of in that hotel, when he'd pulled her into his arms and told her they'd figure it out.
Thus her stomach doing that wonderful little flip-flop thing. "I didn't know you were keeping track," she admitted softly, smiling up at him.
Wyatt gave a bashful shrug, "Easy stat to remember."
That was hardly going to get her stomach to stop doing the fluttery thing, so Lucy ran with it and just leaned in once more, slipping her hands behind his head to tug him closer. She smiled against his mouth, planting a few teasing pecks before Wyatt pulled back, pushing the hood of the sweatshirt away and once again trailing kisses down her neck.
Lucy's eyes fluttered at the sensation.
Fluttered open just enough to catch movement out of the corner of her eye.
She froze immediately, her eyes wide and her fingertips digging into Wyatt's shoulders. "Wyatt…" she hissed.
He didn't even have enough time to turn around to look before Jiya, with arms crossed and her head cocked, raised an eyebrow at them, declaring triumphantly, "Busted."
Lucy winced shyly at the sudden audience, feeling her face grow hot. "How long have you been standing there?" she asked, trying to feign innocence.
Agent Christopher just shook her head and smirked knowingly. "Long enough to know that my week won."
With a groan, Wyatt turned back around to face Lucy, his chin dropping to his chest in exaggerated defeat.
Lucy laughed in spite of the embarrassed flush still tingeing her cheeks and leaned in close to him. "Can we still go to Napa?"
~FIN~
Yes, I know that when they get to this point in Season 2 (MAKE IT SO, TV GODS), things will be super Rittenhouse-y, and stressful, and dangerous, and miserable, and also, I totally know that Lucy and Wyatt's relationship will not progress this fast or possibly even like this at all, but you know what? The Wyatt and Lucy in my head just wanted to be adorable and flirty for a while, dammit. So they were. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
P.S. Ok, with some late-breaking edits, Lucy also actually ended up getting way more 'feels'-y and emotional than originally intended, but whatever :P
P.P.S. I use 'smirk' way too much (Looking at you, Wyatt…). We need to invent a decent synonym.