a/n : did you know that there are only 33 DAYS LEFT UNTIL SEASON 2 IS HERE?! GAH. I'm hyperventilating every time I think about it :)
In the meantime, please enjoy this plot-less piece of randomness!
From the moment Lucy first reappeared at Mason Industries - face stained with the aftermath of tears and eyes hooded in despondent rage - Wyatt had known two things without any hesitation.
For starters, he was in far deeper than he'd realized. He'd done one hell of a hack job trying to express it to her before she'd left, but seeing her return with that look on her face had confirmed everything he'd been feeling - and fearing - over the last several days. His heart was inescapably invested in Lucy's world and there was nothing he could do to extract himself now.
Secondly, he was ready to demolish the person who had apparently just demolished her. She was miles away from the woman he'd bid an unwillingly goodbye to just a handful of hours ago, almost unrecognizable with the weight of heartbreak so evident in even the smallest details of her appearance, which left him with an acute, unbridled need for retaliation. That urge doubled, maybe even tripled, once he learned the truth of what had happened. It was no wonder she was wearing such a profound look of loss across her face. Was there no end to Rittenhouse's shadowy reach into her life?
There had been little time for comforting her then. The Lifeboat was charged, but 1979 was officially off the table. The Mothership was gone and so were Lucy's chances of bringing Amy back home anytime soon. And for as much as the Carol-bomb has shattered Lucy's heart, it's easy to see that the blow about her sister has been equally painful. He knows from experience that hope is a delicate, fragile little bastard; to have it torn away so abruptly is a dangerous thing.
Naturally, Wyatt's first inclination is to sink his teeth into this situation with all the finesse of a rabid Rottweiler. He wants to tear it all down from every possible angle, detonate the whole organization, detain Carol Preston through whatever means necessary, and just put an end to this friggin' mess before it can create another damn casualty. Each disastrous jump that follows from there just cements his aggressive viewpoint. They can't keep going like this forever, and the best defense is a good offense, right?
Lucy won't hear of it, though. It's her family, her mom, her very existence that's at stake. She fights back, argues till her voice is raw, contradicts herself in every possible direction, then shuts down and storms off.
He storms right after her, of course. It pisses her off to no end, but he's lived that exact nightmare before and he won't do it again. He refuses to a let even the slightest argument dangle between them like a sore hangnail. She can give him the silent treatment for as long as she wants. Truthfully, she can slap him across the face for all he cares, not that it's come to that quite yet. But he draws the line at running away. He will chase and follow and persist like a damn gnat when things are left on a jagged edge between them. He'd like to say that she's a fly and he's the trap, but he knows that's a self-medicating lie. She's the one who has him ensnared. He can't escape her and he doesn't want to, so she's stuck with him and that's that.
But anger looks good on her. It's familiar, it's them. They've never backed down from a disagreement before, so they're well-versed in the art of quick, snappy bickering, but they also know when to give it up and meet each other halfway. The embers cool, the smoke clears...a look passes between them, and all is forgiven. It always ends with a quiet embrace, her head slumping onto his shoulder, their arms weaving together like a careworn tapestry.
It's not righteous anger burning like coal in her eyes now, though. It's devastation. The parade of ashes after a wildfire. The piles of debris after an earthquake. Fault lines, shaken foundations, displaced earth. He much prefers her anger to this harrowing detachment.
A few Rittenhouse devotees have opened fire on the three of them, creating absolute havoc in the middle of a developing town square in what will eventually be modern-day Los Angeles. Carol is there looking on at Emma's side, her mouth twitching with something that looks like disappointment, but that's it. She lets it happen. She stands by and allows those dumb bastards to use her own daughter for target practice.
She's not the only one who's become ominously numb, though. Lucy is frozen in place, facing the firing squad without even a flinch or a shudder, eyes never straying from her mother even as furious bullets clip the air all around her.
Wyatt curses an outright blue streak as he forcibly wrenches her out of their warpath. She doesn't fight him, but she's also not aiding in his effort, acting as nothing but dead weight in his arms as he flings both of their bodies behind a nearby wagon.
With a knot of terror wedging tightly in his chest, Wyatt grabs her by the shoulders and damn near shouts, "What the hell, Lucy? Are you trying to get yourself killed?"
When her dark gaze finally clicks up to meet his, her eyes are empty and unseeing, blanker than the hard granite stare of a statue. That look has him regretting the question all together.
"On second thought, don't answer that."
Her expression doesn't change. It's like he hasn't spoken at all. He's momentarily consumed with panic in the face of her eerie silence, but they're really up a creek with no freakin' paddles if they both lose their heads right now. He shakes himself out of it by sheer force of will and rallies his brain back into the task at hand, locating Rufus and formulating an escape plan with what feels like one hand tied behind his back; Lucy isn't contributing a word, and that's definitely a major handicap for their team. Wyatt's always known that her quick thinking is imperative to their success, but now he realizes that he appreciates it far beyond the necessity of survival. They've crafted a tempo all their own - she informs him of exactly what they should be doing, he counters that viewpoint with a few volatile opinions of his own, Rufus usually lands on one side or the other, and they all work through the mayhem together.
It's not the same without her. He felt this same void at the World's Fair and just chalked it up to the sting of failure and guilt on his part. It was there again when he and Rufus went to the '80s on their own, but he'd been determined to shut out any Lucy-related thoughts on that mission. The Jess-related thoughts were plenty loud all on their own, and that had been more than enough pressure for him to handle; considering anything beyond what it would take to get her home again could have very likely kept him grounded indefinitely...which, all things considered, may not have been such a bad outcome after all.
But the act of presently scraping a glacial-faced Lucy out of Los Angeles hurtles the truth of the matter straight to the forefront of his every conscious thought. He hates doing this without her. Rufus is doing his best, but he's not a historian. More importantly, he's just not Lucy.
They manage to pull through without her input. It's a little sloppier than Wyatt prefers, but they get the job done all the same. They're going home.
She robotically puts one foot in front of the other at half a pace slower than her usual speed, but it's enough to get them out of the 1800s and back to the twenty-first century in one piece. Wyatt and Rufus throw together the bare bones of a decent debriefing report once they've all changed and reassembled in the usual conference room, but nothing they say can keep Agent Christopher from angling for some semblance of a contribution out of Lucy. To her credit, she's able to provide the absolute minimum by confirming the facts that her teammates have already offered up, and once she's put her vacant stamp of approval on the whole event, she quietly asks to be excused.
There's an arched brow from Agent Christopher, a meaningful sideways glance in Wyatt's direction, and then she grants a brisk dismissal to all three of them.
He reads that glance for exactly what it is - not that he needed any prompting - and follows closely at Lucy's heels as she slides through the glass door and makes her way out into the hallway. His hand circles her arm, and while she doesn't slow down or spare him a look, she does inch a little closer until her shoulder is brushing up against him. It's the most acknowledgement he's gotten from her in the last several hours, and as small of a token as it may be, he finds that he's able to breathe just the slightest bit easier.
But there's no time to be relieved. Her forehead begins to crinkle as their bitter disaster of a day makes itself known in her eyes. It's like watching a thunderstorm steadily splitting across still waters. A ragged, half-repressed sob comes clawing out of her throat just before her legs buckle beneath her.
The numbing sedative of her shock has finally worn away.
Wyatt maintains a deathgrip on her arm, pivots to throw a steadying arm around her waist, and molds her body against him just as the first torrent of tears hits her fullforce. He guides her into the nearest empty room he can find, one that blessedly lacks those giant wall-to-wall windows overlooking the rest of the facility. With his back to the door and Lucy crumpled to his chest, he lowers the both of them to the floor and holds on with all that he has.
She tries to shake it off much too soon, her slim body still racked with messy, sniffling grief as she speaks brokenly into his shoulder. "I - I'm sorry, I - "
"It's okay, Lucy. You don't have to explain."
"It's just...I know - I know it's beyond stupid," she says with a thorny exhale, "but I never thought it could - could come to this. My mom - she's not...she doesn't care what happens anymore. She - she didn't stop them from - "
An agonizing ricochet of hiccups settles in between just about every other word she manages to squeeze out, escalating to the point where her own breathlessness prevents her from uttering another syllable. Wyatt keeps his hand moving in a constant rhythm up and down her back, but the verbal reassurances that should be accompanying that motion seem trapped somewhere inside of him. He tries, he really does, but the truth of the matter is that he's just as lost as she is on this one. His parents were hardly the shining examples of unconditional love that they should have been, but even his shitty childhood is starting to look pretty bright in comparison.
In the end, he only has one thing to say, and he repeats it several times over to make up for his lack of eloquence. "I'm sorry, Lucy. I'm so, so sorry."
She nods against him with a batch of new tears soaking through the material of his shirt, sailing through one last cresting sob before the worst of it seems to be behind her. A minute or so passes, maybe more, and then she's lifting her wet face with a rueful look. "Good thing this jump was to the eighteen-sixties and not the nineteen-sixties…"
"Why's that?"
Her fingers dance lightly over the saturated cotton of his t-shirt. "You'd really be a mess if a full face of makeup was involved. Looks like I still managed to leave some mascara behind anyway."
Wyatt shakes his head and grins slowly. "I've survived much worse, ma'am."
His voice has inadvertently dipped lower than necessary. Her eyelashes flicker a little as his hand sweeps up to rest against the back of her neck. He squeezes gently, allowing the warmth of her skin to permeate through all of the residual stress and concern that's been stored up inside of him until now. She's back, a bit worn and a little shaky, but more or less herself again. Consequently, he's feeling a hell of a lot more like himself too.
A sudden awareness creeps into her face. She's perched across his legs, basically sitting side saddle in his lap, and while they're often connected to each other by a hand or an arm or some other innocuous little touch, this is the most intimate they've ever been with the exception of one curiously earth-shattering night in 1930's Arkansas.
He can't get a sense of what that realization is doing to her, though. She's usually an open book before him, but she's holding back, guarding herself from him in a way he hadn't known possible. He tilts his head back to rest it against the door but doesn't release his hold on her, quickly registering the fact that she's not making any attempt to withdraw either. His hand slides around to her shoulder, then skips across to explore the hollow of her exposed collarbone, fingertips tracing gently over skin so soft that it practically demands to be touched.
Lucy lets out a short, erratic exhale. Her gaze slinks back up to his and it's like a whole new universe has been breathed into existence. There's layers upon layers of copper and caramel peering back at him, the depths of all the trauma she's been holding so closely, the said and unsaid of what's building up between them. Those eyes contain limitless poise and knowledge and strength, but also so much gnawing fear and aching vulnerability. And with that vulnerability comes enough longing to fill the entire San Francisco Bay a few times over.
He imagines there's plenty of longing ablaze in his eyes, too.
Sometimes Wyatt fears that he's falling straight into her with no parachute, like there's a whole world beneath her gaze and he's being pulled in - no, dragged in - free falling through a bottomless whirlwind of tumultuous emotion. Her world just becomes more and more complicated every step of the way, and the more tangled up she is in Rittenhouse's web of deceit and double talk, the more tangled up he is in her.
He's afraid of what he feels. He's afraid that his feet are never going to touch solid ground again. This isn't what it was like last time. Jessica was a hometown girl, a sunny, bright-eyed beauty, apple pie and blue skies and laughter. She'd been too good for him from the start. He knew it, her parents knew it, their whole damn town knew it, but not her...she'd laugh it off, take his hand, and just like that, he was hers. Maybe that's the bullshit filter of nostalgia talking, but with God as his witness, loving her - even in the end, when the honeymoon phase was long over and the wheels were coming off - came so easily to him.
Not that harboring these feelings for Lucy is difficult. God, no. That's not it at all. But something irreversible is happening to him on a chemical level, like he's had too much to drink and it's starting to impair his judgement or a he's undergone a life-altering surgery that's rewiring his cells piece by piece. He's known darkness before, but her darkness is different, crippling, like a boulder pinning him down to the bottom of a riverbed.
That's the thought that illuminates everything else. He's pinned down, useless, adrift in a sea that refuses to be navigated. He'd chosen his own darkness when the world had collapsed around him, shunned the light, begged the ocean of his sorrow to fold right over and bury him in its unrelenting tide. The only pinprick of significance in his barren existence had been the drive to see Jessica's killer behind bars...or worse.
Things have changed, though. The curtain has lifted, the thunderous grief has receded at last, thanks to Rufus and Lucy and time travel of all things. But now he's back in that place again; the walls have closed in, but this storm isn't his to weather. It's hers. That infuriates him to no end. He's surely earned his spot in hell long ago, but Lucy doesn't belong there. As desperate as he is to lift her out of this black turmoil, there's no clean solution, no conquering this battle without unendurable loss on her part.
He's so absorbed in the spiraling labyrinth of his thoughts that he almost misses the obvious cues. Her head slants sideways as it edges nearer to his. Those infinite eyes shutter closed. Her breath is warm on his mouth like an impending breeze off a darkening sea. And then, with a rustle of anticipation in the air, they're kissing.
On some level - absorbing thoughts notwithstanding - he didn't really need any warning signs to know what was on the horizon. Maybe because it's been on his horizon for days, weeks even, always there subconsciously, playing noiselessly at the brink of his every rational thought. Her mouth commands his attention in even the most innocent of moments; here, wedged tightly together in a quiet room, with her weight balanced on his thigh and enough emotion crackling between them to supercharge the Lifeboat for a few dozen hours, there's no question that he's plagued with the prospect of her lips getting caught between his.
And it's so good, so right, that he almost believes it's nothing more than a fantasy. She feels like an extraordinary dream whispering against his mouth. He nips at her bottom lip and is rewarded with a drawn-out sigh, one that scatters over his skin like a trail of gasoline on a wildfire. She grasps at his neck, his shoulders, maneuvering herself unhurriedly until she has a knee bolted down on either side of him. Her mouth parts with another sigh and he seizes the opportunity. Their tongues meet, click together, seamlessly finding perfect harmony. Wyatt grips her waist between splayed fingers, spurring her closer until she's hit just the right spot and he's humming with divine pleasure. She's dizzying, terrifyingly irresistible. His hand rustles up under her blouse and her hips snap forward as he feels his way along her rib cage.
That forces him to drop back against the door with a groan, heaving breath after breath with the severity of a man who's just finished a marathon. Lucy follows after him on a trancelike impulse, kisses his neck once, then goes very still as she arches away from him. She blinks a very long blink and touches two fingers to her lips, her own haphazard breathing filling the wavering space between them.
Speaking seems impossible. She's still in a very delicate position, straddling him and scrambling his brain with the dazzling pressure of her body fitted so snugly to his. He feels drunk, disoriented, content to simply stare at her in dumbfounded silence.
Lucy breaks through the clouded atmosphere first, her hand falling away from her face and her eyes sharpening abruptly. "I - I, uh, probably shouldn't have…"
"You were upset," he says eventually, gathering an embarrassing amount of effort before he can formulate anything coherent. "I should have been the one who stopped it. Sorry, Luce."
"Sorry...it happened?"
He wants to shout his disagreement, but once again, she's found a way to hold her cards close to the vest. He toes the line, feeling uncertain in the face of her expressionless regard. "Sorry to take advantage…"
"Take advantage? Really?" A tentative half-smile hitches up at the corner of her mouth. "You're usually far more perceptive than that. You can't actually believe that's what just happened, Wyatt."
He belatedly removes his hand from beneath her shirt, mouth dry and voice scratchy as he struggles to keep up. "So explain it to me. I don't think there's any blood going to my brain anymore. It's all traveled...elsewhere."
She gives off a startled little cough at that comment, eyes dropping away from him as a hand rakes nervously through her hair. "You usually seem to know what I'm thinking before I even know what I'm thinking. Is it really taking advantage if you're giving someone exactly what they've been wanting?"
Wyatt cups the side of her face in his palm, bringing her skittish gaze back to his with a patient smile. "If I was a gambling man - and more often than not, I am - then yes, I would have put my money on you and I landing in a spot like this sooner or later. But you started with the backpedaling first, did you not?"
"Only because you were giving me that look again."
A strange sadness has risen into her face. It causes discord from deep inside of him, reverberating painfully like the clamor of a broken violin string. "What look? A stupid look? Because I don't think I was capable of anything beyond that."
"Not stupid," she murmurs with a minute shake of her head. "More like...skeptical, confused… unsure."
"Lucy..." her name leaves him like a sweet ballad, flooding out in a hum of tenderness. "The only thing I'm unsure of is your policy on sex in the workplace. Well, that and whether I still have an ancient and potentially ineffective condom in my wallet."
She tries to laugh that off as she flushes to the roots of her dark hair, but the noise she actually makes is more like a surprised squeak.
"I'm serious," he says with a plying grin. "Speaking as a man who hasn't gotten any in a very, very long time, my threshold for foreplay is startlingly low. There are days that just looking at you has me going off the rails, ma'am."
Her flush intensifies at that confession. She puts a hand to her face, making a half-assed show of hiding her bashfulness from him. "I - well, I thought we were on the same page, but - "
"But the confused look?"
Lucy nods, lowering her hand and tucking her lip inside of her mouth.
He has to curb a significant wave of desire before he can refocus his attention back to her eyes. "And this is a look you've seen from me before?"
"About eighty years ago," she answers quietly, "with Bonnie and Clyde. You told the story about proposing to Jessica, and then that kiss afterwards… It was like you didn't know who I was, as if you'd just kissed an alien, or a - a ghost."
Her voice just about bottoms out into dust on that last word, and it doesn't take much guesswork on Wyatt's part to understand the reason for that downward shift. "I knew exactly who you were, Lucy. That's what scared the bejesus out of me. It wasn't supposed to feel like that."
She runs the back of her hand over his stubbled cheek, her gaze getting deliciously addled as she watches him. "I know what you mean. I've never needed to throw back hard liquor like that before."
He chuckles wistfully and leans in a little nearer. "That's saying a lot for how damn wicked their moonshine was, babydoll."
"You've got that right, sweetheart," she replies with a smile that's lukewarm at best.
There's no comfort in hearing her call him that without any of her usual liveliness. Wyatt presses his jaw against her hand, channeling his every last ounce of confidence before speaking again.
"Let's get one thing straight here. Obviously I bring a shit ton of baggage into this relationship. There's no avoiding it, so if we're really doing this, then that's something we'll have to work through together. But with that said..." he makes a grab for her hand and holds it to his mouth, kissing a meandering line across her knuckles, "...there's no mistaking you for anyone else, okay? Not in 1934, not now, not in a million years. Understood?"
Her face swims closer, fresh tears pooling in her eyes. His lips buzz lightly to hers and she dives right in with a devouring kiss that threatens to burn him alive. She sways forward and he cradles her against him, crushing their bodies together, his every nerve ending ringing out in languorous rapture. If this is what it's like to fall straight into her without a parachute, then by all means, he's gladly letting himself fall. She can pull him in, drag him straight into her whirlwind, take him along with her for every complicated step along the way. If he's going to be tangled up in someone, she's his first choice, his only choice.
He has to bite back an audible growl when her lips leave his, although the new feeling of her hands palming down his chest isn't such an awful trade-off.
"Wyatt," she whispers against his chin, her voice lamentably contrite. "We...not here."
"So that's it, huh? The workplace sex policy is a flat no." He tries to keep his tone light, but it's damn near impossible to conceal the landfill-sized disappointment he's currently experiencing. "Any room for negotiation?"
She glances pointedly downward at their intertwined bodies. "You've already negotiated pretty far beyond my normal policy."
"So why stop now? We've broken new ground, and you're the textbook example of an overachiever, right? I find it hard to believe that you'd choose to hinder such progress."
"This crosses over into recklessness, though." She offers a sly smile that hits him squarely between the legs. "That's your specialty, not mine."
"It's not so hard to learn," he responds with a hand drifting down over her thigh, "and I'd be willing to give you a little crash course…"
Lucy's gaze gets exquisitely darker. "You're serious, aren't you? You'd actually do this here? Now? No reservations, no objections...?"
His lips curl upward at the unguarded curiosity in her eyes. "Ehh, we're technically both here on contract and not actual employees, right? So - "
"Wyatt..."
"We can work around the condom issue, okay? There'll be plenty of time for the main event later, but for now there's - "
She grips his face in both of her hands, looking adorably embarrassed and exhilarated all at once. "There is no condom issue. I have that covered. It's the public and unprofessional aspect that - "
"Wait, what do you mean by covered? Covered as in you have a condom in your wallet that's not ancient and ineffective, or - "
"Or I'm on birth control," she says with a humorless eye roll.
He clasps his hand more decidedly around her leg. "Interesting. Anyone I should be worried about?"
Her derisive snort borders on actual annoyance, and that's enough to temporarily quell the hot needle of desire that's been overruling his better judgement.
"I'm sorry, Luce. I'm being a total asshole." He releases her leg and chooses to tuck back a chunk of her hair instead, a fresh outpouring of remorse washing over him. "Even if we both want this, the timing is - "
"There's no such thing as right timing for us," she mutters with a weary sigh.
"Touché," he returns lightly, his fingers still gliding through her hair. "That doesn't mean it's a good idea to throw ourselves headfirst into something serious when you've barely bounced back from a well-deserved meltdown. I should have - "
She reaches for his wrist and holds his hand in place against her. "No, Wyatt...don't do that, okay? It's not like I've made any effort to - " she glances down again, brows up and cheeks pink at the sight of her body twined so soundly around his, " - to remove myself..."
A new swell of heat threatens to carve out his wavering sense of decency. Wyatt closes his eyes and lets the back of his head thump solidly to the door for good measure. "Well now would be a good time to do so. This self-control thing...it tends to come and go."
Lucy shifts a little in his lap and he swallows a grunted curse. He waits for the imminent retreat, the loss of heady pressure she's supplying, the emptiness of a dimming spark...
But he waits in vain. A sharp click resounds from somewhere above his head, then he hisses with latent pleasure as Lucy's full weight sinks over him again. Her hand sets a red-hot trail down over the front of his shirt until she's reaching for the hem and his eyes fly open.
"What are you - "
Her mouth silences him. She pitches against him, dauntless and ardent, consuming him in an unbelievably visceral kiss that puts a swift end to his question.
She answers anyway, her breath tickling against his lips a beat later. "Door's locked. Crash course is now in session."
a/n : So here's the deal - maybe there's a part 2 lurking in wings..? But if that's the case, part 2 probably can't live under the current T rating of this story, which means you may want to hit the follow button on this one since FF has the tendency to filter the M rating out of the normal story feed ;)
as always, reviews are greatly appreciated (and often squealed over)