I've been so weary with the #RenewTimeless campaign and the wait for renewal/ cancellation really started taking a toll. I lost all of my muse and found it hard to regain while NBC decided to play this cat and mouse game. However, Future!Lyatt are giving me a lot of material to mull over and I loved the idea of a badass, established Lyatt fighting the world together. People have created some masterpieces set in a S3 sphere so here is an attempt at some post-war Lyatt. Reintegration is messy.
Major thanks to courjenna (Twitter) / JennaKaylor (ao3) for her tireless efforts to get me off my ass and writing again. Also, for her insight into reintegrating into civilian life from a war zone. Jenna is as badass as she sounds. Forever indebted to her so I could get this off my chest.
There Were Times, Dear
"You're officially civilians again."
The rustle of the paper bag is too damn loud as it settles on the counter. The crinkling awakens the deadened silence like the crackle of a bursting powder keg, muffling the scope of his senses.
The world is much quieter than he remembers.
Keys clatter onto the countertop and his footfalls against wooden floorboards echo like the distant detonation of grenades as he approaches the bathroom. Seven days of assimilation into the civilian world is still not enough to recalibrate heightened senses, the unpredictability of pedestrian life still splintering nerves with every slam of a door and raised voice in the street. Wyatt knows it'll wane eventually, a sixth sense that will fade as they come to terms with their newfound liberty. Though, it's a thought that feels a bit premature when the tread of his boot catches over the threshold, sparking an all too common fracas.
Two seconds flat and the barrel of a shotgun locks onto him like a missile.
He tilts his head, a cocksure smirk carving into his jaw at the sight of his wife glistening in her ramrod position in the bathtub, weapon trained straight at his heart.
"The bathroom, Luce?" he growls, though the teasing lilt in his tone bleeds through the adrenaline.
For the clumsy woman he'd known back in the early days of the missions, her weapon draw is far quicker and superior than his.
But he won't tell her that.
Her tawny eyes track him and as if by muscle memory her guard drops, Juliet clunking back onto the chair she's pulled over as a makeshift table. There's a challenge blazing in her pupils, daring him to say something, but he knows better than to fall prey to that mistake. Lucy Preston-Logan knows how to chew out his ass and he's not one to tilt the balance against his favor. They're still adjusting, learning to trust their environment with every guarded foot forward, and he can't fault her for feeling on edge in their temporary apartment, so the quip about her gun-toting birthday suit slides.
She's got her mask on. A stony glower that simmers with an unspoken blend of anxiety and concern as he toes off his boots and divests himself of holey socks and worn cargo pants that have seen better days.
"What takes sixteen minutes to grab from the store?" she asks coolly, rivulets of water trailing from the wet ends of her hair to the valley between her breasts. It's a sight that sends a jolt of rabid desire straight through him, but if ever there's an intonation to be wary of it's right there, in the tepidness of her tone as he thumbs off his boxers and tosses them on the pile he's made next to hers.
Since when had there been ten kinds of milk? How could you milk an almond? And who the hell added fifty cents to a liter? These are the trivial thoughts that sit on the tip of his tongue as a quick-fire answer but it's not what she's asking.
I've counted every minute. Fallen prey to every sound. I was worried.
They're all the things she wants to say but can't. He's been there after every deployment and battled through the same instincts. Reintegration is messy, a whole can of worms that'll open on you whether you're ready or not. There's a madness in the quiet and a devil in the noise.
Always a quiet reckoning waiting.
The water burns as he slides in behind her, a stark contrast to the cold water blasts of the bunker and the rivers and lakes they'd scoped out during the worst of their entrapments. With how cold Lucy is she could sit in lava and still find room for complaint, but he merely smiles into her hair as she settles against him, bracketed by his legs as the burn seeps into tense muscles.
"You know," he murmurs into the shell of her ear, purposefully sanding the edge of his bristled jaw against her skin to elicit the thundering of her pulse under his fingertips, "the price of a single snickers is almost a dollar now."
The water ripples with her laughter, "you didn't?"
"We're civilians now, Babydoll. No more begging at Christopher's feet for simple luxuries. The world is our Oyster."
Her laugh is like fresh air.
In the middle of a jump to 1946 he promises to spend the rest of his life putting the radiant smile of '41 on her face, and while that's been more difficult than he could ever comprehend at the time, the tally leans in his favor. A slight turn, a featherlight kiss to his bicep and he feels the cemented tension in her relax a little as she sinks into him, another brick in the wall crumbling.
The fruits of that 1946 promise make him a better man.
He kisses her languidly, submerged hands grafting over her skin with a soft, purposeful reverence. In the height of war it had been damn near impossible to salvage moments for themselves, either in the scope of prying ears and eyes, at the brink of demise or exhausted from the perpetual chase. The pads of his fingers drink her in, finding the most earthly grounding in her presence, a surefire reminder of what he has come to live for. He can barely fathom how he ever deserved to love and be loved back by Lucy Preston. Maybe it's the myriad of klutzy tumbles that have addled her brain, the ones he was too late to catch her for, but even so, if loving him is her choice he'll surely take it.
Muscles pull taught under a stray thumb across her abdomen, a hitched breath strangling at the back of her throat at his ministration. It's been the elephant in the room since their signing off and they've been dancing around the landmine with the tentativity of two time screwed people of little faith. It's a facet of their recent indiscretions they have to face at some point, one that's been churning a carousel of tension in his gut since she came to him in a state of frenzied panic.
"You want to talk about it?" he hedges, lips fusing with her temple.
Her admission finds a voice a few moments later.
"Not really."
And so it goes, until the bathwater cools and he's washed the remains of the day from her hair in muted togetherness. Juliet's tubular magazine gleams from the perch on the chair, an inevitable reminder that their world isn't yet a place they can trust.
She's quieter than he's heard her in a long time, meditative to a point of catatonia and that bottom lip of hers is under constant incursion from spates of anxiety. He doesn't press her, the request for Clear Blue sits in with a pile of groceries on the counter and she makes the progress she needs on her own terms. As long as they're making some sort of forward advancement he can't force her to reckon with feelings she's not ready to decipher.
He's readying to pull the plug when she shifts in his arms, jaw tight with uncertainty.
"Will it always be like this?"
If ever there's a mirroring of his own mindset after Syria and Afghanistan she reflects it back at him with such blinding clarity that he feels his breath snatch. Somewhere in him he holds onto the image of her as the civilian professor, brimming with hyper excitement and a certain naivety, and in moments like this he finds that the image decimates itself, wallpapered by the combative soldier that replaces that woman.
It's been a difficult reckoning for the both of them.
But he knows this better than anyone. It's carved into him in all different manners and behaviors. He feels as though this is the one aspect of it all he's qualified to comment on, one silver lining in the absolute chaos of post-Rittenhouse life.
"You'll get there," he assuages, thumbing the plane of her cheek, "not today, not next week...but it won't be like this forever, I can promise you that."
"How?"
That's a loaded gun. There's never a straight answer, but there's one that rings true even if it only scratches the surface.
"Time."
It's time that holds them hostage once more as they prep for bed, the little white stick placed out of sight in the bathroom while they filter through some half-assed routine. His attention routes itself to her as she slides on a slip that reminds him of '41, although she's stronger now in physicality, all lean muscle and newfound equilibrium from the hundreds of hours spent sparring and training. Long gone are lithe, willowy limbs and two left feet that keep him on his toes. The war has churned her up and spit her out and he can already see the hard time she's having finding her place in a world of true self-autonomy.
Throw in a kid? It's not the picture perfect white picket fence dream of their pillow-talk past.
Life had spiralled towards the end of the war, a fervent fear had spread through the team and the higher the stakes the more reckless their decisions had become. They hadn't tried all that hard to be as safe as D-Day had rolled closer, and while neither of them had really made comment on the fact, the impetus was clear.
I don't want you to be alone.
He hadn't necessarily counted on coming out of it alive.
Now here they sit, a luxury chocolate bar on the bedside table, warm water in the pipes and a potential proverbial bun in the oven. Just as one storm ends, another seems to brew on the horizon. Rufus would have some choice words for them considering half of those intimate explosions of recklessness involved being caught red-handed, or cut short by his exasperated self.
You're just doing this on purpose now, aren't you?
With a minute left the chasm between them landslides when Lucy begins to claw at her chest in an all too familiar breakdown of her stoic facade. It's been a few months since her last, he feels rusty and off-guard, but he's kneeling before her in moments, twining frantic hands with skin and teal chemise until he's pulling her from the brink. She's rawboned with exhaustion and it gleams from red-rimmed, puffy eyes that can't quite meet his, or rather, won't.
It's been one of the humps that's tripped them up cyclically, a communicative barrier that erects itself between them in the most difficult of times. It's something they continuously work on, bring to their vows in '46, but it's still a component of their marriage two years later.
"You know you can say anything to me, Luce," he urges, sailing a thumb over her right hip, "anything."
Come on, get over the hump.
The discernment of that unspoken encouragement washes over her and she swallows back the fear.
There it is, trust - in him.
"I don't want to look...I'm not ready, Wyatt. The government gave us a safehouse. They want us in mandated therapy, which both of us scarpered from, we're unemployed, I can't be in a room without a shotgun and we're throwing a baby into that?" she motions to the gun lying parallel to the Snickers on her bedside table, "it's certifiably insane."
She's being so brutally honest and it'd be a sin not to reciprocate with the guttural fear that rips him from stem to stern, but for as much fear that courses through him there's a diluted sense of preparedness within him. He's been in this position before, thrown into the deep end of a pool that seemed to be an endless abyss of pain and confusion. The next time he had this grenade thrown at him he wanted it to be one he was preparing to catch.
The saving grace is that it's Lucy, a woman he loves wholeheartedly and without restraint. It's not the best of times, nor is it the worst, he's lived in that world and it's ten leagues worse than the position they're in now.
"None of this is perfect, Babydoll. Hardly anything ever is. But we made a choice back then, whether it was right for us or not and now we have to prepare for the consequences. Is this the way I wanted our new life to start? Not exactly. But hell, I didn't think either of us would even be here for this. For any of it. You are all I want. You're everything, Luce. No matter what happens, we'll be okay. I can promise you that."
He makes a lot of promises recently, but they're not the empty ones he'd vowed back in the bunker with his ex-wife. They're the most heartfelt assurances he's ever made.
It'll all just take time.
Three...two...one.
He does the honor while she's anchored on the edge of the bed.
The thundering of footsteps through the silence reemerges with a vivid potency, but nothing screams louder than the piece of plastic in his grip.
As soon as the news falls from his lips the room sheds itself of ten layers worth of tension.
Relief is a powerful drug.
The stick goes into the trash and they entangle themselves on the centre of the bed, thrashing heartbeats lulling against the pressing of sternum against sternum. One day they'll be ready, not today, not next week...but someday.
For now, they'll sleep in a post-war fractured haze, the tenor of his hum reverberating at her temple to the tune of You Made Me Love You.
Juliet will remain on the table.
And they'll work on getting over the hump.
Just figure out what you're fighting for and you'll be okay.
Instead of committing to crazy 7k oneshots I'll upload their progression in fragments. So look out for added chapters or a series. It's yet to be decided.
Come find me on Twitter ( pretty_dire) for some #RenewTimeless shameless screaming.
You can't escape me, Jan.