Summary: Lucy has a nightmare. [Set sometime in the future. Lucy, Garcia, and Wyatt are in a polyfidelitous relationship. Translation: the three of them are romantically involved, faithful to each other, and also live together.]
Notes: For gwennieliz, who gave me this prompt: "You can't keep it all inside, you know? Bottling it up won't do any good," from a list of sentence starters on tumblr.
I See Fire (1/2)
Lucy's eyes opened on the wild current of a nightmare: trapped in her car, she watched it fill with water cascading through windows that were cracked open several inches but wouldn't respond to her frantic grip. Already her body quaked from the chill of the freezing water, which was now up to her chin. Her head thrashed left and right, panic grabbing hold of her and shaking her like a rag doll in its inexorable grip.
To her right, in the passenger seat, sat a partially decomposed skeleton wearing a cowboy hat tipped at a rakish angle. Empty black eye sockets winked at her above ruined cheeks where the some of the flesh, warped and raw, dripped like melted plastic, exposing the bright gleam of ivory bone beneath. As she watched, the jaw dipped open and a swarm of maggots bubbled forth from the gaping maw.
Her head and her ears pounded with laughter that built and built, climbing until it climaxed in a shriek. She swore her ears were bleeding. Slammed by the grotesque image and the terrible laughter roaring in her head, on instinct Lucy inhaled, sucking river water into her mouth and deep into her lungs, coughing and choking on the burning scream that wanted to rend its way out of her tender, pink throat with razor-tipped claws.
The skeleton raised a bony hand, fingers rolling in a beckoning gesture before they reached out and stroked her cheek, shooting bolts of ice down her spine. As blackness swirled and whispered on the edges of her vision, Lucy slammed her car window—once, twice, three times—with the sharp point of her elbow. Pain echoed through her arm….
"—Ow! Damn it."
Someone screamed. Loud and shrill as a whistle blast, the piercing cry penetrated the bony plates of Lucy's skull and burrowed into her brain.
The terror and grief layered in the cacophony clawed at Lucy, drawing hot tears from her eyes. They spilled, scalding, in rivulets down the sides of her face and into her hair. Her eyes shot open to find Garcia leaning over her, straddling her hips. She tried to move her hands only to find they were pinned. "Garcia?" she asked, her voice like two thin, dry sticks rubbing together, and Garcia immediately released her hands and moved aside, sitting back on his haunches next to her. "What happened?" Her hand flew to her chest, where her pulse thundered loud and unpleasant, echoing in the marrow of her bones as her gaze searched the dark room. A single lamp on a bedside table cast an anemic circle of light and a plethora of eerie shadows. Lucy gasped. A hard shiver reverberated through her, making her teeth clack together.
Garcia frowned and pulled at the puddled blanket, pulling it up until it lay over her chest. Then he swept his thumb through the wetness on her face before he responded to her question. "You tell us, Lucy. You were screaming and thrashing around. Did you have a nightmare?" Worry inscribed deep furrows on his forehead.
Bits and pieces of what she'd seen floated back to her. Being trapped in her car again, like in her sophomore year of college, with water pouring in… A gruesome skeleton next to her… Just flotsam and detritus from the depths of her mind and her personal history. A nightmare. Yes.
"—Either that or I did something to piss you off," Wyatt said from his perch on her other side, a wry note pealing in his voice.
She snapped her head in his direction. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, stretching his jaw.
"What?" she asked, frowning in confusion.
"You got in a couple good shots at me," Wyatt said with the barest hint of a smile edging his lips. Wincing, he fingered his cheekbone gingerly, eyes squinted in discomfort. "Nobody warned me I'd need protective padding if I slept with you." He stroked her hair back from her forehead. "I thought I was the reckless hothead in this relationship."
Lucy groaned and started sitting up. Garcia lifted her pillow upright against the headboard and helped her settle back against it. Dread curdled in her stomach. "Oh no." She shook her head and stretched a hand toward Wyatt, stopping just short of touching his face. "Tell me I didn't hit you." Her fingers wavered near Wyatt's cheek until he caught them with his own and lifted them to his mouth for a soft kiss.
"It's fine, Lucy. Don't worry so much," Garcia said, tucking the blanket around her hips. "Knowing Wyatt, he had it coming."
"Ha ha, asshole," Wyatt said, brandishing his middle finger in Garcia's direction. "Real funny. Ladies and gentlemen, Garcia Flynn: comedian and douchenozzle extraordinaire."
Lucy rolled her eyes.
"Sorry, didn't realize you couldn't take a joke, Logan," Garcia said, emphasizing Wyatt's last name.
"Oh, I love jokes, Flynn." Wyatt grinned in challenge, flashing a lot of teeth, and Lucy braced herself for whatever absurdity was about to charge out of his mouth. He waggled his eyebrows. "Let me tell you the one about your mom—"
"Guys. Come on," Lucy said, cutting Wyatt off before things completely disintegrated. Garcia's mother was a sore spot for him, even in the context of ludicrous banter.
"No no. Please, Wyatt,"—narrow-eyed, Garcia climbed off the bed and stalked toward Wyatt—"why don't you finish your joke?" Hands balled into fists at his side, Garcia stopped mere inches from where Wyatt still sat on the bed and tilted his head to look down at the other man. His lips twisted into a thin-lipped and insincere facsimile of a smile. "Then I can give you a bruise on the other side of your face. You deserve a nice, matching set."
Wyatt rose from beside Lucy and advanced on Garcia, rolling his shoulders, back straight and sharp as a knife edge. "You could try," he said with a pugnacious tilt to his chin and a smirk that made the fine hairs on Lucy's arms stand on end.
The atmosphere zinged and snapped, teeming with livewire tension. Pregnant with the threat of violence. Lucy tugged at the scoop neck of her nightshirt; their bedroom felt ten degrees hotter than it had five minutes earlier. A bead of sweat skipped down her body and pooled uncomfortably at the small of her back.
The two men stood toe-to-toe, an air of waiting hovering over them, coiled energy vibrating from their tensed muscles. They looked like nothing less than two fighters awaiting a ringing bell to signal the beginning of their bout. They appeared to have forgotten she was in the room; the entirety of their attention focused, laser-like, on each other. Their chests rose and fell on a synchronized cycle of breaths. Each man's exhale ricocheted off the man standing opposite. Their bodies cast hulking shadows on the gray-blue walls they and Lucy had agreed upon. Blue is peaceful and calm, she had told them when it was time to pick a paint color for their bedroom walls. They had shrugged and agreed that it was a nice enough color.
Lucy had to stop this—whatever nonsense was about to explode in their bedroom.
Bedrooms were meant for sleeping, cuddling, sharing secrets under cover of darkness, and fucking. All of that, yes. But not brawling.
The thing was—the thing was, Lucy loved Wyatt and Garcia. This life they shared, it wasn't anything like what she'd expected to have when she'd been a girl imagining a future love. But it was real and hers and true. She knew they loved her, and she knew they loved each other, too, the same way she knew the sun would rise every morning. With that love came an intimate dossier replete with ways to bore under each other's thin skin and cause an itch that would just have to be scratched.
A blind, deaf, and mute person could see neither Garcia nor Wyatt was going to back down from a direct challenge. (Lucy Preston was none of those things.) Garcia and Wyatt, on the other hand, well, they were idiots. But they were her idiots, and she wasn't going to watch them follow each other like two lemmings sailing off a cliff into a valley of flaming refuse.
Wracking her brain for a solution, Lucy came up empty-handed. Not to be deterred, she grabbed the pillows on either side of her and launched them at Garcia and Wyatt, nailing them both in the face. Take that, she thought. It seemed her aim was better than she'd thought.
Both men swiveled to face her.
"What the —?"
"Lucy!"
With a nod of satisfaction, she threw off the blanket Garcia had snuggled around her with such care, hopped off the bed, and marched over to her idiots. She schooled her face into as severe lines as she could manage, then skewered both men with a diamond-hard glare. Neither held her gaze, choosing instead to stare at the floor as if it held the secrets of the universe. Their faces folded into identical expressions of sheepishness.
She tapped Garcia on the arm to get his attention. When he looked up from the floor, she crooked a finger at him, beckoning him down to her level. He acquiesced, and she stood on tiptoe and grasped his earlobe with her thumb and forefinger. Giving it a good tug, she pulled him toward the bed.
"Ah!" Garcia said, grimacing. "Is this really necessary, Lucy?"
"Yes, it is," she said, releasing her grip on his ear and pointing to the bed. "Sit," she added, and there was titanium in her voice.
Garcia sagged down on the bed, arms crossed in front of him, expression distinctly pouty. All the belligerence and swagger had left his posture, siphoned out like air from a leaky balloon.
Wyatt snickered behind Lucy. She rounded on him so fast his eyes widened. Though his hands shot up in front of him in a placating gesture, Lucy still took him by the ear and tugged him to the bed. She wasn't going to treat him any differently than she'd treated Garcia.
"Ow. Luce."
"Don't you 'Luce' me, Wyatt Logan," she said, releasing him and tilting her head toward the bed. "Sit," she said. Her voice was a one-word command Wyatt dared not disobey.
Her blue-eyed lover sat poised on the very edge of the bed, his hands folded demurely in his lap, while the green-eyed one curled his body into a question mark, his upper body slumped and his bare feet flat on the floor. They so resembled naughty school boys facing a stern headmistress that Lucy fought a mighty battle not to smile. Marshaling her defenses, she set her hands on her hips and pinched her mouth into a thin line.
What, she thought, looking at their bowed heads, am I going to do with these two drama queens?
A/N: I'd love to hear your thoughts, if you feel like sharing them. :)
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