I wrote this two-part fic during the roller-coaster of the last couple of weeks. Best timing ever to write your first FF for a show, just before a renewal or cancellation announcement... ;-) I'd written two thirds when the cancellation news hit. But then we had the best news – uncanceled! I did the virtual equivalent of pulling out a scrunched up stack of papers from the bin smoothed out the wrinkles and wrote the last third.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to show (If I did we would not have had this whole cancel - uncancel business!)

Real life is nothing like the stories. Not even for them who travel to the foreign country known as the past.

So of course it doesn't happen at a convenient time. It's not because things are resolved. Emma is still one step ahead of them, Lucy hasn't seen her mother for weeks, there is no Amy, and Jessica's death remains a mystery. Life is still messy.

It takes them both by surprise. But is it that surprising? Have they not been gravitating towards each other since the Hindenburg?

There is no harrowing trip to the past, no drinks between colleagues or anything else they can use as an excuse or a reason.

It happens when they are stone cold sober in broad daylight on Wyatt's couch. Maybe it's inevitable. Maybe this is where they were heading all along.

Then it happens again. She means to leave his bed just as she left his couch by following the trail of her clothes pulling them on all the way to the frontdoor.

That first time she doesn't notice she is wearing his t-shirt until she comes home. She has not returned it. Two days later she finds the top she was wearing washed and neatly folded in her locker at work. She is oddly touched. Wyatt hasn't said anything. But then they haven't talked about it. What happened. Which doesn't exactly open up for conversations like "Thanks for washing my top" or "Did you take my t-shirt?" (He must know she has his t-shirt she realizes. She pictures him in his jeans picking up her pale pink top from the floor. And come on, of course she pictures his bare chest. It is even more difficult not to now that she knows what it feels like under her hands.) She also pictures Rufus face if they had had a conversation like that the next time they have to face each other again, buckling up in the the lifeboat.

But the second time she doesn't leave. One second they are lying side by side their breaths short and a sheen of sweat on their bodies. The next second he reaches for her and holds her close with such tenderness it almost floors her. How can she make herself leave when his hand runs down her hair and his lips are as light as a feather on her skin carefully avoiding the sore spot from where she fell 103 years ago?

A call from Mason Industries saves them from an awkward morning after. Or a less awkward morning after than it could have been. "Pull yourself together," she tells her face in the bathroom mirror after being oddly touched again by Wyatt handing her a toothbrush with the words "You might as well keep this here," before quickly ducking out of the room. Must be hormones rushing around she decides. Going mushy because someone washes a piece of your clothing and gives you a toothbrush is an exaggerated reaction. It is definitely hormones released by them sleeping together she repeats when putting her toothbrush next to his makes her insides flutter. (Can she help that he only has one toothbrush mug?)

She does not leave the third time either. (She allows herself to wonder if it will happen so many times she'll lose count.) Trekking back to the lifeboat through the woods at night in the 1800s is exhausting. Especially if you take the wrong turn a couple of times because it's pitch black. She is woken by the pillow shifting under her cheek. She peers at the glowing numbers on the alarm clock, 04.12. Her pillow, or that is Wyatt, shifts again and mumbles. She catches Rufus, No and Lucy as his mumbling grows.

"It's okay, I'm here, it's a dream," she says her hand gently cradling the side of his head. "It's just a dream."

He blinks at her. "Lucy?"

"I'm here. Go back to sleep. Everyone's safe." She runs her fingers through his hair until his breathing evens out. How can she leave when she said she would be here?

Lucy wakes up with an aching throat and turns her actual pillow over to cool her warm face. She dozes off until Wyatt putting a mug of coffee on the bedside table wakes her up again.

"Agent Christopher just called me. She's probably calling you right now," he says. (Should she be relieved or disappointed that work, or more specifically Emma, seems to have a sixth sense for cutting their mornings after short?)

As if on cue her cell starts to buzz. Wyatt gazes at her over the rim of his mug when she hangs up.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, just tired," she says and ignores how her eyes feel like they have sand in them. "I need to stop by my place and change clothes."

"You think anyone would notice if you wore the same things as yesterday?"

"Yes!"

"You could wear one of my t-shirts," he smirks.

She takes a long sip of her coffee to hide her embarrassment. (But she's still not returning his t-shirt.)

"Or we could just announce at the briefing that we're sleeping together."

Oh god, should she have said that? Does it sound like she assumes they are now something established. That three times mean this is a regular occurrence?

But Wyatt seems oblivious. "I can't remember what Rufus wore yesterday and I doubt he remembers what we wore. I don't."

"Jiya would notice. And you could check the floor for a reminder. And the lamp over there in the corner... is that my bra?"

"Want to pick up breakfast on the way?" Wyatt asks over the roof of his car.

"No time. I'll see you at Mason's," Lucy replies and takes her car keys out.

"You know, if you kept a few things at my place it would save some time when we get called in. If you're here I mean. When they call. Maybe I should have a few things at your place too. If we're there. Not that I'm..." Wyatt drags a hand across the back of his neck. "I'll see you you at work."

Maybe she's not the only one who worries about sounding like she assumes too much, Lucy thinks as she drives to her new place.

The bagel lands on the table in front of her in the briefing room.

"Could you be more obvious?" she hisses when they are on their way to change and Rufus has disappeared into the wardrobe area ahead of them.

"Because I brought you a bagel?! I think we're safe. I brought Rufus coffee last week and no one gave me a lecture on fraternization rules and Jiya didn't act jealous."

He stops her with a hand on her arm.

"Lucy, I'm..." Wyatt looks at everything but her before he tries again. "I'm sorry I woke you up. In the middle of the night, I mean."

She wants to reach out and smooth the tension from his face, but that is not what they do so instead she settles for reaching out to adjust his collar.

"You have nothing to be sorry about."

They are both unaware of how Jiya, who has come to check if Lucy needs any help, raises her eyebrows at Rufus who rolls his eyes.

Fortunately Emma makes a short trip this time and there are no French field surgeons insisting on questionable treatments or anyone tying them up. Lucy's throat is really sore and her body is aching by the time they are making their way back to the lifeboat.

"You sure you're okay?" Wyatt asks when she stumbles. She has felt his watchful eyes on her the whole trip and not in the same way he looked at her legs when she got out of bed this morning.

"Nothing some NyQuil and tea won't cure."

For once she is grateful to sit down in the lifeboat. She has closed her eyes and drifted away before Wyatt has reached over to tighten her harness.

The nausea from the jump and a cold is a terrible combination. Somehow she makes it through the debrief before she is finally free to go and change and go home. Just a minute she promises herself when she has wrestled out of the corset and everything else women were made to wear a century ago and dressed in her own clothes. The bench has no back support so she rests her elbows on her knees and her forehead in her hands. Maybe she can stay like this until the next time they have to chase after Emma. It would save her the effort of getting up.

Someone is hitting her head. Or hitting something near her. Is someone knocking on a door?

"Hey, Lucy, you in there? Lucy?"

"Yes, she croaks."

Thankfully her answer makes the noise stop.

"Okay, up you go," Wyatt's voice is next to her ear this time. He's had coffee she notes idly as his breath ghosts her cheek before he shifts his hold on her and places an arm firmly around her shoulders to pull her with him along the corridor to the exit.

"I got some cold medicine from the doc. You have tea and honey at your place?"

"Mhm. My car's over on the other side," she adds when Wyatt turns left in the parking lot.

"I'm on this side and I'm driving you home."

She's too tired to protest or mind that he almost lifts her up into his jeep. But when he opens his door outside her building and starts to get out she does.

"Wyatt, I'm not... I'm too tired too..." Great, she's a grown woman who sleeps with her colleague but she is too embarrassed to actually say it out loud.

Wyatt freezes. "Do you think that's why I drove you home? Lucy, you zoned out in the locker room. I waited for you in the corridor outside for over twenty minutes."

This is not what we do, she's about to say. But apparently it is, because before she's had a chance to point this out he has helped her out of his car as she mutters that his car is too high, that it's almost like crawling out of the lifeboat.

"I'll give you a free pass on critiquing my wheels as you're burning up and have a voice like Yoda."

"Why don't you go and lie down while I make some tea," Wyatt continues when there are inside her apartment.

The first wave of nausea hits her when she bends down to unlace her shoes. She makes it to the bathroom just in time and by the time she has emptied her stomach and is leaning back wiping a shaking hand over her mouth Wyatt has turned up with the tea.

"I should have known, you're about as green as Yoda is too," he says and grabs a flannel and holds it under the tap. Then, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, he kneels down next to her and wipes her face. When she pushes him aside to stick her head in the toilet again he runs a hand in gentle circles on her back.

"How did we end up like this?" she thinks as she leans back again. She feels both relaxed and uncomfortable with him here. She doesn't want him to see her like this but at the same time she wants him to stay. They have been in situations where they have been much more vulnerable and exposed than this. But it has always been in their professional roles, in a faraway past. Now they are just Lucy and Wyatt and they are... What are they to each other?

She draws a shaky breath to collect herself and winces at how the tiled walls amplifies the sound making her sound as pitiful as she feels.

Wyatt lifts her hair to place the cool flannel on the nape of her neck.

She lets herself turn her head to rest her forehead against his shoulder. This time it really will be for only a minute she tells herself. But when she begins to move he stills her with an arm around her and leans his cheek against her head.

"Probably best if you don't move for a while to let your stomach settle or you might end up with your head in the toilet a third time."

Lucy blames the virus for not admitting to him that she doesn't feel as if she's about to throw up again and for leaning into him further and letting herself enjoy being held.

Though eventually, when the bathroom floor makes her knees ache, she does move. She manages to toe off her shoes (she's learned her lesson about leaning over to untie shoelaces) before sinking into her bed.

"Oh no you don't, ma'am."

Somehow it feels more intimate when he helps her undress and put on a pajamas than when he's pulled off her clothes when they fall into bed.

His fingers gently cover a red mark on the skin over her ribcage and her breath almost catches at his touch.

"What happened?"

"A corset."

"Ouch. I thought the costumes I have to wear were bad."

"I'll be fine, you can leave if you want to," Lucy makes herself say when Wyatt tucks the duvet around her."

"I'll stay. You might need something."

"You should take the couch. You could catch whatever it is I have."

"That's okay. I think it's too late to be careful now anyway."

Yes it's too late to be careful, she thinks and turns to hide her face and the treacherous tears in her pillow. The lines are all blurred between what they have been, whatever they are and the now.

It's not as if she gave situations like this one any thought when her eyes were caught in his for a moment too long and lips and hands followed and they ended up in a tangle of arms and legs and sighs on his couch.

And the annoying, smirking person she found half-asleep, half-drunk at Mason Industries on one of the most confusing, fateful days of her life lies down next to her and tells her it's just the cold, that it will be okay again soon, in a voice that is almost as gentle as his embrace.

TBC

The second (and last) part will be up in the next few days