Hello, dear Lyatt fans! Just want to put it out there up front that any similarity between stuff I post these days and things others have posted is coincidence and great minds thinking alike. Because of a perfect storm of weird circumstances, I haven't read any fics in a couple weeks. But I've been able to write a bit. Yes, things are weirdly simultaneously busy and not busy. I will catch up on reading/reviewing… soon. Hopefully. Because I definitely don't want to neglect or miss out on post-finale stuff. In the meantime, as I said, if anything I post looks similar to other authors' stuff, well… great minds :)

Hope you're all spending the new year still basking in the fic-like Lyattness of the finale :) Thanks to qwertygal for having a look at this.

*I think maybe this is showing all in italics on the mobile version of the site? But not the regular site? I don't know why! And I don't know how to fix it :(

"It's late and morning's in no hurry
But sleep won't set me free
I lie awake and try to recall
How your body felt beside me"

She knows it's coming. Obviously. She knows it's coming, but it still catches her off guard when she finally rounds the corner into… their… room.

Wyatt. There.

After ducking out of the room earlier, Lucy had spent the rest of the evening out in the main area, poring over the journal, searching for clues about Amy, searching for clues about finally taking Rittenhouse out.

And, in part, seeking an excuse for avoiding Wyatt and that damn room until the very last possible minute, when she'd yawned so hard that Connor threatened to drag her to her cot himself.

Her pajamas she'd snuck out of the room when she'd known Wyatt was in the shower. And she'd really, really hoped that she'd stayed long enough in the living area before her own shower for him to have gone to bed before she'd just been unable to stall any longer and slipped out of the bathroom herself.

But the stalling… it was in vain anyway. As she creeps closer to the room that she'd stupidly said they could share, the faint glow of a lamp spills out through the doorway.

And there Wyatt is. Motionless, still as a statue on his cot, atop the covers on his back with his knees bent up, rumpled sweats on as pajamas, feet bare and planted flat on the thin mattress.

He's pushed the beds apart to opposite corners while she's been in the shower. That's a jarring enough contrast and stark reminder of their reality.

But strangely enough, it's not the beds that get her. Not the beds, not the pajamas he's wearing, not the pajamas she's wearing. Not Wyatt himself.

It's the bare feet.

She's far from having a foot fetish or anything like that; all the same, she can't help that it's them that her gaze fixes on and refuses to let go of as she stands frozen in the doorway like an idiot.

Because really, how often do you lounge around with your work colleagues in a casual enough setting to be sitting there barefoot? Even with the forced proximity and familiarity of the bunker, it's not as if Rufus or Connor or Agent Christopher is running around without shoes and socks. OK, yes, Jiya, but that was only in the context of being roommates, and it was still always with flip-flops and only for the shower, so it didn't count.

Still, she and Jiya had been roommates. Like she and Wyatt now are. Just regular old roommates.

But she knows the feet from before.

Feet are intimate. Feet had been as bare as everything else that night. Feet had teased calves when legs were tangled in the early morning light. Feet are a closeness that was yanked away from her the minute that damned text came through.

He coughs, jarring her from her stupor.

She mumbles a sheepish apology and shuffles in her Uggs as unobtrusively as she can over to the cot he's shoved in the corner for her. As far from his in the opposite corner as he possibly could have.

She tries not to look. Tries not to steal a glance over her shoulder. At the feet. At him.

But just as she's failed miserably at getting her heart to listen to her, so goes her gaze. She sneaks a quick peek behind her.

He's sitting now, studying her, and she knows that he knows that she wants to crawl out of her own skin right now. He knows.

Which is why it's only another half a breath before he's sighing and pushing himself to stand on those bare feet, declaring in defeat, "I'm gonna go to the couch-"

"Wyatt, no," Lucy protests automatically. Because it's not his fault that she doesn't know what to do with herself, with them.

Well, it kind of is. But not really.

"It's fine," she sighs, trying to convince herself just as much as she's trying to convince him. "Just… sleep," she adds. Sleep will be good. They'll both be asleep soon and it'll mean she's not thinking hard enough to give herself a headache anymore. Which will definitely be better. "It's fine," she insists again.

She's not looking any longer, but she can feel him hesitating. It's not as if she doesn't know that her argument was hardly convincing.

Still, eventually, as she fusses with putting away her clothes and meager shower kit, she hears the blankets behind her rustle, and the creak of his rusty cot springs.

And then nothing. No footsteps. He's staying.

Lucy takes a shaky breath, fighting to keep her voice level as she informs him, "You can turn the light off."

He flips off the small desk lamp next to his bed, wordless as he does so.

And when he murmurs a soft, "Good night, Lucy," across the darkness of the room, it's all she can do to sound normal and choke out her one-syllable reply of "'night."

Because this? She realizes as she forces herself to kick off her Uggs and slip beneath the thin covers of her cot. Not good. Not fine. Not even a little. Not when the last time they'd shared a room for the night was at Hedy's.

Before.

Lucy feels herself tear up at the memory, but she brushes the dampness away from her eyes indignantly.

She just wishes it had never happened.

It's all she can think.

But honestly, she doesn't even know if she means the Jessica fiasco or the night at Hedy's itself. Maybe it all would have been easier if they'd never gotten to that point that night.

But does she really wish that hadn't happened at all?

No…

Lucy rolls over to face the wall away from Wyatt, wiping once more at the tears that threaten.

And god, she just has no idea what to feel or think or do. Or anything. Because somewhere in the ridiculous turmoil of death and love and betrayal and duty, all she really wants is to just go back. She just wants to go back to before. His hands on her hips in the hallway and flirty jokes and finally beginning to act on those elusive, tantalizing possibilities.

The worst part? They can. They can go back, in theory anyway, especially now that the 2023 versions of themselves have proven it, and re-do things and re-set things and start from scratch.

And no one would be the wiser.

But she would.

Because for anything they manage to reset, she's still lived the awfulness of the first time around.

And she really doesn't know what to do with that.

Breaking it down logically, rationally, into digestible bites like she has done all her life for other issues just won't work this time around.

Because she's pretty sure she loves him.

But she's also most definitely sure that, unless there is something urgent and immediate about a mission to distract her, she's yet to be able to ignore the crushing heartache that comes with even the slightest flicker of a memory of him being with Jessica.

And, of course, she knows, absolutely knows, that he thought he was doing the right thing. Wyatt is nothing if not unfailingly honorable. And in that sense, she really can't hold anything against him, because she'd seen it the exact same way and had told him as much on that first phone call.

She might even believe that he loves her.

But all of that still adds up to just not knowing what to do, or what she even wants. Well, she does actually know what she wants. She just wants for none of it to have ever happened. But it had, and there's not really anything she can do about that.

And there it is – back to the same place she always ends up, running in mental and emotional circles until she just can't handle it anymore.

Except, for as tired as she is – physically, mentally, emotionally – sleep doesn't want to grant her any sort of a reprieve.

She almost wishes that Emma had just gone somewhere, sometime, again right away, if only for the distraction.

No such luck. So she's stuck rooming with Wyatt.

Lucy cranes her neck, listens for a bit.

He isn't sleeping either.

It didn't take a night together in 1941 for her to know that – a broken snooze amidst the celebratory fireworks while killing time before dawn on the day of Lincoln's assassination, a tense catnap while waiting out the troops at the Alamo, a hypothermia-forced huddle in the woods of 1754… They'd been enough to know.

Wyatt's not a snorer – that's Rufus, god help Jiya.

Wyatt's more Darth Vader. The deepest of deep sleep breathers.

And his side of the room is silent.

That's the final straw. Tears prickle once more at the corners of her eyes and finally spill over. Knowing that Wyatt is lying there just as tortured and miserable as she is… She hates this wall between them. So much. But for all she's preached about getting inside the heads and personal lives of random historical figures, she can't fucking reach out to the one person she needs, the one right across the room.

The one that she's not sure she trusts herself with.

"Wyatt?"

It slips out without her permission. She's kicking herself for it before she even hits the "t" sound. Kicking herself even more when he springs to life immediately, voice on edge and full of concern as he asks, "Yeah?"

She doesn't have any idea what to say. She didn't exactly have a plan. She just doesn't want them to hurt so much anymore.

She certainly doesn't know how to stop the hurt in her own heart, and she knows she's not nearly ready to give him what might fully stop the hurt in his. And maybe she won't ever be.

But she can give him one small thing. Because if it's killing her that she couldn't say it, god knows what it's doing to him.

"I'm… sorry… I didn't say it back," she finally whispers into the still darkness. "I'm sorry."

At first, she hears nothing. And she wonders sadly if maybe he is asleep after all and that she'd imagined that concerned 'Yeah?' and maybe she doesn't remember him as well as she thought sh-

"Lucy," he breathes, cutting into her thoughts, the weight of regret heavy in that one word. "You don't hav-"

"I just-" she starts, now cutting him off. Because somehow hearing him is suddenly worse than the agonizing sleepless silence. She sniffles, still not knowing what she can really say to him. "I- I don't know."

There's a beat, and then, in possibly an even more broken timbre than when they'd sat on the floor in the hall, Wyatt's shaky voice makes its way across the room. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I did this to y-"

"You had to," Lucy cuts in abruptly, her reply clipped and short. Because she can't do this now. Can't listen to another round of his guilt-ridden apologies. It's one thing to politely brush off those apologies in the starkness of the daylight, when they had to focus on the journal and figuring out just what their next steps were. But there, in the darkness, admissions and apologies just seem that much more raw and honest and it's too much. What he did hurt so, so much but he didn't do anything wrong and she doesn't know what that means for how she should feel or act and she should have just kept her mouth shut because she just can't handle it right now. She just can't. Not yet.

But he won't stop. "No, I-"

"It's ok, Wyatt," Lucy cuts him off once more, a declaration that is and isn't true all at the same time. And with as much finality as she can muster, she informs him, "I'm gonna… sleep."

He defers to her announcement and keeps quiet.

But her brain won't be quiet.

Because he's still there. But not the there of 1941, the there that Lucy so wishes could be here again.

Another silent tear slips out.

She just wants it to be how it was before.

It's another… Well, she doesn't know how many more minutes or hours it is that she lies there, that same wish running on repeat through her mind and getting her absolutely nowhere. Not with sleep, not with Wyatt.

And he's still not sleeping either, she can tell.

So maybe it's the sleep deprivation, and maybe it's just pure insanity brought on by the craziness of the past few hours. Or weeks, really.

Before she can stop herself, Lucy slips out from under her covers and tiptoes over to Wyatt's cot.

She probably shouldn't be surprised that his gaze meets hers in the faintest of light that sneaks in under the door.

Yet again, Lucy doesn't know what to say. Doesn't really know why she came over there.

But just as she opens her mouth to say… something, Wyatt wordlessly slides himself to the far side of his cot and folds back the thin blankets in silent invitation.

She doesn't give herself enough time to overthink it or talk herself out of it; Lucy gives the tiniest of nods and eases herself down next to him on the narrow bed.

Wyatt pulls the covers over her and tucks her against his side, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close.

Another tear slips from the corner of Lucy's eye as she rests her head on Wyatt's chest, and she's sure he'll notice the dampness on his t-shirt if more follow.

But she can't bring herself to care.

Because she needed this. Needs him, as much as it hurts to admit it to herself.

But it's true, Lucy knows, as she finally feels sleep closing in, and hears Wyatt's breathing begin to deepen.

They can't go back. And she can't make herself move past it. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But for now, tonight, maybe this little sideways – side-by-side – detour is enough.

It's enough to let her fall asleep, at least.

"In the wee small hours of the morning
That's the time you miss him most of all"

A short counterpoint to all the happy reunion/sexytimes/baby/family fics that I'm sure are out there and that I will definitely catch up on soon/eventually :) Thanks for reading :)