Prompt : Story must open with the line: "Wyatt, you look like hell."

In case you didn't know, I have no ownership over Timeless. This fic is 100% fluffy nonsense & hypothetically takes place somewhere in the midst of our beloved future season 2.

Shout out to everyone behind the scenes at TFP for keeping this contest going, because this mega long hiatus is KILLER. Everyone else - if you want to throw your hat in the ring & maybe win a prize (which is SO COOL), search Timeless Fanfic Prompts on tumblr. More stories = more fun for us all.

Enjoy!

"Wyatt, you look like hell."

He grunted and waved a dismissive hand at Rufus, using the quick gesture to say both hello and goodbye all in one motion. If he looked like hell, there probably weren't words for how he sounded, so it was better not to speak at all, especially with that ridiculous greeting. Talk about a freaking welcome wagon. What kind of person told you that you looked like hell as soon as you walked in the door?

And he didn't really look that bad. Rufus was a notorious exaggerator and everyone knew it.

"Wyatt?"

Lucy's voice went through his head like a rusted blade. He tried to walk faster, squinting his watery eyes down the corridor in hopes that the men's room would somehow pop up faster than it usually did. Lucy had a tendency to surprise him from time to time, but even she lacked the kind of audacity it took to follow him into the bathroom.

"Wyatt, I know you hear me. Slow down!"

He absolutely did not slow down.

But Lucy was not someone you could easily say no to - or at least was not someone that he easily said no to - so she wasn't exactly taking the hint, plus those damn long legs of hers were much better at keeping up with him than most women he'd knowingly run away from.

Not that his younger self had ever made a habit of running from beautiful women.

"Why are you ignoring - "

She'd reached him at last, taken his elbow in her hand, then immediately dropped it again like she'd been zapped. "Whoa, you are on fire."

"Glad you finally noticed," he retorted brazenly.

Or at least he'd meant to say it brazenly, but his voice was scratchier than sandpaper and he was out of breath from trying to outpace her down the hall, so he doubted there was much effect to his words.

Lucy stepped in front of him, stance firm and stubborn, but he was way off his game and he couldn't make himself come to a complete stop before he was colliding into her. She yelped and threw both palms against his chest, eyes wide as she braced his weight as best as she could until he was steady on his feet again.

"Okay, what was that? And you look and sound like total hell, by the way," she huffed up at him, her dark gaze still rounded with panic.

He cleared his throat uselessly. "Have you been swapping notes with Rufus?"

"You shouldn't be here, Wyatt. You're sick."

"It's a head cold," he mumbled back at her with an eye roll that made him a little dizzy. "No biggie."

Lucy crossed her arms over her chest and gave him the kind of stern look that she probably reserved for slacker college students who were flunking out of her class. "There was no reason for you to come in, though. Everything is quiet, no signs of activity from Emma or the Mothership. Go home. Take the night off."

"We all - " he turned his head and sneezed three times in a row, sniffled pathetically, then shifted back toward her to start again. "We all agreed to put in more time, Lucy. I want to do what I can to get ahead of - "

"I know, but - "

"But nothing. I'm keeping my word. I have a meeting with Agent Christopher to go over some tactical ideas, and then I'll come join you just like normal."

"Except you're obviously feeling miserable so this isn't just like normal," she said with a creasing frown.

He smiled weakly and tugged playfully at her sleeve. "Relax, professor. I'd never miss a study session with you."

She tried to fight off the responding bashful grin, but it was no use and he knew it. The blatant transparency of what she was thinking and feeling had always appealed to him, even long before he was ready to admit it to himself.

"Yeah, well we're actually studying tonight, so try not to get too excited. I don't want those germs of yours."

She turned on the heel of her sneaker and strutted off at a jaunty clip, which meant his head went exactly where she'd told it not to go. He got excited.

But that was pretty unavoidable at this point. There hadn't been a whole lot of breathing room lately to allow for their unconventional version of an office romance, but that hadn't stopped them from making room for it anyhow, whenever - and wherever - they could.

Like last week when they'd gotten wired on an insanely strong pot of coffee well after midnight and found themselves aggressively making out in a glass-paneled conference room until Mason's security team caught them in the act during their hourly rounds.

Wyatt grinned to himself, then instantly lost that train of thought when he was hit with another sneezing fit that wiped all amusement and anticipation from his brain, trading it for another raging wave of pain instead. He pressed his fingertips to his temples and breathed as deeply as he could through his clogged nasal passages.

Just a dumb head cold, he urged to himself. Really. It was just a tiny head cold. He'd be fine.

But as he emerged from his meeting with Agent Christopher almost two hours later, Wyatt was having more and more trouble convincing himself that he could just sweat this one out. But then he thought of Lucy sitting in that conference room by herself late into the night, pouring over books and records and files with her hair up and reading glasses on, and he couldn't bear the thought of abandoning her. He might not be the most qualified research assistant in the world, but she'd admitted on more than one occasion that it made her feel better to just have him there. Armed with a statement as persuasive as that, how could he possibly go home this early without her? Not that she lived with him, but they were next door neighbors these days, and he was in the habit of knowing that she was safely inside her apartment with three locks in place between her and the rest of the world before he even thought about turning in for the night. He wasn't about to slip up now and leave her vulnerable to those Rittenhouse bastards. Oh hell no.

So he forced his creaky muscles into submission and wandered down the hall toward the corner conference room that Lucy had claimed as her own personal study, frowning as he noted that the lights were off and the door was closed.

Her loopy handwriting scrawled across a pink post-it note stuck to the frame of the door, and Wyatt's mouth curled up to one side at just the sight of her familiar cursive. Damn did he ever have it bad.

Wyatt,
You should go home and get some rest. I'll check in tomorrow.
- Lucy

He sighed, sneezed, then checked his phone. No messages from her or anyone else.

The note was suspiciously vague on the details of what exactly she would be doing in his absence, and he was not foolish enough to believe that she'd gone home to get some rest of her own just because she'd suggested that he do the same. With an inkling that her note had been nothing more than a tricky ruse to outsmart him, he looped through the facility until he was at the entrance of the employee parking lot. There - under the nearest light post that he'd convinced her to always park under for the sake of optimal security - was Lucy's dark blue Prius, empty and unmoving.

Wyatt pulled his phone from his pocket and tapped out a sluggish message - I know you're still here. Take some pity on me and tell me where you're hiding.

He closed his eyes and waited with his forehead pressed against the cool glass of the double doors until his phone buzzed with her response.

I had a feeling you'd be stubborn about this.

He smirked down at the message for several seconds before willing his thumbs into action again. Come out come out wherever you are.

God you're annoying.

Another message popped through before he had the chance to combat that remark. Upstairs in the visitors lounge. Don't say that I didn't warn you.

Wyatt raised a bewildered brow at that second sentence, but without any idea of what she'd meant by it, he just ambled up the nearest staircase and made his way to her without another thought. The door was open and a warm light spilled out into the corridor like a homing beacon.

His eyes went right to her first. That was just natural instinct at work. She'd scraped her hair into the exact messy knot that he'd expected to see atop her head, and with a loose cardigan draped over her slim shoulders and legs curled up beneath her on the couch, she was the paragon of cozy invitation.

But then the scope of his gaze widened to take in the rest of the room, and he knew in an instant that he'd been totally hoodwinked. There was an array of drugstore medications arranged on the coffee table in front of her, along with bottles of both orange juice and water, several packs of tissues, hand sanitizer, a takeout container still wrapped up in a plastic bag, and a collection of fuzzy blankets and pillows folded up on the opposite end of the couch.

"I thought you wanted me to go home," he rasped out in a gravelly voice.

"I did," she answered with a sly smile. "But I also knew better than to believe that you'd do such a sensible thing."

"You..." he shook his head and scratched a hand over the back of his neck, nearly shocked beyond words. "You, um, really didn't need to waste your time or money on all of this, Lucy. I'm - "

"Don't you dare say you're fine when we both know otherwise," she said pointedly. "And this was not a waste of time or money as far as I'm concerned, so just sit down and eat your soup."

He sighed, then grumbled out a resigned, "Yes, ma'am."

She was practically beaming back at him as he settled down next to her. "Good. I got chicken noodle. Everyone likes chicken noodle when they're sick, right?"

"I wouldn't know. I'm not sick."

Lucy just laughed him off, patting his knee absently as she returned to the history book in her lap.

The soup was good - too good to pass off as any average chicken noodle recipe, so it probably came from some overpriced restaurant that was far nicer than anything he would have picked out himself - and it was working wonders on his aching throat, not that he was going to admit that to her. He reached for the water once he was finished, and without even looking up from the page she was reading, Lucy snagged a pill bottle that advertised nighttime cold relief and thrust it at him before he could get as far as removing the cap from his drink.

"Take two of these while you're at it."

"Are you sure you were a teacher at that fancy college of yours? Because you sound a lot more like a school nurse."

"Yeah, well you sound a lot like Kermit the frog," she sassed back at him. "Take the medicine, Wyatt."

He dropped his head backward against the couch and closed his eyes. "Forget the school nurse comment. You're more like a drug dealer. So pushy."

With a rattle and a pop, she had the bottle open and was dumping two of the capsules into her palm, then pressed them into his hand. "Bottoms up, sweetheart."

He obeyed with a sidelong glare, chugging down more than half of the water in three long swallows. "There. All done."

"Good boy," she crooned with a tongue-in-cheek smile.

Wyatt shut his eyes again and groaned. "Really? As if this wasn't already degrading enough..."

"Oh yes, because having someone take care of you for a change must be so humiliating." She leaned in to leave a soft kiss on his cheek. "Poor Wyatt. You definitely have a bit of a fever."

He cupped a hand blindly over her leg and held on tight. She'd struck a nerve whether she meant to or not, and he was grateful that his eyes had already been closed when she'd said it, because the last thing he wanted to do right now was get sappy in front of her. It had been years since anyone had given a shit about his health, himself included. This setup of hers - the intentional relocation to a more comfortable room, the meds, the food, all of it - showed a level of care and concern that he'd never received from anyone other than Jess. Even his own mom hadn't been as attentive as all of this, but that was more for a shortage of time and money than it had been for a lack of affection.

When he could trust his voice again, he swiftly and purposefully redirected the conversation away from anything that resembled an expression of emotion. "What are you researching tonight?"

He shivered under the compulsion of a sudden chill, and her hand came to rest over top of his. "Potential Rittenhouse involvement in Washington, D.C., specifically around the Twenties and Thirties."

"She has been spending a lot of time there lately."

He cracked his weary eyelids open in time to observe her thoughtful nod. "There has to be something or someone specific that's drawing her there."

"Sounds logical to me." Wyatt straightened up slowly to keep the spinning motion in his head at bay. "What do you want me to read?"

"Nothing. Your company is enough for tonight."

"Lucy..."

She reached past him and shook out a blanket from the stack on the end of the couch, fluffing it out over him in one fluid sweep. "You just rest."

"C'mon," he protested with a grimace. "I'm not dying, ya know."

Her whole body tensed for just a moment - face whitening, hands stilling, shoulders rising - and then it passed as quickly as it had appeared. She went back to casually tucking that stupid blanket over him again as if nothing had happened. "I know. Doesn't mean you should ignore the symptoms though. Do you want to take a cold-eeze tablet? They taste awful but supposedly - "

"Lucy, I - "

He reached for her hand but she dodged him, still tucking away with abandon.

" - they shorten the length of your cold and bolster your - "

"Lucy." He nabbed her that time, letting the blanket fall lower as he clasped one of her hands in both of his. "I'm sorry I said that. I wasn't thinking. I know you were taking care of your mom before all of this happened."

"It's okay."

Wyatt ducked his head lower to catch her eyes. "Really? Because it was a pretty horrible thing to say to someone who's looked after a parent with terminal cancer."

"Really," she assured him quietly, her gaze warm and unfaltering. "I know you didn't mean anything by it. I - it just caught me off guard because...because honestly that feels like a whole different lifetime, and in some way, I guess it sort of was, but...I don't know. I can't explain it."

He frowned sympathetically. "I can't imagine how weird it is for you to handle two versions of the same person when they're both so real to you."

She nodded, her eyes flickering down to their tangled hands. "I'd be lying if I said I've gotten used to it. Especially now."

It wasn't hard to read between those lines. Especially now that her mom had blown the lid off of Lucy's entire existence.

Wyatt felt the frown lines around his mouth deepen as he tried to rally the right sort of response, but she beat him to it, taking her turn at steering the topic away from turbulent waters.

"If you're going to insist on helping, there's a stack of old news articles on the side table that I was planning to hit next. But only if you really feel up to it, okay?"

He gave her hand one last squeeze before leaning over to grab the first article off the top. "No problem. Do you have - "

Lucy was already passing the orange highlighter - the one that had somehow become exclusively his - over to him without needing to hear the rest of the question. He smiled at the familiarity of that action, then promptly sneezed all over the poor marker. Now it was definitely his.

"I'm never touching that thing again," she declared right on cue. "Tissues are on the coffee table."

"Yeah yeah," Wyatt mumbled, reaching for the pack of Kleenex that was nearest to him.

They worked in relative silence for a while, the gentle brush of Lucy's leg on his keeping Wyatt just the tiniest bit distracted from time to time, but if there was one thing he'd readily agree on tonight, it was that there was no way he'd intentionally pass along this head cold - which was all it was - to her. So with an effort of mind over matter, he read several articles with painstaking concentration, refusing to think of any possible diversion beyond the occasional leg graze.

And that was the last thing he remembered - not thinking of creative ways they could be putting the couch to better use - before he woke himself up with a startling flinch. He hastily whipped his head from side to side, finding nothing too alarming other than the sight of Lucy practically giggling herself right out of her seat.

"I - I'm sorry," she said, still trying to smother her laugher, "but I have never seen someone snore themself awake before."

"Huh?" Wyatt scrubbed a hand over his bleary eyes. "I don't snore."

"Maybe not usually, but you've been really stuffed up ever since you fell asleep."

"I wasn't asleep."

"Right, of course not," she murmured with a favorable smile. "You're just sounding extra groggy from the illness that you don't have."

He tried to swallow and winced around the throb of discomfort in his throat. "It's not an illness. It's a - "

"A head cold. So I've heard." Lucy snuggled up closer to him and put the back of her hand against his forehead. "Why don't you lie down for a little while? That fever should be breaking soon with the medicine in your system, but I'll get something cool to put on your head in the meantime."

"Nah, that's - "

"I realize that I made that sound like a question, but it really wasn't one."

She was already up and on the move with a superior smirk. He grumbled the words "bossy know-it-all" under his breath, but she was out of the room before he could even get it out. She returned with a washcloth in what seemed to be mere seconds, nudging insistently on his shoulder until he surrendered himself over to the fact that he didn't have the energy to fight her off any longer.

And as soon as she was finished pushing him around, he wondered why in the hell he had ever bothered to resist in the first place. She had his head resting comfortably in her lap, the coolness of the cloth on his forehead was like a godsend to his fiery skin, and the movement of her fingers threading through his hair was so soothing that he really wouldn't be able to rise above the spell for much longer. Sleep was coming for him, steady and sure.

"Hey Luce?"

He glanced up and was pleased to see the instant smile that came with his use of that newly acquired nickname.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for clearing out an entire CVS on my behalf tonight. Nicest sneak attack anyone's ever planned for me."

Her hand fluttered lower to curve over his whiskery jaw. "I somehow doubt there was a lot of competition in the category of nicest sneak attack you've encountered, but you're welcome nonetheless."

He grinned slowly and turned his face further into her palm. "I learned something new from one of those articles I was reading earlier...there's this monument near the White House. The Zero Milestone. Heard of it?"

"Yeah, it's a zero mile marker, right? Like the Golden Milestone in ancient Rome. It was supposed to be the initial marker to measure all road distances in the U.S., which was a nice idea but didn't exactly come to fruition."

Wyatt nodded, reaching up to slide his hand against hers. "It got me thinking. I haven't had a zero mile in a long time...a place to come back to, you know? A place that felt like the beginning, felt like home."

Her face crumpled with the understanding of what he was saying, and he heard her soft inhale as she pressed her lips together for a long moment. "I - I know what you mean."

"That's changed thanks to you," he whispered hoarsely. "You're like coming home these days, Lucy. You're mile zero."

The fingers of her unoccupied hand skirted along the lower rim of her eyelashes. "I feel the same way about you, Wyatt. And that's...that's probably the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me."

He stroked his thumb across her hand and smiled broadly up at her. "I figured I could never go wrong with wooing you through historical facts."

"I'm going to pretend that this entire conversation wasn't the byproduct of nothing more than exhaustion and cold medicine."

"Pretend whatever you want, babydoll," he retorted before succumbing to a massive yawn. "But just remember that you're the one who forced the meds on me. And the meds never lie."

"I'll be sure to keep that in mind." She leaned down to kiss the corner of his mouth, then resumed the hypnotic sweep of her hand through his hair. "'Night, Wyatt."

His eyes shuttered closed with a contented hum. "Goodnight, Luce."