A/N: I love this show a lot.
There's no sign for Pottersville, not yet. But she can't be the only one who feels the sting of Amy's disappearance. This new order has created strange hopes and fears; that she will come back to Mom dead, or that Amy will be alright after all.
Everything has changed, and only three people know.
The strangest thing is that she has begun to miss them.
Not like she misses Amy, which is a soul-stilling, breathtaking sort of pain. No, this is more of a twinge, a sudden sensation of loneliness, of looking around the world and seeing the memories of what once was history reflected in the gaze of those who watched it change, too.
They are friends. Maybe more than that.
.
Rufus is the one to start the group-text.
Rufus has been skittish lately, but he's still the grounding force between her nerves and Wyatt's occasional pigheadedness. If anything, Rufus wants them to get along too much. He's worried for them. Lucy isn't always sure why.
So Rufus started the group-text, and therefore it's his fault and not Lucy's that she suggests they have a movie night.
Wyatt is momentarily snarky and incredulous, until she reminds him that there's now a movie based on them, which is why they're having a movie night at all.
His mood-shift could have easily let her be snarky and incredulous in turn, but she smiles instead.
"I'm going out, Mom!"
"Work?"
"No—just meeting friends."
She runs out the door before Mom can suggest, hopefully, that she's meeting Noah, or whatever his name is.
They'd picked Rufus's place because Wyatt said his apartment wasn't hospitable for crap and Lucy can't exactly have them come to her mom's. So they show up, three grown adults who've seen the world a hundred years ago and more, much more awkward when they're not about to try and save the world.
"I brought cookies." Lucy proffers a plate.
"Thanks," says Rufus. "Didn't know you baked."
"I don't. The bakery does."
Wyatt's lips hitch into a smile. "Alright," he says. "Let's see who they cast to be our dashing heroic counterparts."
.
It's—bizarre. That's all Lucy can say for it.
"This is kind of racist." Rufus points out. "I don't talk like that."
"My boobs are not that big," Lucy adds, and then regrets it.
"Agreed." Wyatt lifts an eyebrow, and she punches him.
.
The ending scene is epic, an explosive, blowout battle that almost (but not quite) lets Lucy forgive the fact that movie!Lucy very much did sleep with James Bond.
(She buries her face in a pillow for that. Maybe she should have slapped Ian Fleming when she had the chance, charming or no.)
"That was good, in parts," Rufus says. "Still not loving the direction of my character."
"I'll take a Bond movie," Wyatt says. He's grinning. Wyatt never grins. "Talk about making history!"
Rufus smiles and takes another sip of his beer.
.
"You took the bus, right?"
Lucy's standing at the window of Rufus's apartment, looking at the rain washing over the street below, glitter and gold of streetlights skipping over the night-shadowed asphalt.
Wyatt is jingling his keys in his hand.
"Uh, yeah. Yeah, I took the bus."
"I'll give you a ride home."
Rufus is clearing up their dishes from the coffee table and watching them. For some reason, Lucy blushes, and tries to cover it with a quip.
"Why, Mr. Logan—I'm engaged."
"And carrying on quite the liaison with the world's most famous fictional spy, it would seem."
"Shut up."
"I'll give you a ride home."
She can't hide her smile, quite. "OK. Thanks."
Rufus thanks them for coming, they thank him, and then they're in Wyatt's jeep. It's a masculine vehicle. Lucy finds herself wondering if he had it when Jessica was alive, and then decides she can't deal with thinking about the people who aren't here anymore.
"Did Rufus seem a little…worried about something, to you?"
"Not more than usual." Wyatt leans back, one hand on the wheel. He seems more relaxed than he normally does. Maybe because his secret nerd side has been so gratified by being in a James Bond movie.
Lucy sighs, then realizes he's watching her. Wyatt watches her a lot. It makes her feel warm, somehow, as though she wants to stop the moment (as though time, because it is something they can change, is something they can stop) and let the glow rise, tease him into explaining just what he's thinking. But carrying the dream through seems too sudden, too soon, and Lucy shuts it off.
"Are you worried?" he asks, at length.
"Always."
"That's what I thought."
"I don't know why they picked me," Lucy admits. "I mean, I get the history thing. But I'm just—I've always been a ball of nerves. A control freak." That's all she says, control freak, not returning to the full complexity of her control issues, the sinking car, how a watery grave looks up close.
"You're smart and resourceful and fair-minded," Wyatt says. He says it quietly, like there's someone else who will hear him in his moment of forthright supportiveness. "Can't think of a better choice."
Lucy blinks. She's likely blushing again. It's hard not to look at the firm line of his jaw in the half-light, the way the streetlights keep reflecting his steady eyes. Jessica, she thinks, must always have felt so safe.
Until she wasn't, but surely, that can't be Wyatt's fault.
"Thanks," she murmurs, surprisingly breathless.
"Don't mention it." His eyes are back on the road.
He drops her at her mom's place. The rain has stopped and he rolls down the windows. The same breeze ruffles their hair in turn, and Lucy wonders if the wind would have been blowing from a different quarter if they hadn't gone back in time.
If it would have rained at all.
"This was nice," she says. Hopefully Mom is asleep, and doesn't wonder who the roguishly handsome guy in the Jeep is.
Hopefully Lucy falls asleep quickly tonight, so she doesn't have to question herself for characterizing Wyatt as roguishly handsome.
"Yeah. Good to have a little kickback time after…all of it."
"Well, we're a team."
"And don't you forget it," Wyatt says, all serious again. "We have each other, now."
Friends, Lucy thinks, as he drives away. Friends.
But she can't help thinking, maybe more than that.