TFP IS BACK. This is an entry for prompt #1: "Every time I think I've found something that makes me happy, it gets taken away from me."
Also, there's dialogue in here prompted from PeachCheetah :) I think I changed it a little, but when you hit the section from Future!Wyatt that starts with "You don't get to know the whole mission.." you've stumbled upon that particular request!
Last note : If there is such a thing as spoilers for a novel that's 170 something years old, then be warned - I went hard on the Jane Eyre references in this fic. Avoid this story if that's next on your to-read pile or something like that :)
(this became wildly self-indulgent and I'm not sorry)
"...it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame."
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
"I love you, Lucy."
From the moment Wyatt spoke those four haunted words out loud, something had come loose inside of him. That crushing pressure bearing down on his lungs, the tight ache in his chest, a constant stab of unease threaded through each beat of his heart - they were all still there. Maybe they would never leave him. The pain had softened, though, and he could finally breathe again. Simply getting that truth out, setting it loose into the open air, had unshackled at least one dark corner of inward shame.
One down, only about a thousand more to go.
It wasn't until their rescue mission to 1888, with gunshots whistling around every version of themselves, that he could bring himself to look her in the eye again.
Lucy - his Lucy - had almost caught a bullet in her side, and there was no time to reconsider the intrinsic chain reaction of what happened next. He yanked her against him, shielded her body with his own, and scoured her for wounds that weren't there. She called his name over cascades of open fire, but it wasn't until her palms slid over his face and stilled his frantic inspection that he let her words permeate his haze of panic.
"I'm okay. It didn't hit me, Wyatt. I'm okay."
He pinned his gaze to hers and let himself drift away into a dark chocolate stupor. She was there, unharmed, steady and stubborn and close enough to kiss.
Thank God his future self slapped some sense straight into his shoulder and broke him out of that spellbound reverie. Staring openly - gawking really, plummeting headfirst like a vagrant in the desert who'd just discovered water - was already a giant step forward over a too-wide chasm. Kissing her would have been disastrous.
He didn't let go of her, though. That was a compromise he wasn't willing to make, not until the rain of bullets subsided and he could exhale a clean breath again. Lucy didn't fight him off or pull away. He stole one more glimpse, almost afraid of what he would find on her battered face if he chanced it a second time, but the gravity of everything he felt - grief, regret, the annihilating stronghold of tenuous hope - was echoed right back at him in her dark eyes.
She understood. She was as scared as he was. They'd lost Rufus, and no matter what else was lying in pieces between them, neither of them could afford one more hit.
That link of shared experience followed them right through into the present. It bonded them together as they nearly mowed Rufus down with relief, uniting them in the fall of unashamed tears as they embraced him far too many times for his own liking; it ultimately pulled them back together much later that night, once their alternatives selves were gone again and the burden of what they'd seen and done required a drink or two...or several more.
It wasn't anything like it had once been. There was no celebratory clink of two glasses, no furtive smiles or arching banter. They sat solemnly on opposite couches, a pair of hollow-eyed comrades in great need of liquid solace.
She hadn't spoken, neither of them really had, until her drink met the table with a fickle wobble. "I wish they would have left us out of it. Gone back on their own. They could have figured out a different game plan, one that only required the two of them."
"Really?" Wyatt scrubbed a hand over his stubble-peppered jaw, immediately calling to mind the absent gesture of his future self. He dropped the hand away, burned by what could only be described as a strange omen of things to come. "You, letting someone else - even if it's still kinda us - handle a mission as important as that one without your supervision?"
His disbelief had her digging up the tiniest of grins, one that died quickly on the corners of her lips. "For once I want to be counted amongst the blissfully ignorant."
"Not me," he said with another grimace-inducing sip of liquor, its nipping burn a touch too acrid for even his tastes. "I don't deserve to forget."
A wary look passed over her face. Her mouth pursed like she was poised for a dissertation-length argument, so the unexpected brevity of her reply caught him by surprise. "Forgetting would do you some good."
There was a dazzling moment where she held his eyes in challenge, a moment where he could do nothing but fall a little harder for her.
But then Lucy blinked away from him and grasped the bottle between unsteady fingers, miraculously succeeding in hitting her glass without incident as she poured herself another. He bit back the need to caution her, knowing that a whole lifetime of drinking couldn't numb what she'd been through in just a handful of weeks. He was still stunned that this was happening at all, that they were capable of sitting and talking and drinking even if the sunlight had been sucked out of their lives. Just the idea that she was allowing him to exist anywhere near her was far more than he would have granted himself if their roles were reversed. He hated to toe that precarious line with what would only come across as unsolicited condescension...especially when he'd done such a damn terrible job of choosing his battles with her lately.
And maybe a few drinks too many wasn't so bad after all, not when he found himself with his hands on her waist another half hour later, keeping her upright as she carved out a slanting path back to her room. Her hand swiped for the doorknob and came back empty, the grumble of several disordered words tumbling out of her mouth.
"Lucy?" He cocked an eyebrow at her, but she paid him no mind as she tried for the door again and failed once more.
He took charge of her fruitless door opening enterprise, ushered her through the threshold with an arm around her waist, all while doing his best to ignore Jiya's quizzical look as she cracked one eyelid open to regard the two of them wound so unusually close to each other.
To think that this sight had almost been anything but unusual.
Seeing her like this, leaning heavily against him, so soft and warm in a thin beam of moonlight as he lowered her onto her bed...this was farther than he wanted to go. No, farther than he should go. Wanting had nothing - and maybe everything - to do with the thumping apprehension in his gut. But he couldn't look away as Lucy floated down against that skeletal mattress alone, free of him. Free of complications or entanglements. She was halfway to unconscious before he'd even gotten her to the military issue rust-trap of a bed, so now she was really gone, oblivious to the longing she left in her wake.
He turned to go as soon as she was settled, resisting every screaming urge that begged for more - a hand sweeping over her arm, lips descending to her forehead, something… Something he had no right to initiate.
It was then that he caught the bulky outline of an object resting between her elbow and the rustle of bed sheets. Her arm was noodle-limp as he gently brushed it aside to pluck a thick hardback book from beneath her. That brought a smile to his face. Typical. The bookworm stashing her reading material wherever she went.
Wyatt nodded vaguely in the direction of Jiya as soon as that book was settled on top of Lucy's desk and a blanket was tucked up to her shoulders. By the time he was propelling himself back out into the hall, his head was spinning with the impact of a sensation far more potent than the buzz of alcohol in his veins. Less than a minute of feeling her against him, small hints of skin on skin, her hair skimming his jaw, and his entire body was off-center with the bitter agony of what once was.
Lucy kept her distance the next day for reasons easily puzzled out - either she feared she'd acted too boldly without remembering the specifics, or far worse, he had acted too boldly and she did remember it.
Remembered it, and resented him for it.
Wyatt unleashed torrents of anxious speculation into countless push-ups, cement floor crunches and doorway pull-ups, finishing off with a few thousand boxing combinations. Just like the old days, the Lucy was missing and could be dead days. Fantastic.
But then she smiled shyly at him from across plates of lasagna that evening, passed him the Parmesan cheese before he'd even thought to request it, stacked his dirty dishes with her own so he could carry them to the sink in one pile. So they were...okay? He hadn't orbited too closely, hadn't insinuated his way into a place he didn't belong?
Running hot and cold would have probably been easier than this strangely impassive lukewarm thing she was doing, but he was ready to take whatever it was she lobbed his direction. It was his penance to sit on the sidelines and await further directions.
It had been the promise he'd made to himself. To his actual self, in the flesh, right before the silver sheen of an upgraded Lifeboat made its exit. With icy blue trained intently on matching icy blue, Wyatt had listened as attentively as he could, the punishing wash of awe and dread never once letting up as he tried to absorb his own instructions.
"You don't get to know the whole mission, that was never what you signed up for or were trained to do. You take your orders and you go. And these are your new orders." The older Wyatt cleared his throat meaningfully, employing the square-shouldered stance of a drill sergeant. "You do what Lucy tells you. You help her. You train her, you protect her...and you love her."
"And...and if that's not what she wants…?" he'd asked with all the surety of a child about to cross an entire length of monkey bars for the first time.
"Have you ever really questioned your ability to know what Lucy Preston does or does not want?"
He'd sputtered for an instant, then resigned himself to the truth. He'd tried to silence his instincts with her before and that effort had never gained much traction. He knew her. He'd hurt her. He saw it and he kept on doing it no matter how much he tried to safely navigate the fallout. In the end, it was their severed relationship that had brought on the worst of his mistakes. Each step away from her - even if he'd convinced himself that they were actually steps toward the one he was meant to be with - created another disastrous ripple.
It was high time he stopped suppressing what had always come so naturally.
The Wyatt from five years forward hadn't paused to take questions. He'd climbed up next to his Lucy and nodded a goodbye, signalling the end of their short sidebar just a abruptly as it had begun.
Those directives plagued him later that night as he came back from dish duty, observing Lucy now as she perched on the arm of a sofa and watched Rufus and Jiya shuffle decks of cards with pensive eyes. Her lip was raw with preoccupied gnawing, cheeks a shade too pale, forehead scrunched. Her fingers were restless, victims to an unchecked tremor.
She was one flimsy breath away from a total meltdown.
Wyatt slid past Rufus as discreetly as he could and drew a hand over her shoulder. She looked up wordlessly, lower lip wedged into her teeth once more. He tilted his head to one side and she nodded quickly.
"You guys get started without us, alright?" he called behind him, nudging Lucy to her feet and blocking her careening expression from the rest of the room.
"Sure, sure. Don't hurry back, you two."
Wyatt withheld his unappreciative snort, partially to keep from garnering any further attention for Lucy's sake, but mostly because he wasn't going to be able to harness any degree of annoyance toward Rufus for the next hundred years. Living a day without him made every last one of those quips and innuendos feel like priceless commodities.
Thoughts of Rufus flew out of his head as soon as they'd rounded the corner. A sniffle broke away from Lucy the moment they were out of earshot from the others, and the sound multiplied with each footfall until he was escorting her into her bedroom for the second time in twenty-four hours.
She turned to face him in a beat, consumed with a sob that was torn from a place too deep for anyone else to comprehend; a place that still insisted they were bound to keep sacrificing what mattered most - their teammates, their sanity, each other. Wyatt ate up the half step that separated them and pitched her forward into his chest, arms latching around her in an airtight hold. Her tears spilled over his shoulder like a deluge, hiccups of sorrow racking her tiny body against his in a near-constant rhythm that made him physically ache. It wasn't long before she had him crying too, timid tracks of moisture that slowly made their way down his face and into her hair.
"Why - " she whispered raggedly, "why can't I just get over it? Jiya's back. Rufus is alive. They're both okay. You didn't leave. We're all okay."
You didn't leave.
She had...she'd really thought he could do that?
God, he was an inexcusable jackass full of nothing but hot air.
"We still lost big time, Lucy," he said hoarsely, his forehead dropping against the veil of her raven hair. "We lost, and it hurts. It's going to hurt for awhile. I feel it too."
She nodded into him, her nose prodding against his chest as she coiled her arms up around his neck. There was a corresponding throb of his heart, a stammering hitch in his lungs. They were the only two people in the world who would suffer with the weight of this exact affliction pressing down on them every damn moment of every damn day. He'd take it from her in an instant if he could, but he was also just selfish enough to admit that he couldn't imagine going through this with anyone else.
They swayed slightly, silent apart from the occasionally tearful gasp or sigh. Wyatt dipped his head to the crook of her neck and swallowed back a surplus of a apologies, each one coming across as horribly off-message in the moment. There was only one fragment of a thought he couldn't abandon, and even as it fell from his mouth, he still worried that she wasn't ready to hear it. Maybe wasn't even aware she'd put a name to it at all.
"I never could have left, Lucy. It was an empty threat. There's nowhere else for me but here."
Her arms slid away from around him in an instant, tearing open a new cavity for his heart to spill out of. "It's easy for you to say that now."
"But it's - "
"Not tonight, okay?" She shook her head, crept a fraction backwards. "Do you mind, if, um…"
Her sodden eyes cut to the floor and Wyatt winced at the implied request.
"I can go, give you some privacy - "
"No." She seemed momentarily shaken by her own vehemence before regrouping to swipe ineffectively at her wet face. "No, I just...I don't really want to talk. Or play a game out there or - or whatever...but I don't want to be alone either."
He tried to keep his chest from inflating with anticipation. His last discussion with his future self rang in his ears as he waded through the subtext of what she was trying to say. You do what Lucy tells you. You help her. You train her, you protect her...
"Tell me anything," he offered softly, "whatever you want. I'll do it."
Another tear divided her flickering black lashes. "I think I'm going to read for a little while before bed. You can stay if you don't mind just...hanging out."
"I don't mind."
"You'll get bored," she muttered with an unassuming shrug.
"Impossible." His hand wrapped around her shoulder, thumb ticking just slightly up her neck. "Seriously, Lucy. That's not possible."
She favored him with a doubtful half-smile, but he was bolstered by the fact that she didn't contradict him a second time. He followed her lead and got situated atop her comforter, their backs to the wall as she took up the same hefty novel that he'd confiscated the night before, noticing the way it seemed to overflow in her small hands.
Jane Eyre. A vaguely familiar title, but ultimately meaningless to him.
Wyatt nodded down at the crackling release of yellowing pages, his voice sloping low. "What's it about?"
Her expression became unexpectedly guarded, but she relented in another few seconds. "Jane's an orphan, and the family she still has left is...well, pretty damn shitty for lack of a better description. Her life story is fairly miserable until she gets a position as a governess under somewhat mysterious circumstances…"
"A governess, huh? That's like...being a private teacher for fancy people, right?"
Lucy chuckled, eyes coming alive. "Yeah, you could say that."
He smiled in return. "So things improve for her with the new job?"
"Yes...and also no," her face fell a little, knuckles tightening around the book. "Things get...complicated."
"Ah, so she falls in love."
"How did you know?" she asked in a voice laden with cheerless understanding.
His halfhearted smirk held its own brand of worn-out sadness. "I'm very intuitive like that. So who sweeps her off her feet? Some dashing, handsome, prince charming type?"
"Not even close," she laughed, head shaking side to side. "He's a brooding asshole with a wicked sense of humor. They don't get each other at all, not at first anyway."
"We're still talking about the book, right?"
Her shoulders snapped with sudden tension, once again keying him in to a discomfort he was now beginning to comprehend.
"Sorry, Lucy...I didn't mean to - "
"You're right," she said in a small voice. "You actually have no idea how right you really are…"
He narrowed his eyes and tipped his face closer to hers. "Meaning?"
Her head ducked lower, fingers ruffling the pages nervously. "I've read it before, a long time ago, and...well, I'm not there yet, but the big mystery surrounding the house is, umm…Mr. Rochester has a wife. An extremely dangerous, tragically insane, but very much alive wife. She's been locked up in the attic the whole time, and Jane doesn't know anything about it until she's finally allowed herself to admit that she's in love with him. To almost get married, actually."
Wyatt's throat bobbed fitfully as he continued to stare down at the damn book in her hands. "That's a hell of a secret."
"Yep."
"It's, uh...too bad this bunker didn't come with an attic, huh?"
Lucy's head whipped sideways, eyes huge. "Wyatt!"
"What?" he asked with a wisp of a grin. "It's true. Keeping the crazy wife locked away has it's benefits, I'm sure. I should have been taking notes from this Rochester guy."
She stared at him, incredulous and maybe just the slightest bit amused. That brick of a novel thumped against his shoulder and her shock gave way to unfettered laughter. "Oh my God, you're awful."
Wyatt rubbed at the welt she was sure to leave behind on his arm, practically beaming at the light, zipping sound of her amusement. "All I'm saying is that I can hardly judge him, okay? Us brooding assholes have to stick together. At least he had a game plan."
"Did I not mention the part where it totally backfires on him? Attic or no attic, crap hits the fan."
Of course it did. Crazy wives had a way of ensuring such things.
"So what happens?" he asked as soon as he'd summoned the courage to potentially bring the mood down by ten solid notches. "Does Jane forgive him in the end?"
"I don't know," Lucy said with a coy smile aimed at the bedspread beneath her, "haven't finished it yet."
"But you said you've read it before."
"I have, but I'm waiting to see if it ends any differently this time."
His mouth parted to counter that strange statement until he was met with her pointed look of defiance, effectively stifling any further comment.
They were definitely discussing more than the book now.
He touched the back of her hand, ghosting his fingers over her soft skin as he sucked in a sustaining breath. "Don't let me stand in the way, then. Get reading."
The creaking strain in his voice sold him out, earning a sympathetic smile that beautifully counteracted the fading bruises on her face. Her hand turned up to his, there was a quick squeeze, and then her attention was bent over the story that apparently held his fate.
Jesus, if that wasn't terrifying.
Wyatt sat quietly, barely putting any effort into concealing how intently he was watching her from the corner of his eye, needing nothing to occupy the passing of the time other than this - other than her. After weeks of keeping their every encounter excruciatingly short and pathetically inadequate, being near her while she did just about anything felt like unmerited favor from a God he'd never really had much faith in before...until Lucy had challenged that part of him too.
He woke with a start some hours later, a pillow he had no memory of touching now jammed between his head and the wall. Lucy's head was heavy against his leg, eyes closed, Jane Eyre hugged tightly to her chest. He took a strand of her hair between his fingers, letting it slip slowly through his grasp before repositioning it behind her ear.
"Damn, you've got it bad."
It was only his years of covert tactical experience that kept him from jumping out of his skin at Jiya's whispered words.
"I've never really pretended otherwise, ya know," he groused back, "although maybe you saw less of that in your version of events."
"Nope. The Wyatt who came to us with an estranged wife still couldn't keep the stars out of his eyes when he looked at his Lucy either."
That comment did nothing to ease his chagrin. "I hate time travel."
"No you don't," she practically sang back at him from where she sat on her cot. "No time travel, no reason to ever meet Lucy. You love time travel."
"Goodnight, Jiya."
Her knowing grin spread wider. "Night, lover boy."
He removed the pillow from behind him and flopped it back into place, then eased Lucy's head from his lap. With a sleepy sigh and a small wriggle sideways, she was safely ensconced in dreamland, hopefully imagining very happy endings for resilient educators and reckless dipshits of both the real and fictitious varieties.
Once he was back in his own bed, Wyatt slept well - inexplicably well, in fact - for a man who should've been sore as hell after passing out upright against a rigid wall for half the night. The soundness of his rest rolled with him into the hum of a new morning. He was up early, revived confidence springing into his bones for maybe the first time since…
Since they'd been naive enough to believe that the words "nowhere to go but down" wouldn't invite the universe to rain tragedy upon their unsuspecting heads.
With his mind skipping along the highlight reel of such short-lived happiness with Lucy, he retraced his steps from just a few hours ago, eager to offer up his mediocre cooking skills for whatever breakfast whim suited her...within reason. There was only so much a man could do under these shitty circumstances.
But with his hand hanging just short of a steady knock to the door frame, he overheard a question that immediately set off a dormant landmine of his own stupid making.
"You and Wyatt seem to be awfully close these days," Jiya said on a tiptoe of a suggestion. "Think you're gonna give it another shot?"
"It's...I don't know...not that simple, I guess."
"Because of Jessica?"
That name felt like a cold blade to the stomach. He pressed his forehead to the wall, not drawing a single breath until Lucy's answer floated out into the hallway.
"It's not even her, Jiya. I just - " she sighed, and the sound of it was heavy with every last hurt he'd heaped upon her heart. "It's like every time I think I've found something that makes me happy, it gets taken away from me. Even if I could open up again, the loss, the hurt… It will always be there. I won't be able to forget what it was like to lose him just like that, no warning. To have my heart ripped away in a second."
"Like...with Rufus?" There was a pause, then a contrite little chuckle that followed closely behind. "I see the way his death still weighs on you. On both of you. Going back and fixing it can't even begin to erase the awful memory of what happened the first time around."
Lucy's response was a barely-there whisper. "You've got that right…"
"That doesn't mean you'll never let yourself get close to Rufus again, does it?"
Wyatt nearly sank to the floor in gratitude. Jiya. Goddamn Jiya, a saint among so many sinners. He was giving her anything she wanted after that question. She could have his whole stash of alcohol. He would take her share of chores for weeks. Forever, actually. A lifetime of chores, even when they had actual apartments or houses or whatever the hell existed out there beyond this dumpster existence.
He was so busy extolling Jiya's many virtues that he nearly missed Lucy's shattering reply.
"Rufus didn't die on me willingly, Jiya."
Wyatt staggered away before he could hear another word, bile rushing up his throat.
Forget giving away his alcohol. He was going to need every drop he had.
"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself."
She'd been staring at that same line for so long that her tea was officially ice cold. Jane...Jane had been a woman of principle, a woman who struck out on her own even if no one would have been any wiser to the betrayal of her own conscience. She'd left the only one she'd ever loved, viciously cut herself off from the most important person in her life, even if that separation had very nearly killed her.
Lucy had followed the same path without realizing it, never consciously drafting the parallel between herself and her literary hero until it was starkly outlined right there in bold black type. The further she flung herself away from a suddenly married Wyatt, the harder she clung to the cold comfort of self-respect. There were days when she was sure it was all she had left.
She still couldn't justify the thought of handling it any differently. If she couldn't support the idea of his first love miraculously coming back to him, how could she ever expect to find a love as meaningful as that for herself?
One quick peek at Wyatt from across the room - surly, tortured, wounded both internally and externally - and there was no question that he'd suffered enough to fill the existence of two or three men. There were a lot of words for what Jessica's reappearance had brought upon him, and miraculous was no longer one of them.
Maybe...maybe there was one thing she'd do differently. Maybe she'd pay a little more attention, ask a few more hard questions...lean a little further into the strength of their friendship and then - then maybe she could have saved him from himself before it was too late.
Too bad that once-familiar strength seemed even more elusive now than it ever had before.
He'd isolated himself from Lucy, from everyone really. What had initially felt like a generous pardon of space and time a few days ago was beginning to come across like her own personal prison. Strange as it was, she'd thought that her footnotes version of Jane Eyre had somehow set them up on the right path again, but Wyatt had been tight-lipped and sullen ever since.
Lucy glanced between him and the pages in front of her, then back again. He was fidgeting from where he'd stationed himself in front of the tv, clearly uninterested in whatever it was that was playing at a uselessly low volume. His hand strayed to his rib cage for what felt like the umpteemth time in just a few minutes. There was a grimace, a hard inhale, a twitch of his razor-sharp jaw. Even with all the scowling and silent fuming of late, there was no denying one huge discrepancy between him and his newly established literary counterpart - no one could ever accuse Wyatt Logan of being ugly or disproportionate.
Another awkward fidgeting movement snagged her attention and she couldn't hold her tongue for another second.
"You should probably change that bandage."
Either the man was suddenly hard of hearing or he was blatantly ignoring her. As if he didn't know that she was fully capable of out-stubborning his miserable ass.
With her bookmark in place and the novel tucked under her arm, she marched over to him, the terror she'd felt at seeing him get injured on their most recent jump blossoming into biting anger instead.
"Wyatt. The bandage. When was the last time someone changed it?"
"It's fine."
She plopped herself onto the coffee table, knocking her knees against his and obstructing his view of the television. "I can tell it's bothering you. You look like hell."
His head shrank back with a scoff. "Gee, thanks. Glad to hear it."
"Brooding asshole," she muttered beneath her breath, exasperated with herself for even trying. To leave him to his own stupidity was still somehow impossible, even if she wanted to kick the wind out of him. "Come on, up you go."
She made a grab for his arm, gave it a hearty yank, and of course he didn't so much as budge. But, for the first time in nearly a week, there was a real twinkle of humor in his blue eyes.
"Is that the best you got?"
Lucy tilted her head and huffed with undue exaggeration. "I don't want to hurt you any worse."
That twinkle sparked into an actual grin. "Because I'm the one who would get hurt if you tried harder?"
"Exactly." She dropped his wrist and propped her hand against her waist, smiling back without a second thought. "So how about we do this the easy way, alright? You, me, the bathroom…"
Wyatt's whole body inclined forward, their knees now pressing closer, his pale eyes burning a trail over her face. "Yes…?"
"And a fresh roll of medical tape, soldier."
"Dammit," he breathed out, "thought that might get interesting there for a minute."
She was tempted to remind him that interesting was never going to be on the table for as long as he treated the entire Silo like one giant punching bag, but reversing whatever progress she'd just made wasn't worth that particular battle.
"Keeping that knife wound clean and comfortable is plenty interesting. Now get off your ass before I knock you over the head with this book. I saw how you reacted the last time I used it as a weapon."
"Fine, fine. Ladies first," he said with a flourish of his hand.
Incredibly enough, he actually did follow after her as requested, shadowing her by no more than a half-step and never quite dropping that beguiling grin.
Her composure failed in mere seconds once the door clapped shut behind him. Wyatt had his shirt up and over his head in no time, that familiar impish expression spelling out trouble from a mile away. He knew, damn him. He knew exactly what this would do to her. Why exactly had she thought this was a good idea?
Lucy forced her hands to remain still as she dropped her book onto the counter, assembled what she needed, then went to work on removing the old bandage. She was sure Wyatt could sense every bit of effort it took to get through each step without allowing her jitters to get the best of her. The warmth of him at such close range, the long span of his muscled torso on full display...the memory of his slack weight sinking fully against her as the last frisson of release had flickered through him…
"I think that's good enough, Professor," he broke in with a devilish lilt to his voice.
Oh God, she'd just spent an inexcusable amount of time swiping across his skin with a swab of antiseptic. "Right. Sorry."
"I appreciate the thoroughness. Especially since this stuff supposedly makes you queasy."
"Can't take any chances, now can we?"
"No," he murmured in a frighteningly low timbre, now sounding just as affected as she felt, "no chances here."
She met his eyes and felt a seismic shift in the air around them. She urged her fingers into motion, unrolling a new covering over the red slash that puckered high across his ribs, but no bustle of activity was going to mask the way her breath rumbled in and out of her like an overtaxed steam engine.
Wyatt didn't speak another word until she was smoothing her hand over the finished product. There was a gruff sigh, then nothing but an insubstantial, "Lucy," the sound of it ghosting down her spine with a shiver that was as significant as it was distressing.
He traced a hand along her jaw, his thumb moving to outline the lower edge of her lip until the lasering heat in his blue gaze sent her stumbling backwards. Her elbow smacked something solid, something she assumed was the crumbling surface of the vanity behind her.
But unless the vanity had actually crumbled further - and coughed up a piece of itself that landed in the adjoining toilet with a resounding plunk - then she'd accidentally rammed into something else entirely.
Wyatt snatched her arm in his hand as she began to spin around, his eyes rounded in alarm, but the attempt was too little too late. A simple twist of her neck and one more unlucky casualty of her lifelong klutziness was in plain view. Charlotte Bronte's masterpiece was floating in the shabbiest goddamn toilet she'd ever laid eyes upon.
"Oh...oh my God."
"Lucy, I...I am so sorry."
"You - " she forced a deep breath, unable to look away from the wreckage of her latest blunder, "- you didn't do it."
"I shouldn't have...I was…" he swallowed, and even without looking at him, she could sense the spiraling frustration radiating off of him. "What I'm trying to say is that this wouldn't have happened if I hadn't crossed an obvious boundary. I'm sorry."
Her head creaked from side to side. "No, it was...it's no one's fault, not really. It happened. It's over. Can't change it now, right?"
There was a stamp of confusion ruffling his brow as he guided her attention back to him, his fingertips feather-light on her arms. "I know it sucks, but we'll get you a new one, okay? Agent Christopher can easily - "
"Don't worry about it. I've read it before, right? No big deal."
"It is a big deal," he insisted, the planes of his face hardening. "Why give up so quickly on something that's totally fixable?"
"Because it's not totally fixable, Wyatt," she fired back with an onslaught of sudden indignation. "I've been underlining things, making notes, marking my favorite parts - can Agent Christopher get that back for me? Can she find the annotated Lucy Preston edition on Amazon?"
He faltered, defeat settling in even as he made one last valiant attempt. "You can start again...skim until you catch up to yourself, or…"
"I was well over halfway done," she answered quietly, indifference stealing over her as she felt something shut down in her chest. "Starting over would be too much work, and for what? God knows as soon as I start on another one, something else will happen. We'll get relocated and I'll accidentally leave it behind, or Rittenhouse will nuke us to hell, set the whole place on fire until there's nothing left...something. Something will go wrong. So why bother? It is what it is."
Lucy shook him off, pivoting to fish the ruined pages from their watery grave.
Wyatt intercepted her once more, but this time it was only to halt her momentum for long enough to position himself between her and the toilet. "I'll deal with it, alright?"
Her answer was automatic, forged with steel. "I can do it myself."
"I know you can. You can do pretty much anything yourself, okay? But that shouldn't mean you always have to."
The soft admiration in his voice was going to send her over the edge if she lingered another minute, and she would not cry about this. Not when she'd fought through so much worse than a stupid ruined book over the course of the last year.
She backed away from him, sliding a solid wall around her volatile emotions. "If you...if you really don't mind...?"
He shot her a weak smile from over his shoulder, one that did nothing to wipe away the recurring fracture of guilt that splintered all his best facial expressions these days. "I don't mind, not at all."
"Okay, I'm just gonna…" she pointed at the door beyond her, not a word of sensible English forming on her lips for several moments. "Yeah, I'll catch you later."
And with that she fled hard and fast, not stopping until she could flop face down on her bed and let it all out for Jane's sake. It wasn't enough for the main character to get her heart smashed to pieces while choosing to take the moral high road; no, the universe had also decided that she was destined to get submerged in a freaking toilet bowl while she suffered her worst despair.
For a place that tended to have more occupants than rooms, the bunker had been doing an awfully good job of concealing Wyatt from sight over the last few days.
She wanted to clear the air, to reinforce that fact that she didn't hold him responsible for what had happened in the bathroom. He was burdened enough by offenses that actually mattered; she hated to think that this silly incident would add another note of contrition to his resume, especially when she wasn't holding it against him at all.
The question of whether or not he was intentionally dodging her pardon seemed moot as soon as they came face to face at the blare of the usual alarm. The Mothership had jumped just in time for Wyatt to get cleared for active duty again, and as much as Lucy hated to see him return so quickly after taking a knife to his side, there was also a blatant surge of relief in having an excuse to interact with him again.
He was agreeable, alert, ready for battle.
He was also deflecting her every attempt to broach any topic that skirted into the realm of personal.
So after several grueling hours on foot in the town of Elm Grove, Missouri - tirelessly thwarting Emma's efforts to derail the first departure along the Oregon Trail - Lucy had no energy left to use in protest when Wyatt disappeared within seconds of Agency Christopher's dismissal. Their debriefing session was over, and with it went her only chance to talk to him any further.
"What's up with him?" Rufus muttered from her side.
"No idea," she said with a shrug.
But she did have some idea...an idea that he was drowning in his own guilt and had no interest in asking for a lifeline.
Another day passed without a glimpse of him, not even a brief appearance at dinnertime. Just as Lucy was preparing to ruthlessly root him out from whatever hole he'd crawled into, Wyatt popped up practically from underfoot, almost bowling straight into her if not for the hand that braced her shoulder just in time to ward off collision.
"Hey," he greeted a little breathlessly. "Do you have a minute?"
Playing it cool had never been a strength of hers, so it took a whole lot of willpower to refraining from shouting her immediate yes.
"Yeah, sure...what's up?"
He quirked a brow at her, looking a bit humored at her response. She must have failed yet again at that whole nonchalance thing. "I have something to show you."
There was a cryptic smirk, and then he was gesturing her toward the storage closet that had once served as temporary housing for none other than a baby-faced John F. Kennedy.
"In here? You have something you want to show me in - oh."
There was one copy of Jane Eyre on the floor, wilted and puckered and pitiful, clearly the victim of a lamentable porcelain plunge. A second novel was clutched in his hands once he turned to face her again, this copy as bright and new as the smile that illuminated his face.
"Before I say anything else, let me preface this with the disclaimer that I stole a pair of latex gloves out of the first aid kit. Even so, I have washed my hands a lot in the last week. Like a germaphobe on steroids."
"What...what is this?"
She already knew. Or at least she thought she knew, but she still needed to hear it from him before she could believe it.
"I didn't throw your book away. I know that's disgusting, but I - I couldn't let you lose something else that mattered to you." When several seconds passed with nothing but Lucy's mouth lurching open to emit no sound, he forged ahead with a self-conscious chuckle. "It didn't take much convincing to get Agent Christopher to buy me a new version if it. I copied your notes from the first one as best as I could. I know it's not the same, but it passes for legible, and that's saying something. Best penmanship anyone has seen from me in decades if you can believe that."
"You...I can't believe you would...didn't the ink smear all over the place? How - "
"Some parts were a little too smudged for me to be sure, so sometimes I had to jot down my best guesses on a sticky note. I left those in here for you to check over, okay?"
He began to flip through the crisp white pages, and there they were, a small smattering of colorful post-its interspersed between dark strokes of his handwriting in the margins. Lucy stopped him with a hand to his arm, unshed tears clogging her throat as she tried to speak, but all that came was a croaking, "Wyatt…"
"Don't feel like you have to dive back in if you don't want to...this isn't some ploy on my part, I promise. Just...it's here if you want it someday, okay? Maybe you'll want to brush up on that ending, or...I don't know." He shrugged, thrusting it toward her. "Someday you might change your mind, and if you do, this will be ready for you. The annotated Lucy Preston edition, not yet available on Amazon."
She sniffled forcefully, unable to keep the emotion out of her eyes as she glanced between his face and the book that was extended in her direction. "You really didn't have to do this. I - I didn't really mean that - that what happens between you and I somehow depends on - "
"That doesn't matter," he interrupted gently. "This book...it was making you happy, Lucy. It may not be much, but you deserve to have something good. Something that's yours."
There was a flash of her conversation with Jiya from a week or two ago, a snippet of something that sounded suspiciously similar to whatever it was that he was trying to tell her now. And maybe...maybe he'd heard her that morning and maybe he hadn't, but either way, there was no denying the gut-wrenching sincerity kindling in his eyes as he transferred the book from his hands to hers.
With one more tentative smile, he turned to go. Lucy struck out, nearly blind with the rise of her tears, grabbing onto nothing more than a scrap of his t-shirt to keep him from clearing the doorway.
She threw herself at him before he was facing her fully, arms fierce in their quest to lock him down before it was too late. The hug knocked him off-kilter for just a moment, but he found his footing just like always, reciprocating with one hand to the back of her neck and the other low around her waist. It was nothing short of awkward with the lump of a book sandwiched between them, but even then, Lucy could feel every ounce of his love pouring into the uncompromising grip he had on her.
"I know this doesn't go very far," he whispered. "Not with everything else I've put you through - "
"Shh, not now. This is pretty damn good." She paused, heard the echo of his words from not so long ago, a bolstering encouragement in the midst of what hardly qualified as one of their finest moments. "You're pretty damn good, Wyatt Logan."
She felt his smile take shape against her cheek. "Takes one to know one."
He untangled himself from her after the better part of a minute had ticked by, and from the slight brush of his hands over her arms, she could feel his caution, his hesitant refusal to prompt anything more than what she was currently offering.
"Thank you," she murmured somewhat shyly, belatedly overwhelmed at the intensity of their embrace. "Thank you so much, Wyatt."
"No problem...ma'am."
He'd gone to sleep on an absolute high that night.
Wyatt would be lying if he claimed to never try an illegal substance or two in his time. It was in his younger days before getting out of Texas, specifically after he'd almost run into the devil himself on a particularly slippery trip to Mexico and back, that he'd convinced himself to see what all the fuss was about. While the experience rarely left him feeling overly thrilled with himself as a human being, there was no denying the superior untouchable sensation that came with it, the one that could only be rivaled with the adrenaline of flattening the gas pedal of a hot car all the way to the floor.
But with his head sunk against his pillow and an unshakable smile chasing him towards sleep, he was sure that neither drugs nor street racing could touch the rush he felt when Lucy Preston hugged the living daylights out of him. Every bit of effort he'd put into this little project had been returned in the instant she'd hurtled herself against him, her gratitude taking the form of a homing missile locked on its target. He needed nothing else.
Or at least he'd assumed he needed nothing else until an even better reward fell into his lap a few hours later.
"Hmmm - " he startled at a soft thump against his leg, squinting up into Lucy's shining eyes. "Wha- are you...what's wrong?"
"Nothing." She was grinning from ear to ear, hair a little wild, not a trace of sleep to be found anywhere in her face. "I finished the story."
"You...what?"
The weight on his thigh faded away as she took hold of Jane Eyre and held it up for his inspection. Apparently she'd been using his leg as a makeshift shelving unit for that brick. "I read the end. It was just as wonderful as I remembered."
His voice was still a few notches off from lucid, but that didn't stop him from dredging up a small laugh at the welling enthusiasm in her expression. "Is that so? Ole Rochester got his shit together?"
"Well...yes, but also no. Mostly yes, though."
"Love, huh?" he asked quietly, a touch of wariness seeping in. "Rarely a simple answer there."
The rapture of her fingers on his cheek caught him off guard. "Jane's kind of a saint. She finds a way to make it simple even if it's been one hell of an uphill battle."
He laid a hand over hers, reluctant to ever lose the connection of her palm against his face. "She's the spiritual type, isn't she?"
Her delighted smile ignited something inside of his chest. "She is."
Before Wyatt could utter another word, the creak of ancient springs rustled from across the room, and with both eyes still firmly shut, Rufus was grumbling irritably into his folded up pillow.
"Seriously? Frickin' sexual tension book club, guys ? It's the middle of the night. Get a damn room, will ya? One that is far, far away from here."
She was well on her way to out-sassing their teammate much sooner than Wyatt's sleep hazed - and Lucy hazed - brain was functional enough to produce its own comeback.
"Really, Rufus? If I'm here, that means Jiya is officially short of a roommate...maybe for the rest of the night. That should probably interest you more than it inconveniences you. Just saying."
He snickered against his pillow, conceding with a broad grin. "That's a damn fine point, Lucy. You two have fun, but only the kind of fun that contains itself to that one bed over there. And that we all agree to never mention in the light of day. Ever."
Wyatt rolled his eyes, not quite able to contain the laughter from his voice. "Bye, Rufus."
With the door banging shut and the lumbering stride of Rufus' footfalls descending down the hall, they were unavoidably alone. On a bed. Happy, or at least awfully damn close to it.
"So…" he started with a hand drifting up into her hair, "nothing about you should surprise me at this point, but consider me impressed, Lucy. You might have been more than halfway done when that thing hit the john, but the book is roughly the size of a concrete slab. You still had a big chunk left to read."
Her gaze dipped low over his face, leaving no illusions as to where desire was leading her. "I felt pretty inspired to knock it out tonight..."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Brooding assholes need love too. Probably more than the rest of us, honestly."
"They usually deserve it the least."
"No," she objected softly, "they just didn't get enough of it at some point. Makes them believe lies they never should've heard in the first place."
He released an anguished breath, his hand tightening over hers. "Lucy…"
"You're right, Wyatt. One book can't fix everything. But I…" she blinked, set the novel down beside him, running a finger over the cover with unmistakable reverence, "I think we'll get there eventually."
"Someday," he offered, mimicking his own words from earlier in the evening. "Someday, if this is what you want, I'll be right here."
Her eyes locked on his, two dark magnets that slowed his thoughts and accelerated his pulse. "Someday. And maybe a little bit right now too."
He almost stopped her, rattled at the idea of giving credence to their feelings much too soon, potentially sending them skittering backwards if they weren't careful. But then there was the ice cold stare of his future self permeating his brain, his own voice coming at him low and sure - Have you ever really questioned your ability to know what Lucy Preston does or does not want?
She gripped his shoulder and lowered her face to his, the sweet slide of a kiss dissolving straight into his bloodstream. Wyatt caressed the hair away from her cheek, twisting his fingers deep into the frenzy of wavy tangles. There was a shift against the mattress and then she was no longer looming over him but curling into him, laying claim to the sliver of his bed that was meant to be hers all along.
Because whether it was a glamorous guesthouse or the starkness of this Silo, his bed - along with his trust, his heart, and his devotion - belonged to no one but her.
He tipped his head and bumped her nose with his, kissing her cheek, her temple, snuggling her in further with a hand at the small of her back. "Get in here. Your nose is cold."
Lucy complied easily, fitting an arm around him and grinning into his neck as he threw his blanket over her. "I know no weariness of your society."
"Hmm?"
She pressed that cold nose against his jaw, her voice infused with a beautiful harmony all her own. "It's a line from the book. Jane knows no weariness of his society and he feels the same way. They never get tired of just being together every day."
"That's not so hard to imagine," he teased with his lips skimming across hers again. "But I have a favorite line of my own."
"Yeah right."
Wyatt slipped a hand up beneath her shirt, his fingers dancing lightly over her ribcage. "That part about a string being tied between the two of them, knotted close to their hearts...the one that would make him bleed internally if it was ever severed? That was some heartbreaking shit, okay? I needed a minute after that one."
She examined him closely with eyes as black as coals. "You're serious, aren't you?"
"Damn straight. I knew exactly what that miserable bastard was talking about when he was going on and on about being separated from her."
"You like Jane Eyre," she muttered with an awed smile.
"Let's not get carried away. I didn't actually read it, I was just replicating your work. There was a lot of underlining in that section."
"Master Sergeant Wyatt Logan, U.S. Army Special Forces, likes Jane Eyre. I'll be damned."
"Just keep it down, will ya?" he said with his mouth nuzzling over her neck. "I still have some pride, okay?"
"Well in that case, it sounds like I'll have to introduce you to Mr. Darcy next."
"Do any of these unworthy dickheads have first names?"
She hooked her leg through his with a snicker. "The culture of their time was much more formal than ours is today, Mr. Logan."
"So what you're saying, Miss Preston, is that the heroine of the story doesn't usually storm the bedroom of her idiot love interest as soon as she decides to give him a second chance?"
"You're no idiot, Wyatt," she returned softly, angling up to kiss his scruffy cheek. "Even at our worst, I couldn't ever think less of you. Couldn't stop understanding you, trusting you, or...or missing you."
"No more missing," he promised solemnly against her skin. "Never again. I won't allow it."
With their limbs creating one big intricate mess between them, souls as knotted as fingers and arms and legs, Wyatt let a few other silent promises resonate deep within his heart.
You do what Lucy tells you. You help her. You train her, you protect her…
...and you love her.