a/n : Yo. It's still Septober & I think this will officially fulfill my last prompt for this particular TFP challenge. I'm working overtime to win that Amazon giftcard this month, because yours truly needs some income to support my spending habits ;)
The prompt - Stanford asks Lucy to do a lecture during her sabbatical and Wyatt and Rufus sneak in to watch Lucy in full on professor mode. (prompted by kln8525)
"Okay, so here's the game plan. We get in with as little disturbance as possible. The objective is clear, so a successful outcome is definitely attainable, but there's no such thing as a sure thing. Don't look around, don't engage in conversation. Keep a low profile and blend. Our entry and exit has to be as clean as a whistle for this to work, so you'll need to stay focused and follow my lead."
"Good Lord, man," Rufus grumbled with a deadpanned eye roll, "I haven't seen you this worked up since that time we broke into Fort Knox in the 40s."
A passing student shot them a weird look as she walked by, undoubtedly overhearing Rufus' seemingly ludicrous claim about that hellish trip to Kentucky. She had no idea how lucky she was to assume that Rufus was nothing more than insane for claiming to commit a felony more than forty years before he'd been born. Most days Wyatt was pretty sure that he himself really was going bonkers. Motion sickness was just the beginning of those batshit sideeffects that he experienced every time he climbed out of the Lifeboat. Time travel had a real tendency to scatter his brain into a million little pieces, none of which ever fit together quite right once his boots were back on the familiar soil of the present. He knew it wasn't a real physical affliction as much as it was a psychological one, but that knowledge did little to comfort him.
But today's current insanity had nothing to do with time travel, or anything that was even remotely dangerous in the literal sense, which was probably why Rufus was less than amused by Wyatt's dire tactical peptalk.
Dangerous was a relative term, though. Wyatt knew enough about women to know that this particular mission was far from safe. There might not be landmines hidden in these walkways or enemy artillery positioned along the rooftops, but he was worried nonetheless, and for good reason too.
"Just trust me, Rufus. We need this to go off without a hitch."
"What are you so afraid of? Lucy is - "
"I'm not afraid," Wyatt insisted with perhaps a bit too much emphasis, "I'm just being cautious. There's a difference."
The imposing set of arching doors stationed approximately three yards beyond Rufus' shoulder were finally being pulled shut by a duo of what appeared to be grad-level teaching assistants, and that was Wyatt's signal to proceed with phase two of the plan.
"Alright, it's go time," he muttered to Rufus, nudging him forward with an elbow. They maneuvered themselves nonchalantly - or at least Wyatt hoped Rufus was pulling off nonchalance - toward the last door on the left, sliding in just before the grad assistant could close it in there faces.
"I really had my heart set on bringing popcorn," Rufus said with a sigh, "can't believe I let you talk me out of that."
"No talking," Wyatt hissed back at him.
Rufus gave him a wide-eyed look of disbelief and gestured out over the mass of restless college students who were milling about the various levels of the stadium-seating auditorium. Wyatt hated to admit it, but the guy had a point. There was still more than enough chatter in the room to completely mask their voices, and they were practically in the nosebleed section of the giant lecture hall, so anonymity shouldn't be hard to maintain at this distance.
That didn't mean Wyatt was backing down, though. "Just stick to the plan, okay?"
Rufus shrugged and shuffled along behind him, grousing all the while, "Too bad no one told me that the plan was for you to have a major stick up your ass the whole time we were here. This was supposed to be fun."
Once again, he had a point. But if Wyatt tried to justify his motive for being so intense about it, that would only serve to land him in even hotter water than what he was already risking, and that wasn't worth it. Let Rufus whine about him, see if he cared.
But oh God, he did care, because Rufus would not shut up.
"I don't even see her. Do you see her? How hilarious would it be if we're in the wrong place and you got your boxers in such a twist for nothing?"
"We're not in the wrong place," Wyatt said between gritted teeth as he tugged Rufus down into a seat in the back corner of the hall. "I'm sure of it."
Rufus gave him a lopsided grin and nodded his head slowly. "Yeah, I bet you are. You probably printed off blueprints of the whole campus, didn't you? Tell me, what are the air ducts like in here? Big enough for us to make an escape in case this whole thing goes south? Or are you planning a different backup plan, like a secret passage through - "
"Would you keep it down?" he asked in a fierce whisper. "What part of low profile did you not understand, dude?"
Rufus' smile didn't waver. If anything, it actually grew in the face of Wyatt's irritation. "Yep. Definitely should have brought the popcorn."
"What is that supposed to - ?"
Wyatt didn't finish the question. A slim, dark-haired professor had just emerged from a side door that was tucked into the lowest level of the room, and all of the fight went right out of him at the sight of her.
Never in his life had a blazer with elbow patches looked so good.
"Ah, there she is. The most harmless, warmhearted, thin-as-spaghetti woman in the world...and you're terrified of pissing her off."
Wyatt tore his eyes away from Lucy and glared indignantly at Rufus. "Terrified? Please. She's a lightweight in tweed. Why would I be terrified?"
Rufus tapped the armrest with a snickering laugh. "Even the lightweights have a way of striking fear in the hearts of their men."
He tried to form a convincing protest, he really did, but he knew it was nothing more than a shitshow when his voice cracked on the first damn word. "Funny, but since when am I - "
"Great question," Rufus interrupted impishly, "why don't you tell me, man? Because last I checked, you were very single and pretty unwilling to mingle."
"That last part is still true," he mumbled halfheartedly.
"What was that? I think I heard a confession somewhere in there!?"
"Alright... Good afternoon, everyone," Lucy greeted warmly, her voice flowing evenly throughout the room thanks to the aid of the microphone that was anchored to her ear. "Please find your seats and we'll get started."
Wyatt wriggled lower into his seat as she scanned the room from behind the podium at the front, her hands smoothing over the packet of notes in front of her as she regarded her students with a smile. He actually stopped breathing as her eyes ran out over the upper rim of seats where he and Rufus had situated themselves. They were sitting too close to an aisle. That was the mistake that would give them away. He should have forced Rufus further into the row so that they would blend in better, but it was too late now and -
Lucy glanced down at her watch and cleared her throat, then began to speak again in the same friendly tone as before.
Crisis averted.
"If you haven't noticed yet - and you should have, but who knows - I'm obviously not Dr. Witzel."
"Yeah, you're hotter," a bold, masculine voice called out from the middle of the auditorium.
That remark earned a round of laughter from his fellow classmates, but Wyatt was unable to find a single ounce of humor in that punkass kid's snide comment.
Rufus, however, seemed to be having the time of his life. "Try not to pop a blood vessel, dude."
Lucy shook her head with a small smile, apparently unflustered by the idiotic outburst. "Hotter than a 67 year-old-man with trifocals and a bow tie?" she asked with a sarcastic lilt weaving through her words. "Consider me flattered."
The class laughed again, and Lucy's head tilted with a charming smirk that helped to ease the build up of angry tension in Wyatt's chest.
"Now that we have that out of the way, I'm Dr. Lucy Preston and I'll be filling in for Dr. Witzel over the course of the next few days as long as my somewhat unpredictable schedule continues to allow it. I've been with the Department of History at Stanford in one capacity or another for more than a decade now, which means that I'm way too old for most of you..." she aimed a long look at the center of the room, undoubtedly staring down the source of that asinine comment about her hottness. "So let's keep the catcalls to ourselves, shall we? Which is really the policy on all catcalls, age differences or not, just so you know."
"Damn, she roasted him," Rufus said with a barely subdued cackle.
"Of course she did," Wyatt answered with a note of pride evident in his voice. "He certainly had it coming."
"He's lucky too, because you were gonna throw down in the parking lot after class if Lucy hadn't put him in his place first."
"Like I don't have better things to do than beat up 19-year-old college kids," he scoffed petulantly. Not that Rufus was far off the mark. Damn it if he didn't really have Wyatt's number today. When had he become this ridiculously transparent?
Lucy segued straight into her lecture from there, not batting another eye at the less-than-ideal opening she'd been dealt. The screen lit up behind her with a few clicks of the handheld remote and then she was off, rattling off precursors to the first World War with seamless authority. If he didn't know any better, Wyatt would have been sure that this was a presentation she'd prepared weeks ahead of time, something she'd been practicing over and over again until she could deliver it in her sleep. She didn't so much as glance down at the notes she'd brought along. She didn't even stay stationary behind the podium like he'd expected her to do, but instead was meandering back and forth across the small stage as she spoke, her hands going a mile a minute as she got more and more entrenched in what she was saying.
The frantic scurrying energy of her early morning preparations had evaporated completely. There wasn't a hint of last night's panic when she couldn't get Witzel's PowerPoint file to open on her laptop. She was fearless, poised, steady and dialed-in and charismatic. It would be an impressive thing to behold under any circumstances, seeing as she'd gotten the call about subbing in for her colleague just yesterday morning. What made it even more remarkable - and what no one else in the room aside from the three members of the Time Team could possibly ever know - was that she'd also spent nine solid hours in 1887 between then and now.
"Is it just me," Rufus said with a sideways look, "or do you feel like you should be wearing an ancient, scratchy-as-all-hell suit while looking over your shoulder for signs of the trouble right about now? That's automatically where my brain goes when she talks like this."
Wyatt simply shhhed him and waved his hand dismissively, blatantly ignoring the muttered reply that sounded a whole lot like, "Damn, do you ever have it bad."
And of course he was right. That seemed to be the theme of the day. Wyatt had somehow lost his ability to bluff his way through this situation, and Rufus was taking every opportunity he had to call him out on it. He figured it was payback for the way he and Lucy had openly speculated about Rufus and Jiya right in front of him, and now he was well aware that payback was indeed a bitch.
He'd deal with that later, though. For the time being, he was too captivated with Lucy to pay any heed to Rufus. What he did pay heed to, however, was the range of activity happening all around them. A large majority of the students appeared to be just as spellbound by her lecture as he was, scribbling down notes as she spoke and following her movements across the stage as she paced the length of it in long strides. Unfortunately, there were a few others who were a whole lot less engaged. A young woman several rows down from him was shamelessly taking pictures of herself on her phone. Another kid was playing some kind of shooting game on his laptop, and the girl next to him was furiously typing out book-length text messages. There were several others who were nodding off in their chairs, heads bobbing up and down in a looping rhythm of intermittent microsleep, the sight of which was all too familiar to Wyatt. And truth be told, if he was reverted back to the age of nineteen or twenty, he'd probably be among the sleepers. He hated himself for that, but it was still the truth nonetheless.
But his irritation with the disrespect that these entitled brats were paying to Lucy skyrocketed when the student directly in front of him kicked out the makeshift little desk that was tucked between the chairs, pulled the ratty hood of his sweatshirt over his head, and put his face all the way down on the tabletop. It was one thing to prop up your head in your hand and doze off a bit here and there, but good God, did the guy have no dignity?
Wyatt was leaning forward before he could even distinguish his own intentions. He heard Rufus frantically pleading with him, calling out the word don't in a hasty stage whisper, but it was too late. His hand had already connected with the kid's shoulder.
The student moved with sloth-like inertness, then finally glanced blearily over his shoulder at Wyatt. "Yeah?"
He rolled his eyes and nodded down toward Lucy. "Sit up, man."
The kid stared back blankly for several seconds before shrugging grudgingly. "You're kind of old for a TA."
Wyatt's mouth fell open, but nothing came out. The student returned his attention to the front of the room and did as asked, his posture still pathetically slouchy, but he was more or less upright.
And Rufus - freaking Rufus - was literally shaking with muffled laughter. "Kind of old for a TA. Oh my God, kinda old for a TA."
"Shut it," Wyatt said with a sharp jab of his elbow into Rufus' side.
"This would have been so much better with popcorn."
A ripple of laughter spread over the hall just then, meaning Lucy must have cracked a joke. Thanks to the damn three-ring circus going on around him, Wyatt had missed the moment entirely.
He settled back in his seat with a tightly clenched jaw, determined not to let himself get distracted again. He hadn't come here to bust on random college kids, and he definitely hadn't come here to get busted on by random college kids. He'd wanted nothing more than to discreetly observe Lucy in her element and that was all he'd do from this point forward.
Too bad that the concept of discretely went right out the window a few minutes later when the opening chords of the freaking Imperial March began blasting away from the inside of Rufus' jeans pocket. It was bad enough that he hadn't switched his phone to vibrate before the lecture had started, but seriously, why the hell was his damn ringtone set at such an earth-shattering decibel that it could probably be heard across the entire state of California?!
Rufus fumbled to silence the call in a series of clunky, startled movements, but oh God it was way too late by the time he had it under control. Wyatt hid his face in his hand as rows upon rows of gawkers twisted in their seats to either glare in their direction, or worse yet, laugh out loud at the jarring disruption.
"This is so not what I meant by keeping a low profile," Wyatt groaned into his palm.
When the ringtone was finally cut off, Wyatt raised his head to assess the damage. For as far away as they were from her, Lucy's eyes were still capable of burning a hole right into his forehead despite the distance.
"Can't get through a single class without that happening at least once, now can I? If you haven't done so already, everyone please silence your phones now." Her eyes shifted over to Rufus with a clipped, faux smile. "See me after class, Mr. Carlin. And bring your friend with you as well."
"Oh shit, we're about to get kicked out of college," Rufus murmured with what appeared to be genuine dread.
"I thought you weren't afraid of her," Wyatt returned carefully, his lips barely parting as he spoke in case Lucy was still watching them.
"That was before she zapped me with that irate professor look. She's scary good at that."
He tried not to shudder in response. "Agreed."
Wyatt found it difficult to enjoy the rest of her lecture with the same sense of awe as before; not only had Rufus sniffed out their burgeoning relationship thanks to his own pathetically lacking poker face, but now Lucy was going to be doubly pissed off at him for sneaking into her class to watch her in action. Thank God the blaring cell phone was Rufus' problem to deal with instead of Wyatt's, because he was pretty sure that a third strike would be the end of him.
When the hour was up and her presentation was over, Lucy tentatively informed the class that she would most likely be seeing them again on Thursday - you know, pending the fact that she was actually existing in the present era by the time Thursday afternoon rolled around - and then dismissed them for the day.
Rufus stood quickly as if he planned to shuffle out of there before she could locate him again in the crowd, but it was a wasted effort.
"Rufus Carlin and Wyatt Logan," she intoned loud and clear over the mic, "front and center, please."
Rufus inhaled weakly. "If you're the only one who makes it out of this alive, please tell Jiya that I love her and I'm sorry."
Wyatt clapped him on the back before marching off to face the music. "You got it, Rufus."
By the time they reached the hall's bottom tier, Lucy had removed the wireless microphone and was stuffing her laptop back into its case. She didn't look up at them as they approached, but that was somehow worse than facing her directly.
"The two of you better have one hell of an explanation for what you're doing here, but unless you've secretly enrolled as undergrads at Stanford without telling me, I'm going to assume that there was no good reason for this charade of yours."
"Yeah, that's it, we've decided to audit a few courses to better ourselves, so - "
"Nice try, Rufus," she countered briskly, straightening up with a scowl, "but that's not gonna cut it. Wyatt? Your turn."
With no feasible exit strategy to turn to, he settled for a mix of sweet talk and backpedaling. "You were amazing today, Lucy. And we just thought it would be fun to support you on your first day back in the saddle, no big deal, right? That was a topnotch - "
Her arms folded over her chest as she took one menacing step toward him. "Cut the crap, Wyatt."
"Yeah, Wyatt," Rufus broke in with a frown, "that is crap. We didn't come up with this idea, you did. You even bribed me with a free lunch when I didn't agree right away."
Wyatt grimaced, annoyed but not at all surprised that Rufus was so quick to sell him out. His only grasp at self-preservation was to lash back immediately and cut straight to the point. "Let's not forget that it wasn't my cell phone that went off during her class, which means I'm not the one to blame for Darth Vader's dramatic entrance in the midst of World War I."
Lucy shook her head, those arms crossing even tighter as she narrowed her eyes at him. "But apparently Darth Vader wouldn't have been an issue at all if you hadn't dragged Rufus here in the first place. I still haven't heard a half-decent reason for why you'd want to come to a boring old history lesson to begin with...don't you get enough of that when you're on the clock? Why the hell would you need to listen to more of it, especially here of all places?"
Rufus was practically leaping in place in his haste to answer that question.
"Because you guys are happening, which means he's totally obsessed with you and wanted to see you talk about history from far away so you wouldn't see him watching you with a dopey lovesick smile on his face," Rufus declared a little breathlessly. He lifted one shoulder and let it drop, grinning like a doofus as he did so. "Just a guess, though."
When Lucy turned to face Wyatt again, the ice in her gaze was rapidly thawing, but the inquisition wasn't over quite yet. "You told him we were happening? I thought we agreed to keep it quiet for a little while."
"In my defense, I didn't actually tell him anything. He just - "
"Just would have to be blind to miss that dopey lovesick smile," Rufus explained slowly, as if this was all very common knowledge. "Plus he's been wigging out from the moment we stepped foot on campus. It was not what I'd call subtle."
"Wigging out because you knew I wouldn't want you to come?" she asked in the kind of tone that let him know she already knew the answer to that question.
"Maybe…" Wyatt responded with drawn out reluctance. He was every part the squirming delinquent student that her superior professor voice warranted, but dammit, he could not find a way to shake off his chagrin for being caught in this stupid situation. "I'm sorry, Luce, but he's right...I mean, other than the fact that he made me sound like a moron, but yeah...I really wanted to catch a glimpse of your world. Your normal world, the one you belonged to before all of this chaos at Mason Industries began. And I meant what I said, okay? You were phenomenal."
She took another step closer, and to his great relief, this step was far from menacing. "You mean it? You liked the lecture? And you guys really weren't here just to prank me or make fun of me or - "
"Are you kidding?" Rufus roared, nearly tipping backwards with the force of his amusement. "He was hanging on your every word, and hell no to the second part. Giving you a hard time was the last thing on his mind. I thought he was gonna murder that dude who called you hot, and - "
"That's enough, Rufus," Wyatt interrupted in a warning rumble.
But Rufus had no interest in cutting him a single break today. "Nah, she's gonna love this. Get this, Lucy - he was totally on sleep police duty up there, no joke. He shook a kid awake! That's how serious he was about this - he shook a kid awake and the kid thought Wyatt was some grumpy old TA! He actually said that - you're kind of old for a TA. I could have died."
Lucy's eyes were shining now, a golden smile forming across her face as she looked Wyatt over like she was just seeing him for the first time. "Really? Is he telling the truth?"
There was no point in denying it, not if it brought her that much happiness. "It's all true. Although I could have done without the part where someone called me old."
"It's not so bad," she said with a chuckle. "Take it from me - you spend enough time around people their age and suddenly you're pretty grateful to get lumped into a different generation than them."
Wyatt edged closer to her, not stopping until he could see the tiny flecks of hazel that were sprinkled throughout her deep brown eyes. "So am I off the hook, ma'am?"
She tilted her chin upward to regale him with an electrifying grin. "You seriously shook a kid awake for me?"
"Absolutely. He deserved much worse."
Lucy pursed her lips for a moment before nodding her approval. "You're off the hook."
"Are you guys going to kiss now?" Rufus questioned with a steep rise in his normal inflection. "Because I need to decide if I'm watching or looking away, and honestly, it's a total toss up at the moment."
"Look away," Lucy instructed firmly. Her hands slid along Wyatt's jawline, framing his face between the incredibly soft skin of her palms, and then she was guiding him down to her mouth with the conviction of a woman who knew that she held all the cards. And with God - and potentially Rufus, who was most certainly watching them between his fingers - as his witness, she unquestionably did. From where Wyatt stood, she held every card in every deck that had ever existed. He was hopelessly lost in her and he had no intention of ever returning to the place he'd started from, not when this was the radiant alternative to the hellishness of his life before her.
"Is that - oh my God, there's tongue!" Rufus' lament became muted as he seemingly turned his back to the pair of them. "I'm scarred, I am unbelievably scarred. There are children in the building, guys!"
Wyatt nuzzled his forehead to hers, not bothering to open his eyes as he fought to regain his breath. "She warned you, man."
"And they're not children, Rufus," Lucy retorted, sounding just as winded as Wyatt felt. "Most of them are more scandalous at eighteen than I'll ever be in my whole life."
"We'll see about that," Wyatt murmured in a challenge against the shell of her ear.
"Oh gross, I heard that," Rufus groaned from even further away than before, his hands now clapping over his ears.
Lucy smiled against Wyatt's cheek, her fingers feathering over his shoulder. "As much fun as it is to torture him, I'm supposed to be on my way across campus for another lecture in twenty minutes."
Wyatt hugged her tightly to himself for an instant of self-indulgence, then released her with a sigh. "Alright. Go knock 'em dead, and I guess I'll see you later."
"Yeah," she returned with a wavering look of resistance. "Later it is."
Neither of them moved an inch. After the moment had stretched on for several seconds of filled-to-the-brim silence, Wyatt found himself reaching for the lapel of her blazer, his thumb smoothing gently over the tweed fabric as he mustered his most endearing smirk. "May I walk you to class?"
She beamed back at him. "Yes, please."
Rufus cleared his throat from halfway across the lecture hall, raising a hand as if he were waiting for the teacher to call on him. "I'll just...meet me at the car, okay? Cool, good plan. Bye everyone."
Lucy turned to wave him off, providing Wyatt with the perfect opportunity to scoop up her laptop bag and situate it across his shoulder. She gave him a coy, bashful grin when she noticed what he'd done, then allowed him to lace their hands together and swing their joined arms back and forth in a cheerful little arc.
"Lead the way, ma'am."
She leaned into him instead, pressing herself up on tiptoe to transfix him with another feisty kiss.
Needless to say, she barely made it to her next class in time, and it certainly wasn't because the walk across campus lasted longer than twenty minutes.