a/n: You guys. I have never ever ever received this kind of review explosion on ANY ONE MEASLY chapter of ANYTHING I have ever written. I have been exhausted lately & spend too much of my free time harassing NBC on twitter (because #renewtimeless duh), so I'm not so sure I'll get around to replying individually to the comments on this fic… but oh my goshhh, THANK YOU. THANK YOU! I think it's safe to say that future!lyatt is creating fandom-wide pandemonium and I. Am. Here. For. It.
This chapter picks up a few hours later and is still initially from current!Lucy's POV. Keep an eye out for a shift (or two) part way through, though ;)
The first thing she feels is stiff, aching pain. Tight bruises. Split skin. That's what wakes her. The meds have worn off, sleep evaporating along with the last of her relief.
And then there's the secondary pain. It's a hollow one, a searing abyss of loss. Surprisingly, Lucy feels that ache just as acutely as the real physical pain. There's nothing but a big gaping yawn where her heart is supposed to exist inside of her chest. A stinging chasm named Rufus.
A piece of that void belongs to Wyatt, too.
And then there's one more person who adds to that sense of vacancy, a title that's rang false and unfit for months now - Mom.
She's awake, and there's no undoing it. A whisper of light floats in from above her, pale miserly pre-morning haze, barely giving shape or form to this cubbyhole she calls a room. She'd been too preoccupied by her encounter with future Wyatt to have the foresight to bring medicine - or better yet, vodka - into her room last night, so with bleary eyes and the jarring creak of her reluctant limbs, she pulls a bulky cardigan over her shoulders and plods out into the hallway.
This time she's the one who intrudes on the stomping thud of his boots.
He's up, he's apparently wide awake at this ungodly hour, and he's pacing like he's trying to erode a path directly to China.
Except it's not the laughing, crinkly-eyed Wyatt of last night. No, this one is…
The idea of calling him hers feels like a slap of deceit. She needs to find another way of differentiating between the two of them, because this one doesn't truly belong to her, does he?
Give him time. That's what the future Wyatt had told her - give him time.
"Hey," he says quietly as he comes to an abrupt halt, eyes catching on her from across the room. "It's still really early."
"And yet here you are," she answers, one brow hurdling higher.
"Yeah but…" there's a defeated cast to his shoulders, one that she's seen far too much of lately, "you need rest, Lucy. With the day you had yesterday..."
He's treading closer, saying words that resonate far too well with the same message she'd gotten from the other Wyatt a mere five or six hours ago, and the similarities are tampering with whatever scrap of sanity she has left. Dealing with one of him has already been hard enough. To tangle with two Wyatts on a revolving basis is going to file her down to nothing.
Lucy touches two fingers to the puffy skin beneath her eye and shrugs. "Can't sleep."
Grim understanding twists over his dulled features. He gestures a little desperately in the direction of the couch, muttering almost to himself as he launches into action, "I've got it."
Her gut instinct is to stop him, to insist that she's perfectly capable of taking care of herself without his assistance, but the pent-up spring of his muscles makes her wonder if he's slept at all, and she knows that driving need to be useful. To do anything to offset a bad situation, a situation you want to shoulder even if it's completely out of your hands.
To bring a Snickers bar home every damn night to someone who hasn't eaten solid food in weeks.
She's also getting a flash of his deflated face as she'd hoisted herself up onto that horse in 1863, the one that exposed a major nerve for him; the further she set sail away from Wyatt's coastline, the more dispensable he became, unneeded, perhaps even unwanted, expendable.
Nothing could be further from the truth, but coming clean to him then - with the word pregnant branded between them in big, acidic letters - had been impossible.
Now… Well, who the hell knew where they are now, but she's really in no condition to draw any kind of line in their ever-shifting sand at the moment.
So she sits. She accepts the water bottle he offers a minute later, allows him to drop two little white caplets into her palm. And once she's swallowed them down, with a fingernail drawing absently over the scab on her lip, she nods a wordless invitation at the cushion next to her.
Wyatt just turns his gaze to the floor, immobile.
"Have you been up all night?" she asks with a sigh.
"No." The disputing noise in her throat brings his eyes up to hers, causing the skin between his brows to furrow deeply. "Not all night, okay."
Lucy closes her eyes, sighs again, crunches the bottle a little too tightly in her hand. She hates feeling like this. She hates wanting to comfort him. She hates loving him in spite of everything inside of her that screams to let him go for good.
"Would you please just sit down? The hovering thing isn't working for me."
"Yes, ma'am."
Lucy knows instinctively that he isn't doing the ma'am thing to needle her. It isn't an attempt to be funny or charming. The automatic quality of his tone, the stony set of his face, it all implies that he's taking a literal order.
She has no idea how that makes her feel. Not good, but maybe not so bad, either.
The brush of his leg against hers crackles through her as he moves in one long step and takes a seat. He leans far over his knees, still worlds away from her even as they sit side by side.
"May I ask what has you pacing yourself into a frenzy well before 6 AM, soldier?"
Lucy watches his profile carefully, finding a gaunt trace of a smirk at her question, but he doesn't allow it to linger for more than a second or two. "I'm still not so sure about any of this...about them."
She remembers then that he'd been watching last night, that he'd observed some snippet of her conversation with his future self, and she can't help but assume that what he saw was helping to shape whatever it was he was trying to express now.
"What do you mean? They're us, Wyatt. I think you're being paranoid."
"Maybe, but I've damn well earned it," he returns gruffly. "How do we know that someone else didn't send them? That this isn't just Rittenhouse screwing with our heads again? Who knows what's out there in the future...they could've cloned us, or microchipped our brains, or I don't know...used some kind of freaky mind control."
Lucy turns to face him more directly, mouth quirked upward as far as she could get it without wincing. "You actually believe that - "
"They might not even be human," he went on with a familiar spark of bullheadedness. "They could be robots programmed to look like us, talk like us."
"Seriously? Evil clones? Robot impostors? You sound like - " the amusement drops away from her voice, heartache rising swiftly in its place, "...you sound like Rufus."
A tick of sadness pulls at Wyatt's mouth. "He would have referenced twelve different movies to back himself up, too."
"Half of which I've never seen and never want to see."
"More than half for me."
She can't blink fast enough to conceal the sudden build of tears. "I miss him."
"Me too," he says hoarsely. His leans back to level the playing field, and his hand turns up against his leg like he's about to extend it to her, but his fingers freeze prematurely, initiating a retreat before the offer is even fully made.
Lucy reaches over without a second thought. Her grip is too intense, she knows it is, but somehow - as improbable, as it may be - he's still a symbol of refuge. A stronghold. Her counterbalance. The one person who knows just how incomplete she feels without the third component of their unlikely trio. He knows the same emptiness. It's their team. Their shared heart.
He returns her pressure with a hardy squeeze of his own. There's a glistening smile, one that holds firm despite the tears that line his eyes, and it speaks so clearly of gratitude, of hope. The change in him is instantaneous and magnificent.
If he's her equilibrium, she's his lifeline in the choppiest of seas.
"I'm not...not ready, Wyatt." The words come tripping out of her gracelessly, unplanned. "I can't say it back yet, but - "
"You don't need to."
"I know. I know that's what you said."
"And I meant it," he breathes out like it's an oath written in blood.
"It's not for a lack of wanting to," she confesses in a watery swell of a breath. "For now...until I can - until we - can move forward, I just need you to be here. To not let the crap we've been through keep us from relying on each other. To not let guilt and pain eat us up to the point that it ruins us."
"I - I can do that. Well, I promise to try...but that last part might be a little hard for me."
Lucy nods, expecting as much, but never on her life did she anticipate that he'd admit it so easily. "Trying is a good enough start."
His other hand comes close to her face, a hint of a tremor behind it, touching down just barely to brush a tear off of her cheek. She sucks in a dizzied breath, sees his immediate flash of doubt, and she moves her head in time to his before he can duck away from her. "It's okay. That was okay."
"It didn't look okay to me," he murmurs back, eyes scanning her face in quick, restless sweeps.
"You - the other you - " she trails off and shakes her head, but there's no reprieve from the outlandish reverberations of this current reality windmilling through her brain. "Let's just call it déjà vu, alright?"
"I'm glad you're bonding with them." He chuckles, but it's a small, unconvincing sound. "Pretty sure they both hate me. Not that I blame them."
"They don't hate you."
"You really so sure about that, Lucy? Because she hasn't looked me in the eye once, and he - me, whatever - yeah, when he looks my way, it's about as amicable as the Cuban Missile Crisis."
"The Cuban Missile Crisis? Nice one."
"Thought you might like it," he says wryly.
Her hand is already like a vice around his, but Lucy somehow finds a way to clamp down even firmer. "If I don't hate you now, there's no way any version of me ever could."
He glances sideways, his expression indecipherable. "I'll attempt to take that as a point in my favor."
"Wyatt, I - I wasn't trying to - "
"I know," he cuts in with a slice of a grin. "And it's appreciated. Just so ya know."
Lucy's head lolls back slowly, sinking against the back of the couch as much as anything can sink into that sad slab of furniture. The persistent ache of her injuries are beginning to subside, and with that tinge of relief comes the return of a sleepiness she'd been sure was out of reach.
"Go back to bed, Lucy."
His voice is warm honey, a low ooze that melts over her, the bittersweet memento of a Wyatt who'd been mellowed by the luster of passionate release. A morning-after Wyatt. A happy, languid, incandescent Wyatt.
She loosens her hold on his hand and he does the same, awaiting her eventual withdrawal with expectant eyes. Her head slides from side to side on rusty hinges. They've walked away from each other so much lately, repelling against the undeniable tether that bonds them, stretching their connection as thin as it can possibly go.
This gray-hued morning doesn't carry much sunshine, but a well-known impulse is cutting through the perpetual fog that surrounds them; an impulse that insists for more than his hand in hers.
So she does extract her fingers from the web they've made, but it's only so the rest of her body can fold forward into his chest. His arms twine around her so fast that she knows it's an unconscious reaction on his part. With her head sagging across his shoulder and her legs curling up to press lightly into one of his, she takes one very full breath and exhales bucketloads of grief, anxiety, anguish. There's a dash of his bristling stubble against her forehead as he fits himself against her. He's breathing just as deeply, just as abundantly, as she is.
"I saw you with him last night," he murmurs confidentially, like he's sitting on the other side of a confessional screen. "Weirdest shit I've ever seen, and that's saying a lot these days. Me, but not me. Holding you like this."
"Trust me, you're not the only one who's having a hard time adjusting to the idea."
"You seemed to be adjusting just fine," he volleys back with an edge of cynicism, giving credence to the claims from his future self. Paper-thin jealousy, aimed indirectly at himself, foolish as that may be. Before Lucy can point out the absurdity of that position, his shoulder shakes from beneath her with a rueful snicker. "Don't bother. I know how stupid I sound."
"Thank God, because I really wasn't looking forward to explaining that to you."
His voice catches this time, his usual blustering humor washing up short. "He might be me, but I get the impression that he's properly atoned for his sins. Until I find a way to the same, it's no fun watching you hug it out with that doomsday robot."
"He's not a robot," Lucy mumbles into his shirt. "He smells just like you."
"Probably because I loaned him my shower stuff," Wyatt retorts with a grunt. "Hope Rambo used some shampoo in that frickin' beard or we might have to burn this whole place down to get rid of the bugs."
She laughs. It's full of new tears, messy and clogged, and there might have even been an unattractive snort somewhere in there, but oh God, does it ever feel good.
"There it is," Lucy says as she swipes at her wet face, "the movie reference Rufus would be proud of."
Wyatt's arms tighten around her, the side of his face coming to a full stop against the crown of her head. "You know I'm in, right? As crazy as it is, as much as I still worry that it could blow up in our faces...it's Rufus. Of course I'm in."
She closes her eyes with a lazy smile. "I know you are. Couldn't have convinced me of anything less."
"Wyatt," she calls dimly, voice still gritted with sleep. She can barely even see him through heavy, sated eyelids, but she is able to make out a blurred canvas of skin - lots of it - and that's an obvious red flag. "Clothes. You have to wear clothes."
"What do you call these, Luce?" he asks with his hand snapping the waistband of his boxer briefs.
"Cute, but no," she says with an unfurling stretch, blinking lethargically. "We agreed to not advertise the fact that we're sleeping together."
"I agreed to not advertise the wedded bliss, babydoll. Didn't promise a word about sleeping arrangements."
"Wyatt."
"Fine." He crosses the room, lowers his lips to hers with a grin-infused kiss, then retrieves a t-shirt and sweatpants from his younger counterpart's stash. "But I don't want to hear any complaints later when you try to lure me back to bed. This was your doing."
"As if you'd actually hold out on me if that's what I wanted," she taunts back, reaching up to slide her fingertips through his beard once he's within striking distance again.
His eye roll does nothing to sell his case. That glinting grin of his only grows, reflecting the sure-fire accuracy of her indictment. "You're such a damn killjoy."
"You love me," she hums in response, hands hooking around his neck to drag him down to her.
She intends to keep it short, but all it takes is one kiss to consume her like a blast of heat lightning, and then he's halfway on top of her a moment later, the rough friction of his hands soon chafing up beneath her shirt. Well, his shirt… or baby-faced Wyatt's shirt, one that she'd helped herself to without asking, to be more technical.
"I do love you," he says before harnessing her lower lip between his teeth. He bites, licks, then sweeps higher, kissing the tip of her nose, the center of her forehead. "So much. Always."
She ruffles a hand through his hair, sighing appreciatively when he dips down to gnaw at a shudder-inducing spot on her neck. "You're not letting them get to you, are you?"
"Of course I am. We both knew that was inevitable."
Lucy laughs good-naturedly, adoring every last inch of that fragile heart, the one that refuses to be hidden beneath whatever stupid tough guy pretense he thinks he upholds. She tugs him to her mouth once more, gets him back on track with a single chaste kiss, then exhales an order against his lips. "As you were, soldier. Coffee first. Then sex. It always turns out better that way."
"Only if you think getting pounced on by the freaking Energizer Bunny somehow translates to better…"
"Tell me it doesn't, Logan. Tell me that with a straight face and I - "
His kiss steals the words from her mouth, the breath from her lungs. "You're right, Logan. Your cute caffeinated ass can pounce all over me as often as you'd like."
As much as she revels in his use of her new last name, it's a habit she's not so sure she should be encouraging at the moment. "Keep calling me that in here and you're bound to slip up out there."
"Yeah, about that…"
She stiffens beneath him. "You didn't."
He shoves off from the bed with a sheepish laugh, jamming a thumb over his shoulder toward the door. "So...coffee right? I'm on it."
Lucy flings a pillow at him, but damn him and his combat-honed reflexes - not only does he catch it easily, but it's sailing right back at her in an instant, flopping against her stomach with a soft thump.
"I thought she was you," he says with a hand on the door, repentant and humbled, but clearly crafting a well-timed escape for the reaction he knows is to come. "Honest mistake. And before you go ballistic, all she knows is that I like kissing your neck. Hell, she already knew that, right? Didn't exactly make a secret of it in '41 if I recall correctly."
He does recall correctly. He's always been good like that, effortlessly retaining details both small and large, especially details like that one.
Because not only does he like kissing her neck, but he also knows she likes it when he kisses her neck. Another thing that hadn't been much of a secret between them in the shimmering seclusion of Hedy Lamarr's guesthouse.
"You're downplaying this, I'm sure," she states flatly, but God knows she can't actually stay mad. Not with him, and not about mistaken neck kisses.
"I'm sure you'll have no trouble brainstorming an appropriate punishment for my lapse in good judgement." He waggles his eyebrows suggestively, the shameless bastard. "It's not my fault, anyway. Entrapment on her part, no doubt about it. I've always been a sucker for those ugly robes you collect."
"You are not."
"Wrong. Easy access, ya know...just one yank on that knot and - "
Her arm wheels back and the pillow is airborne again, but he's ready as always. Wyatt vanishes into the hallway and has the door shut in time for her ammo to smack against the metal barrier instead of catching her intended target.
The disappearing act gives her time to mull over what this could mean for them. They both knew the risk too well before they'd embarked on this jump, understood the potential reverberations through time that they were bound to cause. A different result for Rufus would surely alter their current reality in ways too vast to calculate, and it's not like she hasn't already gone over this a thousand times before, but…
But she needs this so badly, needs him so badly, needs to go home to a world that still grants her Wyatt Logan even if they've manipulated the hands of the universe for the sake of their missing friend, their pilot, the third component of their unlikely trio. The grief that glues them together, their shared heart. Their Rufus.
Wyatt creeps back in much sooner than expected, sans coffee mugs, a finger to his lips.
"Come here," he says with a devious tilt to his head. "You have to see this."
"What?"
She doesn't move fast enough for his liking, so he's dragging her from beneath the rumpled sheets in another heartbeat, hauling her through the door with both arms wrapped around her waist.
"Wait, I'm not wearing pants," she hisses in protest, digging heels against the floor until her bare feet make solid contact with the freezing-ass concrete and then she's hissing again as she curls her arms up to his shoulders. "Or socks, dammit."
He leverages her weight up against one hip, not the least bit interested in stalling for even a moment. "Keep it down, will ya? Geez, woman. We don't need to wake the whole bunker."
Wyatt slows his pace as they round the corner, footfalls becoming softer, his muscles tensing beneath her arms in a familiar way that she teasingly refers to as stealth mode.
Stealth-mode Wyatt never goes for teasing, though. It's the only time she gets to do all the razzing without any backlash from him.
"Look," he says, eyes alight, a big toothy smile plastered over his face - a smile that contradicts everything she knows about stealth mode. "Look at them."
Lucy follows his gaze, then nearly forgets what it means to breathe.
Whatever it is that her Wyatt had unloaded on poor present Lucy yesterday, it seems to have done far more good than harm.
Her eyes go to younger Wyatt first. It's only natural, a well-traveled circuit built upon years of reflex.
He's cradling his Lucy to the middle of his chest, arms as secure around that version of her as the arms that circle her own body now. His eyes are closed, face soft with sleep, and he has his nose buried straight into the nest of dark curls that hangs much longer than her current style. His Lucy looks as close to serene as those awful bruises allow, her whole body tucked seamlessly into his, one hand keeping a fistful of his shirt wedged between her fingers.
"They're so cute," she whispers, unexpectedly battling a tsunami of emotion that's rushing up her throat.
"We're so cute," he mumbles, his beard tickling the shell of her ear.
She understands the reasoning behind that correction. It is them, after all. A battered, undone, younger but already so scarred, them. They haven't seen the end of their hardships, but it seems as if they know even now that the path they're on will always be smoother when they navigate it together.
"You still do that shirt thing. The unconscious death grip."
"I do?"
"Yeah." He brushes his nose over her cheek. "And people think I'm the possessive one."
She's too absorbed in her happiness - in the delicate whisperings of hope - to even really hear that smartass remark of his.
"Wyatt?"
"Yeah, Luce?"
"Let's skip the coffee for now."
She mostly means that she doesn't want to risk waking them, but she's also pretty sure that the dark desire she sees in his eyes must be fully reflected in her own.
As expected, he doesn't require much convincing. "Yes, ma'am."
It's the way things work with them anymore, reading off the same page far more often than not. Thoughts aligned like clockwork. That's their superpower, if they were ever to claim such a thing - sharing one mind, one heart, in two separate bodies.
Not that those two bodies tended to stay separate for any longer than they had to.
One eyelid peels upward, followed closely by the other.
It's mirage, a trick of the imagination, just a snapshot that's disintegrating before Wyatt can even be sure of what he thinks he - what he maybe saw.
No, he knows. There's no maybe about it. He'd recognize a flash of Lucy's bare legs, no matter how brief of a glimpse he gets, just about anywhere. And is that his shirt she has on? There's nothing but an army green tee, one that does little to conceal the endless flight of pale skin. She's hoisted in midair for a millisecond, and then she's gone.
And yet she's also right here.
A squinty-eyed glance down at his chest confirms that long-haired Lucy is out cold against him, making the occasional sleepily contented noise that's never once faded from his golden-hued memory.
But another Lucy noise - a throaty laugh that hints of anything but sleep - rings down the hall before the solid bang of a metal door seals off that sound for good.
Well then.
He has the barbaric impulse to high five the other Wyatt as soon as he has the chance, and between the cozy warmth of one Lucy surrounding him and the preview of what may just await him with the other Lucy someday, the idea of going back to sleep is damn well impossible.
It's no hardship of a trade-off. If he can't have actual dreams for however much time remains before the rest of the Silo springs to life around them, the daydreams spiraling through his mind are going to be more than enough to keep him occupied.
a/n: note to self 1 - don't write about Rufus when someone might catch you with tears in your eyes (oops)
note to self 2 - don't finish editing after 1 in the morning, you idiot (that's my apology for tired-eyed mistakes)
hit up that review box, mmmkay? thanks for reading :)