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“Oh, dear God!”
Connor’s exclamation echoed through the common room as he appeared in the doorway, taking in the sight before him. Lucy couldn’t exactly deny it wasn’t looking quite as good as she had hoped, but she was trying.
“I’m doing the best I can with what we have,” she explained to her friend. “Personally, I think we’re lucky to have anything at all by way of Christmas decorations since we all live as fugitives in an underground bunker,” she said pointedly, flinching when the garland she thought she had got pinned to the wall suddenly fell at her feet.
“Darling, I’m sure it will look wonderful... when you’re finished,” said Connor waving his free hand in some vague gesture then downing the drink in his other. “Hmm, in the meantime...” he said, shaking the empty glass and wandering off again, presumably in search of a refill.
Lucy huffed out a sigh and stooped to retrieve the garland from the floor. She really was trying and frankly, it wasn’t coming easy at all. Hanging Christmas decorations, trimming the tree, it was all a part of the life she used to have, a life that included her mom and Amy. It all seemed like such a long time ago now, almost like it was somebody else’s life instead of her own.
“Need some help?”
She looked up sharply at the sound of a familiar voice. Not that she was likely to hear an unfamiliar one down there, Lucy supposed.
“Couldn’t hurt,” she said of Flynn’s kind offer. “Nothing seems to want to stay up,” she said, showing him the garland in her hands. “Honestly, none of this stuff is really all that inspiring anyway,” she said, turning to the two sad looking boxes on the table and all the odds and ends of decorations that they contained.
“Odijelo ne cini covjeka.”
It wasn’t the first time Lucy heard Flynn speak in Croatian. It had started happening so often in their long conversations after-dark that she had started prompting him to translate for her. She had even learned a few words here and there, but the longer phrases always eluded her. After all, it had only been a few short months and it wasn’t the easiest language to just pick up.
“You know, it’s an interesting expression you get on your face when you’re trying to figure out something you really can’t... untangle,” said Flynn, smirking as he held up another dusty Christmas garland that was knotted together six ways from Sunday.
“Okay, genius,” she said, smiling back at him. “What did you just say?”
“Something my grandmother used to say,” he explained. “Basically, it means not to judge a book by it’s cover. It doesn’t look like the most inspiring box of Christmas cheer on the surface, but it could surprise you.”
Lucy raised an eyebrow as she dug into the box and produced the most disturbingly mangled Christmas angel. “Oh, it’s surprising. Surprisingly awful.”
Flynn shook his head and plucked the unfortunate little figure from her fingers. “Looks to me like she just needs a little love and care. I’m sure she’ll pull through,” he said, looking sideways at Lucy as he set to work on carefully reshaping the wire in the angel’s wings.
With other people (read: Wyatt) there were times when Lucy felt like she needed a translator even though he always spoke English. At least Flynn only lost her when he went deep into his mother tongue. She was beginning to realise just how much she understood the rest of the time, even when he was being kind of cryptic.
Everything spoken and unspoken between them, it was becoming more and more clear as time went by, a little more transparent and a lot more comfortable. They talked about almost everything. Lucy had heard so much about Lorena and Iris by now that she felt as if she had actually known them herself, and was sure Flynn could say the same about Amy too.
Hidden away in what was officially his room but had fast become theirs, they talked about other things too. History and philosophy, their childhoods, their hopes and dreams, movies and music, just everything. Lucy never had a friend like Flynn before, never had another person that seemed to care as much about her as she did about them.
Shaking her head when she realised she was both staring and way too lost in thought, Lucy grabbed the fallen garlands and manoeuvred herself up onto a chair then the table to try again at fixing the decorations up by winding them in and out of the metal fixtures on the ceiling instead. She had a little more success than before, since they actually did stay up. Reaching down to grab another piece of trimming from the box, she was surprised to find Flynn much closer than before.
“Careful,” he said, reaching out to grab at her and keep her steady when her foot came too close to the edge of the table she was balanced upon.
Their eyes met and she swallowed hard. These were the moments when all the comfortable that usually existed between them just flew away in a split second. Lucy wished it would get easier, but it didn’t, if anything it got more difficult every time.
“I, uh... I guess I’m not the best person to be climbing on the furniture,” she said softly, “since I’m the one that usually trips just walking on the ground,” she said, smiling slightly.
Flynn nodded like he agreed, hands going to her waist then as her own slipped to his shoulders and he lifted her effortlessly down to the ground. It was nothing really, a move they had made many times before, usually when he was helping her down from the Lifeboat in whatever random time and place they had flown to. Still, it felt different this time, probably because they were alone and what passed for home.
“Thankfully, some of us don’t need to climb to reach that high,” said Flynn, turning to the boxes and retrieving another sparkling garland. “Where do you want it?”
“Um, I guess over this side?” Lucy directed, walking by him to point.
As he said, Flynn didn’t really need to stand on anything to reach the ceiling, just had to stretch a little to put each decoration in place as Lucy handed them off to him and continued to give directions. She tried not to notice how his shirt parted company from his pants when he reached up, or the way his muscles rippled with the movement. As if she hadn’t noticed plenty of times before how good he looked in his clothes and sometimes couldn’t help but let her imagination roam a little on how much better the picture could get in the absence of said clothes.
Clearing her throat and forcing those kinds of thoughts from her mind, Lucy went back to the box to see what else they had to hang up.
“Um, I don’t know what to do with the ornaments, since we don’t have a tree,” she said, picking up two clearly plastic but glass-looking balls with glittery designs on the surface. “I guess the same goes for...” she began, reaching for the angel Flynn had been working on before. “Oh. You... I didn’t think you could actually fix it.”
“Very little is ever really broken beyond repair,” said Flynn philosophically as he came over to join her again, “even when it seems that way. A very smart lady taught me that,” he said, with that ever-charming smile that Lucy was convinced could bring whole rooms full of women to their knees given the chance.
“Are you trying to flatter me, Mr Flynn?” she asked him with a smile of her own.
“I am just telling you the truth, Lucy,” he told her simply. “Something I have always sworn to do. It’s no more or less than you deserve, after all.”
There was a time when Lucy would’ve been sure a remark like that was just another dig at Wyatt after the way the other guy treated her, but that was all too long ago to care about anymore.
Time was different for them, with all their trips to the past, all the time spent locked away from the real world. A couple of years ago, Lucy was terrified of Garcia Flynn and all that he seemed to stand for. Three years ago, she didn’t even know he existed.
She thought she was happy then, living her ‘normal’ life with her mother and Amy. Honestly, she had been happy, but so much of her life then had been a lie. People in her life hadn’t been so quick to tell her the truth as Flynn was. Except for Amy, who she still missed, every day.
“You know, when we were kids, Amy was always allowed to put the angel on top of the Christmas tree,” she said, holding up the little figure in her hands. “I wanted to do it sometimes, I figured we could even take turns, but no. Amy was always a brat about stuff like that and mom just let her get away with it. I used to get so frustrated with her but... but God, I would give anything to be fighting with her over Christmas ornaments now.”
Tears were filling her eyes by then, even as she laughed at how foolish she knew she sounded. She could barely stand to look at Flynn, knowing not only that he would sympathise with her pain, but be feeling just as much of his own too. He had a wife to miss, a child who ought to be so excited for this time of year. It was so wrong for her to be this broken over a sister when he had lost so much more. Lucy hadn’t realised she spoke that thought aloud until Flynn responded.
“Pain and loss is not a competition, Lucy,” he told her, reaching out and pulling her easily into his arms.
She went more than willingly, holding on tight, her head against his chest as she cried. Flynn whispered words of comfort, not all in English, as he rubbed her back, though the sentiment was clear enough regardless the language.
“You know, the angel on top of the tree... it was Iris’ greatest joy too. I would lift her up so high and she would place the little figure there. She was just so happy.”
“I’m so sorry, Flynn,” Lucy told him, pulling back to look up at him. “I didn’t mean to remind you.”
“I don’t need any help with that,” he told her, shaking his head and finding her a smile. “As much as it still hurts to know they’re gone, and always will as it should, almost all of my memories are happy ones. Not many people can say that when they suffer such a loss.”
“I guess most of my memories of Amy are happy too,” Lucy considered. “I like to think she would want me to make the best of what’s left, of the new family we’ve built here. I don’t know... I mean, I never knew Lorena or Iris, but from everything you’ve told me, I think they would probably want the same for you.”
She watched Flynn’s expression, almost afraid she had made him angry with such assumptions. Maybe she ought to have known better. Still, it was a relief to see him nod his head at last.
“I am sure they would,” he said softly.
It took a moment for Lucy to realise quite how closely they were standing yet, his hands near her waist, her arms resting on his own. If anybody saw them, some outsider who didn’t know, they might think they were more than friends. Perhaps they were, after all, hadn’t they just established they were family in a sense? Lucy winced at the very idea, feeling awful when she saw the look of confusion and hurt in Flynn’s eyes. His arms slipped away from her very quickly and he turned away.
“Uh, I don’t think there is very much more here that is worth the hanging,” he said, peering into the near-empty boxes on the table one more time.
“It’s a shame we couldn’t get some kind of tree.” Lucy sighed as she came to join him, standing closer than she usually might as she took a look in the boxes too, reaching in to grab what she thought was a sprig of fake holly from a dark corner. “Oh,” she said shortly when she realised her mistake. “Um, maybe you could...” she said, gesturing up to the ceiling with what she now realised was mistletoe. “I mean, Rufus and Jiya would probably appreciate it. Not that they really need any encouragement,” she said with a smile.
Flynn smiled too, a genuine expression they could share in thinking of their dearest friends. It was no surprise that the couple were determined to be as close as possible, as often as possible, what with her having been lost in the past for too long, and then him dying on her the way he did.
Lucy still truly believed it was a miracle that they managed to reverse all of that. There was a long way to go yet if they were going to finally defeat Rittenhouse, but lately, she had gained more and more hope as time passed. Each victory added to the pile gave her the strength to keep striving on.
Lucy shivered when Flynn’s fingers brushed hers when he took the mistletoe from her hand. Stepping in closer to her, he reached up to hang the festive plant from the beam directly above her head. She was holding her breath, waiting for him to step back again, only to realise he didn’t seem at all eager to do it.
“Flynn...” she said uncertainly, head tilted back out of necessity as she stared up at him.
“I’m giving you the chance to move, if you want to,” he said plainly. “I know, in the tradition, a woman under the mistletoe is fair game, but I guess my mother raised me a gentleman, so...”
“So,” Lucy echoed, taking a deep breath in and letting it out as she held his gaze, “I’m still standing here.”
A smile pulled at Flynn’s lips then. “Yes, you are,” he said softly, “and as beautiful as the first time I saw you,” he said, words he seemed almost relieved to have finally shared, as his hand came up to cup Lucy’s cheek and he slowly leaned down to kiss her.
The moment his lips made contact with hers, Lucy knew she was not going to be okay with some quick and friendly peck of a kiss. She flung her arm up around Flynn’s neck, holding him close, kissing him back with all the passion that had been bubbling inside her for far too long.
Lost in a moment she was happy not to escape from for a while, she didn’t even notice Connor coming back into the room, or his hasty exit moments later. He was long gone when she and Flynn finally broke for air.
“Oh,” she gasped, eyes looking past him. “When did...?” she asked, pointing over Flynn’s shoulder.
He turned to look, eyes wide when he realised, as she had, that a Christmas tree seemed to have arrived in the room at some point. It was short and scruffy looking, artificial too, but it was something. Something rather than nothing.
Without a word, Lucy slipped her hand around Flynn’s own and pulled him with her towards the poor, sad looking tree. As they stood before it, in all its four feet of bare, twisted branches, she produced the rescued angel from her pocket and showed it to Flynn.
“Together?” she asked, nodding her head.
“I hope so,” he replied, surely meaning much more than she ever could have hoped for as he gently took a hold of the angel from the other side.
The two of them placed her on top of the tree, stepping back to admire her a moment later, his arm around her shoulders, hers around his waist as they leaned into each other.
“Merry Christmas, Garcia,” she said softly.
“Merry Christmas, Lucy,” he replied, kissing the top of her head.
It seemed as if, somehow, it really might be now.