Chapter Text
Lucy woke to the sensation of soothing warmth enveloping her from behind. Almost too warm, she noted, when her bare skin stuck to his as she shifted. A movement he did not appreciate. His arm wrapped itself tighter around her midriff, pulling her flush against his chest. She stifled a giggle. When she’d first met Garcia Flynn, that ruthless, seemingly vicious man, ‘clingy’ would have been the last attribute she’d have associated with him. But here he was, literally gluing himself to her body from behind in his sleep.
At any earlier point in their relationship, she’d have found it unsettling to witness such open display of affection towards herself. She would have questioned it. All of it. Who they were, where they came from, if they were meant to enjoy such intimacy at all or if she would be able to survive it, if it were taken from her once she allowed it?
The latter still sent a ripple of anxiety through her entire being, but she soothed it over with logic and determination. She had come to terms with her feelings for him and the way he reciprocated. It was no longer just friendship, or some hollow infatuation given their close accommodation – she truly cared for him, felt the need to turn his smug grins into honest smiles that reached his gorgeous eyes. Longed for him to relax into her embrace whenever he felt wound up or somber and be his rock. Just as he had become hers. And if they lost each other along the way – she would do anything in her power to prevent that, anything – but if it happened, if they did lose each other, she would regret it either way. So why not just be happy together for as long as they had?
He tensed behind her, murmured something incomprehensible and buried his nose into her hair as he relaxed once again. The new angle, however, had her snort and wiggle in his grasp as he breathed down her ticklish neck.
He exhaled again, sending a shiver up her spine as she writhed, eliciting a low groan from behind.
“Dooon’t,” he muttered, undoubtedly disgruntled with her constant shimmying. But she couldn’t help it. Another breath, another wriggle, another grunt.
And suddenly she was on her back, pinned to the mattress beneath his body.
“You’re squishing me!” She whined, half chuckling, under his dead weight.
“You woke me, you pay.”
Despite his sleep slurred speech, she could see his lips twitch into a smirk as she craned her neck to get a glimpse at his placid expression. Eyes still closed, face half smooshed into the pillow and hair sticking out at every possible angle, he made an absolutely endearing picture. Silently she vowed to take one with her phone once he’d decided to release and unsquash her body.
“I wouldn’t have, if you hadn’t tickled me.”
“I didn’t.”
He sounded mildly offended now and it was all she could do not to laugh at the almost sulky tone of his voice. To settle his sentimental mind, she snaked both arms around his torso and smoothed her fingers across his skin in long slow strokes. Up to his neck, softly ruffling his hair and back down to his shoulders. A brief kneading of the muscle beneath drew a satisfied little sound from him and she smiled against his warmth. Lower then, she ran her fingertips along the knobs of his spine, down to his hips until she grazed the coarse hair on his thighs, earning a shiver. Back up again, in slow and even circles, until she reached his ribs.
By now his breathing had evened out again, giving away that he’d drifted off once more. Oh, it was too tempting. How could she even consider withstanding?
A few more languid pats along his battered skin, tracing lines and knotty remains of healed damage, then she seized her chance.
Biting her lip, she dug her fingers into his sides, poking into his muscle just in the right angles.
The squeaky yelp he gave was priceless and before she knew it, she found herself in a hopeless tangle of limbs, blankets and innocent laughter, trying to evade his relentless vengeance.
A good while after, once their breathing had settled and Flynn seemed to have accepted her most profound (and very loving) apologies for her ferocious attack, Lucy peeled herself from the covers to sit on the edge of her cot and stretch her arms above herself. Only to be disturbed by an overly excited knock on the door.
Dropping her arms back down, she sighed.
“Just a second, we’re up, I’ll be right there.”
“You better hurry!” Called Rufus through the door and Lucy was unspeakably grateful that he refrained from barging in this time. Busted with Wyatt was one thing. Busted with Flynn in their current state of undress was quite another matter. Not to herself, but to several members of the team without a doubt. She wasn’t going to hide it either, but throwing it into Rufus’ face, of all, was decidedly not a good idea.
***
“Garcia?”
In only socks and jeans, still undecisive which new pullover he’d try today, Flynn poked his head past the locker door at the mention of his first name. It was disturbingly strange to hear Lucy use it so easily. Not that there was anything about it, that was uneasy. It was an uncommon first name, yes, but otherwise perfectly good. It was just that he had not been ‘Garcia’ for a few years now. The last one to call him by his first name had been his wife. A memory that had paled so much by now that he could not decide which was more painful – the sound of his name on her tongue in his head or the fact that he was slowly forgetting the way she had pronounced it? Still, it was per se okay. Lucy calling him Garcia was just fine. He could perfectly well live with it if she enjoyed it. He just had his difficulties reacting to the sound after being called just Flynn for so long. Even in his own head. It would take some time for him to readjust to being called anything else.
“Lucy?”
“Just before we step out there, there’s a thing I’d like to talk about.”
He quirked a brow, already guessing what was to come, but nevertheless curious what went through her head.
“See, even in our former reality, to some of us it was quite the challenge to accept you moving into the bunker, living with us.”
He nodded, decided on the turquoise, almost bluish, turtleneck. The day was worth a bit of color. And maybe he’d perfectly blend in with the walls of their new common area. Disappear from anyone’s wary glances. He smirked.
“Now, while Wyatt and Jiya have come to realize you’re our ally – and I think so has Amy – there’s still Rufus, Denise and Connor.”
Again, he inclined his head, slipped into the pullover, and tugged it down to smooth out the wrinkles.
“So, I won’t rub it into their faces, but if you’re fine with it, I won’t hide this either.”
This. Referring to what they were to each other. This strange something, they hadn’t defined yet, but that was steady and cozy enough to be more than a random affair.
He raised his head at that, regarded her with a mixture of pride and satisfaction bubbling low in his belly. It was such a tiny decision to make, such an irrelevant detail in the big picture. Nonetheless it made his heart soar that she was offering to stand by his side.
“As you wish,” he replied, closed the locker, and stepped into her personal space.
“You’re in charge.”
***
The rest of the team had already gathered in the hangar when Flynn and Lucy got there. Nobody dared to mention their little delay, but the looks on the faces around spoke volumes.
Lucy was particularly worried about Amy's glance, a mixture of curiosity and skepticism. But she didn't have time to think about how the relationship between Flynn and her would be received by the team. They had barely reached the table when Rufus gave a tense "Finally!" and ushered them to sit down.
"May we find out why in the world we were so rudely robbed of our precious sleep?" Asked Flynn, who preferred to lean against the kitchen counter behind Lucy.
"Nice that you slept so peacefully while we worked through the night," Rufus shot back. "Which is why you are all sitting here. We cracked the encryption on Emma's hard drive."
His revelation made the assembled sit up straight and listen.
"By and large, many files are damaged and can’t be repaired. But we were able to filter out and reconstruct some of them. And in the process we stumbled upon this."
On Rufus' command, Connor turned the laptop over on which he had just been busy typing. Now there was a picture of a hand scribbled note displayed. On it: Several seemingly random numbers. Now just as curious as the others, Flynn pushed away from the sideboard to take a look at the screen.
"Coordinates," he stated. "For what?"
It was Jiya who spoke up to answer his question.
"We’ve already looked into it. Two of the places are warehouses. Officially, one belongs to a furniture store and the other to a frozen food supplier."
With two clicks she called up pictures of the respective buildings on the screen. One more inconspicuous than the other.
"Apart from the employees, nobody seems to go in and out. The same applies to the third coordinate point. However, this is not a warehouse, but an office building. We assume all three-"
"Are safe houses," Denise finished her thought. "Probably. And none of them have come up in our investigations or during the arrests."
For a tense moment there was a strange silence as the new knowledge began to sag.
"Those could also be targets," suggested Wyatt.
"Targets? What would they get out of it? Revolutionize the furniture industry?"
As Wyatt's eyebrows drew together in annoyance, Lucy found it hard not to chuckle at Flynn's comment. Sure, there was the possibility. But in view of the facts and the organizations previous targets, this assumption was rather negligible.
"But why," she threw in new doubts instead, "should they write down such important information and also keep it digitally. There are no lists of members. No records. That doesn't fit together."
"It doesn't," Denise agreed. "Sounds suspiciously like a trap," she added, resting her chin on her hand thoughtfully.
"On the other hand, they cannot predict when someone would fall into this trap, nor which of the three. They can’t fully guard all three buildings for years. Especially not now that we have put a large part of the organization behind bars”
A quiet throat clearing brought the attention back to Jiya.
"I know this might sound ... crazy now - but honestly, what's crazy after everything we've been through? - So, I'll just throw out an idea. Rufus is the one who cracked the encryption while Connor and I didn’t accomplish anything remotely successful. And Lucy, the future Lucy I mean, hinted that Rufus is an indispensable part of the team in bringing down Rittenhouse. It's just a hunch. A very vague one. But maybe this is the one fatal mistake they made."
For a second time since they gathered, an uncomfortable silence settled over the team. This time Flynn was the one to break it.
"Do we have any other clues? No matter how small?” A collective shake of the head was the answer he received.
"Then I suggest we take a closer look at the very few breadcrumbs that we now have."