Chapter Text
“Oh my god,” Jesse groans, spine popping and cracking as he twists himself through some vaguely complicated looking stretch in the middle of the elevator. “I dunno about you guys, but I could smash a beer right now.”
“Is that a good idea?” Lucy asks, ducking under Jesse’s inconsiderately swung arm, far more mocking than concerned. “Mixing alcohol with all those painkillers you’re gonna need?”
“I won’t need painkillers,” Jesse insists, somewhat belied by the grimace that visibly pinches across his profile as he tries – and fails – to bend and touch his toes.
“You sure about that, bro?” Kai offers from his position deep in the corner, flattened back against the wood panelling in an effort to stay clear of Jesse’s long, indiscriminately flailing limbs. “Got your ass beat pretty good out there today.”
“Oh, please,” Jesse scoffs, straightening up as the elevator doors ding open. “Dude was like, 5’3 and 110 soaking wet. He couldn’t beat my ass if you wrapped it in crepe paper, called it a piñata and handed him a baseball bat.” He spares a glance in Lucy’s direction, possibly prompted by the burn of her glare against his cheek. “No offence, Luce.”
Somehow, that does little to help Lucy feel any less offended.
But, before she can make that obvious with a thudding fist into Jesse’s shoulder, she’s distracted by the voice that’s had her in a chokehold ever since she first heard it attempting to order a pinot grigio in her local dive.
“That’s… an incredibly specific visual,” Whistler says, simultaneously confused and amused, pivoting out of the bullpen entryway so the NCIS trio can trail past her.
“Jakey wants one for his birthday,” Jesse and his poorly concealed limp explain, as Whistler falls into step beside Lucy, “and Heather thought it would be better to make it ourselves…”
“No wonder you want to drink,” Tennant adds, emerging from her office with one meticulous eyebrow arched towards the sky.
Jesse dumps his field pack onto his desk without any sense of ceremony. “How’d you know about that?”
“Just a lucky guess,” Tennant shrugs. “That, and...” she leans against the frame of her door, arms crossing over her chest, “...when Julie turned 8, Daniel said store-bought would be cheating.” A cloudy look overtakes her eyes, not dissimilar to the thousand yard stare Lucy has become so familiar with on trauma victims. “And if we weren’t divorced already...”
“That would’ve been the last straw?” Jesse finishes, a jump in his jaw exposing the pain that must be striking as he eases himself down into his chair.
“The last several, I think,” Tennant laughs, expression clearing like her mind has returned to the same building as her body.
“Is it really... that bad?” Kai asks, radiating a baffled vibe that reminds Lucy of the lost air that always surrounds him whenever anyone mentions a perfectly ordinary childhood experience that he missed while he was busy hunting for bugs in the jungle or whatever else he did instead of watching movies like a normal kid.
“Well,” Whistler starts, planting her hand on Lucy’s desk and giving Lucy a front row seat to a show as her forearm flexes, “I don’t know about piñatas. But I do think papier-mâché was invented by the devil.”
There’s a story there. Lucy knows there must be. And she knows she wants to hear it. She just doesn’t – or can’t – care enough to ask. Not now, not in this moment, not when her eyes are glued to the taut lines of Whistler’s muscles rippling under her skin.
So she just makes a mental note to force Whistler to tell her about it later. Maybe when the sleeves of her blazer aren’t pushed up to her elbows.
“Right?” Jesse’s voice rings out, cutting Lucy’s thoughts off at the pass before they can venture anywhere more inappropriate. “It’s just so fiddly. And I’m–”
“Not a fiddly guy?” Kai supplies, mouth splitting into a shit-eating grin as he catches Lucy’s gaze across the bullpen.
“Exactly!” Jesse exclaims, jumping gigantic foot first into the trap Kai laid out for him.
“Don’t worry, we know.” Lucy prepares to deliver the killer blow, twirling in her chair so she can stare straight at Jesse. “I still remember when that boy gave you his origami heart at the career fair. He was so excited and you just… squashed it, with your big ol’ sausage fingers.” She leans closer to Whistler and drops into a conspiratorial stage whisper, still a little bitter that Jesse had interrupted what was sure to become a very enjoyable daydream. “The kid cried.”
“No!” Whistler gasps, aghast, hand flying up off Lucy’s desk to press against her sternum. “Jesse!” She fixes him with a stern look, the same one that always makes Lucy think Whistler must’ve graduated summa cum laude from DIA's withering glare training. “How could you!”
“Y’know...” Jesse shakes his head, giving his beard a begrudging rub with his knuckles, “I was gonna say we should all go to Aurora. But–” he tries to glare back at Whistler, his effort notably lacking the scalding edge that she’s so perfected, “–if you two are just gonna gang up on me, you can stay behind.”
“Must be your lucky day then,” Whistler smirks, relaxing into casual slouch as she slips her hands into her pockets. “I actually–”
“Can’t make it,” everyone else in the room choruses, beating Whistler to the punch with varying degrees of exasperation.
Whistler’s head tilts to the side, frown creeping across her features, posture deflating from quietly confident into something more chagrined. “It’s just, I have–”
“Paperwork,” the team choruses again, each rendition this time inflected with a kind of resigned understanding.
Because they all know this drill.
It’s a protocol they’ve practised down to an art over the past six weeks.
Whistler gets invited – to drinks, to brunch, to dinner, to a game night – and she begs off, always with some version of the same excuse.
The only exception since Lucy’s not-so-surprise welcome home party was Tennant’s most recent potluck. In that case, Whistler mixed it up by deigning to say she’d attend – only to reverse course via a text that, while admittedly apologetic, also wasn’t sent until most people had already arrived.
And Lucy doesn’t want to let it bother her.
She’s an independent woman. She doesn’t need her girlfriend permanently attached to her hip.
But the ever-increasing familiarity of this new pattern isn’t making it any easier to deal with.
Instead, each family event Whistler flakes out of stings a little more than the last – feeding into a growing suspicion that something’s wrong like a drip feed of gasoline onto the fire of Lucy’s previously suppressed fears.
Fears that, in the long-term, Whistler won’t be able to be satisfied with the opportunities that Hawaiʻi can offer. That, once Whistler’s initial high at winning Lucy back finally wears off, she’ll realise the sacrifices she made to stay weren’t truly worth it. That, over the course of months or years, Whistler’s resentment will germinate and then mushroom until their relationship collapses under the sheer weight of it.
Because Whistler’s always been... thorough – or, in Lucy’s less charitable moments, anal – about reports. And forms. And spreadsheets. And anything else that could be considered a document.
But there’s only so much paper-pushing that one FBI agent could possibly be expected to do. And, to Lucy, this is starting to feel like it exceeds any reasonable interpretation of that threshold.
Kai, apparently, agrees. “How’d you piss Curtis off to get stuck with all the secretary duty?”
“You know how it goes.” Whistler’s mouth twitches at the corner. “No rest for the wicked.”
“No, seriously.” Jesse isn’t appeased by Whistler’s obvious avoidance. “What’d you do, huh?” He clasps his fingers together and leans forward over the top of his desk. “Insult his brisket? Hide his BBQ tongs? Ask which ‘70s porn star he stole his moustache from?”
A snort escapes Lucy’s nose and Whistler’s neck snaps around so fast that Lucy worries she might herniate a cervical disc.
“What?” Lucy protests into the face of Whistler’s disapproval, fanning her arms out in a call for support from the rest of the team. “You can’t tell me that ‘stache wouldn’t be at home in an old Hustler.”
Whistler turns on her heel to look at Lucy square on, eyes narrowing dangerously as she assesses Lucy the way she might a recalcitrant suspect. “I wasn’t aware you were such a Hustler connoisseur.”
Lucy lets her lips curve into a slow smile, spreading open until she’s baring her canines. “Everybody’s gotta have a hobby.”
“Interesting,” Whistler drawls, dry and unconvinced, one arm folding over the other into a woven knot across her chest. “What happened to being an NCIS agent who’s whole life is work, gym and me?”
Lucy offers a conciliatory shrug, entirely lacking any real remorse. “I should’ve included an addendum.”
“About...” Whistler draws herself up until she positively looms over Lucy, “...your passion for vintage pornography?”
“Mhm,” Lucy hums, dragging her gaze down and then back up Whistler’s body, noting the tension coiled from top to toe, a tell-tale sign that she’s struggling to decide whether she’s annoyed or turned on. “ It provides real insights into fashion history.”
Whistler’s grip on her own bicep visibly tightens. But before she can release what Lucy imagines would be a carefully calibrated retort, Tennant interjects with an ostentatious cough.
And it’s probably for the best.
Because a sharp back-and-forth that’s less argument and more foreplay would almost certainly fall afoul of the no flirting at work rule that Whistler has been determined to enforce ever since The Incident – when Alan got discovered in the copy room Lucy had sworn was too antiquated for anyone to actually use, after Lucy had been in the middle of shoving her hands up the sleeveless plaid mock-neck that drives her crazy every time Whistler wears it.
But she can’t say she isn’t disappointed all the same.
“So...” Jesse chimes back in, doing little to disguise his thirst for gossip, “...if it wasn’t the facial hair, what happened?”
Whistler shifts her attention off Lucy, leaving her to dwell on how much it feels like a loss. “His last brisket was dry.”
“Oh, no,” Kai groans, vicarious stress leaking out of his pores. “And you told him?”
“Yes,” Whistler deadpans. Then, as it becomes clear that Kai hasn’t detected the sarcasm, she rolls her eyes. “Of course I didn’t tell him.” She huffs out a sigh and drops her hands to her hips, pushing back the hem of her blazer in a way that only accentuates the length of her legs. “This might come as a shock but, I don’t really want to commit career suicide.”
Tennant smiles, wide and genuine. “Lucky for us.”
Whistler laughs, ducking her head like she doesn’t know what to do with the unexpected compliment. “You don’t miss Viner?”
Tennant shudders, face warping with a kind of horror. “Don’t remind me.”
“On that note,” Whistler says, twin hollows in her cheeks betraying the fact she’s biting back a smile, “unless you want him back, I do have to go.” She steps away from Lucy’s desk, movements measured and precise, offering her traditional farewell nod, still stiff but less so than it used to be. “Have a good night, everyone.”
And, as Whistler sweeps towards the elevator in a flurry of long strides, Lucy finds herself noticing that she never answered Kai’s question. Or Jesse’s. Not really. Not properly. Not in any truly meaningful way.
And that realisation only re-triggers the acidic concern that’s now a semi-permanent resident in Lucy’s gut. But – as she packs up for the day, aware of but not listening to the distant hum of conversation going on around her – she chooses to ignore it. At least while she’s surrounded by family, being plied with an array of delicious food and alcohol, in stitches at Jesse’s re-enactments of Kai’s latest disastrous interactions with Boom Boom.
Then – when she pushes through the door of apartment 1204, pleasantly buzzed but not drunk, to discover Kate perched at their kitchen island in the white knit v-neck that reveals a devastating amount of her collarbones – she decides to ignore it again. At least while Kate presses her into the wall of their living room in an emphatic demonstration of why her arms are the star of so many of Lucy’s fantasies, taking Lucy apart so sordidly and then putting her back together so tenderly that she’s not quite sure of her own full name by the end of it.
Because wilful blindness might not work forever.
But it will for tonight.
“You’re staring,” Ernie observes blandly, pilfering a chair from Kai’s empty desk so he can sit himself down opposite Lucy and the stack of financial records she’s supposed to be reviewing.
“Am not,” Lucy retorts, eyes never leaving the sight of Whistler pacing across Tennant’s office.
“Yes, you are,” he says, sliding into a more accusatory tone. “Look.” He jabs a finger in the vicinity of Lucy’s chin, noticeable in her periphery even as she fixates on the curve of Whistler’s ass under her criminally clingy pencil skirt. “I think there’s some drool right there.”
Lucy gasps, alarm erupting beneath her skin, spinning away from Ernie to slap a panicked hand against her – it turns out – bone dry chin. She scowls, eyebrows pulling together so tightly her forehead aches. Then she grabs a pen off her desk and whirls back around to fling it at Ernie’s head.
She misses by a foot.
And it should feel like a shameful failure but…
She can’t blame her aim for being thrown off after she catches a glimpse of Whistler’s tongue darting out to wet her bottom lip.
The pen clatters to the floor somewhere in the vicinity of Jesse’s unoccupied workspace and Ernie just cackles, tipping his head back until his nose is perpendicular to the ceiling. “Gotcha!”
“Oh, buzz off,” Lucy snips, pointedly directing her attention at the cash flow statement in front of her – rather than at the lethal line of Whistler’s jaw slicing through the air as she clenches her teeth, a cutting reminder of how her facial features must’ve been honed with god’s finest flint.
Or at the shine of her hair in the evening sunlight, the otherwise severe ponytail that Lucy is desperate to ruin softened by the gentle warmth of golden hour.
Or at the regal column of her neck, strong yet delicate, disappearing beneath the high collar of the blouse that Lucy’s been yearning to peel off her impossibly broad shoulders since the second she buttoned herself into it this morning.
At least, Lucy tries to concentrate on the mountainous pile of accounting documentation she needs to sort through – rather than on the increasingly likely and increasingly sickening possibility that, no matter how honest they may seem on the surface, Whistler’s words might not be entirely reliable.
Or that, no matter how much Whistler herself appears to believe them, they might not provide a truly trustworthy reflection of Whistler’s inner world.
Or that, no matter how comprehensively they account for Whistler’s purported actions, they might not represent a wholly accurate description of Whistler’s daily reality.
But it’s hard to maintain that dedication when the numbers keep blurring together into an indecipherable mass of black ink that almost makes her wish she’d just become a trophy housewife like her sister.
“No but really,” Ernie says, unexpectedly gentle voice carving through the dull throb that’s starting to hammer in Lucy’s temples. “Everything okay on the home front?”
“Of course,” Lucy sniffs, retrieving a new pen from her drawer so she can aimlessly circle an expenditure table she hasn’t really read yet. “Why?”
“You’ve got the face back.”
Lucy glances up from the page, taking in Ernie’s evident and – to Lucy – perturbing concern. “What face?”
“You know.” Ernie wheels himself closer, expression incisive and sincere in a way that makes Lucy’s veins tingle like he’s administering a contrast CT of her most cancerous emotions. “The one where it’s like you can’t decide if you want to kiss her or punch her or cry or all three at once.”
Lucy looks back down at the tiny font that corporations seem communally addicted to, denial pulling the corners of her mouth down into an admirable trout impression. “I’ve never had a face like that.”
“Lucy,” Ernie says, volunteering her name like a plea and a warning all at the same time.
“Okay, fine,” Lucy admits, throwing her hands up in reluctant defeat. “I just can’t figure out why she’s busier than a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest.” And Lucy’s an investigator, to her core. She can’t stand an unsolved mystery. It makes her brain itch like someone used her ears to funnel fire ants into her skull. “She didn’t come home til 2 am last night.”
Ernie shrugs as if he’s not seeing a problem. “We’ve all had cases like that.”
“Yeah, but...” Lucy sinks her molars into her inner cheek, taking brief solace in the distracting bite of pain, “...this doesn’t seem like a case.”
Ernie cocks his head. “Why not?”
“The vibe’s wrong,” Lucy states, plain yet firm, as if she’s presenting incontrovertible proof of guilt.
But Ernie just scoffs, incredulous. “The vibe?”
“Yes,” Lucy insists, unrepentant. Again, she’s an investigator. She knows how to conduct a vibe check. Her results are ironclad.
Ernie remains unimpressed, staring at Lucy like she just offered to replace his customary boba with one of Whistler’s green smoothies. “That’s your evidence?”
“Yes,” Lucy repeats, Ernie’s scepticism failing to sway her from her conviction.
“Alright, well…” he pauses, visibly weighing his options. Then he commits. “Have you asked her about it?”
“Yes,” Lucy sighs, running frustrated fingers through her curls, disregarding the risk that she’ll wind up looking like an Edward Scissorhands cosplay. “But she just blows me off. Every time.”
“And...” Ernie smirks, eyebrows waggling with a lewd suggestiveness, “...that’s a bad thing?”
“Oh, gross,” Lucy gags, face wrinkling with revulsion, more at the progenitor of the idea than the concept itself. “Not like that, you perv.”
“Yeah, but–” Ernie grins, clearly pleased with himself, “–it was funny, right?”
“No,” Lucy spits back, smothering any potential amusement under petulance, contemplating whether she should try to bean him with her second pen as well.
“What-ever,” Ernie sing-songs, like a very middle-aged, very male version of the stereotypical valley girl.
But Lucy doesn’t laugh.
And he reacts in an instant, dropping the comedy act, slipping into a cloak of earnest solemnity instead. “Hey.” He lays what Lucy guesses is supposed to be a soothing hand onto her wrist. “It’s Whistler. She loves you.”
“Yeah,” Lucy agrees, blinking away the threatening burn of impending tears.
Because she doesn’t doubt that.
Doesn’t doubt that Kate loves her.
Not really.
Or, not regularly.
Not anymore.
She just doubts whether it’s enough.
Whether their relationship is enough.
Whether she’s enough.
Whether she ever could be.
But she can’t say that.
Not here – not at work, in the middle of the bullpen, where her boss and her girlfriend would both see her cry.
Not now – not when the humiliation would force her to crawl, penitent and grovelling, back to her family just so she could use their connections in the space industry to arrange a one way trip directly into the sun.
“It won’t be you,” Ernie continues, a disturbingly specific response to the thoughts Lucy hasn’t shared aloud. “She’s probably just hooked into a big fish and up her butt about confidentiality because she’s scared any tiny snag might cut the motherload loose.”
“I think you’re mixin’ your metaphors a lil there, Ern,” Lucy deflects, giving into weakness and letting her gaze drift back towards Whistler. “And anyway, it’s not like we don’t talk cases all the time.”
“Sure,” Ernie says, calm and careful, as if Lucy is some especially skittish small animal. “But that’s when you’re already read in, right?” He gives her wrist a faint squeeze. “Or when anything she tells you won’t compromise the investigation.”
“She couldn’t just say that, then?” Lucy argues, eyes locked on Whistler as she gesticulates towards Tennant’s window, the glint of sun off her ring only serving to draw Lucy’s focus to the nimble fingers that she’s so adept at using to delectably catastrophic effect. “Instead of weaselling like a politician in a sex scandal whenever I mention all her overtime?”
Ernie lets out an odd choking sound, like he tried to swallow a laugh but it got stuck on the way down. Then he collects himself. “She probably assumes you already know.”
Lucy scoffs, dissatisfied despite the plausibility of Ernie’s theory. “You know what they say about assumptions.”
“I do,” Ernie concedes softly, before his tone hardens, becoming strident but not unkind. “Which is why you should stop making so many of them and just talk to your girl.”
“How am I supposed to do that–” Lucy drops into a hiss, spotting the clues that Whistler and Tennant are about to move towards the door in frighteningly perfect sync, “–when she’s never around.”
“You’re a smart woman.” Ernie pulls himself to his feet, releasing Lucy’s wrist and reaching over to clap her on the shoulder instead. “You’ll think of something.”
just left the office [Lucy, 19:26]
It would be more accurate to say that Tennant just banished her from the office, pulling rank to override Lucy’s objections about how many documents she had left to analyse. But that’s too many words to try to tap onto a very small, very bright screen when her brain hurts like it’s hosting a concert for an experimental garage band full of enthusiastic but musically talentless monkeys.
thinking pizza for dinner [Lucy, 19:26]
To be fair, it would be easier to count the nights when she wasn’t thinking that. But she’s not totally self-centred. Not always.
open to other suggestions [Lucy, 19:28]
And as she clambers into her car, before she can even start to fish around for the excedrin migraine bottle Kate has insisted on keeping stocked in Lucy’s glove box ever since Lucy confessed to her tendency for headaches, her phone dings with a reply.
[Kate, 19:32] Pizza sounds amazing.
Lucy rolls her eyes at the period. She’s been trying to talk Kate out of it – trying to make a compelling case that texting doesn’t require grammatically immaculate punctuation.
But, given the utter lack of success her efforts have been met with so far, she thinks hell could be the setting for a sequel to March of the Penguins before Kate sends any kind of written communication that doesn’t read like it was typed by the stick that used to live up her ass when she worked at DIA.
[Kate, 19:33] But I think I’ll be stuck here until late again tonight.
And it’s not surprising.
But it’s still disappointing nonetheless – igniting a largely irrational sense of abandonment low in Lucy’s gut, a discomforting prickle that she does her best to drown under a mouthful of leftover electrolyte water that’s long since become warm.
what r u gonna eat [Lucy, 19:35]
Then she ferrets the stash of pain pills out from beneath a tangled mess of receipts she really should get around to expensing and knocks back a pair, wincing when the movement makes strobes from the parking lot lights hit her eyeballs at a particularly painful angle through the windscreen.
[Kate, 19:36] I’m not sure yet.
[Kate, 19:36] But I can always grab something from around the corner.
Lucy frowns, eyebrows pulling together until they almost create the unibrow her brothers always accused her of having growing up.
Because she knows what that means – knows it means that Kate will forget to eat until whatever ungodly hour she gets home, that dinner will be whichever scraps she thinks she can scavenge from the kitchen without Lucy noticing, that she just doesn’t want to admit it in hopes of avoiding a lecture about looking after herself.
And that simply won’t do.
Not when Lucy is a functional adult with money and a vehicle and an eidetic memory for all the best pizza places on this island. So she doesn’t bother to reply, opting instead to jam her gear stick into reverse and drop a lead foot onto the accelerator.
And in the moment, when the alternative is yet another night alone on a couch that’s far too big without Whistler and her giraffe legs there to take up three-quarters of the space, this seems like the greatest plan Lucy’s mind has ever concocted.
But 90 agonising minutes later, when she’s finally knocking on Whistler’s office door, anxiety chewing at her stomach lining like a dog with an especially tasty bone, she’s no longer so convinced.
“Come in,” Whistler’s voice calls from behind an inch of solid wood, curt but not quite rude.
And that should be perfect. Except–
Small problem.
Lucy’s well-known status as scrappy NCIS agent – and now also Whistler’s girlfriend – might let her talk her way into the FBI building. But it doesn’t mean her swipe card will disengage the electronic lock on Whistler’s door.
It’s possible she didn’t think this through.
And maybe a more reasonable human being would just... knock again.
Or call back.
Or do anything other than Lucy’s next manoeuvre.
But Lucy isn’t a reasonable human being.
At least, not right now.
So instead of any of those sensible alternatives, she juggles the gargantuan pizza box from her left hand to the right and leans across until she can squash her nose against the sliver of window that separates Whistler’s office from the hallway with enough force that the thud draws Whistler’s attention.
And Whistler balks, expression undertaking an arduous journey from alarm to bewilderment and back again as she absorbs the sight of Lucy’s – probably quite deformed – face pressed against the glass. She stays frozen, bar her gaze flicking frenetically between the window and the scattered collection of books and loose-leaf paper that litters her desk, for – if Lucy had to approximate – about a decade. But then she makes a decision, rolling her chair back and towering up to standing, clicking across the floor until she can swing the door open.
“Lucy?” The short walk doesn’t seem to have done much to make Whistler any less startled, if her tone is anything to go by.
“Hi!” Lucy beams, projecting what she hopes is a normal level of enthusiasm, worried it might come off closer to deranged.
“You’re here?” Whistler plants a hand on her door frame, arm blocking Lucy’s view further into the room. “At my office?”
“I am here,” Lucy confirms, matching each syllable with a nod. “At your office.”
“Is there a case?” Whistler frowns, concern crinkling into lines across her forehead. “I didn’t get a call.”
And Lucy has to wonder what synapses in Whistler’s brain got fried in the few hours since they last saw each other. Because the enormous slab of prominently-branded cardboard clutched in Lucy’s grasp isn’t anything she’d call subtle. But Whistler doesn’t appear to have noticed it at all.
“There isn't a case.” Lucy waggles the pizza box for emphasis. “I just brought dinner.”
Whistler’s frown deepens. Not exactly the reaction Lucy was aiming for. “You brought dinner?”
“I did,” Lucy agrees, gnawing on her bottom lip as if that might subdue the anxiety that’s happy to return with more and more of a vengeance the longer Whistler remains disturbed by her presence. “But there was traffic up the wazoo on the way here so...” she scrunches her nose in apology, “...now it’s cold.”
But Whistler doesn’t seem like she’s really listening, staring at a point on the wall somewhere far above Lucy’s head, face twisting with concentration like she’s grappling with a particularly heinous algebra equation. Then she glances back down towards Lucy’s – much lower – level, confusion scrawled into wrinkles that Lucy can only pray she’s still around to see when they’re permanent. “How did you get in here?”
Lucy screws the toe of her boot against the carpet, nerves rendering her incapable of standing still, skin starting to feel hot and tight under the intensity of Whistler’s scrutiny. And not in the fun way that happens when Whistler gets her naked and stops to stare, and stare, and stare until Lucy has to threaten to take matters into her own hands if Whistler doesn’t hurry up and fucking touch her already. “Ortiz let me in.”
Whistler blinks. Once. Then twice. “Oh.”
“Is that...” Lucy shifts her weight from one foot to the other, craning her neck to better catch Whistler’s eye, “...okay?”
“Yeah,” Whistler says, absentminded, gaze oddly vacant. “Of course.” She blinks again, expression sharpening back into focus. “You just…” she trails off, reaching out to tuck a stray lock of hair behind Lucy’s ear, Kate escaping out of Whistler’s skin for a precious, affectionate second. “You surprised me, that’s all.”
And Kate doesn’t look mad about it, even as she retreats back into Whistler’s more rigid confines – looks almost touched instead, even as her commitment to professionalism pulls her posture back towards ramrod straight.
But guilt claws in Lucy’s chest regardless. Because she knows Kate isn’t big on surprises. They stress her out under the best of circumstances. And having Lucy materialise at her place of employment with no forewarning could never be called the best of circumstances.
“I’m sorry,” Lucy starts, barely louder than a whisper, shame clogging in her throat, a self-inflicted consequence of her own flagrant presumption. “I shouldn’t–”
“No.” Whistler shakes her head, firm but kind. Or maybe it’s Kate. Or some uncanny valley crossbreed of the two. Lucy can’t quite tell at this point. “Don’t apologise.” Her lips twitch, like maybe Kate wants to smile but Whistler won’t let her. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Lucy glances towards the floor, view blocked by the pizza she’s still wielding like a weapon, craving reassurance with the desperation of an addict on the come down. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” the Kate/Whistler amalgamation confirms, plain but achingly genuine.
Lucy looks back up, relief flooding through her veins. “So...” she raises an eyebrow, shuffling forward and prodding a corner of the box into Kate-or-Whistler’s navel, “...can I come in?”
And in an instant, any hints of Kate vanish – disappearing out of Whistler’s demeanour faster than Ernie ghosting a woman who’s shown serious interest in him. “What?”
Lucy jerks her chin towards the room behind the newly, inexplicably perplexed Whistler. “To your office.”
“Oh.” Whistler’s forehead furrows. “Uhh...” She throws an anxious look over her shoulder. “I mean...” she drags her gaze back onto Lucy, “...you said it’s already cold, right?”
“Yes?” Lucy offers, unsure of where Whistler’s going but intrigued all the same.
“So...” Whistler’s mouth turns down at the edges, something that might be negative on anyone else but on her is a tell-tale precursor to a smile. “It won’t get any colder if we take it home?” The smile breaks free from whatever chains Whistler might’ve been trying to restrain it with. “Where we have an oven?”
Lucy squints. “I thought you had to work late.”
“Well, I do, but...” Kate unexpectedly re-emerges, low and smooth, leaning forward to peek in both directions down the mercifully empty hallway, giving Lucy a brief but shattering glimpse down the three open buttons of her shirt. “Maybe I could play a little hooky?” She leans back, saving Lucy from her wildly inappropriate urge to dive into Whistler’s cleavage right then and there. But what Kate does next is even worse, dropping her hand off the door frame to trail her fingers up Lucy’s forearm, light and tantalising. “Just for tonight?”
“Uh... huh,” Lucy chokes out, channelling all her concentration into keeping a hold of the pizza she’s still in charge of protecting. Although, if she did let it crash into a wreck all over the carpet, at least then dinner and her mental state would match.
“Great,” Kate grins, wide and almost predatory.
Then, before Lucy can suck in so much as a single shaky breath, Whistler’s door is slamming shut in her face. And Lucy’s brain can’t figure out how to process the weird turn of events, moving at the pace of treacle as it fights to crawl out of the imaginary gutter where Lucy was letting Kate devour her.
Eventually, a message manages to struggle down her spinal cord and into her hands. But, just as she’s rearranging her grip on the pizza and raising a fist to execute a puzzled knock, the door flies open again. And Whistler reappears in front of her, blazer hooked over her shoulder with one hand, keys dangling from the other.
It’s a cataclysmic combination.
Lucy swallows thickly, rummaging through her mind for some coherent string of words that doesn’t include the primitive, thirsty gurgle that’s suddenly dominating her thoughts.
But it’s not a fruitful search.
And Kate must take pity on her, pointing down the hall with a barely suppressed smirk. “After you, Special Agent Tara.”
Or maybe it’s not pity. Maybe it’s torture – forcing her to listen to the way her title rolls off Kate’s tongue when they’re all alone but Whistler’s rules still dictate that Lucy isn’t allowed to do anything about it.
And it doesn’t become less torturous as they progress down the hallway, Kate following a few steps in Lucy’s wake, gaze burning against Lucy’s back with a heavy kind of intent.
But that changes when they turn into the elevator and Lucy spots Whistler’s reflection in the floor to ceiling mirrors that line the back wall.
Because her expression is unmistakably hungry.
Starving, even.
Just...
Not for Lucy.
And Lucy could take it personally that – maybe, apparently, somehow – she’s the only irrideemably randy one out of the pair of them. But instead, she just props a boot up on the handrail, transforming her leg into a precarious table she can balance the pizza box on. Then she pops the lid open, extricating one of the bigger-than-her-head slices and brandishing it in Whistler’s direction. “Eat this.”
But Whistler doesn’t move an inch, doesn’t relieve Lucy of the slightly limp, greasy yet delicious triangle of bread and cheese that Lucy’s waving under her undoubtedly famished nose. Rather, she stares – blank and mute – even as said cheese threatens to slide off onto the ground and Lucy’s thighs start to protest against the awkward stance she’s pretzelled them into.
“Kate?” Lucy prompts, readjusting her grasp on the slice to safely corral the toppings back into a secure position atop the thin base.
“There’s vegetables on that,” Kate finally says, sounding vaguely confused by a fact that would be obvious to anyone who isn’t legally blind.
“Yes,” Lucy agrees, deeply endeared by the dumb look on Whistler’s usually whip-smart face. “There are.”
“But…” Whistler blinks, slow and stupid, “...you don’t like that.” She levers her head over until her cheek is almost parallel to the ceiling, as if a different angle on the situation will help her understand. “Vegetables. On pizza.”
“Sure,” Lucy shrugs, nonchalant. Whistler isn’t wrong. She just hasn’t accounted for all the relevant factors. “But I know how you feel about nutrients, so...”
“Oh,” Whistler breathes, less a word and more a rush of air out of her lungs – big, brown eyes Lucy that would gladly stay trapped in forever taking on a suspicious gloss under the harsh fluorescent lights.
And it makes Lucy’s chest hurt – that being cared for is still such a foreign experience for Kate that she could be surprised to the verge of tears by the simple act of having her preferences considered in Lucy’s takeout decisions – each of Lucy’s heartbeats accompanied by sharp pang of grief for all the love Kate has always deserved but rarely received.
But she doesn’t say that – doesn’t flirt with the risk of making Whistler uncomfortable by mentioning something so emotionally charged while they remain ensconced in the bowels of Whistler’s workplace, in an elevator that’s taking an age and a half to ferry them down 6 storeys to the parking garage.
Wait.
That can’t be right.
Lucy frowns.
And calls on her more contortionist set of old flyer skills – summoning them out of the dusty recess in which they normally lie dormant at the back of her memory and twisting her body into a shape she might regret in the morning – until she can see the elevator button panel without jeopardising her control over the pizza, either box or slice.
It’s dark.
Completely and decidedly so.
Goddammit.
If she had a spare hand, she’d slap herself.
But she doesn’t.
So in lieu of that, she gestures as best she can towards the panel with a tip of her head and a slight shimmy in her shoulders. “Could you...”
“Oh!” Whistler startles, jaw dropping open, cheeks flaring with a faint flush of embarrassed pink, like a much taller – and much hotter – version of that surprised pikachu. Then she jolts into action, dodging around Lucy to press the button for sublevel 2. First, once. Followed by thrice more for good measure.
“Okay,” Lucy announces, resisting the instinct to laugh at Whistler’s uncharacteristic air of flustered incompetence, tensing tired muscles to hold herself steady as the elevator shudders into motion. “Now could you please just–” she flaps the pizza slice at Whistler again “–eat this already.”
Mercifully, Whistler does as she’s told this time around – freeing Lucy from her gloriously oily burden and ripping off a feral bite, accompanied by a borderline obscene noise that vibrates out from low in her chest.
And – as she eases herself down into a more conventional human standing position, groaning with relief when her legs are finally allowed to relax – Lucy has to smile, closed-lipped but full of love, watching Kate get transported closer and closer to ecstasy each time she chews.
Because Whistler still tends to be so uptight, so proper, so dignified – as long as there’s any possibility anyone might see her, even if it’s only their team, their friends, their family.
But with Lucy – just with Lucy – she’s not any of those things.
Not always.
With Lucy, she can be a person who’ll chug OJ straight from the bottle, who’ll eat dry cereal by the fistful right outta the box, who’ll moan so loudly over a slice of pizza that it echoes around an elevator.
And, for Lucy, it feels like a gift to get to see Kate like this – licking grease off her fingertips, head flopping backwards, eyelids fluttering shut – messy and unguarded and real.
It’s everything she wanted but – for most of two interminable, painful years – thought she would never have outside that fateful first weekend when Whistler couldn’t interfere with Kate’s authenticity because Lucy didn’t even know her last name, wasn’t ever going to know it, wasn’t ever going to see her again after those two nights and three days that altered Lucy on some fundamental, cellular level.
And her gratitude only swells further once they’re home and Kate – freshly wrapped in her favourite soft cotton robe – is studiously plucking each piece of bell pepper off Lucy’s half of the now revivified pizza, dropping them into her own mouth from greater and greater heights until one finally misses, splattering onto the countertop with a wet slap.
Kate laughs, pure and unrestrained.
And Lucy thinks her heart might burst.
“I missed this,” Lucy says, sentiment escaping almost involuntarily as Kate wipes her victim off the kitchen island and dumps his remains into the trash. “I miss you.”
And Kate doesn’t reply. Not immediately. But her expression shifts, melting into something crushingly gentle, radiating an overwhelming love that sometimes Lucy still can’t believe is really meant for her. Then she circles back around the island, movements thoughtful and deliberate, coming to a stop in front of Lucy’s stool, slotting herself between Lucy’s knees and reaching up to caress Lucy’s jaw. “I’m right here.”
It’s true.
She is right here – curving her fingers around the back of Lucy’s neck, gaze thrumming with a current of attraction that’s probably measurable from space, so close that Lucy could count her individual eyelashes if she wanted to.
For now.
But this isn’t normal.
Not anymore.
Hasn’t been since Lucy got home from her adventures at sea.
And Lucy knows this is the opportunity Ernie told her she’d be able to find – the opportunity to push Whistler into explaining her chronic absence, to extract answers to all the nagging questions that Lucy is haunted by on the many lonely nights when Kate isn’t there to distract her, to address the festering insecurities that have been progressively eroding the confidence she usually prides herself on.
But – as Kate leans in until she’s hovering a hair's breadth away from Lucy’s mouth, like she’s daring Lucy to kiss her already – that’s not the opportunity Lucy chooses to take.
Because if everything is going to fall apart in the end anyway, she can let herself have this first.
Can let Kate temporarily chase away any lingering unease with the tug of her hand fisting in Lucy’s hair, with the tremble of her thighs around either side of Lucy’s head, with the chant of Lucy’s name on her lips like a devotion as she crashes over the edge.
Can let herself ignore how similar this is to the bad before times – when they couldn’t stay away from each other but Whistler wouldn’t let them develop into anything committed either, inevitably sidetracking Lucy with sex whenever a conversation threatened to turn serious.
Can let herself indulge in this moment of pleasurable delusion.
At least once more.
Lucy could spot them from a mile away. Maybe not literally. But close to it. Because Jesse and Whistler are like a matching set of beanstalks, towering over everyone else on the sidewalk as they stride towards the NCIS building.
She breaks into a jog – the only way she could ever have a hope of catching up to her favourite redwood twins – attention torn between watching where she’s going and ogling the vast expanse of Whistler’s back, mesmerising even from a distance. She used to think that coping with suit and heels Whistler at work was the most Sisyphean of tasks – her poor lesbian brain eternally condemned to shove away the base urge to press Whistler into the nearest flat surface, only to have it roll back and flatten her whenever Whistler so much as glanced in her direction.
But, somehow, having to deal with t-shirt and field boots Whistler is even worse – the casual badass vibe setting every single one of Lucy’s gay nerves so entirely on fire that she could almost be tempted to jump into the ocean just for a brief reprieve from the heat that sears under her skin.
Speaking of–
“Dude,” Jesse says, voice carrying towards Lucy on the breeze, ”the El Niño swells have been sick.”
Lucy pulls back, slowing down to a walk before Jesse or Whistler can detect her presence. Because she doesn’t really understand what that sentence means. But she can recognise enough individual words to guess it’s a surfing thing. And surfing things aren’t her territory – are things she prefers to let Kate have with the boys alone.
Not because Lucy doesn’t like to think about the infinite dangers of the sea – about how little time the water would need to drown the love of her life, how easily the waves could mangle Kate into fish food, how quickly the currents could tow Kate out over the horizon never to be found.
Or, not only because Lucy doesn’t like to think about that.
It’s also because she knows that Kate often feels like a vestigial appendage in her friendships – tolerated by virtue of her connection to Lucy rather than valued for any of her own merit.
But surfing is different.
Surfing doesn’t have anything to do with Lucy. It couldn’t. Not now. Nor at any foreseeable point in the future. Even if she did get into the ocean without immediately collapsing into a panic attack that one time when she was agent afloat. She’s still never going to do it on a regular basis, on purpose, for fun.
So surfing remains Kate’s independent domain – one thing that can reliably give her a sense of worth in her own right.
And Lucy would never want to steal that from her.
But that doesn’t mean she won’t shamelessly eavesdrop.
“Mm,” Whistler hums, just audible from Lucy’s position six feet arrear, “I bet.”
“You’re missing out,” Jesse says, clomping out of the path of an inconsiderately piloted e-scooter.
“On Kai eating coral for breakfast?” Whistler asks, slightly judgemental in a way that Lucy probably shouldn’t find as hot as she does.
Jesse chuckles. “You heard about that, huh?”
“He didn’t want to admit it but–” Whistler shakes her head with an air of affectionate exasperation, “–the giant gash on his chin was a bit of a giveaway.” She scoffs, half derisive, half endeared. “Tried to tell me he cut himself shaving.”
Jesse looks over towards Whistler and Lucy dodges behind a palm tree so he doesn’t snare her in his periphery. “You shoulda seen him tryna act like it was no big deal and then whimpering like a baby when he thought we couldn’t hear.”
Whistler laughs, short but sweet. “I can imagine.”
“So...” Jesse draws out, clasping his hands together, both classic signs he’s about to pry, “...when are we gonna get you back out there?”
“July 29th,” Whistler replies, crisp and instantaneous, before confusion can fully filter through to the front of Lucy’s mind.
“That’s...” Jesse sounds mildly nonplussed, “...specific.”
“It’s in my calendar,” Whistler elaborates, unhelpfully.
Lucy can almost hear Jesse frown. “Anyone ever told you you’re too type A?”
“No.” Whistler’s tone is deadly serious.
“Never?” Jesse asks, dripping scepticism.
Whistler doesn’t bend under the scrutiny. “Not once.”
“You’re full of shit,” Jesse snorts, bumping his shoulder into Whistler’s.
“I’m actually very regular,” Whistler shoots back, without a second of hesitation.
And Lucy has to clamp her teeth down onto her own tongue to cut off a startled laugh that would undoubtedly blow her surveillance operation.
But Jesse laughs for her, loud and surprised.
Then he stops.
Only to start again, shoulders hunching until his name might as well be Quasimodo.
“So type A you've even gotta crap on schedule?” he eventually ekes out, between gulping breaths that may or may not be helping him regain his composure.
“Exactly,” Whistler says, smug enough that Lucy can imagine the self-satisfied smirk that’s surely painted across her lips.
Jesse tuts, disapproving but entertained. Then he heaves in one more steadying breath, posture straightening. “I still wanna know, though.”
“Know what?” Whistler asks, the picture of simple innocence.
Jesse isn’t deterred by the butter-wouldn’t-melt act. “Why July 29th?”
“Great question,” Whistler replies, the trademark uncooperative smile from her DIA days audible in each syllable.
Jesse sighs, heavy and resigned. “You’re not gonna tell me, are you?”
“Nope,” Whistler confirms, popping the P as she swipes her ID and yanks open the NCIS door.
“Y’know,” Jesse starts, faux-annoyance failing to hide the warmth in his voice as he follows Whistler through the entry, “you are such a pain in my ass sometimes.”
“I’m aware,” Whistler responds dryly, as Lucy lurches to grab the door frame before it fully swings closed. “And I think there’s a club for that. It’s not very exclusive but–” amusement leaks into Whistler’s tone as Lucy slips into the lobby with all the subtlety she can muster, “–I hear the hors d'oeuvres are fantastic.”
Lucy spies a cluster of Alan’s newest B-team buddies heading down a side corridor and ducks herself into the crowd before the beanstalks can turn to towards the elevator bank and discover her ruse – losing whatever Jesse says next under the excited chatter of overconfident probies who’d definitely wet themselves if they got shot at.
And as she’s swept down the hallway by the murmuration of baby agents who don’t seem to have noticed her existence – further and further away from the sibling bickering that filled her heart with fondness – her brain starts to itch with the pesky feeling that she’s missing something, like she’s overlooking a vital piece in a puzzle she didn’t even realise she needed to solve.
At first, it’s just annoying.
Then it gets uncomfortable.
Then it escalates closer to painful.
And then it hits her.
Harder than Jakey hit Kai’s shin when he whiffed his swing at the tragic excuse for a homemade piñata Jesse proudly hung in his backyard last weekend.
You’re missing out.
When are we gonna get you back out there?
The memory of Jesse’s voice reverberates around in Lucy’s head, bouncing off the walls of her skull, pounding her with overlapping waves of nauseating clarity.
You’re missing out. When are we gonna get you back out there?
You’re missing out. When are we gonna get you back out there? You’re missing out. When are we gonna get you back out there?
You’re missing out. When are we gonna get you back out there? You’re missing out. When are we gonna get you back out there? You’re missing out. When are we gonna get you back out there? You’re missing–
Lucy drops out of the flock, ripping her phone out of her back pocket and smashing dial before her mind can catch up with what her hands have decided to do.
“Hey, Luce,” Kai answers after a lone ring, irritatingly cheerful.
“When’s the last time Whistler went surfing with y’all?” Lucy spits out in a rapidfire rush, not bothering with pleasantries, words spilling uncontrolled off her tongue.
“Huh?”
“Whistler,” Lucy repeats, slower but no less accusatory. “Surfing with you. When was the last time?”
“Oh. Uhh...” Kai drones, like his thoughts have chosen the most inconvenient moment to start moving on island time, “...just before you got back, I guess?”
And the bottom plummets out of Lucy’s already sick stomach, bypassing the floor and falling straight down to the depths of hell.
“We thought you weren’t lettin’ her outta bed,” Kai adds, filling the space left by Lucy’s silence with details that only exacerbate her urge to hurl.
Because that couldn’t be further from reality.
Surfing Saturdays have been sacrosanct – Kate showing a religious commitment to beginning the weekend with a 5 am wakeup followed by hours out of the house, no matter how busy the rest of her days have been.
And Lucy never complained, never let herself become bitter, never tried to make Kate feel guilty about leaving her – not even after weeks when they’d been lucky to see each other in anything more than scattered five minute increments.
She knew it was important for Kate to have that time – to relax, to bond with the boys, to exist away from the constant pressure she usually puts herself under – so important that it was worth sacrificing a rare opportunity to just be together, uninterrupted and unencumbered.
And maybe Kate never actively said she was going to the beach. But she never said she wasn’t, either. So of course Lucy would let herself assume, let her knowledge of Kate’s old routines colour in the gap, let herself be lulled into a false sense of security.
Of course she’d be a fool, an idiot, a dupe – whatever you might call the kind of sucker who’d trust that a woman who lied by omission for 18 months and only admitted it once there was no more room for denial was... simply never going to do that again.
Of course–
“Luce?” Kai’s voice cuts into her spiral, an unwelcome but useful reminder that she’s still at work. “You there?”
She hangs up without a goodbye.
“Shh,” Kate hushes, heartbreakingly tender, touch meandering loose patterns across Lucy’s forehead. “Just sleep.”
She does this. On Saturdays. Maybe only some of them. When her elaborate system for getting up without rousing Lucy in the process fails. Or maybe it’s all of them. And Lucy just doesn’t know about it when the system succeeds.
“I love you so much,” she murmurs, brushing a kiss to Lucy’s temple, lips lingering against Lucy’s skin for a second that feels like an eternity. “And I’m so grateful.” Her thumb and forefinger smooth over Lucy’s closed eyelids. “Every day.” Her palm slides over to cradle Lucy’s cheek, voice fracturing around the edges. “Th– that you… that you let me.”
Normally, Lucy relishes it. Even if sometimes it can make her feel a little like a fussy toddler being tricked into sleeping against her will. Mostly it just makes her feel cared for. Feel cherished. Feel fucking adored.
“Thank you,” Kate whispers, thick with sincerity, resting her cheek against the top of Lucy’s head. “For accepting me.” She nuzzles her nose into Lucy’s hair. “For being who you are.” Her breathing quivers, air snagging in her throat on the way down. “For everything.”
But not this morning.
This morning it makes Lucy feel motion sick – mind sent careening back onto the dizzying carousel it’s been spinning around since Thursday’s calamitous afternoon.
Maybe she overreacted. Maybe her world hasn’t been tipped upside down and fucked seven ways til Sunday. Maybe Kate just wants to surf alone but doesn’t want to risk offending the guys by admitting it.
Or maybe her first instinct was correct. Maybe Whistler’s hiding something that Lucy could’ve already uncovered if she were better at reading between the lines of her behaviour. Maybe she’s just chosen to be blind to red flags Whistler’s been twirling with more enthusiasm than Pearl-Hickam’s conjoined colour guard.
“I’ll be back before you know it,” Kate husks, drawing away inch by gradual inch until only her fingers are left, feathering along the shell of Lucy’s ear. “Promise.”
And Lucy cracks, pent up suspicion crashing through the dam that had been holding it back – demolishing past the walls she diligently but tenuously constructed out of her fear that starting this conversation would mark the irrevocable end of all her dreams for the future. “Where are you going?”
Kate’s hand retracts like she’s been electrocuted, snapping away from Lucy’s face so quickly it almost breaks the sound barrier. “What?”
“Where are you going?” Lucy repeats, aiming for curious rather than critical, even as a flicker of annoyance licks at the spaces between her ribs.
“Now?” Kate asks, audibly apprehensive.
“Yes,” Lucy confirms, swallowing the urge to make a sarcastic dig about the stupid question, staring at the blank insides of her still-closed eyelids so she doesn’t have to watch Kate decide whether to lie to her.
It must be a difficult choice.
Because her pause is long and heavy – dragging out until Lucy is about ready to scream.
But then she sighs, profound and pained. “To the office.”
Lucy’s eyes flash open. “The office?”
“Yes,” Kate says, hovering beside the bed, hands wringing so tightly that her knuckles threaten to burst out through her skin.
Lucy scoffs, disbelief driving her to fling the comforter off her body and shunt herself up to sitting. “At the asscrack o’ dawn on a Saturday?”
“Yes,” Kate echoes, biting at her bottom lip, teeth glinting in the dim early morning light.
And Lucy just scoffs again – plan for an interrogation solidifying in her mind as she hauls herself out of Whistler’s vertiginous bed, powered by offence at the fact Kate mustn’t think she’s worth the effort of crafting a convincing cover story.
But – as Kai is always eager to remind anyone who’ll listen – no plan survives first contact with the enemy.
Or, in this case, first contact with Lucy’s phone – ringtone blaring out so suddenly that Kate jerks with shock and almost headbutts the bedpost – a call from Tennant staying the potential execution of their relationship thanks to a meth lab explosion in a rear admiral’s backyard.
And Lucy knows – from the instant she walks out of the apartment with Whistler’s wide, sad eyes silently following her every move to the instant she slides her key into 1204’s lock eleven hours later with the acrid stench of burned plastic still clinging to her hair – that the stay is only ever going to be temporary.
She just doesn’t expect everything to return to shit quite so immediately.
Or quite so completely.
“Lucy?” Kate’s voice calls from the vicinity of the kitchen, lacking any of her typical welcome home warmth, tinged with a cold unease instead.
And Lucy can’t be bothered to unpack that. Not now. Not after an interminable day spent elbow-deep in the bombed-out carcass of an amateur drug manufacturing operation, hounded by allegations of a misogynistic set-up. So she doesn’t reply, preferring to mutely toe off her boots and kick them into a haphazard heap in the corner that’s sure to get on Whistler’s nerves.
But Kate isn’t deterred by the absence of a response, rounding the corner into the entryway, brandishing a vegetable peeler like a knife. “Oh.” Her gaze lands on Lucy and her stance softens but her expression doesn’t, tension clear in each plane and crevice of her face. “It is you.”
“Yep,” Lucy snips, refraining from asking what Kate was planning to do if it wasn’t. Poke the intruder in the eye? Frisbee the peeler at their neck? Hope they had a phobia of green kitchen implements?
“It’s just...” Kate re-stiffens as Lucy brushes past her on the way into the living room, “...Kai said you wouldn’t be done for another couple of hours.”
And Lucy’s already sour mood curdles into something rancid. “You spyin’ on me?”
Kate blanches, grasp tightening around the peeler she’s still clutching like a lifeline. “No, I–”
“Really needed to know when I’d be home?” Lucy finishes, tossing her backpack so it clatters across the floor and skids to a stop under the side table by the couch.
Kate audibly swallows. “I just–”
“Couldn’t ask me?” Lucy interrupts again, spinning back around to level Kate with an accusatory stare. “Had to go behind my back to ask my coworker instead?”
Kate wilts, folding in on herself until she seems about 4ft tall. “It wasn’t like that.”
“Oh, yeah?” Lucy leans against the arm of the couch, arms crossing over her chest like a shield. “What was it like?”
“We just– we were talking.” Kate’s tone grows pleading, hints of panic barely concealed in her eyes. “And he– he just– he told me.”
“So…” Lucy lifts an unconvinced eyebrow, “...why does it matter if he was wrong?”
Kate shrugs, defeated. “I was gonna make dinner.”
“Dinner?” Lucy almost laughs. Kate hasn’t cooked in weeks. “For us?”
“Who else?” Kate frowns, gaze darting between Lucy and some more distant point over Lucy’s shoulder.
“You tell me,” Lucy says, dismounting the couch arm and taking a pointed step back towards the ajar balcony door she can see reflected behind her in the hall mirror.
Kate takes a matching, albeit more desperate, step forward. “Please don’t.”
“Why not?” Lucy asks, hot anger draining away as icy realisation trickles down her spine.
“Be– Because– just... I–” Kate fumbles, tongue tying itself in knots, feet stuttering across the floorboards as she creeps closer to Lucy’s zone of personal space.
“Just tell me,” Lucy says, more request than demand, finding herself oddly detached from the hurt of the situation – like her devastation can’t figure out how to penetrate the dense layer of relief that comes with no longer feeling confused. “Please.”
But Kate can’t manage to get the words out, mouth opening and closing without ever producing a sound, vegetable peeler creaking under the pressure of her ratcheting vice grip.
So Lucy does it for her, laying all the now irrefutable cards out on the table for them both to see in the bright sunshine of the Hawaiian summer afternoon.
“You’re cheating on me.”