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Lucy is at Wyatt’s door.
Lucy is at his door. His door.
Wyatt blinks at her like an idiot, pondering a tad grouchily if he’s gained a serious concussion during his latest escapade in time. Shot, brained, and Jesus, how had she even got his address?
“Hello,” she announces, a touch too cheerfully. Her smile is wobbling all over the place, enough to set Wyatt’s senses tingling. Something isn’t right, something is off. They’ve probably fucked with the timeline in some catastrophic and irreparable way and his head hurts.
“How badly did you miss me, sweetheart?” He slants his smile slow. It is a calculated move, one he has practiced and honed. Lucy falters, as expected, but rallies sooner than he’d like. It’s dawning on him that she probably wants an invite in, and he can’t think if he’s got stuff about Jess left out or, honestly, when the last time was that he did his dishes. Time travel has a way of blurring priorities. Wyatt does not like company.
Lucy shoves a case of beer across his threshold. “I think we can both use this.”
That said, she pushes on past him, smacking him in the leg with… a suitcase? She drops it unceremoniously by his feet and goes to his couch, all a big show of ease and comfort. Her smile looks tremulous enough to break.
Gaping at her bag, he manages to choke out, “Staying awhile? I know we’re all ‘gelling as a team’…” He lets obnoxious air quotes say what he’s afraid to.
Lucy scoffs and struggles for a moment with the cap on the bottle. He reaches for it to assist, but she has another in hand almost instantly. This time, she twists it off and takes an admirable chug, at least for a historian. It is strange seeing her in modern clothes for longer than a second here or there. Her blouse hugs her shape, and Wyatt throws back a large swallow of his own.
“I left my fiancé.”
My fiancé and he knows she has forgotten his name. Life has taken on an air of ridiculousness since the Lifeboat became a thing.
“I mean, I guess we’re on a break.” She laughs awkwardly. “I don’t know. I’m going to Mom’s.” A nod at her suitcase.
Wyatt doesn’t know what to say to that. His apartment is a mess. His humiliation is epic, intense. Lucy is looking at everything but the socks he’d kicked off earlier. For fuck’s sake, he’s in ancient sweatpants, saved from all the way back to Basic. He has a reputation to uphold, and he is not upholding it.
Clearing his throat, he chooses to ignore the small hole by his knee and how put together she always looks, even uncomfortable and thrown for a loop.
“If you’re after a bit of rebound action…” he drawls, raising an eyebrow.
Lucy scowls at him over her beer. “I am after this.” She takes a gulp for emphasis. “You shouldn’t drink alone, and I think you need—”
“Rebound action?”
She laughs, which he likes, but his head takes that moment to implode. Cringing, he pushes his beer bottle against it, relieved by the cool glass.
“You need a doctor.”
It’s an order. He smirks at her around the bottle. “I’ve taken worse hits than this.”
She looks doubtful. A moment and then another, and now it’s uncomfortable. Wyatt talks a good game, he knows it, but the truth is that he’s not been around a lot of women, or at least not women he’d spent much time talking to. Jess had been different. Jess had understood him. The thought of her adds a different level to his headache, and he is suddenly unbelievably tired.
“Crazy day today,” he tries, at the exact moment she says, “I don’t want to stay at my mom’s tonight.”
That throws him, and she’s blushing, her hand not holding her beer held up in protest.
“Not, like, God… that sounded like an invitation.”
Lucy is squirming. Wyatt raises an eyebrow, somewhat enjoying her discomfort. The whole thing seems vaguely humourous to him, in a way he can’t quite pinpoint.
“Not like stay stay. Just… uhh… stay. Just for tonight, while I figure out what the hell I am going to tell her. She’s going to be so mad about all this.” A quick swig. “‘Really, I’m sorry for ending my engagement to a complete stranger. Oh, you didn’t know he’s a stranger? Yeah, he appeared right around the time your cancer disappeared!’”
“How’d he take it?”
“Really well, that’s the worst part. I’m sorry I came here. I just…”
“I know.” He smiles at her for real, mostly to put her at ease, and also because it’s kind of nice that she ran to his house after leaving what’s-his-name. He makes a split second decision. “Take the bed.”
He leaves the room on her protests, grabbing a second beer as he passes her. He chugs most of it making sure nothing private is out for prying eyes. Jessica, no matter how much he wants the team to know, still seems safer as his secret. It’s a stupid thought, selfish in its own way. It's his timeline and his alone; Wyatt has always been an intensely private person.
When he comes back, blankets for his new bed on the couch in arm, she is wearing pajamas. He chortles at her, at the strange cats-sleeping-on-clouds pattern on her pants, and nudges her out of the way. He’s going for brotherly, for familiarity. If he notices how sweet she looks, how sweetly geeky really, he’s not ready to acknowledge it, even to himself. Lucy jostles him back, comfortable now.
“Don’t laugh at my pants,” she admonishes. “Yours are from, like, the Bush era.”
He pushes a second beer on her, all at once strangely glad for the company. His head is still pounding, but the claustrophobic feel of his apartment has lifted slightly. He still hates company, but he does like alcohol.
“Wyatt, I—”
He knows that tone. It’s going to lead to feelings, to things about Jess, and mystery fiancés, and mothers who are no longer on death’s door. He doesn’t want to talk about sisters who ceased to exist and fate and fucked up meant-to-be-bullshit.
“I’m going to let you in on a few trade secrets,” he says, settling back against the cushions to better face her. At this angle, their knees brush, but that is what it is.
She looks skeptical. “How hard did you hit your head?”
“I’m going to teach you how to drink like a soldier.”
Lucy laughs at that, an honest laugh, but then she is protesting. Wyatt ignores her, grabbing for the blanket. He puts his feet on the table and holds his bottle at the ready.
“The goal of this mission—” He is very serious. “—is complete and utter annihilation. Do you accept this mission?”
Lucy has a thousand things to say, he can see it. He can also see the moment it appeals to her, the moment she decides not to talk about fate et al.
“Bottoms up, soldier,” she says, a saucy smile of her own.
Chugging beer is not his favourite past time, but he likes to win. As soon as her lips touch hers, he’s downing his, trying not choke or do anything else that might imply he really isn’t that good at this. Give him hard liquor any day. Still, the beer floods his throat like sweet relief, and he is almost having fun. He is having fun.
“Beat you!” She is triumphant, knocking into his shoulder. “Maybe I should teach you how to drink like a historian?”
Wyatt is smiling like an almost-drunk. Lucy is on his couch. Lucy is on his couch. The suffocating silence of his apartment, a constant when he can't get out of being here, lifts, however momentarily. Wyatt hates company, but he can make an exception.
Pitching the cap of his bottle in the general direction of the table, he asks, "Does this end in some kind of stripping game?"
"Ha," she rebuffs, holding her bottle up for a friendly cheers. "My modern bra is not for your eyes."
"I hate this timeline," he jokes, knocking his bottle against hers. "To history!"
"To history!" she echoes, though her tone implies that, at this point, she thinks it can go fuck itself.
"Fuck history," he amends.
She pauses, and something painful crosses her eyes for the briefest of moments. "Yes," she says, thinking God knows what. "Today, fuck history."
They hold eye contact for a moment too long. Somewhere out there is a fucking nuke, to name the biggest of their problems. Somewhere out there is--
But Lucy cuts off the angsty turn of his thoughts. Tomorrow, that is for tomorrow. Tonight, there is company and there is sweet, precious beer, and Lucy, with her frazzled smile tinged with sadness.
"Bottoms up," she murmurs.
"Bottoms up," he replies.