Chapter Text
They’re getting to know each other, and they trust each other all right. That’s easy. But understanding each other – that takes a little time.
Rufus is a friendly guy, and he’s certainly willing to give his opinion on things, but he’s not always… expressive. At least, not like this. With a few drinks in him, all it takes is the right question and suddenly he’s gesticulating wildly and waxing lyrical about what appears to be his favourite subject while Lucy and Wyatt watch in tipsy bemusement.
“Einstein always said time is a fourth dimension,” he’s saying, his unfocused gaze directed somewhere in between the two of them. “And it’s directional, usually only forward, but with an Einstein-Rosen bridge, you can connect two points in spacetime – spacetime means thinking about space and time as a continuum, see, and…”
Wyatt looks at Lucy. She scrunches up her face, tilts her head to one side, and gives a tiny shrug. He raises his eyebrows and returns the gesture. They both go back to watching Rufus.
“But to make the wormhole bigger,” Rufus is saying, “You’d need exotic matter, that’s matter with a negative energy density, but…”
Wyatt picks up his beer and takes a slow pull. Lucy takes a peanut from the bowl in the bar and nibbles at it. They glance at each other again, and one corner of Lucy’s mouth twitches upward. Wyatt presses his lips firmly together. If he smiles, he’s going to start laughing in sheer confusion at Rufus’s stream of words, and if he does Lucy will too, and if they laugh at him Rufus will never forgive them and he will never, never be this enthusiastic about anything ever again. So they both shift their focus back to Rufus and “hmm” attentively.
“And THAT,” Rufus finishes triumphantly, “Is how we ended up getting drunk at a bar in the seventies!”
“Strategically drunk,” says Wyatt.
“Yeah. Strategically drunk. See?”
They both nod in unison, solemnly, for a second, and then Wyatt starts shaking his head, and Lucy says, “No, not at all.”
“Didn’t understand a word of it,” Wyatt confirms.
Lucy sees the look of disappointment on Rufus’ face and takes pity. “If it makes you feel any better,” she tells him, “We now realise that you are actually very smart.”
“You didn’t realise that before? I’m the pilot of a time machine that I helped build!”
Wyatt picks up a glass of beer and presses it into Rufus’ hand. “It’s okay,” he says. “You do the science stuff. We do the other stuff. We don’t need to understand what you’re actually doing.”
“But you asked,” says Rufus, looking imploringly at Lucy.
“I know.” She puts her hand over his and gently pushes the glass toward his mouth. He looks surprised to see it, but takes a gulp.
“I am very smart,” he reminds them, once the glass is empty. “And I deserve another drink. And you’re going to listen to me talk about string theory.”
Wyatt signals the bartender for another round, leans an elbow on the bar and turns his full attention to Rufus. On the pilot’s other side, Lucy does the same. “Okay, Rufus,” he says. “Tell us about string theory. We’re totally going to pay attention.”
They don’t. Later, they learn together that time travel is much, much worse with a hangover.