#I tasted one for the first time methinks yesterday

[scrimblyscrorblo]

He’s making chocolate strawberries. Giyuu is me when I receive a spatula, shove that thing so far down my throat for the sugar

[qqueenofhades]

Uh uh. Nope. We got enough of the Lucy/Flynn betrayal heartache in the finale, I cannot handle it in the trash saga too. Fix it! Fix it now! ... please?

yadda yadda the trash saga of flynn and lucy methinks you know the drill

The door shuts with a thump, Wyatt mutterssomething about could that proprietor have been giving them any more side-eye(to be fair, turning up with an injured, clearly dangerous, armed lunatic in towdoes tend to have that effect) and he and Lucy heave Flynn onto the bed ashe continues to glare red murder at both of them. His bullet wounds aren’tlife-threatening, but they still need attention, and to judge from the amountof blood already spattered on his jacket, that should be sooner rather thanlater. Wyatt desperately needs to go back out and find the Lifeboat before JohnRittenhouse comes looking for it (let him be good and distracted at thismeeting of his, Lucy prays) and to try to find a way to contact Rufus. And asgerm theory, Louis Pasteur, and Robert Koch are still another forty years away,any surgeon they can find here will be only marginally better than useless.Lucy knows more about it than they will, and she’s a doctor of history, notmedicine. They had enough trouble finding a boarding house as it is, with thecity packed for the inauguration, and Lucy isn’t sure she wants to drawattention to herself or their hiding place by going out and looking. “Wyatt,”she says. “You go. I’ll… take care of things on this end.”

He cocks a skeptical eyebrow at her. “Really? With himsitting there looking like he wants to bite your head – or other parts of you –off?”

“I can hear both of you, you know,” Flynn growls. “In caseyou were wondering.”

Wyatt shoots a black look at him, then turns back to Lucy,putting a protective hand on her arm. “Look,” he says, still more quietly. “Idon’t know everything that happened while we were apart, and this is badenough. But if Flynn has it in his head to hurt you for something – ”

“He’s not going to hurt me.” Let Flynn overhear that,if he’s so inclined. “You know we need the Lifeboat back online yesterday. I’llfigure something out. Rittenhouse could be sending out a squad to get it rightnow, and if we lose it too, we’re done for. Take care of yourself, okay?”

Wyatt pauses for a long and loathing moment, then nods tersely.His hand lingers on her arm (something that Lucy most assuredly sees Flynn’s eyesflicker to, for all his affection of viciously ignoring them) and then he letsgo, turns away, and checks that he has his gun and it’s loaded. He takesFlynn’s too, with a very pointed look. Then he lets himself out, footstepsthumping away down the hall, and Lucy and Flynn are left alone in the smallroom, staring each other down, the tension thick enough to not only cut with aknife but serve for dessert lightly chilled. For the longest moment, neither ofthem says anything. Then Lucy goes to the wardrobe, opens one of the drawers,and starts rummaging around. Flynn watches her until curiosity finally gets the betterof anger. “What on earth are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out how to stop you from being a dead bodysewn into a mattress,” Lucy says shortly. “You could be the origin of the urbanlegend, you know.”

Taken by surprise, Flynn barks a laugh, which turns into agrimace as more blood soaks into his jacket. Then he glares at her, evidentlyresenting her even more for it, and Lucy struggles with a brief and intensedesire to just pick up the cast-iron coal scuttle and brain him with it.Instead she pulls out sewing scissors, a needle and thread, some rags, a bottleof the kind of old-timey medicine that proudly lists its ingredients asalcohol, cocaine, morphine, heroin, “and other Healthfull Substances,” and abizarre metal instrument that can work as tweezers. She scoops them all up,goes downstairs to the kitchen, and quietly asks the black maid who works there(she hopes she’s free, not a slave, but history has not been designed to makewhite women feel comfortable) for some boiling water. For the man upstairs.He’s hurt, and she needs to tend him.

The maid is skeptical, but also doesn’t want the trouble ofa death on the premises, and agrees to boil all Lucy’s tools and rags, althoughshe clearly has no idea why. Lucy tells her it’s a new theory in Paris, fromwhence they have recently arrived (hopefully this will account for anystrangeness of their clothes or behavior – when in doubt, blame the French) andthe maid nods gamely. Then, when the tools are well boiled and thus as sterileas they are going to get, Lucy washes her hands in some of the water that is ashot as she can stand it, scrubs them with the cake of rough lye soap, rinses,and takes her impromptu surgical kit back upstairs.

She half expects Flynn to have pushed open the window andescaped, limping across the city leaving a trail of blood, with a Bowie knifein his teeth to track down John Rittenhouse and gut him like a pig in front ofhis horrified disciples, but he’s still there, more bad-tempered than ever.“Are you done looking for your craft supplies yet?”

“I’m trying to stop you from dying of gangrene,” Lucyinforms him coolly. She knows he’s upset, she knows he’s hurt, but she’s stillnot intending to sit here and not give him a few whacks with the reins,especially if he is doing his stubborn-ass routine and jerking them every whichway. “Take off your shirt.”

He arches an eyebrow at her in a way that clearly says hehas about a hundred comments to make here, but will, for the moment, charitablyforbear. He reaches up with a grunt of pain, loosens his cravat, and unwindsit, pulling it off his neck, and then unbuttons his shirt, struggling to get itover his head. Then he looks at her defiantly. As if to say, here he is. Takeor leave him.

Lucy can’t help glancing at him sidelong as she reaches forthe tweezers. Despite everything they’ve done, she hasn’t really seen himnaked; their trysts have generally taken place with most of their clothes on,grasping and swift and greedy, falling into each other and burning up andrushing on separate orbits again, until they inevitably crash together oncemore. He has plenty of old scars that must come from his clandestine servicesdays. Her eyes trace over the breadth of his shoulders, the heavy muscles ofhis arms, the solidness of his barrel chest and the slight jut of his hipbones.The bullet wounds are in his left shoulder – fortunately not in the meat, thatwould be tricky and bloody – and low on his right side. Clean exit through theshoulder, a fragment still left in his side. Lucy normally faints at the sightof blood, and she’s feeling more than a little woozy now, but she is still theonly one who is going to handle this.

Lucy glances at him, as if to say that she will unavoidablyhave to come closer, and he flicks an insolent look at her, but doesn’tprotest. She slides the chair up to the bed and sits between his knees, movingto explore the bruised, lacerated flesh with the tweezers, as he sucks in his breathslightly but is too Slavic-stoic to show other obvious discomfort. She wonderssuddenly where he grew up. His mother was from Texas, as American as apple pie,but she doesn’t know where Asher Flynn was from. The half-brother he saved,Gabriel, now lives in Paris. He was an asset for the NSA embedded in EasternEurope, and to judge from the accent, his first language is probably one ofthose, though he speaks English flawlessly. Probably others. There is so muchof who this man is, who he used to be, that is so burned and buried far beneaththis blackened shell, this wreck of him, nothing left but the promise ofvengeance, the fading dream of solace. Of rightness. Of happiness. Of goodness.Of ease. He must wonder if he had imagined all of it.

Flynn shifts and grunts as Lucy locates the bullet fragmentand carefully disentangles it, pulling it out and dropping it on a cloth. Shehas to look away, light-headed, at the fresh scarlet ooze that results, andFlynn notices her reaction. “Don’t like blood, do you?”

“Or small spaces, no.” Lucy tries to keep her tonematter-of-fact, but she remembers her confinement in Rittenhouse’s root cellarlast night (and, you know, fifteen years ago) and her voice trembles slightly.She can taste bile in the back of her throat, and swallows hard. “I’m notreally cut out for adventures outside of books.”

“And yet,” Flynn says, with something either mockery orsincerity. It’s always so hard to tell with him. “Here you are.”

“I think that’s thanks to you.” Right, she can do this. Onemore hard gulp, and Lucy gets back to the task at hand. Rinses the tweezers ina diluted concentrate of the alcohol-cocaine-morphine-heroin super-solution,wets a folded rag with it, and presses it to Flynn’s side, as he hisses throughhis teeth at the sting. Yeah, that stuff probably packs quite a wallop. Morethan Bactine, that’s for sure. Once it’s mostly stopped bleeding, she takes therags away and tries to judge if she can stitch it. God, she really doesn’t wantto do that. Maybe she can wait until Wyatt comes back. He was in the army, hehas to know about field medicine, and besides, he would probably thoroughlyenjoy stabbing Flynn a few times, even if only with a needle.

“Actually,” Flynn says, with his typical, bullheadedinability to concede an argument, even when he’s getting his bullet-riddledcarcass pieced back together, “technically, it’s thanks to you.”

“I beg your pardon?” Lucy has been preparing to tackle his shoulder wound, but at that, shestarts. “You stole the Mothership, you started allthis.”

“Yes,” Flynn says. “Because Mason Industries was making itfor Rittenhouse all along. Connor Mason was so far up their ass that he sawdaylight whenever they yawned, and I could not let them get it. Ask your friendRufus if you don’t believe me. Of course,” he adds viciously, “now they do have it, so that’s all gone fornothing, hasn’t it?”

Lucy flinches slightly at the venom in his voice. “Flynn. .. Iris… we’ll get her back, I swear, we’ll find her, we won’t stop – ”

“Is it true? What Emma said? That you handed her over tothem?”

“It…” Lucy doesn’t feel up to recounting the whole sagaof Emma’s betrayal, especially since she’ll have to tell him about JohnRittenhouse, and everything that has come as a result of her stoppingFlynn from killing him. “It’s complicated.”

“Complicated,” Flynn repeats, with cold, bitter contempt.“How did I know you were going to say that? Things are always complicated for you, Lucy. You thehistorian, you the scholar, always looking for so many nuances, so manypossibilities, so many arguments. You can’t even acknowledge evil when it’sstaring you in the face, you have to try to explain and rationalize your wayaround it. Like a good little academic. There’s always another hypothesis. Something you can publish ina paper, debate about over cocktails at a conference. It’s a game. That’s allthis is to you. You’re a coward.”

This is so breathtakingly unfair that Lucy wants to slaphim, and yet it strikes at exactly what she was terrified of in the rootcellar: that she has been protecting Rittenhouse, not history, because she’snot brave enough to do what it really takes to stop them, and finds this theeasier, safer, more existentially comfortable way. She thinks of that saying,how the real enemy of goodness, the thing that allows evil to take root andflourish, is simple indifference. People don’t bother to care, as long as itdoesn’t affect them personally. And by the time they do care, it’s too late.

She digs rather more violently into Flynn’s shoulder thanshe needs to, teeth gritted, not trusting herself to answer. Finally she says,“I did not hand Iris over to them willingly. I never would have. It was a trap.Everything was a trap, set up by Rittenhouse. And you’re not the one who erasedme in the present. They did, so I would turn to them, need them, once all ofyou were gone. We did exactly what they wanted us to, the whole time. Hands ontheir clock face.”

This takes Flynn aback enough that he doesn’t have anotheraccusation to level at her, and Lucy continues to work on his shoulder.Finally, he says, “What?”

Shortly and succinctly as possible, Lucy explains whathappened with Emma. The revelation that she’s Rittenhouse, that she braggedabout tricking Flynn into coming here, the meeting with John. The plan to jumpthem here in the Lifeboat, so he could see in person the results of hisglorious enterprise. And now, Emma with the Mothership, and them, well. Fucked.

It’s hard to say what part of this staggers Flynn the most.As Lucy straightens up, needing another opportunity to look away from hisshoulder, he repeats, “John Rittenhouse is here.”

“Yes.”

“The same one you stopped me from shooting in 1780.”

“Yes.”

Flynn’s face contorts into something sneering and ugly. “Andnow he’s a grown man, thinks he’s going to marry the guardian angel who so benevolently saved him when he was aboy, and have a dozen scions of his new master race, does he? I told you! Itold you, Lucy! That he believed the same thing as the rest of them, that hewould get away and found it anyway! And now it doesn’t matter if I shoot himtoo, because he’s already planted his foul seeds for years, has dozens,hundreds of followers! You stopped me,and you’re the reason it happened!”

“Maybe it was seeing his father gunned down in cold bloodthat made him make that decision!” A burning red heat rises into Lucy’s cheeks,eyes snapping back at him. She stands up, wanting whatever self-possession shecan get for this argument; even sitting, he’s still not much shorter than her.“That’s always the thing about prophecies – whatever you do trying to avert themends up inadvertently makes them happen instead! It always works that way!Always!”

“Oh? In your books?” Atruly horrible light sears Flynn’s face like the flames of hell, and for amoment, Lucy almost is downright afraid of him. “That’s what you mean, isn’tit? It always works that way in your books!Because nobody’s ever tried to do it in real life, nobody’s ever had theability to actually change history, so we don’t know what the rules are! If Ihadn’t killed Rittenhouse, he would have done the same thing! And now, thanksto you, we don’t know if I could have stopped Rittenhouse at the start! Savedeverything, everyone! All it would have taken was you to be braveenough to step aside and let me killhim!”

“Oh? Me? To be brave enough to stand aside from a derangedman with a gun and let him kill an unarmed, terrified child? That would havebeen the brave thing in thissituation?” Lucy spits back at him, too angry to pull her punches, especiallywhen she’s so sick of him, of this, of everything. “Oh, but yes, I’m a coward.I don’t understand, I have nothing on the line. When I’ve lost my sister and mymother has lied to me my whole life, my father is Rittenhouse, my friends and Iare on the run, I can’t go home because I don’t exist, and I’ve beenresponsible, even without meaning to, for turning your daughter over toRittenhouse and letting them get the Mothership! While you and I and Wyatt aretrapped here, and God knows what Rufus is facing back home, in a history thatdoesn’t even look like ours! But yes, I forgot. You’re the only oneof us to ever lose anything. To ever understand.How dare you. How dare you.”

She’s almost in tears, taken with a mortal urge to actuallyhit him, but whirls on her heel and stares at the wall, the silence thunderingbetween them. It feels so good to finally say everything, to lash out atsomeone, at him, that she could keepgoing, but she’s too raw already, too weary, too wounded to keep wanting todrive the knife into her own heart and twisting, twisting. Why can’t he justshut up and be a half-decent person for once. Why can’t she just break down inpeace. Why isn’t Wyatt here. He mightknow how to comfort her.

The silence goes on until it is almost physically painful.Then Flynn says, very quietly, “I’m sorry.”

Lucy, who has been braced for another angry reprisal, iscaught completely off guard. She doesn’t want to ask him to repeat it in caseshe misheard. She sniffs instead, smudging her nose with the back of her hand,until most unexpectedly, he touches her chin, lifting her face with his thumb.He looks very tired and older than he is and sick at heart. “I’m sorry,” hesays again. “I… I think I’ve put too much on you. That was my mistake. Ijust…” He trails off, as if trying to think how to put this. “This wholetime. I’ve wanted to see you again.”

“What?” Lucy looks up at him, startled. “What do you mean?”

Flynn pauses again, then goes for it. “When I said it wasyou that started this, not me. I stole the Mothership, I knew about itsexistence, because I had your journal. Because it told me.”

“My journal.” Lucy still hasn’t gotten how that’s supposedto work. “But where did you get it, when I haven’t even written it yet? How didyou get – ?”

He smiles at her. It doesn’t reach his eyes, which look upat her like a drowned creature from the bottom of a well. “You gave it to me,Lucy.”

“I…” She opens and shuts her mouth. “What?”

“I met you two weeks after my wife and daughter – after…they.” He stops, looking away. “You age quite well, just so you know. Youcomforted me. You told me there was something I could choose to do, if I wantedto, and – after I talked you into it – you gave me the journal. You said we’dbe meeting again soon. And we did. At the Hindenburg.That first time – for you.”

Lucy’s mouth is still open, but nothing is coming out. Shethinks madly of John Rittenhouse, waiting to see her again since he was a boy,and now of Flynn, apparently waiting to see her again as a young woman. If he’sknown her older self, if they’ve – if she’s– none of this makes any sense at all,but that is time travel for you. “So you met – me – in 2014. When I gaveyou the journal, supposedly. But you didn’t steal the Mothership until 2016.”

“Because it said in your journal that it wouldn’t befinished until 2016. It was still two years away from completion in 2014. So Iused that time to prepare. To learn everything about where I might be going,about who I would meet, about who I might need to target. Who was Rittenhouse,and what I would have to do to take them down. No matter what.” He looks at herunflinchingly. “I used to wonder if I had in fact dreamed the whole thing. Butthere was your journal. It gave me something to hold onto. Something to keepgoing for. So I did.”

This is still a lot more than Lucy feels adequately preparedto take in. She rubs both cold hands over her face, trying to come up with anykind of response, this revelation that this – that they – are so much more than she has ever known. So he does knoweverything about her, or at least a version of her – a stranger, a person shehas never met, the uncanniest of uncanny valleys. And has, all this time, beenhungering to get back the one person he has had to lead him through that shadowof death, the one person he has trusted, the person who is supposed to lead himback to what has been so long and lost. And that, somehow, is her.

Lucy is shaken. Staggered, almost. She doesn’t know what todo with such depths of trust and belief, even as twisted and badly expressed asit has been, and understands slightly better how terrible such a loss must be,if he thought that she had forsaken him. Emma’s voice echoes mockingly in herhead. Reads your stupid journal all thetime. Thought you could do anything. So this is going to really sting, won’tit?

They sit there, still looking at each other. He appears tobe waiting for her to say something, fire back, to shout some more. They fightwell, they always have. Especially since, for whatever confounded reason, evenwhen it would make more sense – and perhaps this is it, this is the reason –she has never been afraid of him.

Lucy considers it, to be sure. It’s enjoyable. Comforting.Safe. But for all that, it is so very not what she wants to do right now.

Instead, she leans forward and kisses him.

Flynn’s breath catches in shock. Their kisses before havebeen of the hungry, possessive, taunting, testing variety, one of them or theother pushing each other’s limits, usually a prelude to a hot and hard fuckagainst the nearest wall; the closest they ever got to a bed was the one shechained him to in 1787, and there was that chaise they nearly broke in 1912,but otherwise, tenderness has not been much of a feature.Lucy cups his face in her hands, turning his head slightly, opening his mouthwith her own, able to actually enjoy it for the first time, rather than burningthrough it to another unsettled parting and lingering haunting. He makes a moveto raise his hand, and grunts in pain as his bad shoulder catches. He tries itwith the other hand instead, knotting it in the loosened hair at the back ofher neck, pressing her into him. There is a vast, unspeakable hunger in him, aneed to be touched gently, to be seen, to be wanted. No man is an island, Lucy thinks. But God, but God, Garcia Flynn has been living on onefor as long as he humanely can, and chasing away anyone who tries to swim out.

She shifts forward onto his lap, trying not to jostle hisside, as he scoots back on the bed to give her better purchase, as her kneesslide to either side of his hips. He is a very good kisser, especially whenhe’s not actually trying to tear her face off, when the rage that burnspermanently in his depths seems to have been, at least for the moment, banked.His mouth is warm and wide and generous, and Lucy utters a small sound into itas she grips his hair, her lips brushing over the fine-cut corner of his, hisnose, the rough scratch of his jaw, the underside of his chin. His good handrests low on her back, pulling her solidly against him. His shoulder isstarting to bleed again, but he also doesn’t appear to care.

Finally, Lucy pulls back, flushed and breathless, handstrembling as she reaches for the rags, wets them again, and begins to fashion amakeshift bandage. She really doesn’t feel up to trying stitches; she’ll askWyatt later. How long will he be out, anyway? It would be awkward for him towalk in on them again, though if he doesn’t have any good news about theLifeboat, it won’t matter. Lucy feels obliquely ashamed, but not entirelyenough to avoid the risk altogether.

Flynn’s dark eyes flick to her. Lucy can feel him trying alittle too hard to be nonchalant about the way her arms are almost around himas she ties the bandage into place. Then abruptly he says, “Rittenhouse. JohnRittenhouse. Did he hurt you?”

“I think I hurt him more, actually.” Lucy concentrates onthe knot; the wet rags are slippery. “I hit him over the head with a candelabra.”

Flynn grunts a surprised laugh, then grimaces. “Ah,” hesays, half to himself. “That’s my girl.”

Lucy has to swallow an unexpected warmth in her stomach, asher cheeks heat faintly pink. She’s almost tempted to tell him about theRittenhouse thugs throwing her into the root cellar overnight, see if hisoutrage extends to hearing about her being mistreated, but she also doesn’twant to prod or grub for his sympathy, and her fear, her struggle, is moreimportant than being a prop for whatever wrong conclusion he would draw fromit. Besides, the last thing she needs is to give him another reason to try tobust out of here and try to take down John with his bare hands. She pulls thebandage tight over his shoulder, and can’t resist smoothing her own handsacross the strong planes of his bare chest. Their eyes lock. It’s not only himshort of breath.

Slowly, deliberately, Lucy slides forward on his lap,straddling him, until his back is against the wall and she is fully on the bed.Their foreheads touch, breath hot on each other’s cheeks, his nose against theside of hers, as he brushes the back of his fingers on the side of her neck,with a gentleness and hesitance he has rarely shown with her. Their couplingshave been rough, insistent, hard and heavy – perhaps because both of them knowthat the other is strong enough to withstand it, and perhaps because, untilnow, tenderness is the last thing they have wanted or expected from each other.Sex is understandable, defensible. Intimacy, less so.

Lucy traces a finger over Flynn’s bottom lip, as he suckslightly on it, and she leans closer, breath catching in her throat as shehitches herself up against him. She puts one hand on his shoulder, thencaresses from his collarbone down his stomach, sliding under the waistband ofhis trousers. He shifts with another muffled grunt, holding her back, as hedoesn’t do well with not being in control of things, of thinking he’s lostfocus on the mission even for a moment. But she gives him a look, reminding himthat if he wants this, if he wants her, he plays by her rules right now.

After a moment, he shifts again, granting silent permission,and her fingers continue their downward course. Both of them gulp, mouths open,as she touches him, cupping his smooth hardness in her palm, stroking andcircling. He thrusts up into her grip, swears under his breath as thisapparently is uncomfortable for his multiple bullet wounds, and then apparentlydecides to fuck with it, literally. Lucy can’t help grinning slightly into hischeek, keeping a light touch on him, enjoying the weight of him, the solidness.When he seems rather short of breath, she kisses him on the undersideof his jaw, nips at his pulse point, and slides slowly down him, as he looksstartled. Moves to shift his trousers down off his hips, brushes her lips alongsolar plexus to stomach, then lower. Noses at the cut of his groin, and then takeshim in her mouth.

Garcia Flynn seems to stop breathing altogether, staringdown at her like a man in a dream, as Lucy licks lightly at the tip, then movesdeliberately up the shaft, sucking slowly and thoroughly. He reaches out as ifto grasp her hair, stops himself, takes a fistful of the bedclothes instead,and braces himself, almost afraid to move if it would stop this, if she mightcome to her senses. He looks down to watch her head rising and falling on him,this woman, this angel, reaching him in the uttermost depths ofdarkness. If I ascend to heaven, Lucythinks, remaining intent on her work, ifI make my bed in the reaches of hell. IfI take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea.

Flynn groans, bucking up into her, as she reaches out totake hold of his hips, pushing him back down, intensifying the pace of her slowand deliberate fucking with lips and tongue and teeth and breath, taking hersweet time about it. He almost whines, if it’s possible to imagine him makingsuch a sound. Lucy doesn’t relent, finds herself enjoying the control, thepower almost as much as the action itself, the way it feels to have a man likethis – this man – completely at hermercy. She takes him briefly, wetly almost to the hilt, sucks fiercely, and dragsher lips back down, curling her tongue and flicking him. He whispers something thatsounds half like a prayer.

Lucy pulls back, shifts onto her knees, and turns around,beckoning for him to unbutton the back of her dress. He does, though it takesslightly longer than usual with one good hand, and she lets it slide off hershoulders, revealing her corset beneath. She wraps her hands around his head,pulling him toward her as he presses kisses into her cleavage, worshiping atbreasts and shoulders and collarbone and throat, having clearly had enough ofletting her have the upper hand. Swings her around beneath him, grimacing asblood shows on his bandages, and they stop kissing frenziedly long enough for Lucyto whisper, “Your shoulder – we shouldn’t – ”

“Shut up,” Flynn says into her mouth, getting a hand betweenher legs (hopefully his good one, but she’s not sure he’d notice at this pointif it wasn’t) and both of them gasping as he finds her wetness, teasing at herwith a thumb but not quite slipping into her. He toys at her clit, then all atonce, enters her with two fingers, building a gentle but relentless rhythm asshe arches her hips, desperate for the friction as he rubs and rouses her. He movesfaster, and it’s her turn to whine, pulling at him, starving for his mouth, buthe won’t let her kiss him. “My rules now, Lucy.”

“You’re a bastard,” Lucy manages, conscious of how true thisis in just about any aspect of Garcia Flynn’s life, but especially this one. Shejerks at him, well aware that this is payback, as he shifts his weight, braceshimself on one arm, and slides his hand out of her. Then he rucks up her skirtsaround her knees, glances at her, and when she gives him a breathless littlenod, plunges into her hard and fast.

Lucy practically sees stars. Oh god, oh god, it feels so good that her entire body clenchesaround him. Normally this is the part where they commence on their hot andmindless rush to release, but he doesn’t move right away. Seems to be taking itin, considering it, remembering it, before he finally starts with lighter,shallower thrusts. Her head tips back, hair spilling in shining dark locks overthe white pillow, his knee riding along her hip as he changes the angle. She clutches at him, wanting, wanton. Can feel the strain and strengthof his strokes, the rasping against her, the hunger. She is ascending, unmade.

After everything, it doesn’t take long for either of them,and he pulls her half upright as he rides one final, heavy thrust into her,both of them gasping and heaving, and shuddering and burning and blazing in theheat of climax. They fall back entangled into the bedclothes. The bandage onhis shoulder is half off. He really might accidentally kill himself one ofthese days. And yet perhaps if he died like this, he might not even care.

By the time Wyatt returns later that evening, they are bothdressed and sitting carefully apart and not sure how to talk, or ifthey should. Lucy can sense that things aren’t entirely mended between them,and won’t be as long as the questions of Iris and the Mothership remainoutstanding. Flynn isn’t outright furious at her anymore, at least, but whatwas said earlier, what Lucy realized, about the weight of what he has given her,what she’s broken, intentionally or otherwise – that isn’t something that ismended in a day, hot sex or otherwise. She could still lose him from here, shethinks. Easily. Perhaps even more easily than before, as if the knives havebecome sharper, the fall more perilous. She isn’t sure what she feels aboutthat, other than that it terrifies her.

“Well?” Flynn says grumpily, when Wyatt doesn’t speakimmediately. “Are you going to give me my gun back now, so I can go take careof the bastards?”

“Yeah,” Wyatt says. “I’m not so sure that would work out foryou.”

Flynn gives him an even blacker look. “I’m happy to be wrongif it doesn’t.”

“No. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t.” Wyatt runs a hand throughhis hair. “I don’t even know what’s going on, but it’s major. They weren’tkidding about this being some kind of meeting. Look, man. Even you and I togetherwith both our guns wouldn’t stand a chance. And…” His eyes flick to Lucy. “I’mnot sure that’s a wise idea anyway.”

Flynn frowns. “What are you talking about?”

Wyatt takes a deep breath. “Remember how we got to 2017,” hesays, determinedly offhand, “and discovered that the reason Lucy doesn’t existin the present was because her mom’s side of the family had somehow vanished?”

Lucy and Flynn glance at each other. This is news to her,but apparently not to him, as he pauses, then says, “Yes?”

“Yeah. Well. The name of the woman leading this… thing?Major Rittenhouse hootenanny?” Wyatt’s jaw tightens. He looks at Lucy again, asif he really wants to spare her from this, but can’t think how to do so. “Ididn’t see her, but I heard her name. It’s Carol. Carol Preston.”