#kid goes to get icecream from the kitchen and returns with another kid

[puppetmaster13u]

Mini Prompt

Bruce, concerned: Where are you going?

Baby Tim: To get ice cream or commit a felony, I’ll decide on the way there

Jason, very proud: Have fun!

[ravenwritesstuff]

Repetition (2/?)

Fandom: Timeless - Set during episodes 1x11-1x12 Pairing: Lyatt (Lucy x Wyatt) Rating: Very M (SoooOoooOOooo not for kids. Go away, children.) Warnings: M (just see the warning on the first part. It is basically the same) A/N: I am absolute TRASH for this couple. I will probably write one or two more parts for this. Maybe. I don’t know. I just - whatever.

[ first part ]

He offers to drive her back to her car, but she calls a cab instead so he offers to make her a cup of coffee while she waits. She is already jittery as hell but she accepts because she needs something to do with her hands besides remember how his skin felt beneath her fingertips. She hovers in the doorway of his small kitchen as he scoops the grounds and measures water. Her eyes go to the little red light above the carafe and she just stares because she cannot look at him.

She cannot speak to him.

She can hardly breathe.

A clock ticks on the wall above his table for two (even though there is only one chair) and she tries to sync her racing heart to its steady rhythm - to the rhythm of time - and a hysterical chuckle chokes in her throat. A dark part of her heart wants to take down that clock and smash it to bits. It reminds her too much of David Rittenhouse, his son, a gun pointed at Wyatt’s head - and she has made a mistake.

She has made an awful mistake.

He pours the black, steaming liquid into two mismatched, military-sloganed mugs.

“Cream or sugar?” He asks, and the sound of his voice startles her.

“What?” She looks at him and feels her face heat. He side eyes the mugs on the counter. “Oh. Yes. Cream please.”

He goes to the fridge and pulls out a carton of milk. She tracks him as he doctors her drink.

“More?” He holds the plastic handle of the jug and looks at her with eyes sharp enough to cut diamonds, soft enough to fall into - wait. He had asked a question.

“That’s perfect, thanks.” It doesn’t really matter. She doesn’t plan on drinking it - they both just really need a way to fill the time.

Time.

The damn reason she is here in this kitchen where the fluorescent lights aren’t doing anyone any favors. Her mind races.

Time.

History.

Rittenhouse.

Rottenhouse.

Flynn.

Flynn and her journal.

Amy.

Amy.

The name alone is a stab to the gut.

Had she really does this for her? Would it make a difference? Would anything ever make a difference? It seems like everything they try to do to fix the situation only makes new, worse, more complicated problems.

He hands her a mug. It says ARMY on the side in bold black letters. His hands don’t shake. Hers do. She wonders if he has done this before - if that is why he is so calm - if she is just another girl in the long line of hookups he has used to replace Jessica. She probably is and that is the most humiliating part. He probably will forget about this and she never will and -

“We don’t have to talk about it.” He folds himself against the counter a safe distance away but she knows there is really not such thing as a safe distance when it comes to Wyatt Logan.

“O-Okay.” She bobs her head and looks at her coffee. It is just how she likes it, but the idea of drinking it makes her nauseous.

“...Unless you want to?”

He’s putting out feelers, aiming for tact instead of his usual take-no-prisoners approach and she supposes she should be grateful, but it uneases her. Somehow it would be easier if he was brusque. It would be easier to throw up her walls and deflect, but now he is looking at her with blue eyes wide and cautious like he cares and that is not fair. It is not fair at all because she does not want to talk about it. She has no idea how to talk about it - especially if he is going to pretend like it matters.

What if it does matter?

She cannot.

“You said it was for - history. And after we - after you said that now we have to wait.” He presses into her silence, prompting, and crosses his arms over his broad (t-shirt covered - thank goodness) chest. She’s tasted that chest and suddenly she needs to drink her coffee because she realizes he is still stuck to the back of her tongue. “What did you mean by that?”

She gulps two deep swallows from her mug and doesn’t taste it. All she can taste is him. She wonders how long that will last.

She’d spend longer lamenting that truth, but there is a question to answer and to be honest she has no idea even where to begin.

“I don’t know I just -” She looks down at her shoes. “I had a theory.”

“What theory?” He prods, but it is not demanding. Something curious scratches behind his words and she wonders just what kind of answer he is expecting from her.

Her eyes come back up to him, and she wants to tell him that it doesn’t matter - that this had all been some sort of fluke brought on by stress and insomnia and - you know - her life as she knew it being altered beyond seeming repair, but she knows that is not the truth. She doesn’t do anything, say anything, without knowing the reason and the cause behind it. She knows just why she suggested this but that does not mean she is ready to admit it.

“It’s just -” Her cell rings and she jumps like a gunshot (except at this point a gunshot may be less startling than her phone ringing) and she drops the mug. It falls and shatters, the rest of her coffee splatters all over the bottom of her jeans and the linoleum floor. “Shit!”

She flutters between answering the phone and picking up broken pieces.

“Answer it.” Wyatt tells her, always so cool under pressure, as he reaches for a roll of paper towels.

She obeys. The conversation lasts all of two seconds.

“My cab is here.” She says and hesitates as he kneels and begins mopping up her spill. “I have to go. I could - I’m so sorry about the mug.”

He does not look up from his work. “It was free.”

“I should stay. I’ll get another cab. I should stay and help clean up this mess.” She thinks to move, doesn’t.

He rocks back on his heels and sighs. “What’s done is done. It’s fine.”

She still doesn’t move.

“Lucy.” He says her name and that gets her attention. She did not expect that. Her eyes flash to his. “It’s okay, you know. All of it. We’re good.”

Her throat works, but she can neither swallow nor speak. She just stares.

He gestures with his head towards the entryway with his head. “Your cab is waiting.”

It is all the dismissal she needs but she still hesitates. His head falls and they both look at the ceramic pieces scattered across the floor. The juxtaposition of both Wyatt on his knees and the shattered ceramics at her feet is enough to make her heart leap to her throat and she does not want to dissect the reason why.

She all but runs out of his door and counts it a victory that she does not cry until she makes it to the cab.

What in the hell had she just done?

….

Amy isn’t at the house.

She doesn’t know why she thought she would be.

All she did was make a shitty decision and sleep with someone inappropriate in the current timeline. That wouldn’t bring her sister back. That wouldn’t change the fact that somewhere, out there, Garcia Flynn is already planning another way to make her life impossible while she is (apparently) trying to beat him to it.

She drops her purse on the kitchen stool and heads to the freezer. With any luck, her mom will have left some of the Ben & Jerry’s she bought on the last trip to the market. She needs it. Either that or a shot of whiskey, but she is making enough poor decisions without being inebriated so she’ll stick with icecream for now.

No sooner had she found the Phish Food and turned to find a spoon then she sees him. She jumps, but manages to keep a hold of the ice cream carton which makes her one for two tonight.

“Noah.” He is in the breakfast nook, but it isn’t breakfast time. Actually she has no idea what time it is, what day it is, what year it is. “What are you doing here?”

He frowns. “You haven’t returned any of my calls. Your mom says you disappear at all hours for work and don’t come back for days. I’m worried about you, Lucy.”

He comes from where he had been sitting, hands in his pocket, and she acknowledges that he is handsome. He is kind. He is thoughtful and if they were as in love and engaged as those scrapbooks would have her believe then he is probably in quite a bit of pain as well. Guilt rises up to choke her but she screams against it. His pain is not hers. He is not hers. No matter what this timeline would have her believe, but she proceeds with caution.

“I know. I know.” She sets the ice cream on the counter and braces herself. How do you explain the inexplicable? “I’m so sorry. I wish I could explain - I do.”

He stands on the other side of the island looking like he is going insane. “Then do it. Lucy - dammit. I love you and you’re acting like I’m a total stranger.”

But you are. She thinks, barely able to stop herself from saying it, and she looks at her hands gripping the edge of the counter top to keep herself from running out of the room.

“There is a lot going on right now that I can’t explain to you - or to anyone. I wish I could, maybe someday, but now…” Her head spins. This is the last thing she needs right now.

“When are you coming home?” He asks and she immediately flashes to images of Wyatt’s condo, nothing on the walls - only the most basic creature comforts, and how that had felt more like a home than all the time she spent with her fiance in their ‘home’.

She thinks of this place with Amy in it.

She thinks of everywhere except the place to which he refers.

She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

Noah shows himself out.

….

She goes for a run. It is raining, but she doesn’t care. She just needs to feel something that isn’t the pulsing need she has to go back to Wyatt’s place and clear the air or jump back in his bed or something. It really didn’t matter to her exactly what they did so long as they did it together because she is slowly realizing: she has no one else.

Not now.

Not after what they did.

She has single handedly managed to both create and destroy the only relationship she has in the world in one fell swoop.

She slows to a walk about two blocks from her house and lets the rain wash her tears.

….

She doesn’t even jump when her phone rings this time. She has set a special ringer for blocked numbers (the only blocked calls she ever gets is from Mason Industries) so she always knows when she needs to start preparing for corsets and polyester. This time, however, she just stares as the phone rings to voicemail. She’s playing Rummikub with her mother and she is letting her mom win and somehow that seems like way more fun than going back in time and seeing him right now.

Her phone rings again, another blocked number, and she knows she should answer it but she stays still.

“Lucy. Your phone is ringing.” Her mother gives her that I raised you better than this look.

“It’s work.” She replies and her mother’s face hardens at the corners of her mouth, her eyes.

And as badly as Lucy wants to keep ignoring it - she knows that she cannot. Mason Industries will send a car of scary men to make sure she does as they say and she is not about to try to explain that to her mother.

She answers on the last ring and hangs up on a sigh.

“They need me at the office.”

“Of course they do.” Her mother starts cleaning up the game without even asking. “Should I keep dinner warm for you?”

Lucy smiles. She wishes….

“Leave me a plate in the fridge.” She stands and kisses her mom on the top of her head and breathes in deeply, not taking any of this time for granted. “I love you, mom.”

….

She knew this moment would be awkward but she hadn’t known just how awkward. Wyatt is there, his slouchy energy magnified by a restless quality previously unseen. She doesn’t want to credit their encounter to his updated body language in her proximity but she is not naive enough to write it off. Still - there is something else there too. Something a bit too raw to just be about their lapse in judgement.

She glances at him when he isn’t looking her way and looks away the second he catches her. His eyes hold questions she is not brave enough to answer, not yet.

Agent Christopher talks to her. Somehow Lucy manages to access the fact storage part of her brain long enough to regurgitate enough useful facts about the time period and completes her report without stuttering because she is fucking capable, okay? That, however, does not stop her from dreading every step she takes towards The Lifeboat after wardrobe.

Wyatt comes up alongside her and she refuses to admit how good he looks in his period duds. It is thoughts like that that got her into this mess in the first place. Instead she becomes preoccupied with the maneuvering of her skirts, balancing her hat.

“You okay?” His voice is low and just for her and she is transported back to his bed.

Tell me what you like. He had said and she knows the answer. She likes him, hell, probably loves him, but is nowhere close to being ready to deal with the implications of that.

“Yeah. You?” She asks, but it is time to climb in.

He goes in first like he always does so he can offer a hand, help her up, and she never knew that taking someone’s hand could be such sweet torture. He pulls her up and they are a breath away. He is scruffy as usual and she remembers just how that stubble felt rubbing across her throat, her breasts, and lower.

“Better now.” He says, holding her three beats longer than necessary, and she has no idea what to make of that.

Before she even has a chance to consider it, Rufus clears his throat.

“Don’t know about you all, but I’m pretty ready to get going because the sooner we leave the sooner we get back and that sounds pretty damn fine to me.”

They break away and go to their seats, her legs trembling from proximity. Her eyes find his as they buckle and don’t leave until they touch down in 1882.

….

Better now? Better now, how?

Better because he was on a mission?

Better because being on a mission meant being closer to her?

Better because now he had added reasons to be a reckless hothead just to piss her off?

She can think of a lot of things that this situation is, but none of them have the word ‘better’ attached to them.

It is April 2nd.

She’d heard it in the briefing. She’d seen it on the calendar on the wall of her mother’s kitchen, and yet it hadn’t registered to her for even one instant that she had missed her sister’s birthday.

Amy was born on April 1st a hundred years from where she currently is, except that she wasn’t. Amy was never was born. Not anymore, and Lucy does not know how that makes anything better.

He doesn’t make her better.

In fact, he only makes it worse because if she hadn’t been so damn sidetracked by What She Did With Wyatt (The Thing She Did In Attempts To Bring Back Said Forgotten Sister) - she may have remembered Amy in the first place.

Mason says that time is linear, but she is ready to write a thesis statement that is just one big, horrible loop.

She walks by a mirror in the saloon they are in searching for leads and looks at herself. It is warped, imperfect, as was common for the time but she cannot find anything she knows to be true about herself in that reflection. She blames the mirror, but she knows it is more than that.

….

She wants out.

This isn’t fun anymore, not that it was ever fun but there have been certain perks (meeting Abraham Lincoln and George Washington - are you serious?!) but none of that matters any more. She can see the strain it is taking on Rufus, on herself, and on Wyatt.

She thought that maybe she was the only one coming unhinged, but it is clear her entire team is slowly coming apart at the seams. And Flynn Garcia is not helping the issue. In fact he is actively doing the opposite. He is pressing down on them and as much as Lucy hates to admit it - they are cracking.

She’s always been aware of Wyatt’s skill set, apprehensive of it at times, but she’s never been afraid of it. Never until now, sitting at a campfire, listening to him weave a case for something that could only be described as a God Complex and realizing that she has done the same thing. She, the protector of history, is fully and completely willing to do anything to change it. She knows better than to assume that changing one life doesn’t make that much of a difference.

Changing one life changes the world.

So when Wyatt looks at her and asks her for back up, she thinks she is going to be sick. She is no sounding board, no paragon of time virtue. She doesn’t deserve to be trusted with this much responsibility, this much power.

No human does.

….

How far would you go to preserve time?

She used to ask herself this question even before taking this job, even more so now that she has, but never did she think that she would give the answer of murder.

She did not want to kill him.

She never wanted to kill anyone.

She did not sign on for this. Any of this. She knows she’s maintained the continuity of history by eliminating Jesse James in the proper time-frame, but she’s never killed a man before. She never wants to again, hero or villain. She never even wants to be put in the position where she has to choose.

She just wants to go home, but she doesn’t know where that is anymore.

Amy is gone. She isn’t ever going to get her back. She isn’t ever going to get any of it back.

She cannot stop shaking. Tears burn the backs of her eyes. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. None of it was supposed to be like this. She wants to go back to her old job with its normal hours with its safe predictability and normal boundaries. She wants history to go back to the past, untouched - untouchable, because she cannot take it another second.

She’s in the woods behind the cabin, trying to pull it together, when he finds her. She must look a fright because he eyes her warily at best.

“You did the right thing.” He doesn’t ask if she is okay, knows that she isn’t, and choked laugh breaks from her throat.

“The right thing? Right by whom?” She presses the heels of her hands against her eyes. “I feel like I don’t know which way is up - or if there even is an up”

“He needed to die. He was supposed to die.” Wyatt comes close and grabs her arms. His touch sends electricity through her and she pulls her hand from her eyes. “You did the right thing.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“The guy was a maniac. He’d go on and kill more people than he already had. Sometime in order to prevent a greater evil you have to get your own hands dirty.”

And suddenly she knows they aren’t talking about Jesse James anymore. She looks at him. He is so close, still holding her arms, the dim light from the cabin illuminating the edges of his face in the cold night. Despite it being spring, the night air is still cold enough that she can see heavy puffs of air coming from his lips.

Lips she has kissed.

Lips she wants to, against all sound judgement, kiss again.

“You said you had a theory.” His hands tighten. “What was it?”

“It was nothing.” She shakes her head, eyes not leaving his face. “It doesn’t matter. It was stupid.”

“Tell me.” He says and she knows he is not asking. There is something too raw, too desperate in his voice, and she can feel him losing grip the same as she.

She supposes after all they have been through - after all the lies and confusion - she owes him this truth. No matter how ridiculous.

“I thought that - uh - I thought that maybe if I did something that I would never do then maybe, somehow, it would change - something. Like Amy.” She cannot make out his expression in the shadows but can feel embarrassment heat her body. “See? I told you. Stupid.”

He is quiet for a few deafening heartbeats. Then:

“You tried to take your life into your own hands. You tried to get back someone you love.” His voice holds gravel, but not cruelty. “I can’t fault you for that.”

It’s easier to talk about this in the dark, easier when she cannot make out his every expression. When she knows he cannot see the hope shine in her eyes.

“Are you going to do it? Are you going to try to save Jessica?” She asks, lips tremblings and not just from the cold.

“I don’t have a choice.”

“Wyatt…” She wants to tell him he has a choice. She wants to tell him that they all have choices. They don’t have to just take orders anymore - they can make their own. Set their own path like Emma had. Run away and be lost in time, in space, and forget that any of this ever happened, but she cannot.

Because he kisses her.

She melts into him without a struggle. For the first time in days it feel like she is standing on solid ground because he is holding her. There is no time for gentleness. They fight tongue and teeth against a world that is all too unfair. A world that is just as eager to put them together as it is to tear them apart.

He groans against her mouth and she hushes him. Rufus is close. Bass is close. They are tending to James and Grant’s bodies, are digging through the piles of modern paraphernalia abounding in the bullet-riddled cabin. This is complicated enough with just the two of them. She doesn’t want an audience.

He steps and pushes her back against the nearest tree. This is a different side of Wyatt than she had seen the first time. There is something dark, something final, about the way he holds her, kisses her but she is not giving up without a fight. She claws into his shoulders, his back, and holds him that much tighter. He answers by grabbing one of her thighs and hiking it up so her foot hooks around his knee.

And this is war.

But she doesn’t know who is fighting.

She is so tired of fighting.

Her hands go to his neck and pull him closer, her body arching up against his. That familiar ache mounts deep inside of her, begging for release. The corset and heavy trappings of clothes feel too small, her skin too exquisitely sensitive with him so near. She wants to feel him. Her fingers go to the buttons on his coat, his vest.

“Lucy.” He whispers against her lips when small hands slip under his shirt to touch warm skin and the sound of it sends a new shock of pleasure through her system.

She is doing this. He knows that it is she. He does not pull away. So no matter how fucked up this situation may be - she will hold onto that till her dying day.

They don’t have long.

He hikes her skirt up around her waist as she works loose the buttons on his fly. She can feel his hardness even before it springs up between them. He presses up against her center, thrusting a few nowhere strokes, hitting the oversensitive peak at the top of her sex, before he lines up and drives home.

She thought she would be used to this. She thought that maybe, after the first time, he wouldn’t feel so big. But he does. Oh - gods - he does, and she sees stars.

She didn’t think, ever in her life, she would be turned on by something like this. But then again until recently the idea of having primal, urgent, absolutely necessary sex up against the trunk of a tree in 1882 Missouri had never really been an option so she is willing to make an exception because - holy shit - she is not going to fight this.

His breath comes in harsh pants against her cheek. She grips his shoulders, tries to pull her leg up over his hips to draw him in closer. Despite the cold she can feel sweat break out down her spine, along her hairline. Maybe it is the adrenaline from almost dying, from killing a man, but it only takes a few moments before she is clenching hot and rippling around him. She cannot make out his expression but she can tell from the change in his breathing that he is just as surprised as she is when she clamps around him and everything goes white.

When she comes back to earth his hips stutter against hers in hard, short thrusts until he collapses against her. His mouth moves against her neck, but it is not a kiss. He is saying something, but she cannot make it out above her hammering heart. She doesn’t know if she wants to because if she does, she may have to acknowledge what just happened.

They stay there frozen, unwilling to face the fallout, until:

“Lucy?” It’s Rufus calling into the night. “Wyatt?”

They jump apart. Her skirt tumbles back into place as he does his best to fasten his pants, his vest. The proof of their encounter runs down the insides of her trembling legs and she guesses that unprotected sex is something she else does now on top of murder.

“I’m clean. I’m on the pill.” She says at the same time as she cringes that that is the first thing she thinks to say in this moment.  

“Me too.” His voice has that husky quality she remembers from the first time. She squeezes her legs together. “The clean part.”

“O - Okay.” She cannot move away from the tree. Her legs shake too badly.

“Wyatt!” It is Rufus again. “Lucy!”

He probably thinks they’ve been kidnapped or killed or -

“We’re over here!” Wyatt calls back.

He turns to her and she can see the faintest glint of his eyes in the moonlight. “You head back first. I’ll follow in a bit. It’ll be less suspicious that way.”

She’s not sure how it will be less suspicious, but she is in no place to argue - to think. So she locks her knees and moves. She finds Rufus backlit from the cabin where Bass is still sorting through things he will never understand.

“Hey.” Rufus greets her. “Where’s Wyatt? Is he okay? Are you okay?”

She gives him a half smile and hopes to whatever powers existed that she does not reek of sex as much as she thinks she does.

“I don’t think any of us are okay.”

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