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piratekane · 9 months ago

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(a "lucy fills their home with things" kacy piece)

Lucy isn’t exaggerating. She travels light.

She brings a few bags of things—clothes, mostly; a few picture frames of faces that Kate recognizes; a sizable shoe collection that forces Kate to weed through her own and finally get rid of a few pairs she’s been holding onto for no reason.

What she doesn’t bring is trinkets.

There’s no novelty mugs, no knickknacks from Lucy’s college years, no potted plants, no paintings or little figurines that Kate was worrying wouldn’t fit on the shelves with her things.

She didn’t need to worry, though. Lucy makes four trips and then stands in the living room with her hands on her hips and a smile on her face. She declares herself moved in and immediately goes to the drawer filled with take out menus; it’s a pho night.

Kate stares in wonderment for a moment. Four trips and that’s it? Her apartment is empty? Not that it would take Kate long to pack up her apartment, really, but it would certainly be more boxes. She’d have to pack the planters, the mugs, the baskets of blankets, the candles, the small collection of books, the stack of games she keeps for the possibility of a game night. It would take Kai and Jesse’s help, at least. But Lucy did it all by herself, up and down the elevator like she was going on a weekend trip, not moving an entire life from one apartment to another.

“I just don’t need a lot,” she tells Kate that night, a sheet pooled around her waist as she lays back on her pillow. “Work, gym, and you. I wasn’t kidding.”

Kate doesn’t need a lot either, but she does have small things. Jane bought her an orchid in a yellow pot that thrives in the living room. She has a few things from Northwestern on a shelf nearby. A stack of books on a side table. Three mugs with silly slogans she got as a gag gift in D.C. that she used to hide in the back of the cupboard before she didn’t care if Lucy saw them. A novelty, oversized fork that hangs by the stove. Just a couple of things that give her apartment a version of a personality without overwhelming things.

Kate ran a finger over the swell of Lucy’s hip and they hadn’t talked about it again.

Kate doesn’t notice it at first, rushing in the morning because Lucy rolled across her just before her alarm went off and they got caught up in each other. She needs to start putting her foot down because she’s been nearly late to work too many times since Lucy moved in. But every time she thinks about telling Lucy they can’t, they have no time, Lucy tosses those curls over her shoulder and bats her eyes and smiles that slow smile Kate always gives in to.

So she misses it, sitting on the kitchen counter. She doesn’t see it until later, peeling her silk shirt off with a groan as the fabric sticks to her skin. It was a hot day and she spent too much of it running around. Her texts say that Lucy is finishing up a few notes but she’ll be home soon—home, Kate thinks, smile unconscious—and can Kate please make fettuccine Alfredo if they have the right ingredients? Kate opens and closes the refrigerator and cabinets and they have the basics but she’ll have to go back out to get cream. She fires off a text to have Lucy stop and pick up a few things and finds a wine glass, pouring herself a drink.

When she puts it down on the counter she sees it: a small, golden set of letters, interlocked seamlessly so she can barely tell where one ends and one begins. A K&L so small that she could fit in the center of her palm. It’s tucked next to the coffee maker, inconspicuous. Kate frowns, picking it up and turning it over. She didn’t bring this home, and logically it could have only been Lucy who did, but when did she put it on the counter? Was it here yesterday? Just how unobservant has she been lately?

She holds it for another moment before placing it gently down on the counter where it was. A fingerprint shines on the golden surface but she doesn’t wipe it away. Something about erasing it makes her chest ache with an unknown feelings. She tucks it back a little, tighter to the coffee maker, and makes a note to ask Lucy about it.

Lucy barrels through the front door 10 minutes and half a glass of wine later, already laughing as she launches into whatever Jesse did to Kai today and Kate forgets to ask Lucy where the K&L came from, too caught up in her whirlwind and the bruising kiss she pulls Kate into to remember it.

They don’t have fettuccine Alfredo but Lucy, standing behind her at the kitchen counter as Kate lazily stirs peppers and onions and Lucy presses even lazier kisses to her shoulder, doesn’t seem to mind.

Things start appearing.

Kate thinks she might be going crazy, honestly. Every time she looks around, more things pop up. She finds a bonsai tree on the coffee table one night when she gets home from work and Lucy is stretched across the couch, snoring. A new candle is burning on the counter when she gets back from her Saturday morning surfing. A bobble head pops up on Lucy’s nightstand that looks suspiciously like Jesse. Kate blinks and the tissue box in the living room has a strange Dallas Cowboys cover on it that she didn’t realize you could still buy. Then there’s a caricature of the two of them Kate doesn’t remember sitting for tucked onto the wall with all of their degrees. An NCIS mug finds its way into the cupboard and behind it is one with “Aloha Hawai’i” on it.

Kate looks around their apartment and wonders how Lucy keeps sneaking things in without her noticing. Or why she’s sneaking them in the first place.

But she doesn’t mind them. She does thinks the bobble head is creepy and she makes Lucy turn it to face the wall whenever Lucy’s hand snakes across the sheets to Kate’s thigh. But the rest of them, things her mother would probably turn her nose up at, don’t bother her. They’re cute, if a little kitschy. They bring a little life into their home, pops of color that Kate wouldn’t have thought to bring in herself.

Lucy doesn’t say anything about them either. She just keeps adding things: a wooden sign for the bathroom with a giant palm tree on it that takes Kate a week until she decides that no one sees their bathroom because no one visits; a three-candle holder sprayed a deep teal color that Kate thinks looks like the ocean before a storm: a new coffee pod container with a subtle rainbow on it; a small hand-painted pineapple.

Kate just lets these things pile up in their apartment and silently brings Ernie the bobble head after its beady eyes follow her around her bedroom in her towel.

“Okay,” Kate finally declares when she comes home to find a small clown figurine on the counter next to the wooden, painted bowl Lucy bought to house their oranges. “We need to talk.”

Lucy looks up from peeling one of those oranges and her brow furrows. “That’s never good.”

Kate frowns before it clears. “Oh, not like that.” She follows her words with her hands curling around Lucy’s waist and pressing a kiss to the top of Lucy’s head. She points to the clown. “About this.”

“You don’t like clowns.”

“I do not like clowns,” she confirms. “But I meant, where are all these things coming from?”

Lucy looks confused. “Where is what coming from?”

Kate sweeps an arm across their apartment and things Lucy has been bringing home. “All of this. The knickknacks. The trinkets. The… clown statue.”

Lucy brightens. “Oh, do you like them? Not the clown, obviously. I will get rid of that. Ernie is strangely afraid of clowns, too.”

“I didn’t say I was afraid. They’re just unnatural,” Kate insists. She shakes her head, getting back on track. “But where are they coming from?”

Lucy shrugs. “Everywhere. Whenever I see something I think you might like, I pick it up. This place was a little… boring. It needed some personality.”

Kate frowns. “It wasn’t boring. I just... wasn’t here a lot.” She leans one hip against the counter. “So you were just going to fill our place with ‘personality’ until we suffocate under screen-printed blankets and dog statues?”

“Well, you never said anything about them.”

“Neither did you.”

Lucy shrugs again. “I figured you’d say something if you didn’t like them.”

Kate softens. She tucks some of Lucy’s hair behind her ear. “I like them. Most of them,” she amends. “The sign in the bathroom is not my favorite. But the rest of them, I like,” she rushes to add. “I just didn’t think you were someone who liked those things. I mean, you literally brought nothing but clothes and shoes when you moved in.”

Lucy abandons the orange, turning until her stance mirrors Kate’s. She looks thoughtful as her gaze slides towards the open balcony doors. “My house growing up was… spartan. Not that it was empty, but we were doing the minimalist thing before it was cool. And so I never had these things. The knickknacks, you know?” She meets Kate’s eyes. “I told myself that when I had a home, I’d do the opposite. I’d get all the weird little things I saw, that I liked. And I’d buy them and fill a whole place with them.”

Something softens even more in Kate’s chest. It melts, warm and slow, through her body. She smiles softly, hands reaching for Lucy’s waist and curling in her shirt. “So you bought them now.”

“I have a home now,” Lucy says simply. “I didn’t before.”

Kate tugs Lucy forward a few inches until their hips press together. Her forehead drops to Lucy’s. “I love them. Well, except—“

“The clown and the bathroom sign,” Lucy finishes. Her lips twitch in a smile. “Noted.” She presses up on her toes, their lips brushing. “What about a different bathroom sign?”

“How about no bathroom sign?” Kate counters. She presses their lips together with more purpose. “And a no bobble head rule.”

Lucy laughs softly. “I’ll cancel my order, then. It’s a shame. You would have been a cute bobble head.” She unwinds from Kate’s grip, picks up an orange slice, and crosses the apartment, grinning.

“That’s not funny, Lucy.” Kate frowns when Lucy only smiles wider. “That was Jesse,” she accuses. “I knew it! Lucy, that was so creepy!”

Lucy laughs and pops an orange slice into her mouth. “I was going to fill the apartment with the team until you said something,” she admits. “But I guess they can go in Ernie’s lair.”

Kate rolls her eyes as Lucy disappears into the bedroom. She looks around the apartment—at the K&L by the coffee maker, the Cowboys tissue box, the half-filled “Aloha Hawai’i” mug, the coffee pod container, the collection of candles growing at the unused end of the counter. All little things Lucy picked up, picked out for them.

Trinkets, knickknacks, souvenirs, baubles—it would take Lucy more than four trips to move out now. And Kate agrees, it makes it look like a home in her with all these things, these novelties handpicked by the woman she loves.

Lucy hums from the bedroom and Kate smiles to herself before she catches sight of the clown figurine. Her smile twists into disgust and she picks it up, opening the trash can and dropping it in. Some of these things she can live without.

Lucy, not so much.

#kacy #ncis: hawai'i #kate whistler #lucy tara #possessed by this idea at 7am this morning #opened the notes app and looked up an hour later to find this was written #of course lucy is still a nomad but eventually she might get there #lucy tara when will you return from the war?#okay byeeeee

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piratekane · 9 months ago

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(post-3x05 kacy scene)

Warm fingertips press down against the thin skin on the inside of her wrist, a melody she knows that she knows but can’t quite place in the early grey of the morning, the sun rising, muted, through the low clouds outside the window. She was asleep a minute ago and there’s a dream quickly fading away as her eyes open slowly and the room shifts into focus.

“Morning,” Kate whispers, still sunken in her pillow.

“G’morning.” Lucy pulls the words from the back of her throat like she’s pulling cotton from a cattail. “Time s’it?”

Kate doesn’t roll over to check her phone. “Early,” she guesses. “Too early for our day off.”

A day off. A present for her jungle excursion, courtesy of Tennant. A whole day to let her body come down from the high of being chased through thick vegetation with a life hanging delicately in her hands. Lucy lets her eyes close again and sinks back into her pillow. She goes back to focusing on Kate’s fingers looped carefully around the wrist between them. Tap, tap, taptap. Tap, tap. A song, then. One that she knows but can’t quite place.

“Is that Boot Scootin Boogie?”

Kate exhales a short laugh. “Taylor Swift.”

“Who else would it be?” Lucy feels the bed shift as Kate slides a little closer. She can feel the soft heat coming off Kate’s bare arms and wants to reach for it, pull it back over her, close her eyes and slip back into sleep for just a little bit longer.

It was a long day yesterday, her nerves pulled to their breaking point. When she stepped over the threshold to their apartment, the weight she had been working so hard to push off came crashing down on her. She doesn’t remember tasting the pizza Kate ordered, doesn’t remember picking Love is Blind on the TV or queuing up where they left off. She doesn’t remember brushing her teeth or turning out the light.

She does remember Kate’s body warm behind her on the couch, her own body pressed to Kate’s front as they sat wrapped up in each other. She remembers Kate’s arms and how they wrapped low around her waist in bed and held her tightly. She remembers soft lips to her bare shoulder and I love you against her skin as she let the exhaustion take over.

She remembers the Kate of it all, the steady and warm and loving presence she’s come to need like oxygen in her lungs. She remembers the overwhelming feeling of love—one she thought she’d never find in a million years.

“I could sleep another hundred hours,” she admits, eyes still closed.

She feels Kate’s smile against the back of her hand. “You can. We have nothing planned today.”

The thought is so tempting. She could pull Kate’s arms around her, drape them over her like the light comforter they’re sharing, and let herself sink back into sleep. It’s not too far off; she could reach for it and be asleep in moments.

But Kate is awake and tapping out a Taylor Swift song against her pulse point and that usually means banana pancakes and a Golden Girls marathon and pressing Kate against the counter edge and kissing her until either their lungs start to burn or the pancakes start to smoke. Lucy loves those mornings and the way Kate tastes like the bites of bananas she snuck before mixing them into the batter.

“Did I dream yesterday?”

“Only if we were having the same nightmare.” Kate’s free hand pushes back some of Lucy’s hair. “Otherwise, it was real.”

Lucy slides her foot forward, curling her ankle around Kate’s calf. “I thought so.” She opens one eye, studying Kate’s profile. She’s committed it to memory by now. “I feel like a truck ran me over.”

“It did,” Kate murmurs. “That very much happened.”

Lucy sighs. Yesterday wasn’t a dream. She can see it vividly in her mind and she closes her eyes against it again, trying to fill it with Kate—Kate so close and so warm.

“I’m not ready to talk yet,” she admits. She isn’t. She can’t. She’s still working through her family in her own mind; she can’t possibly put into words what they’re like and what they’ve done to her and to each other.

“We don’t have to talk.” Kate’s voice is soft and genuine and Lucy thinks again—again and again—how lucky she is. “We can just lay here. We don’t have to do anything at all.”

Lucy knows Kate isn’t lying. She knows Kate won’t push and she won’t prod and she’ll let Lucy set the pace for when and where and how. And it sounds perfect—a whole day in bed with Kate and their bodies pressed close together, hidden away from the world.

But someone told her to live her life yesterday. Someone who had the courage to throw theirs to the wind and start over from scratch. Someone who proved that there are still good people in the world who want to do what’s right for the sake of doing the right thing. And even if she can’t talk about it yet, even if she’s not ready to unlock the ugly parts of her past and lay them out on the table, she’s not going to lay in bed all day and let the world just pass her by.

“No.” She opens both eyes, staring deeply into Kate’s brown ones. “Let’s get up. We can make pancakes.”

“Banana or blueberry?”

“Both,” she says, feeling greedy and not caring. “And bacon. And toast. And—“

Kate laughs. “Okay. Remember we can only eat so much.”

“I can eat so much. I’m from—“

“Texas, yes.” Kate laughs again and leans in, kissing Lucy softly and pulling away too soon.

Lucy thinks about chasing her, pressing her deep into the mattress and not stopping until she has to come up for air. But she settles on letting Kate pull away and slide out of bed, pulling her hair up into a ponytail that exposes the long line of her neck. In her thin tank top and her soft shorts, no one has ever looked more beautiful than Kate does right now.

Lucy may be holding some things back, may be keeping some things close to the vest, but this? This she wants to scream from the rooftops. This she wants everyone to know. This she wants to tell Kate.

“I love you.”

Kate looks back over her shoulder, a smile on her face that threatens to break through the grey clouds outside their window. “I love you too.”

Live your life, Lucy Tara.

Lucy smiles as she gets up and stretches her arms above her head, feeling the tension break in her shoulders. She is going to live her life. She’s going to take every moment and hold it tightly in her hands. She’s going to love Kate with every part of her that’s capable of it and when she’s ready she’ll tell Kate everything she wants to know.

“Lucy?”

Lucy looks up. “Hmm?”

“I said, we can make toast too. If you want.”

She thinks about it for a moment before she smiles. “Life is too short to skip the toast.”

Kate rolls her eyes, pulling the sheet back up on the bed. “Where did you read that?”

“That’s a Lucy Tara quote, free of charge.” She winks when Kate laughs and scrubs her hair back off her neck into a bun. “There’s more where those came from, by the way.”

“Lucky me,” Kate grumbles, still smiling.

“Yeah,” Lucy says softly. “Lucky you.” She holds Kate’s eyes for a moment. “Lucky us.”

Kate’s smile slips into shy before she clears her throat and gives the neatly-made bed one last pat. “Lucky us,” she echoes. She slips out of the bedroom and heads towards the kitchen, humming something under her breath.

Lucy watches her walk away and thinks: this is a good life. This is a life worth living.

She follows Kate.

#ncis: hawai'i #kacy #kate whistler #lucy tara #post-ep shenanigans #a next morning run-on sentence that won't let me go #i wrote this in my notes app during a family easter dinner so excuse me i was in the middle of passing the peas when this idea came to me #actually it was mashed potatoes and my cousin wouldn't shut up about tswift and i was like get me outtttttta here #and since my brain is kacy-mush anyway this just happened #k bye <3

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