Chapter Text
“I just don’t like the way he’s been looking at you, okay?” Wyatt’s voice was low and urgent, leaning in toward her in the bunker’s deserted hallway.
Lucy’s mouth fell open and she immediately clamped it shut before something less than polite could emerge. She exhaled sharply through her nose, hands coming to her hips as she tilted her head up at Wyatt. “And what way is that exactly?”
Wyatt looked pained and a small, vicious part of Lucy took pleasure in having successfully baited him. Another part of her felt petty and ridiculous but the righteous anger she still harbored over Wyatt’s change of heart was just enough to blot that out, for now.
“You know what I mean, Luce.” He extended a hand toward her shoulder then seemed to think better of it, dropping his arm limply to his side. “He’s dangerous.”
At that, all she could do was shake her head, a bitter smile tugging up one corner of her mouth. “At this point, we all are.” Wyatt looked ready to protest but Lucy held both hands out, palms toward him. “Please. Just… just go to bed, Wyatt."
His lips pressed hard together and he moved slightly closer, her hands almost touching his chest. “Lucy…”
“Go.” She spread her hands wider and took a step away from him. Wyatt looked taken aback at the hard edge in her voice and she took a deep breath then deliberately softened it. “Go spend time with your wife. I’m a big girl. I can look after myself in this enclosed, hidden government bunker.” She made a vague gesture around them.
Wyatt conceded her point with a half-hearted laugh, his shoulders slumping. “Yeah, okay. Fine. Good night, Lucy.”
Before she could answer in kind, the bathroom door opened and Flynn stepped out with a towel slung around his shoulders. His hair was wet and he wore only a pair of sweatpants sitting low on his hips. He looked between Lucy and Wyatt, taking in the awkward space between them. “Did I miss the fun part?”
Wyatt’s jaw clenched, the line of his shoulders going rigid again. “Good night, Lucy,” he repeated, barely acknowledging the other man’s presence.
Flynn’s eyes narrowed at Wyatt but he said nothing. He leaned against the door frame, overly casual, and addressed Lucy. “Seems early for bed, doesn’t it? I still have that bottle of Glenlivet to open.” He grinned at her, “And I do hate to drink alone.”
Lucy fought the urge to let her gaze travel past Flynn’s face as she licked suddenly dry lips. The invitation was being made more for Wyatt’s sake than her own but it was still tempting. She’d been in Flynn’s room more nights than she’d been in her own in the last few weeks. She didn’t sleep there and they’d never so much as kissed but she was perfectly aware he wanted her. Wyatt was, in fact, rather late to the party in seeing it.
At first she’d ignored it; the lingering heated looks, the way Flynn would make little excuses to touch her - always in politely acceptable ways. He’d place a hand at her back to guide her into a room, offer her his arm on trips when she was disguised as his wife. When she didn’t push him away, he got bolder.
Lucy, bereft of all connection, still grieving the loss of Wyatt (while having to share a tiny space with him and the woman she'd lost him to) found she welcomed the attention. The distraction. She knew she ought to be ashamed of it, the way she leaned into him when he dared to put an arm around her at a play in Edwardian England. Or the way they’d danced closer than necessary at a nightclub in 1940’s Beirut. Sure it felt good being touched by an attractive man, how he sometimes sent a cascade of shivers all the way down her spine with the simplest gesture. He’d stroked a single finger down her neck while complimenting her updo on their last trip and she'd spent the rest of the evening just slightly flushed.
She hadn't been able to decide if she was sending him the wrong signals or exactly the right ones…
Wyatt cleared his throat, breaking her reverie and Lucy realized she had, after all, been unabashedly staring at Flynn’s torso, well shaped and still damp from his shower. Flynn looked highly amused and Wyatt was clearly furious.
Great. Just how she’d wanted her night to go.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh my God. Both of you just grow up.” She turned to walk away and heard Wyatt do the same, his heavy footfalls echoing in the hall.
Later, perched on her cot in PJs, she heard a knock at her door. Sighing, she crossed to crack it open.
Flynn. Eyes downcast, holding the aforementioned bottle in front of him. “I… came to make peace.”
She nodded to the bottle. “Is that an offering?”
His mouth flicked up at the corners. “If you’re willing to share?”
Lucy bit the inside of her lip, contemplating the tall man outside her door. He looked back at her, his expression guileless and searching, hooded eyes that hinted at the deeper sadness he always carried. He looked… lonely. It could be an act. But did she even really care?
It was late and she was lonely, too.
She opened her door.
***
An hour later, Lucy was starting to feel pleasantly fuzzy. The previous events of the evening had faded to the back of her mind and Flynn was entertaining her with impressions of his very superstitious grandmother. They sat side by side on her cot, passing the bottle generously between them.
“I’m serious! The house was filthy until after New Years. And guess who was tasked with cleaning it up?”
Lucy laughed. “Hmm, I’d guess a certain young man who was… what was it?” She affected an Eastern European accent, recalling a previous anecdote he'd shared, “Strong as an ox but twice as stubborn as a bull?” She knocked her knee playfully into his.
Flynn’s face split with a glowing smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “You do have a good memory. Of course, I knew that already.” He reached over and twirled a lock of her hair between two fingers, brushing the end of it against her nose. “Brilliant.”
It was such a familiar gesture, so unexpectedly intimate that Lucy froze, her eyes locked on his. Her lips parted but she realized she had no idea what to say. So she said nothing.
Flynn’s smile faded as he released her hair, looking away into an empty corner of her room. Leaning both elbows on his knees and interlacing his fingers between them, he swallowed audibly.
Just like that, the levity had somehow faded, leached away by all the unspoken things between them.
Lucy thought about why she kept spending time with this man. He was dangerous - Wyatt wasn’t wrong about that. She’d seen Flynn kill, needlessly waste life and recklessly mar the history she so adored.
And some future version of herself had helped him do it.
Five years from now, if he was being truthful, she’d be his accomplice. What were they to one another, then? What were they now?
Lucy screwed her eyes shut, pressing her hand to her spinning head. Too much to think about. It was all too much. Everything she’d seen and done and been. The things she was yet to do. The woman she’d become. She didn’t want to think about it. Not now. Not yet.
She didn’t want to think at all.
Taking a deep breath to steady the sudden quaking in her chest, she slid closer to Flynn, their outer thighs pressing together. She placed a hand on his leg, mid thigh, and felt the muscle tense under her palm. His head turned toward her, a question in his dark eyes.
She answered it with a kiss.
He responded immediately, one hand cupping her cheek and the other reaching across to shape her waist and pull her bodily closer. She let him set the pace at first, opening up to him as he sipped from her lips, warm and slow. But it was just too gentle, too tender. Too reminiscent of all the things she was trying to forget.
She nipped at his bottom lip, burying one hand in his hair and giving it a tug. Flynn made a low, feral sound at the back of his throat and deepened the kiss. Lucy tilted her head, their tongues sliding together as his hand at her waist slid to her hip, fingers gripping hard enough to bruise. And oh yes, this was good. This was what she wanted from him.
She rewarded him by scratching her nails against his scalp and he groaned his approval, his hand now roaming the length of her body as the other twisted into her hair, keeping her close. He pulled her head back and trailed biting kisses down her throat. Lucy gasped and clawed at his shoulder, her body nearly sideways on the cot in an attempt to get even closer. When he found her mouth again, this time she took the lead, exploring him thoroughly, chasing the smoky taste of scotch through their mingled breath.
Lucy broke the kiss reluctantly, her neck starting to ache from the awkward angle. Flynn made a noise of disappointment, searching her face as she rose from the cot. They were both breathless and no doubt she looked about as wrecked as he did. His eyes were darker than she’d ever seen them, his hands clutching the rumpled blankets on either side of his lap. His arousal was evident through the sweatpants and Lucy felt an answering pulse at her core.
“Is this… are you… alright?” he managed at last, watching her carefully.
She nodded. “Yeah, great actually.”
He grinned. “Good.” He extended a hand toward her,making a beckoning gesture with two fingers.
Lucy stepped closer, straddling his knees, her hands coming to his shoulders. “Just…” He met her gaze steadily, his hands framing her hips. She licked her lips and continued. “You know I’m trusting you, right?"
A somber nod. “I do.”
“Okay, then.”
And with that she was in his lap, his hardness throbbing against her center, sending delicious sparks through her body as she ground against him with abandon. Their mouths met messily, raw need overcoming finesse. His hands found her ass, squeezing and kneading as their lower bodies rocked together, the cot beneath them squeaking in protest at nearly every movement.
Flynn’s mouth traveled to her neck again, planting hot, open mouthed kisses, licking and sucking at her pulse point and seeking out all those little sensitive spots with eager determination. Lucy writhed in his lap, clutching his forearms and gasping as he discovered one secret after another. Her mind was blissfully blank, nothing but Flynn’s mouth and hands and the building heat between them.
Without warning, he scooped her up and rose from the cot, swallowing her yelp of surprise as it escaped her lips. Her legs wrapped instinctively around his hips.
“What are you doing?”
“That little cot can’t handle the things I want to do to you,” he rumbled in her ear.
Shivers of anticipation licked up the length of her spine as he set her on the desk in the opposite corner of the small room. Once she was seated, Flynn leaned away just enough to pull his shirt over his head. This time, Lucy made no pretense over drinking him in, tracing the hard lines and planes of his body first with her eyes and then her fingers. She could feel his quick shallow breaths, the way his stomach trembled as her hands ventured lower. When she met his eyes again, at last, the fire there could have consumed her in an instant.
His mouth crashed down on hers, his hands sliding under the tank top she wore, thumbs just brushing the undersides of her breasts. He tugged lightly at the fabric. Asking permission, she realized a moment later.
“Yes,” she breathed against his lips and they pulled apart again long enough for him to strip her of the unnecessary garment. She was braless beneath it and his hands were big enough that each of her breasts fit perfectly into his palms. He cupped them as he kissed her again, first her mouth then the hollow of her throat, bending to tease one nipple and then the other with his tongue and teeth. Lucy leaned back on her hands, back arching to present herself to him. Flynn sunk to his knees between her legs as his hands continued to play at her breasts. He flicked his tongue against her bellybutton, nipping at the skin just below it. Lucy squirmed and panted her encouragement.
Flynn smoothed one hand up her thigh and pressed his thumb against her center, rubbing her through her pajama pants and panties. Lucy’s head lolled back as her hips shunted toward him, her lips half forming his name in a desperate plea for more. More pressure, more skin, just more, more, more.
With a chuckle, he plucked at the waistband of her pajama pants and she lifted her hips as he helped her shimmy out of them, her underwear going with them. Before she could even register that she was completely bare before him, Flynn was propping her legs over his shoulders, kissing and biting his way up the inside of one thigh. She placed one hand behind her to brace herself as she rolled her hips toward him, the other hand stroking his hair. He glanced up at her, his expression hungry. She nodded again though she wasn’t sure why he was even asking at this point. That seemed to be all the answer he needed, though, because the next thing she knew was his tongue between her folds, lapping and sucking, eating her voraciously as she struggled to bite back her moans.
She rode his face to climax, clutching his hair for dear life. As she came down from the shuddering aftershocks, he pet her gently with two fingers, tracing her entrance, teasing with little additional flicks of his tongue until she pushed him away.
He rested his head against her thigh, grinning like the cat who caught the canary, his face still shiny with her juices. “Still alright?”
Lucy blinked down at him and thought about how that was possibly the most unanswerable question she’d ever been asked. And then she began to laugh. Because just in this moment, in a post orgasmic glow, in the dark with the deadliest man she’d ever known, she felt oddly free. Untouchable. She’d crossed a line and there was no going back. It was a deal with some kind of devil, she was sure, but at least now she knew just how good a fall from grace could feel.
Amidst her giddy realization, Flynn rose to his feet, wiping his mouth on his forearm, and raising a quizzical eyebrow at her. She reached for him wordlessly, pulling him close to rest her head against his chest, his heartbeat racing in her ear as her manic bout of amusement fizzled out. Flynn wrapped both arms around her, stroking her hair with that uncomfortable kind of tenderness that she wished he wouldn’t show. She needed him to be different. She needed him to be dark and twisted and complex and unknowable. Otherwise the world would stop making sense and there was a chance that what they just did - what they were about to do - would have much more meaning than she was ready for.
She pushed his arms away and reached toward his sweatpants, his hardness tenting the fabric, a damp stain having formed at the tip.
He caught her hands. “We, ah, we don’t have to do anything else tonight.” A soft smile. “There’s no rush.”
Lucy shook her head. “No time like the present, though, right?” She giggled again at her own half pun.
Flynn looked troubled. “I don’t… There shouldn’t be any regrets about tonight.”
“Do you have any?”
“No,” he answered instantly, almost before the words had left her mouth.
She palmed him through his pants, tracing his length and feeling her excitement return full force. He pulsed against her hand, hot and thick and so very hard.
“Good.”
She pushed his sweatpants to the floor and wrapped her hand around him. Flynn closed his eyes and took a shuddering breath as she began to stroke, gathering moisture from the tip to ease her way. His eyes opened again and he brought one hand to her cheek, fingers grazing her jawline as his thumb brushed against her lips. She parted them to flick her tongue against his thumb and he pressed it into her mouth. She suckled the digit as her hand increased its pace.
Flynn groaned and removed his hand from her mouth, kissing her hard as he leaned her back onto the desk. It was cold on her bare back but Flynn was burning up against her, warming her quickly as he replaced her hand on his cock with his own. Aligning himself with her entrance, he slowly pushed in. Lucy clawed at his back, her legs lifting to take him further, deeper inside her, until he was fully seated. He swore quietly in what she assumed was Croatian and pressed his forehead against hers.
She tilted her head to catch his mouth, rolling her hips into his and he took the hint, pulling halfway out of her to slam home again. It was her turn to swear and he nibbled her neck as his hips began to move in earnest. Lucy met him thrust for thrust, panting against his shoulder and feeling herself spiral up up up. He snaked a hand between them to rub at her sensitive little nub and Lucy dug her heels into his lower back. She was so close and he felt so good and if she could just live in this mindless moment, animal and raw in all the ways she'd never been allowed.... maybe she would be a different Lucy, the one who could take on time itself.... Flynn's teeth sunk into her neck and that was it, she was gone. She was breaking apart, the world dropping away to nothing but the white hot pleasure uncoiling inside her. Flynn pistoned his hips, muttering in at least two different languages as he planted reckless kisses anywhere his mouth could find skin. It was almost too much, her legs were shaking and her heart was ready to burst in her chest when she felt him go rigid, her name a breathless whisper on his lips.
They stayed there for a minute, both regaining their breath, before Flynn pushed himself up, slipping out of her. He helped her down from the table and made to pull her into his arms again but Lucy dodged away, grabbing her clothes from the floor. Her cheeks hot with sudden, unexpected shame.
“I should, um. You know, I should get some sleep.” She pulled her top over her head and ducked to pull on her bottoms, purposely avoiding his eyes. She needed him gone now. So tonight could just be what it was and not anything else. Not a beginning or an ending. Just a moment in time where she felt something different. Something new and terrifying and bold. She couldn't live in that place, be that woman. Not yet. Not now.
Flynn ran a hand through his mussed hair. “Right.” he stared at her briefly, expression unreadable. “Right,” he repeated and began to pull on his own clothes.
Feeling more awkward than she could remember, Lucy lingered by the door until he made his way over. He hesitated before dropping a light kiss to her forehead. Then he was turning to the door.
“Wait!”
He turned back quickly. “Yes?”
“The Glenlivet. There’s still plenty left.” She inclined her head to the forgotten bottle on the floor by her cot.
Flynn’s face fell and Lucy felt it like a blow to the gut. He recovered quickly, shrugging one shoulder. “Keep it. I’m sure I can get more on another trip.”
Lucy shifted her weight from one foot to the other, wrapping her arms around herself. “That doesn’t seem fair. I know how much that must have cost.”
A roguish smile that didn't meet his eyes, something of the old Flynn - back when she thought he was just the bad guy. “I didn’t pay for it.”
“Oh.” She should have known that. Just as she should have known how seriously he'd take her dismissal. How quickly he'd retreat. “Well, either way…” she considered her next words carefully. “Perhaps you’d like to… come back and finish it with me. Sometime?” She met his gaze at last.
He blinked at her, something shifting below the surface as his mouth pursed. “Hmm. I could be persuaded.”
She closed the distance between them and pushed onto her tiptoes to kiss him, just a quick peck goodnight, her own little peace offering. “Until next time.”
His mouth quirked upward and Lucy felt her own mouth curve in reply. In the next breath, he took her by surprise, wrapping one long arm around her waist and bending her slightly backward as he kissed her soundly. “Until next time,” he murmured, righting her back onto her feet.
And then he was gone.
Lucy slumped against the wall, feeling depleted. The effects of the liquor were gone but the effects of Garcia Flynn …. Those might linger for some time. His scent was on her skin and she could still taste him, feel how he’d moved inside her. It had been good. Really fucking good.
Some part of her had wanted him to stay, Spend the night curled around her on that cot. The better part of her knew it would have been too much - would have made a statement. A promise she didn't know how to keep. That was why he had to leave. But she couldn’t stay cold, couldn’t just turn it off the way she wanted. So there was the suggestion of next time. Just short of a promise and definitely not a lie. Next time was just nebulous enough.
It didn’t have to mean anything. It wasn’t the beginning of something.
It just wasn’t an ending either.