a/n : oh look, another prompt from the TFP challenge: Cold temperatures force characters into close proximity.

Wyatt was fully trained in more than just the basics of First Aid. It was information that he'd learned long ago after first enlisting, but that was just the beginning. There were always new tests out in the field, as well as required trainings and re-certifications every few years at the very least. He knew how to applying field dressings and create tourniquets. He'd familiarized himself with weather-related risks, could swiftly identify everything from heat exhaustion to hypothermia without a second guess. He was well versed in finding the correct pressure points to help slow the bleeding depending on the varying locations of a wound. He could form a makeshift splint with a variety of different equipment - a bayonet, a rifle, an entrenching tool, tent stakes, a spare tree branch and God knows what else if necessary.

The blood and guts of the job had never really bothered him. As long as there were still blood and guts to deal with, there was something to be done; there was a mission to uphold, a buddy who depended on him to get them home safely. Injuries were to be expected, and he'd always choose to deal with an injury before he'd accept the alternative.

Checking for vital signs, however - a pulse rate, a temperature, the respiration rate, and blood pressure - was a task that had him swallowing back bile every time. It was a devastating responsibility. It was the one thing he'd never been able to numb himself against over the years - standing by, essentially helpless, as one of his guys gradually crossed the chasm from life to death right before his eyes. The race for a pulse, a breath, a rising and falling motion of the body; all of it wasted, futile. Too little too late. It usually haunted him for months, years even.

For reasons he couldn't quite explain, Wyatt was feeling equally helpless each time he snuck a glance across the room at a certain downcast historian. Lucy was calmly explaining the causes of an impending blackout to Rufus, and from where Wyatt sat on one of the lumpy twin beds on the opposite wall, it was almost impossible to see the difference in her. She was using that patented teacher voice of hers, equal parts educational and energized. It was obvious that she was meant to do this job, for she never completely lost that dewy-eyed animation when the scenes from her textbooks began to weave together into the realm of a living and breathing hands-on world that far surpassed anything she'd experienced in the academic arena. She was actively participating in history, contributing to the outcomes she'd studied all her life, and the glow of it never quite left her expression.

But even though Wyatt could still discern that bit of childlike wonder coloring her words as she discussed glitching transmission lines and overwhelmed power stations, it was just about the only positive vital sign she had left at this point. The shift had begun slowly, which really should have been his first indication. She'd handled the news about her mom far too well. She'd been forced to weather the initial shock of it in just a handful of hours, and then they were off again, protecting history from Emma instead of Flynn, and Lucy had flung herself into the fray without pause. She'd been so sure that they could snuff out Rittenhouse's resurgence before they had the chance to build up much momentum, and in hindsight Wyatt could see that she'd been too bright at the prospect of fighting back for another round, too hopeful for a fast victory in their favor. It hadn't been real.

So when one jump became two, then three and four and more, that false optimism eventually starved itself to death. Lucy became resigned and ever-so-slightly withdrawn. He had to squint to see it, but she was compelling herself to be good company through sheer willpower, building up the energy to pretend that she was eagerly participating in nights out at the bar and extra hours at Mason Industries. He could see the robotic motion behind it, as if she were programming herself to pass as normal when she was far from it. There was less smiling, less talking, less eating. More drinking, more distance, more makeup to cover the growing circles beneath her eyes.

But he'd been encouraged when he realized that she was still welcoming his presence in her life even when her interest in socialization had been waning away to nothing. They were practically next-door neighbors now that she'd moved out of her mom's house, and Wyatt made every excuse in the book to wheedle his way into her apartment as often as he could. He borrowed three eggs from her when he had a full carton of them in his fridge. He claimed that he'd heard a weird noise and wanted to be sure that it hadn't come from her place. He was supposedly bored and asked her for suggested reading material. He 'found' her sweater in his car and wanted to return it. He intentionally ordered enough takeout for two and then begged her to split it with him after realizing it was too much for just him.

She wasn't stupid, not that her intelligence had ever really been in question. There was always a wary look, a doubtful roll of the eyes, a long sigh. And then she would let him in and never made any attempt to shoo him off once he'd gotten through the door. She'd become the Lucy that he recognized, the one that laughed and teased and smiled. It may have all been a little subdued, tainted with sadness and fatigue, but he took that as a good omen. She wasn't trying to fake it when he was the only one around. She was sad, after all. He was relieved that she let him see it, didn't try to hide it or excuse it.

And when she was like that - vulnerable before him, tired and stressed and gloomy - that's when he felt most liberated to also be one-hundred percent honest about his own feelings. He hugged her more often, kept an arm around her while they sat close on the sofa, refilled her wine glass when she gave him the imploring puppy dog eyes, and did his best to reminded her that she wasn't going through this alone.

He didn't make a move, didn't overtly talk about possibilities, didn't initiate anything beyond their established level of physical contact. He wanted to, dreamt about it even, but was terrified of upsetting their delicate balance...terrified that the first woman he cared for since Jessica would go running in the opposite direction if he chose the wrong moment to take that next step. So he held his breath and waited it out.

Until she'd taken that next step for him, of course.

It was just last night that he'd taken her hand once they'd left the bar, waving to Rufus and Jiya as they split ways for their respective cars. Right there in a poorly-lit parking lot, he'd opened the passenger side door for Lucy and been extraordinarily surprised when she planted her lips on his instead of getting into the vehicle. She was warm and sugary-sweet, kissing him with all the light rustling of the peach sangria that flavored her mouth.

With his hands mapping their way across her jaw, he'd whispered his first and only thought with his eyes still closed. "Finally."

She pulled away with a self-conscience smile, leaving her hand on his arm even as she awkwardly shuffled backward. "I - I think I maybe had too much to drink tonight. Everything's buzzing...but in a good way."

Wyatt laughed, steered her carefully into her seat, and went around to his side with an unruly grin and a revving heartbeat.

He'd waited until they were almost back to the apartment complex, glanced over to be sure that she was still awake, and then confessed the irreversible truth as they passed beneath a glittering streetlight. "You know...I'd be more than happy to try that again sometime if you want. When you're sober, of course."

Lucy ducked her head with an adorably dopey smile. "That would be nice."

"Yeah? You think you'll still be interested without the liquid courage?"

She made an incredulous scoffing noise, wordlessly suggesting that he was an idiot for asking such a silly question. He'd carried that sound with him as he want to sleep later that night, instantly remembered it when he'd woken earlier than the sun, and most definitely had it playing in the back of his mind when his cell phone buzzed with news from Agent Christopher. Emma had taken the Mothership out again, which meant they were jumping too. A jump through time meant he'd soon be facing Lucy, and facing Lucy meant a chance to test the waters after what had transpired at the bar last night, and suddenly Wyatt was actually looking forward to the act of buckling himself into that God-awful nausea machine known as the Lifeboat.

He tried to catch her eye as Agent Christopher and Jiya briefed them for the jump, and was pretty sure he saw a hint of a blushing grin when he did finally snag her gaze, but she was appropriately consumed with the usual questions of when, where, and most importantly, why - the most ambiguous question of all ever since the Mothership had been commandeered by Rittenhouse. Emma's motives had been impossible for Lucy to discern lately, and it was taking an obvious toll on her. Hell, it was taking a toll on all of them.

The story was no different when they landed in Syracuse. Lucy knew that there would be a blackout less than 12 hours after they arrived in 1965, and the outage was a big one, spanning across Ontario and moving through a myriad of New England states, reaching all the way down to parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. What she couldn't understand was why or how Rittenhouse would want to interfere.

But after several hours of chasing down empty leads on an unseasonably cold November day, it seemed like the inevitable was bound to happen without a single clue of where to turn their attention. The clock was ticking down on them, and in this particular instance, there was nothing they could do to suspend it in their favor. The electricity was soon going to flicker and fail without any apparent tampering from Emma or her lackeys, and Wyatt had insisted that they settle in somewhere safe before night fell and chaos ensued.

So here they were in a tiny inn just a few miles from the shores of Lake Ontario, and as best as he could figure it, somewhere between touching down in the '60s and securing a room for the night, Wyatt had inadvertently done something that severed the line he'd been cautiously cultivating between himself and Lucy. He tried to coax a smile out of her when he claimed to be her husband downstairs at check-in. He had offered his hand to her as they climbed the steep staircase to the motel's second floor. He made a lame joke about the dubious ratio of three adults and two twin beds.

She didn't smile, didn't take his hand, didn't laugh. Didn't bat an eye or vary her blank expression. Hadn't uttered a solitary word unless it was directed at Rufus.

And thank God for Rufus, because he was undeniably picking up on the weird vibes and had jumped right in to ease the tension, asking Lucy about the crisis at hand and how it would eventually be resolved. The two of them were quickly swept away in a conversation that interested both parties; it was the perfect blend of physics and history, which meant they were rambling on and on about topics that Wyatt would much rather tune out.

He may not have been following the actual meaning of her words, but he was listening intently to her sunken inflection, observing her pinched face carefully in the fading gray light that slipped between the curtains of the room's lone window. It was so achingly similar to what he would do for any fallen ally - searching for that pulse, that breath, that rising and falling motion of the body - except this wasn't about the physical preservation of life. It was even more elusive than that, and that's what really had him on edge. There were no simple solutions, no clear preventative role that he was trained to carry out on her behalf. Maybe he was massively overreacting and everything was fine, but when there were so few vital signs left to measure, his connection to her felt like the only stable thing he had left. If she was closing the door on him now, what was there left for him to do?

He had to find a way to fix this. There was a very real, incredibly gruesome possibility that this freeze-out of hers would carry over for another 52 years and follow them right into 2017 if he didn't figure out how he'd screwed this up. He couldn't live with the isolation, because that would mean that she'd be alone to deal with the fallout of Emma, of Rittenhouse, of losing Amy in one way and her mom in another. And that meant he'd go back to being alone too.

Wyatt was startled from his thoughts as Rufus backed away from the window, his glance swiping nervously between Lucy and Wyatt before he cleared his throat. "I'm, uh, gonna use the restroom while there's still a working light in there. We don't have much longer to go..."

He waited until Wyatt nodded back at him, then made his exit. The silence that descended upon the room was palpable, expanding over them with menacing intent.

"So, wanna fill me in why you're upset with me?"

Lucy kept her eyes on the brisk landscape just beyond the glass of the window, her posture more rigid than he'd ever seen it. He sat forward with his elbows on his knees and just plunged straight in before he could chicken out.

"I mean it, Lucy. Why don't you just tell me what I did to piss you off so I can get a head start on the groveling."

Her shoulders caved fractionally, but she didn't spare him a look. "I'm not pissed off."

"You're not happy with me," he said blandly, matching her flat tone, "so obviously I did something to cause that."

He got nothing in return but a short shake of her head. That was enough to pull him to his feet, and he didn't miss the flash of panic in her eyes as he advanced across the room.

Wyatt rubbed his temples with a sigh, angling himself against the window casing so she couldn't avoid him entirely. "Forget about me for a minute, okay? We have a job to do. We're a team, aren't we? And if the team is distracted by - "

"I'm not distracted," she said stonily, her brow furrowing with the force of her words.

He fought the urge to put his fist through the glass pane, grasping for a way to redirect his building frustration before he blew a fuse faster than the damn power outage that was coming down the line at any moment. "Okay then. So you're not pissed off and you're not distracted, but you are definitely shutting me out, so can you at least admit that something is off between us?"

"I'm not shutting you out. I'm talking to you right now, aren't I?"

"Damn it, Lucy," he breathed out bitingly, shoving his fists into his pockets. "I know how this game works. You remember I was married before I knew you, right? This is not my first ride on the cold-shoulder carousel."

He didn't know it was possible for her to appear any more pale until she noticeably blanched at his choice of words, her mouth stretching thin as she worked double time to keep her expression neutral. He was on the right track with something he'd just said, so he pushed harder, his voice going hoarse as he charged ahead. "I'm not playing around, alright? I'd gladly apologize for whatever it is - hell, I'll say I'm sorry right now just knowing that you're upset about something - but don't punish me like this. Don't leave me out in the cold."

His emotions rose up into his throat, hindering his ability to plead with her any further, but he wasn't even sure he had much left in him anyhow. This argument - or more like the lack thereof - was the equivalent of picking the scab on a barely-closed wound, and his head was starting to thrash with the beginnings of a nasty migraine.

Lucy finally loosened her statue-like resilience, swiveling just enough to let the pain in her eyes wash over him like a torrential downpour. She breathed in, scrunched up her nose, parted her lips to speak...

There was a crackle overhead, a slow hum, and then the lights died out.

"Wyatt. Dude...Wyatt, wake - "

"Jeez, I'm awake, okay?" He grumbled irritably, eyes still closed and brain lagging with sleep. "What d'ya want, Rufus?"

"Get her off me," Rufus whispered so loudly that it was barely a whisper at all.

Wyatt shifted idly against his half of the pillow "Huh?"

"Get. Her. Off. Of. Me."

He blinked several times, surprised at the amount of moonlight that sailed through the curtains and provided clarity to his otherwise obscured surroundings. Once he was functioning with a passable amount of awareness, he turned over and nearly burst into laughter at the sight before him. Rufus was twisted at a strange angle, gesturing down at Lucy with frantic movements, but she was totally unaware of the commotion that she was causing. Her body was curled up about as small as humanly possible with her forehead crowded between Rufus's shoulder blades, and while Wyatt couldn't really see much more from his side of the makeshift bed, he was pretty sure that her legs were huddled up against him too.

"How is this my problem?" he asked with a muted chuckle. "She's sleeping, Rufus. It's not like anything is...happening."

"This was your stupid idea, man. You need to fix this now. Right now."

"Are you forgetting that we're here because of a blackout? What were we suppose to do with no heat in this place?" He glanced downward, noting that Lucy had certainly migrated pretty far beyond the middle line where the two mattresses met. She'd been the first to turn in for the night, and by the time Wyatt had followed suit, she had been flat on her back in the dead-center of the bed. Definitely not the case any longer. "Just go back sleep, okay? We'd all be freezing our asses off if we hadn't pushed the beds together."

"Oh, just go back to sleep, he says," Rufus grumbled lowly, struggling to keep his voice even in the ballpark of a whisper now. "Yeah, well I can't. I naturally assumed that she'd wind up on your side of the bed instead of mine. The two of you just had to get into your first fight right before we're all in bed together. Awesome timing."

Now Wyatt was sure that sleep deprivation was tampering with his comprehension. "Our first fight? We fight all the time."

Rufus snickered, hissing in reply, "I mean your first couples fight. I saw that kiss in the parking lot last night, dude. This is way different and you know it."

"I...we aren't - "

"Look, I don't care right now," he interrupted hastily. "Tell me later, as in after you've rolled her off of me."

Wyatt watched the languid rhythm of Lucy's back as she slept on, somehow undisturbed by this outlandish exchange. "She probably moved over because you're warmer than her. What's the big deal?"

"What's the big deal? I'm a guy, Wyatt. I think it goes without saying that a woman - any woman - pressed up against me while I'm sleeping is...well...frick man, I don't have to spell this out for you. And for God's sake, I thought she was Jiya, okay?! Please help me out here before I wake up a second time and accidentally do something that will forever scar my friendship with Lucy."

"Oh my God, is this middle school...?" He muttered with a scowl, propping himself on an elbow and reaching for Lucy's shoulder with a massive dose of reluctance. "Connor Mason has got to up the budget for overnight expenses. This room sharing thing is getting way out of hand."

Wyatt knew that she didn't want to be close to him, a fact that she'd made abundantly clear before they'd lost power, so he wasn't too surprised that she'd maneuvered herself to the complete opposite side of the bed. But it was also abundantly clear that Lucy had not been getting enough rest lately, which meant he despised the idea of disturbing her when she actually seemed to be pretty far off into dreamland. So how was he supposed to get her away from Rufus without waking her up? And if that weren't enough pressure, would she really be alright with the idea of Wyatt taking his place as Lucy's personal space heater? The science of thermodynamics was on his side, but they still hadn't cleared the air between them, not when Rufus had shot back into the room in a total frenzy as soon as the blackout had begun.

But the real bottom line was that for as much as he'd acted like Rufus was exaggerating the situation, Wyatt knew he wouldn't be faring much better if Lucy had snuggle-attacked him in the middle of the night. Especially when she wasn't just any woman to him, not anymore.

As he expected, she was not sympathetic to their cause. Wyatt tried to ease her onto her back, but she whined and refused to budge. He looked up to Rufus, but his friend's face was unrelenting. "Try. Harder."

Wyatt raised his eyes to the ceiling, wondering how the hell this job seemed to get so much weirder with every fricking jump.

"Lucy," he murmured soothingly, a hand massaging her shoulder. "C'mere, Lucy."

She muttered something unintelligible, moving just an inch with the motion of his hand but then stopping abruptly.

"Lu-cy," Wyatt whispered again before glaring at Rufus. "This is ridiculous. I feel like I'm calling a dog."

"Shhh, it's working," he countered with an urgent nod.

Sure enough, Lucy was sluggishly responding to his gentle prodding. She turned over with a grunt, but instead of staying put once she'd shifted onto her back, she rolled again and nestled her face right into Wyatt's shoulder. He went stock-still, not daring to release so much as an exhale as she settled into him. She wedged an icy foot between his shins and wound an arm up over his side and across his back. With a short wriggle and a satisfied little noise in the base of her throat, her slim frame went slack against him, the entire front of her body compactly burrowed into his.

"And there it is, just as God intended it to be," Rufus murmured with a note of delight.

"Don't be an ass, Rufus."

"Whatever you say, man. Just try to keep it PG-13 over there, alright?"

Wyatt narrowed his eyes from above Lucy's head. "Goodnight, Rufus."

"Goodnight, Wyatt," he singsonged with a smile. "I'd tell you to sleep tight but I don't think you have any other option."

With that Rufus turned over to face the wall, leaving Wyatt to shoot daggers into his retreating back. And then it was just him and a very clingy Lucy, bundled up together so closely that no one would mistake them for anything but lovers.

Goddammit.

Their natural regard for personal space had been shrinking more and more of late, a change that Wyatt had cheerfully welcomed as they spent more time together, but this was brand new territory and he wasn't even able to enjoy it, not when he was plagued with the belief that she'd wake up tomorrow and hate him for allowing this to happen.

He closed his eyes and breathed in with some difficulty. Her hair tickling his neck, her legs grazing between his, her soft curves pressing into him - it was sensory overload.

Wyatt tilted his head back with an uneasy sigh and peered up at the ceiling, admitting to himself that sleep was now a very, very long way off.

a/n: Part 2 will be posted super soon! Thanks for reading!