Part 2 is here! Good thing I had this done in advance, because I'm totally drowning in a sea of Timeless cast perfection thanks to SD Comic Con :))) God bless the social media age.

Sunlight illuminated the shoebox-sized motel room, gradually slanting over Wyatt's skin until he couldn't ignore it any longer. There was a wistful slowness in his waking, which was far from the norm for him. He usually sprang awake like a wind-up toy, fully alert as soon as the first dredges of perception filtered through him, but something was different today. He blinked heavily, scanned the room by force of habit, mindlessly tucking away the fact that he'd slept well into the mid-morning hours and simultaneously observing that Rufus was nowhere to be found.

And with that realization, it didn't take long to identify the source of Wyatt's quiet listlessness. Lucy was beginning to stir from between his arms, looking irresistibly creased with sleep and uncommonly at peace with a world gone wrong. Her head was still perched upon his shoulder and she was smiling a cozy little smile as she stretched out beside him. It was the lightest he'd seen her in what felt like forever, and all he wanted to do was bottle up that bliss and hold onto it indefinitely.

But then the illusion was ruthlessly ripped away as soon as she officially crossed over into the land of the conscious.

Lucy sat up clumsily once her bleary eyes lit upon his face, a strained agony contorting her features until all traces of peacefulness had been entirely choked out. "Uh, sorry..."

"I'm not," he mumbled foggily. "Didn't have to move on my account."

She gave him no response, but she also made no attempt to remove herself from the jumble of sheets that still kept them relatively close. Yesterday's veneer of cool detachment hadn't quite settled into her eyes yet, and Wyatt was not one to waste a perfectly good opening. He maneuvered himself upward against the headboard and ran a hand through his hair, zeroing in on her with all of the sleepy focus that he could muster. "Are you ready to level with me yet?"

That was all it took for the last of her groggy fatigue to drop away. Her gaze was such a pained twist of reluctance and guilt that he instantly regretted the intensity of his tone. "I...I'm not trying to play some kind of manipulative game with you. I never meant to make you feel like that, Wyatt."

"I believe you," he murmured lowly, "but that doesn't change anything. I'm still in the dark here."

"Actually the power is probably back on by now, so - "

"Lucy."

"Right," she chuckled, but the sound was hollow and restless. "I - uh, maybe saw Emma yesterday and didn't tell you about it."

The power may have returned overnight, but Wyatt would have sworn that the room had somehow been emptied of all oxygen in the meantime. "Here? In '65?"

She nodded with unmistakable fear glazing her rounded eyes.

"Are you kidding me?" He sighed, his whole face crumpling with disappointment. "I thought we were done with this, Lucy."

She cocked her head sideways as if she hadn't heard him properly. "Done with what?"

"The sneaking around, the secrecy and the backdoor conversations. It's like Flynn with that damn journal all over again."

Her knuckles went starkly white as she clutched the quilt in both hands. "You don't understand."

"How could I? You won't explain it to me, and I'm not a mind reader, so yeah, I don't understand at all."

Lucy's eyelids wavered precariously, but she held her emotions at bay, biting down hard until she could speak again. "I didn't seek her out. She - she popped up out of nowhere when I was checking around in the post office. It was my last stop before we all met up again. She was there when I turned back from talking to the clerk. She said she wouldn't hurt me or change anything this time if I promised to stay calm and hear her out."

"Did she also make you promise to keep your teammates out of the loop?" he asked tersely.

"No," she said in a low, croaking voice. "That was all me."

"Wonderful. So what did your pal Emma want to discuss?"

Lucy rotated away from him, looking out toward the window for several harrowing moments before answering. "She had a message for me. I needed to know that my...my mother would tolerate a lot of things from me, but she would not allow me to - to weaken the bloodline."

He nearly coughed up his last meal. "To...what?"

She kept her back to him, tenting her hands together in front of her face as if she were about to kneel for prayer. "Weaken the bloodline. Water down the family lineage. The Cahills and the Prestons are...oh my God, it's like I'm some type of show pony pedigree, and they - they..."

Wyatt felt queasy as he watched her chin tremble. "Lucy..."

"Don't you see why I...I couldn't tell you..." she glanced over her shoulder with crushing anguish filling her eyes. "It's so beyond screwed up. I mean, we've kissed one time and now I have to tell you that Rittenhouse has issued some kind of repulsively intrusive warning about...about the consequences of us breeding? How the hell was I supposed to bring that up?"

She shuddered and looked away, shame creeping over her features until she covered her face again.

"Twice, actually."

"What?" she muttered with her hands still blocking her face from view.

Wyatt tried to unstick his tongue from the stifling dryness that consumed his mouth, clearing his throat before answering. "We've kissed twice."

She lifted her head with watery eyes trained on him, but her expression was far more confused than sad. "You mean...Arkansas in '34? You made it pretty clear back then that it didn't count."

"Yeah, well...I was lying." He shrugged and scratched a hand through his hair. "More to myself than to anyone, but yeah...definitely a lie. It counted."

Lucy squared her shoulders and twisted to face him more directly. "I just told you that Rittenhouse is threatening to come between us if they suspect that there's a chance we're procreating, and you're taking this opportunity to argue about when our real first kiss actually happened?"

He smirked, but there was very little humor in it. "If we count Arkansas, I get credit for kissing you first. It's an issue of pride."

"My God," she groaned as she flopped face-down onto the mattress. "Clearly there's nothing for my mom to be worried about here. I have high standards. I'm not reproducing with a Neanderthal."

Wyatt chuckled at her muffled protests, dragging himself over to her and collapsing across the bed with his head braced on his arm. His fingertips moved involuntarily to sketch over the slope of her back, magnetized by her very nearness and incapable of restraining himself. "They're not going to scare me off, Lucy."

She sniffled into the quilt. "You don't get to decide that on your own."

"Neither do you."

Her head turned to the side, revealing chocolate brown eyes drowning in sorrow. "Look, it's not too late. We're friends now, right? So why make this more difficult than it has to be?"

He scooted nearer until their noses were almost touching. "Because I want to kiss you more than twice."

Lucy visibly gulped at that, a gleam of yearning rising into her face. "I can't take that risk."

"You do realize what you're saying, right? You're choosing to be exactly what they want you to be - nothing more than a trained show pony - if you let them decide what we can and can't have together. We're the only two people who should have any say in the matter."

"I'm not quitting the team. I'm not joining their side. If this is the one thing that I can't have, is that really so - "

"Yes," he exhaled quietly, "yes it is that bad. This is just where they'll start, Lucy. They're looking for a sick way to gain control, scouring the situation for any sign of weakness. If you give them even the slightest bit of leverage, you'll never be rid of them again."

She closed her eyes, momentarily shuttering him from her suffering. "I'm so scared, Wyatt. They're watching my every move, tracking every choice I make. I - I've had this feeling for weeks now, like there's always someone hovering over my shoulder, but now...now I know."

He put an cautious hand to her cheek and she automatically leaned into his palm. "Why didn't you tell me that you thought you were being followed? You know that we've been batting around the idea of providing personal security detail for awhile now."

Her shoulders lifted dismissively. "I was equally convinced that I was just becoming a paranoid freak."

"Okay, that's it," he murmured with a labored smirk, his hands moving to circle her waist and flip her over until her back was against the mattress. She let out a resistant clamoring noise as she went, fingers clawing for purchase on his arms. "You have got to trust your instincts, Lucy. Listening to that internal voice of yours could be the difference between life and death."

She watched him looming over her with uncertain eyes. "What does that have to do with you going all caveman and tossing me around on - "

His lips touched down against hers lightly, just a buoyant little sweep of a kiss that could barely pass for the real thing.

"Wyatt - we...we shouldn't - "

He kissed her again, upping the pressure by only a few degrees. He felt the tumbling shiver that spread over her. Her fingernails scraped at the back of his neck and then she pulled him in, meeting his mouth halfway and kissing him without any excuse - it wasn't for show and it wasn't the result of tipsy impulsiveness. It was simply Lucy taking exactly what she wanted from him, and he was all too happy to give it up for the taking.

"I know what you're doing," she said without retreating.

He snuck a blistering kiss to the side of her neck. "Is it working?"

Lucy released a euphoric hum and tipped her head back to grant him further access to the column of her throat. "This proves nothing."

"So I guess that means you want to stop." Wyatt huffed out a warm sigh that stirred up a colony of goosebumps across that swan neck of hers. "I was just getting started too."

He sat back on his haunches, but she didn't hesitate to follow after him, hauling his mouth back to hers with more speed than he'd thought possible. He grinned into the kiss, hands searching for her waist and guiding her forward against him until their hips were perfectly aligned.

Wyatt identified the squeak of the doorknob a second too late, his mouth and arms still entangled with Lucy when Rufus came staggering inside with a gust of cold November air drafting after him.

"Hey guys, breakfast is - oh shit, hello!"

"Oh my God, Rufus," Lucy crumpled backwards. "I - I'm sorry, we - "

"Let's just pretend this never happened," he insisted with his eyes carefully averted from the bed, shoving a collection of breakfast items onto the windowsill with far more force than necessary. "But hey, what did I expect? It's like I said - just as God intended it to be, right?"

Lucy glanced at Wyatt with a perplexed frown, but he only laughed in return, allowing Rufus' resolute claim to speak for itself.

"The Northeast blackout of 1965 was a substantial disturbance in the delivery of electricity on Tuesday, November 9, 1965. The outage affected parts of Ontario, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Vermont."

Wyatt caught Lucy's approving nod from the corner of his eye, verifying that the details of Jiya's internet search were matching up with her expectations thus far.

"Oh and get this," Jiya called out with a significant upshot of enthusiasm, "It says that when no cause for the blackout was immediately apparent, a bunch of writers made claims that it was caused by UFOs, which was partially inspired by so-called UFO sightings near Syracuse just hours before the outage."

Lucy winced, fiddling nervously with the collar of her blazer. "Oops."

Jiya showed none of the same concern as she glanced up from her tablet. "I don't know about you guys, but I know I want to believe. Someone better call Agent Mulder about this."

That earned a groan from Rufus, but Agent Christopher seemed more or less unaffected by the minor fumble. "Good work, everyone. That's all for tonight. Get some rest and I'll be in touch."

"One more thing, ma'am." Wyatt leaned forward, acutely aware of Lucy's eyes boring into his face as he spoke. "We have reason to believe that Rittenhouse is closely monitoring our off-the-clock activities. I think it's time we move forward with the idea of assigning an agent to Lucy at all times. Rufus too."

Denise nodded her consent. "Agreed. That's long overdue anyway. Anything in particular I should be concerned about?"

Wyatt hesitated, but the memory of Lucy's withering mortification from earlier that morning had him clamming up sooner rather than later. "Nothing specific. It's just a hunch, but I'd prefer to be safe and not sorry."

"Say no more," she stood up, already tapping away at her phone with a request for additional agents. "I trust your judgment."

"Wyatt will be protected too, right?" Lucy asked suddenly, palms pressed to the tabletop. "I know he's the soldier here, but he has a target on his back just the same as the rest of us. He can't possibly be expected to remain on high alert all the time."

Wyatt was already queued up to argue against that statement, but Denise leveled him with an unswerving look. "Yes, we'll provide someone for Wyatt too. That's final."

Agent Christopher was the first to make her exit from the conference room, and Rufus and Jiya were right behind her, both of their heads bent over her tablet as they discussed the merits of an X-Files episode based on Lifeboat sightings throughout history. That left Wyatt and Lucy sitting there alone with nothing but three miles worth of friction between them.

She broke first, unleashing those massive doe eyes on him as she spun her chair in his direction. "Thank you for being discreet about what Emma told me. My dignity can only take so many hits in a 24-hour window."

"Believe it or not, even I have some self-respect," he said with a wry smirk. "I like Agent Christopher well enough, but she doesn't need to hear about the possibility of future copulation between us."

Lucy cringed and dropped her gaze to her hands. "Well, on that note..."

She pushed back from the table and began to collect her bag from the chair next to her.

"Not so fast," he continued with a grin, "on that note, we do need to discuss the possibility of future copulation between us."

"How romantic," she grumbled sourly.

Wyatt pushed himself up out of his chair and propped his hip against the edge of the conference table, unapologetically crowding into personal space. "I liked waking up with you in my arms this morning. It's a good thing you're cute, because you are one hell of an aggressive cuddler and I don't put up with that from just anyone."

She flushed, sitting forward with a groan. "Wyatt - "

"Oh, and in case you weren't sure, I don't actually care who gets the props for initiating our first kiss as long as we keep on kissing," he went on as if she hadn't said a thing. "And if I really thought you needed time to be ready for this relationship, I'd give you all the time in the world, but that's not what's holding you back. I wasn't sure when you kissed me the other night at the bar, but today in that motel room...I know that you want this just as much as I do, Lucy. And even then, I'm still not going to blackmail you into dating me, okay? But if you care about me at all, platonically or otherwise, then please don't ever close yourself off to me like you did yesterday. Pushing me away like that...it's the one thing I can't accept from you."

She'd long ago pressed a steadying hand to her mouth, but he saw the quiver that clattered through her nonetheless. Wyatt reached for her wrist, his thumb gliding over her smooth skin before he spoke again. "How's that for romantic, ma'am?"

"Much better," she whispered faintly.

He lowered his face to hers, but she pushed against his chest at the last possible second, distancing him from her with a repentant look.

"How can you be so sure about this?" she murmured almost inaudibly. "After what happened to Jessica, shouldn't you be the first to shy away from something that's so...so ill-fated?"

"Ah, your good friend fate is back to torment us again," he said with half of a grin. He straightened up, dropping the teasing tone and bringing her hand up to his heart. "For what it's worth, have you ever gotten the sense that I regret getting married in the first place? Have I ever said that I think my life would have been better if I'd avoided Jess from day one and never loved her at all?"

"No, but I do get the sense that you'd trade in the whole marriage if it meant she would have a shot of living a longer life apart from you."

"You're right," he admitted quietly. "And if she were here, she would call me a self-important jackass for even entertaining the idea."

Lucy's brows wrinkled together thoughtfully as she stood up to challenge him head-on. "I think you just found a way to underhandedly tell me that I'm being a self-important jackass."

He squinted at her with a frown. "That was a risky strategy, wasn't it?"

"Reckless, even," she agreed, nodding along with him. "Kind of your trademark, right?"

"Hmm, guess so. You'll have to let me know how it pays off this time."

"Come a little closer and I'll tell you," she said with a cunning smile.

Wyatt's head dipped again, taking her lower lip victoriously between his teeth. He had her up on the table a second later, eagerly sloping forward between her legs until he felt her heels digging into the backs of his thighs.

"Hey, are you guys up for - damn it, not again!"

There was a distinct thudding noise as Rufus immediately backpedaled away from them, cursing up a storm as he stumbled backward.

"Sorry buddy," Wyatt called out without so much as a glance in his direction, eyes still transfixed on Lucy's mouth despite the interruption.

"Okay, just because this is the way God intended it to be does not mean I need to walk in on it all the time now. Jeez. Jiya and I are going for drinks, but you're both uninvited now."

He was fleeing the scene as fast he could then, mumbling something about rabbits under his breath as he went, and Wyatt knew that the whole facility was about to get an earful on their current relationship status now that an indignant Rufus had been unleashed.

"So much for being discreet," Lucy murmured dryly.

"Let's get out of here while we still can," he answered with a wary eye to the door. "These people might not be as bad as Rittenhouse, but I still don't like our odds of facing an interrogation from all of Mason Industries at once."

They dashed out of the facility hand-in-hand, not stopping until they were both panting at the passenger side of his vehicle. History mercifully repeated itself as Lucy ignored the door that he'd opened for her, opting to open her lips to his instead. Wyatt swayed into her and let it all in, welcomed the patter of her racing pulse, stole each feverish breath that passed between them, embraced the chaotic rise and fall of her chest against his. Nothing - not a power outage or a secret society or the ghosts of the past - could compete with the surging rush of limitless voltage that crackled between them now.

a/n : Hey! Reviews are fun! Thanks for reading!

Also sidenote: that thing about UFO sightings in Syracuse before the power outage is truly a documented speculation from the time of the real blackout! It was too good for me to pass that up when I found it :)