I'm a professor*; I couldn't ignore the 'Professor!Lucy' that's part of TFP's Septober list of prompts. But seeing as I tweaked the actual prompt (Sorry, Rufus…), I don't think this counts as an official entry. Still, it's a fic!

(*Ha, not a very good one, apparently, because I spent this afternoon finishing this instead of prepping lectures, labs, and answer keys for the week. Oh well.)

Lucy groaned into her pillow at the sound of her phone. They hadn't had to follow Emma for a few days now, which meant they were probably due. Except, she realized, the ring tone wasn't right. Not for Agent Christopher, nor Rufus, Wyatt, Jiya, or anyone else that could possibly be summoning her for a mission. It was one she hadn't heard in nearly a year.

With a grimace, she reached from under the covers to pluck the phone from the bedside table and squinted blearily at the screen.

Her suspicion was confirmed; it was work, but not Mason work. Stanford work, in the form of the department chair, resident sleazeball, and unfortunately, her ex of about three dates until she'd fully realized said sleazeball status.

She quickly swiped her thumb over the screen to reject the call. Like she needed to deal with him on top of Rittenhouse and hunting Emma.

She'd just settled back down into bed when it rang again. Same ring tone. "Ugh, go away," she grumbled, once again swiping to reject the call. Really, she should just block him, but she also couldn't be bothered with fiddling with phone settings when she was really hoping to get another hour of sleep or two. (She'd learned quickly to take advantage of these time-travel-free intervals and the sleep they afforded, because they sure as hell couldn't count on decent rest when they were flitting around in the past.)

Less than five minutes later, the stupid phone was ringing again. But it was the generic ring tone.

Now curious, Lucy reached for the phone once more, and was surprised to see 'Work – Nancy', her phone's entry for the History Department's admin assistant.

In this timeline, her mother still worked for the same department, though Lucy had been able to glean from Agent Christopher's sources that she'd also gone on leave after that fateful conversation they'd had while Emma was in the middle of hijacking the mothership. Now a little concerned that it could have something to do with her, Lucy sat up against the pillow, cleared her throat, and answered the call.

She was not expecting to hear what she did from Nancy.

It turned out that most of the department's faculty was off at a conference. (Any other year, she'd have been with them, Lucy realized absently – how had she not kept track of what month it was?) Lectures were mostly getting covered by graduate TAs or postdocs, but the one slated to cover the course that Lucy used to teach had come down with appendicitis and was headed in for surgery. Supposedly he'd be ok by Thursday's lecture, but was there any way that she could take over that afternoon's lecture?

Lucy was pretty well flummoxed by the request; it was so far from her current life, it almost didn't feel real. But she managed to stammer through a few questions about where the class was in the syllabus, what room the lecture was in, and at what time, and before she knew it, she was agreeing, albeit with the stipulation that she may have to pull out at the last minute as well, depending on obligations for what she vaguely described as her 'new job'. Given the pinch they were in, Nancy assured Lucy that even if she couldn't guarantee being there, having her tentatively lined up was better than nothing.

And with that, Nancy hung up and Lucy was left sitting in bed feeling rather blindsided. She still had roughly eight hours before she had to be in the lecture hall, but she was suddenly feeling in no way prepared. Of course she'd taught this exact lecture before, but where were her materials? Did her laptop still have that PowerPoint? Would she need to go into her old office on campus? Did she still have those keys? Hardly anything had made the move with her to the stark, bland apartment she'd found following the revelation of her mother's status in Rittenhouse, and she really didn't want to have to venture back to her mother's house. Maybe even if she didn't have the files on the computer, maybe they were in Dropbox? Or maybe she'd emailed them to herself?

Quickly, jumped out of bed, her mind racing as she headed to the shower to get the preparation process started.

A couple of hours later, she was a little more calm. She didn't have the full set of files she would have liked to use for the class, but she did have some older versions ferreted away in email drafts, so she could work with that.

As she worked to get her presentation and the student activity in shape, Lucy actually started feeling kind of exhilarated. It was hardly a return to her old life, but even a little taste of normal was something to be savored. She'd take whatever she could get at this point.

Just before noon, while she was poking through news articles to add a bit of current events to the lecture, her phone rang again. Her shoulders slumped when she recognized Jiya's ringtone; a whole morning of work to get a lecture up to speed, and now it wouldn't happen because of Emma? Damn it.

"Hey," she sighed into the phone. "When?"

"Oh, no, it's not Emma!" Jiya quickly reassured her, much to Lucy's relief. "I just wanted to see if you would want to go apple picking this afternoon? Rufus and I are going to go, and Wyatt said he'll come too."

Lucy's face fell; as excited as she'd started to become about heading back to the classroom for a day, she couldn't help but feeling disappointed at missing out on a chance to spend time with the others away from work. "I can't," she replied, dismayed. "I'm actually heading to Stanford soon. I told them I'd teach a class today as a favor."

"Really? That's so awesome," gushed Jiya. "I mean, we'll miss you, but that's pretty great that you get to do your old job for a day, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it's nice that they asked," Lucy agreed, still a little wistful at the missed opportunity to go with the other three. Or, more specifically, with Wyatt… But she didn't have time to dwell on that. Or on him. "Which means I have to get this presentation finished," she added. "And then get to campus."

"Right, go!" urged Jiya, promising, "We'll bring you some apples."

"Thanks," Lucy replied, smiling into the phone. "Bye."

With that, she hung up and forced herself to re-focus on the last of her PowerPoint slides.

A bit later, she was winding her way through Stanford's expansive grounds, only to realize that not only were faculty lots pretty much full, she didn't have a parking permit for the new semester anyway.

Crap.

By the time she found a metered spot off-campus, Lucy has just enough time to race to the lecture hall before the class was set to start. Thankfully, it was one of the same auditoriums she used to teach in, so at least she knew her way around the technology and was able to get her laptop hooked up easily.

And from there, it was just like they say, riding a bike. And she loved it. It really did feel so nice to just be back in her comfort zone, trying to get students excited about history, not racing through history trying not to get anyone killed or be killed herself.

Forty-five minutes went by in no time, at which point the plan was to take a break from the lecture and split the class of roughly 100 students into about eight smaller breakout groups for discussion before bringing everyone back for some wrap-up debating.

She couldn't see very well between the bright projector and spot lights up near her podium, coupled with the dim lighting of the main portion of the auditorium, so Lucy headed up the aisle on one side of the room, grouping students and directing each group to head elsewhere, to the front corner of the room, or the hallway, or the quad, or wherever, with instructions on their discussion topics and a promise to make the rounds to help point them in the right direction if they got stuck.

With four aisles in the large room, she'd made her way up one side, down a middle aisle, back up the other middle aisle, and was just surveying the clearing crowd and making her way across the back of the room to head back down the far aisle when she spotted one lone student in the back corner not moving from his seat.

So she headed over, asking as she descended the few steps down the row he was in, "Did you get a group? I think the one that I sent out to the steps out front only had-"

But her voice died out completely when she rounded the end of the row.

It wasn't a slacker student who hadn't been paying attention to his group assignment. It wasn't any kind of student.

There, in her US Foreign Relations lecture about the role of religion in presidential politics, at Stanford, was a guilty-looking Wyatt.

"I thought you went apple-picking," she blurted out, flabbergasted to the point that nothing more eloquent than that had any hope of coming out of her mouth.

He shrugged, looking almost bashful – was he blushing? "Jiya said you had to teach instead of coming," he explained as his gaze darted around, avoiding her. "I wanted to see."

Not that his explanation really clarified anything for Lucy. "But… why?" she stammered. "How-"

"I called the history department to ask when and where," Wyatt muttered, evading the first part of her question.

"Oh," Lucy uttered numbly, still not quite sure what to make of his presence there, in her classroom. She knew what she wanted it to mean, but she still couldn't quite allow herself to really hope for him to finally be making any sort of move towards acting on those once-mentioned possibilities. Still, even if it was just a friendly gesture, it was kind of comforting to have some support on her first day back; it's not as if Amy or her mother would be there or anything.

She must have stayed quiet a bit too long; before she realized what was happening, Wyatt was moving to stand, apologizing as he did. "Look, I'm sorry if it's-" he started, before rephrasing to a simple, "I can go."

"No," Lucy hurried to assuage his worry, suddenly hating the idea of him leaving. "No, it's ok. You can stay," she assured him. It really was kind of touching, albeit surprising, that he'd come to see her teach. And as much as she wanted to convince herself that it didn't mean anything, the relieved smile that spread on his face when she gave him permission to stay touched off a flurry of flutters in her stomach. "It's, uh, nice. That you came," she stammered, trying in vain to quell the warm, fuzzy feeling his unexpected presence was giving her. "I just can't- I have to go talk to the groups."

"I know," Wyatt nodded, settling himself back into his seat. "I'll catch you after?"

"Yeah," Lucy confirmed with a weak smile, and backed away shakily, nearly tripping down the auditorium stairs.

Thankfully, she didn't trip, and she did manage to make her way out to some of the groups of students in the hall and outdoors. Somehow she was able to give them pointers and guide any wayward discussion back on topic, despite her brain being nearly entirely focused on Wyatt's presence the whole time. What was he doing there? Lucy just couldn't quite wrap her brain around it, and as much as she was still trying to suppress any irrationally hopeful musings about his motives, she just felt… what was that word in Bambi? The one that a young Amy had always said wrong?

But there wasn't enough time to come up with that elusive word; before she knew it, the students were trudging back into the lecture hall to reconvene for the final twenty minutes of class, which left Lucy needing to focus on debate moderation. They made it through well enough, but she still felt a little badly about how distracted she must have seemed. And not really seemed. More like actually was distracted. Seriously, why had Wyatt felt the need to sit in on a lecture that the bulk of the students required to be there didn't even want to attend?

Lucy wasn't able to come up with an answer for that particular question, but she did finally recall that word from Bambi, because once the students had cleared out and Wyatt descended from the shadows of the back of the auditorium with a sheepish grin on his face, she was feeling it all over again. Twitterpated. Weak in the knees. Your head's in a whirl. All of it. But with no real reason to be feeling that way. So she forced herself to try to tamp it down once more, and dropped her gaze from him as he approached and instead busied herself with unhooking her laptop and shutting down the AV system of the podium.

She could feel him near her before he said anything. But at a loss for what else to do, she kept her head down, painstakingly wrapping up her laptop's power cord just so.

Once again, she'd been quiet too long, and she eventually heard him clear his throat softly, then gamely quip, "I feel like the bad kid who has to stay after class."

For all the weirdness of the situation, Lucy couldn't help but smirk up at him at that. "Have experience with that?" she teased.

"Hey," Wyatt yelped, feigning a wound to his chest. "I actually don't, if you must know."

But then she didn't really know what to say after that, so Lucy slipped right back into a flustered silence. She could speak to him like a normal human being in most any other circumstance, especially with Rufus or Jiya or both around. Why was it throwing her so much to have Wyatt here?

Lucy was ever so grateful when Wyatt finally figured out something to say, breaking the awkward silence once she finished stowing her laptop in her bag. "So what now, Professor?" he inquired lightly.

"Nothing, I guess," Lucy shrugged, grateful for the prompt. "I mean, normally, I'd go back to my office to grade things, or prep another class, but…" She trailed off; Wyatt knew as well as she did that such preparations weren't necessary given their current employment situation.

She didn't anticipate him latching onto the notion of her office. His eyes amused and curious, he asked, "Do you still have your office here?"

"I guess so?" Lucy said, her reply slow and stilted. To be honest, she hadn't put much thought into it. She'd found the office keys, but sure, she supposed they could have converted the small space into a storage closest or something with her gone. But probably not, right? "Technically, I'm just on a leave of absence," she added.

"Can I see?"

Lucy felt her brow furrow a little in confusion. First showing up at all, now Wyatt wanted to see her office? What the hell? "I guess?" she allowed. "I mean, I actually never really went back after… everything. So I guess I should see if there's anything there I should take with me? It's not very exciting," she warned.

But Wyatt wasn't deterred; he just shrugged and followed her dutifully as they made their way across campus from the multipurpose building housing the large lecture hall to the smaller one, in which the history department was actually located.

As it happened, her office was still there, still bearing her name on the door, so Lucy pulled out her keys and pushed the door open to step inside.

Nothing special, and pretty much exactly as she remembered it. Stacks of papers here and there, books in haphazard piles with more on the shelves, pens and half-used notepads littering her desk. Oh, and her extra laptop power cord. That she should grab, Lucy realized, making a mental note to look for other potentially useful junk like USB phone chargers and the like.

She set her bag down on the desk chair and began to more carefully scan over the things covering the desk itself, and couldn't help but catch a glimpse of Wyatt out of the corner of her eye. He hadn't fully entered the office yet; he lingered in the doorway, his gaze fixated on the small placard on the door, bearing the engraved, Lucy Preston, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of History.

When he remained silent, still staring at the plaque rather pensively, Lucy forced herself to say something, anything, to somehow spur on a reasonably normal conversation. "No fancy gizmos like at Mason," she pointed out, "but here it is." And still Wyatt stared at the door. "You can come in if you want," she added. "I can't actually fail you or get you in trouble if you're not in the class."

Wyatt shot her a wan smile and did actually step into the room, but still kept quiet.

Well, Lucy reasoned with herself, at least she wasn't the only one clearly a little thrown by his presence here. So rather than trying to entertain Wyatt, she went back to the task at hand, rifling through some papers, scanning through the contents of her desk drawers, tossing some things in her bag here and there.

She looked up at one point to see Wyatt over at her bookcase. He'd found her book on Lincoln (the one that was probably not even close to what she'd originally written, considering how much they'd screwed with history on that second mission…) and was flipping through it, pausing when he hit the back inside cover of the dust jacket, where the her photo and small bio were.

And when he lingered on that page, a few of those little butterflies in Lucy's stomach were revived. They'd grown closer as of late – they all had, their little time team and Jiya, and Agent Christopher, considering the missions that had become so intrinsic to their lives but still had left them with no one but each other to talk to about them, given the NDA – but whatever that little flicker of possibilities had been that day, that roller coaster of a day when Emma had taken it upon herself to become Flynn 2.0, it had been snuffed out. Or at least very much relegated to the back burner. Lucy was well aware that if Wyatt had been going where she'd thought – and hoped – he'd been going with that conversation, it was more than likely only brought about by some mildly panicky nostalgia because they'd have all had to go back to their regular lives, and Wyatt, who'd obviously gone through more than his fair share of upheaval in his life, had been about to go back to a life without her and Rufus, who had become the only semblance of constants in his life. So when they'd been thrown right back into a new slate of missions, it made complete sense that he'd backed off, maybe even having spooked himself with how close he'd come to admitting… something. So yes, while they'd all grown closer as of late, Lucy always reminded herself – sometimes daily, hourly even, when he was being particularly endearing in one way or another – that whatever connection she may or may not feel with Wyatt, more than likely it was all just born out of his need to feel some sort of constant, some connection to anyone, and not any sort of attraction or affection for her specifically.

And mentally, Lucy was ok with that. If just being a constant in his crazy life was what he needed from her, she was more than happy to give him that. Emotionally, however… Well, suffice it to say, that was another story, thus her feeling all in a tizzy simply because he'd shown up in her classroom today.

Still, affection and/or attraction aside, it was kind of nice to see him standing there in her office at the university, bridging the gap between the two wholly different lives she'd led over the past year or so. If she were to let that emotional side take the reins, it could easily run away with fanciful musings of this sort of thing becoming commonplace in the future, of him having a reason to stick around and come see her in her office all the time.

But, Lucy scolded herself, shaking her head and scooping a few notepads up from her desk, that's not what she needed to be thinking about. Not if she wanted to maintain some semblance of sanity around him. So perhaps it would be best if she just got him out of the office, and her, in turn, out of that dangerous mental space of wishful thinking.

So she unceremoniously shoved those few pads of paper into the bag with her laptop, gave the office one more cursory scan, and announced, "That's it, we can just go-"

"Do you want to go get a drink?" Wyatt blurted out, suddenly springing to life and cutting her off. "Or early dinner, or something," he rambled on, almost seeming nervous, "since Rufus and Jiya are still picking apples and you don't have any grading or planning or whatever?"

Lucy's gaze darted over to him, startled. She hadn't been expecting that, especially after he'd gotten rather quiet once arriving at her office. And yes, she was feeling a little awkward around him since finding him up in the back corner of the auditorium, but she still wasn't going to pass up spending some time with him socially, regardless of what his motives were or weren't. "Yeah, sure," she agreed, trying to muster as casual a tone as possible.

But damned if he didn't do that chivalrous hand-to-the-back thing a few minutes later when, heading down the hall in the opposite direction from which they'd come, they passed her mother's office, the name placard almost identical to the one on Lucy's door. She froze, not quite sure how to process the tangible reminder of just how screwed up everything in her life was. But that's when Wyatt's hand had slid up to her back, gently guiding her away as he murmured, "Come on, let's get that drink."

At some point, his hand fell away, but it was almost as if getting out of the building had flipped a switch in Wyatt and he was back to his normal self. Not that he was ever overly talkative, but after being silent in her office, the smattering of questions he tossed her way as they walked was a welcome distraction for Lucy. He actually had some intriguing, intelligent inquiries about her lecture, which, thankfully, allowed her to focus on something other than whatever the hell he was doing there on campus with her today.

It almost – almost – felt like a normal interaction by the time they made it to a restaurant just beyond the edge of campus, especially when, after seated at the bar, Wyatt pulled up a picture on his phone that Jiya had texted of Rufus being ridiculous at the orchard. They both dissolved into laughter at the image, especially given the follow-up text that indicated that Rufus had actually mildly tweaked his ankle because of his cocky, apple-y showboating for the camera, followed again by a photo of a pouting Rufus. Wyatt ordered them both hard ciders in honor of Rufus' ankle. Another few photos followed from Jiya, of far more apples than it seemed anyone could ever make use of, and they spent the duration of their drink speculating wildly about what Rufus and Jiya could possibly do with pounds and pounds of apples.

At some point, a second cider appeared in front of Lucy, and not long after, she found herself nodding at Wyatt when a server came over to ask if they'd like to move from the bar to a table for dinner. After hopping down from the bar stool, she reached for her wallet in her bag, only to look back up to Wyatt already sliding his credit card across the bar to cover the tab. She tried to protest, but he waved away her attempt, signed the receipt, and nudged her to follow the server.

Dinner was more of the same, just regular old conversation and poking fun at Rufus here and there. By the time Lucy had reached the bottom of her second cider, she was even feeling comfortable enough to sneak a French fry off his plate. He just smirked at her and turned the plate so the fries were even closer to her.

When they'd finished and the check finally came, Wyatt was once again quicker than she was and had already grabbed it before she could voice any objection. It was at that point that déjà vu hit her hard; the last time she could recall that feeling of being simultaneously offended on behalf of her feminist sensibilities and being kind of flattered by the gesture, was, well, on a date. It felt like a date. One of those early stage ones, maybe even a blind date or meeting some guy from a dating site, where she was never sure whether she was supposed to offer to pay her half or not. And here she was, feeling that same sensation with Wyatt, because really, now that she was thinking about it, it really did kind of seem like a date. And she was really, really wondering what that meant in terms of whatever his motives had been in showing up at Stanford today.

Maybe it was the two ciders that emboldened her, maybe it was that flustered, fluttery, twitterpated feeling that hadn't ever completely gone away since first finding him in the lecture hall, but whatever it was, Lucy bit her lip for a second, then just spit it out. "Wyatt, I know I asked before, but why did you come to my class today?"

He smirked down at the bill that he was signing, and slid it back to the server before fixing his gaze on Lucy again. "Everything I do, all these missions, protecting you and Rufus?" He shrugged. "That's just me doing what I always do. It's my job, whether it's 2017 or 1817. Same for Rufus," he continued. "Even if we weren't around, even if Flynn and Emma hadn't fucked everything up, he'd still be sitting there at Mason Industries writing all his codes and testing out freaking time travel." He let out a little sigh and shrugged again. "But that crap? It's not you. I-" He cleared his throat, coughing a little. "I didn't like that I hadn't seen you in your normal life before. And I wanted to," he admitted.

It wasn't what Lucy had necessarily been hoping for, but nor was it really what she'd been expecting either.

Before she could really process whatever it was his admission was making her feel, he spoke up again, though with a suddenly melancholy expression. "I'm really glad I did, Lucy. You were amazing in there; you're an amazing teacher. I'd have paid attention a hell of a lot more than I did in school if I'd had teachers that taught like you."

Lucy was taken aback by his additional admission and the sincerity with which he said it.

But of course, because she was Lucy Preston, she wasn't quite comfortable with his overt praise, so she launched into a babbling stream of chatter to deflect, relaying how she's normally not that great, it just happened to be a topic she loved and had taught a lot before, and it was only because she was excited to be back that it seemed any good, and how her favorite lecture was this one or that and it was too bad he hadn't seen one of those instead, and holy crap, wouldn't it be funny if she had to teach lessons on the history that they'd managed to screw up?

By the time she paused the rambling to catch a breath, Wyatt had grown increasingly somber from that initial subdued expression he'd worn when first commended her teaching. And Lucy had no idea why.

Suddenly feeling like she'd somehow done something wrong, or irrevocably screwed up the date that wasn't a date, she fell silent.

With the two of them suddenly at an impasse, it was Wyatt who finally spoke again. "I'm glad you got to teach again, Lucy." And with a nod toward the door, he asked blankly, "Should we head out?"

Lucy blinked, then nodded, but the question was on the tip of her tongue as they slid out of the booth. They'd just stood up, with Wyatt scanning the room for the best way around the smattering of tables to get to the door, when she couldn't hold it in anymore. "Wyatt?" she asked, her voice tentative.

He paused for a second, just before heading for the door, not saying anything, but waiting for the rest of her question.

"Was this-" Lucy stammered shyly, trying simultaneously to summon the nerve to finish the sentence and to keep the bright pink flush she knew would be coloring her cheeks to a minimum. "I mean," she tried again, "…was this a date?"

Wyatt froze, looking immediately like he'd been caught red-handed. He shot her a guilty look, mumbling, "I don't know." His gaze darted around, a little panicky, before his shoulders slumped in resignation. "Come on," he sighed, reaching to tug her arm.

Lucy trailed along obediently, her mind racing; he didn't know? What did that mean?

He ushered her out onto the street, scanning the noisy, crowded sidewalk. "Is there somewhere we can… sit?" he asked, still not meeting Lucy's eyes.

Still reeling from whatever that cryptic admission could possibly mean, Lucy stumbled over her reply, "Yeah, um… yeah," she repeated. "The arboretum is just over that way; it has benches…"

After a tense walk, they eventually found an empty bench, and Wyatt gestured for Lucy to sit. She perched herself carefully at one end, allowing him plenty of space. Which he apparently needed, collapsing down with a whoosh of a sigh as he leaned forward to rest his head in his hands.

"Yes," he finally stated, head still in hands. "It was supposed to be."

Lucy's jaw dropped, but even if she could come up with a response, he continued, running his hands through his hair before sitting up straight and eyeing her sideways. "I mean, I wanted it to be, but…" he trailed off, swallowing hard and clenching his jaw.

With a sigh of her own, Lucy squeezed her eyes shut. She knew where this was going. "…Jessica?" she prompted, rubbing at her temple.

"No," Wyatt chuckled in what sounded like disbelief at himself. "Honestly, no."

Lucy's eyes flew open in surprise.

"I just-" Wyatt continued. "I don't fit here," he sighed, defeated.

"What?' Lucy stammered, confused. "Stanford?"

He gave what looked like was meant to be a shrug to confirm the obvious, but it was anything but to Lucy.

"I- But-" Lucy knew she wasn't making any sort of sense as she blurted out random words, but to be fair, neither was he. He'd wanted it to be a date? But it wasn't because he didn't fit somewhere? What did that mean? "What?" she stammered out again.

Wyatt gave her a sad smile. "Your life, Lucy. I don't fit in with your life."

Lucy couldn't have felt more blindsided if he'd smacked in the head with a two-by-four. He hadn't said much, but the gravity with which he had said more than words ever could have. He wasn't talking flirty little possibilities, he was talking Serious Possibilties. Like the kind of serious he'd had with Jessica. But she was absolutely floored by the fact that he could have somehow made the leap to that place without her realizing it. How could he be thinking like that already? They hadn't dated yet, or kissed, nothing.

But it's what she's wanted for how long now? And now, it seemed those serious possibilities were going to get yanked away by his insecurities before they ever had the chance to become something. "My life is the same as yours," she spluttered hurriedly. "Time travel? We're the only ones who fit in each other's lives," she insisted.

"Yeah," he chuckled again, with the stupidly infuriating self-deprecating smirk, "but let's assume for a second that we actually do what we're supposed to do and don't end up chasing Rittenhouse all over time and space until we can collect social security. This is you," he stated plainly, gesturing to the campus behind them. "It was so obvious that you love teaching. And you're good at it," he stressed. "It's part of why I came to see you," he admitted sheepishly. "I wasn't sure how I'd fit into a life of that long term. You'll come back to this life and I don't know that I fit into that. This."

"But you don't know that," Lucy insisted, the beginning of tears suddenly stinging her eyes at the thought that he could be pulling away like this. "I actually probably won't come back here – I didn't get tenure," she reminded him, desperate to get some sort of reason across to him. "There's no second chance. I honestly don't know what I'll do after all this Mason stuff."

"You'll teach at some other college," Wyatt countered, as if it were a foregone conclusion.

Lucy shook her head vehemently, trying in vain to convince him. "I- I really don't know if I will. It's hard to get academic positions. Really, I'm pretty sure I only got this one because of my mother," she admitted.

"That's ridiculous," Wyatt scoffed. "Any school would be lucky to have you. You never tried to go anywhere else?"

She looked down, fiddling with a little hangnail. "…I had one job offer," she said, her voice hushed. "In Ohio. I... I probably should have just taken it, I wanted to, but I was too wrapped up in trying to do what my mother wanted me to."

Lucy looked up to find Wyatt smiling at her. "Then go now," he urged, nudging her leg. "Or after this Rittenhouse crap."

It was all too much, too much all at once. It was a date but it wasn't. He wanted them to be a them but didn't think they could work? And now he was trying to insist that she just up and move to Ohio without him? When the feelings she'd hoped against hope that he actually felt were actually there?

"Wait, can we just-" Lucy paused, trying to sort out her thoughts and figure out what she could possibly say to convince him that he did fit with her. But at a loss for what to say, she just shook her head and looked him in the eye, opting to reiterate her initial question. "Wyatt," she said softly, hoping to coax his gaze up to meet her eyes. And when he did look up, she repeated, "Was this a date?"

Wyatt looked away, shaking his head. "Yeah, but-"

He didn't get a chance to finish; Lucy rested her hand on his cheek, gently guiding his face back to her, and leaned up to press her lips to his.

For the first split second, Wyatt didn't respond, and Lucy had the fleeting thought that it had been a monumentally stupid idea on her part, but then she felt his hand slide to her waist, tugging her closer as his lips parted beneath hers. She sighed into his mouth, her heart racing as his tongue slid over hers, deepening the kiss beyond anything she could have anticipated given the dismal turn the conversation had taken earlier.

But it was at least momentarily too good to be true; before long, Wyatt was pulling away, looking somewhere between stunned and guilty.

"Lucy," he protested, mild warning clear in his voice.

"Forget jobs or careers right now," insisted desperately, her thumb still stroking over the stubble of his cheek. "Are you really- Us?" she squeaked. "…Me?"

"More than anything," he breathed, his gaze darting down to her lips even as he began yet another protest of "But-"

Lucy cut him off with another kiss, quicker this time, and when she pulled away reluctantly, she let her forehead rest on his. "I want this. I don't want to be anywhere you're not."

Wyatt backed away, looking pained as he shook his head again. "Lucy…"

She let her hand slip from her face, but she reached for his hand instead. Gripping his clenched fist, she asked, "You have to go back to Pendleton after this, right?"

The reply came in the form of a laborious sigh. "I don't have to, and, honestly, I don't really want to," he conceded, "but if I want retirement in a few years, I do."

"Then I'll come," Lucy declared, matter-of-fact.

Wyatt shook his head immediately. "You can't give up your career for-"

"What? For you?" Lucy shot back. "Why not? You'd rather I give up on us for a job that my corrupt mother got me? That I still couldn't get tenure at even with her there? And no guarantee I could get another position anywhere else? And what, end up with some boring doctor like Noah?" She was pretty sure she sounded a little hysterical by the end of the rant, but at least it earned her a wan smile and an eye roll at the reference to Noah being boring.

When Wyatt didn't respond beyond the eye roll, Lucy seized the opportunity to try and drive her point home. "I don't want… him," she insisted, desperate for him to believe her. "Or that life. I do love teaching," she acknowledged, "but that can happen anywhere. I want this," she repeated, squeezing his hand for emphasis.

His protest was the same refrain of "Lucy…" but if she wasn't imagining things, it was maybe a little weaker of a protest than it had been a couple minutes before.

"Military bases have schools, right?" She pointed out. "I'll teach there."

Wyatt's face wrinkled with disdain. "That's… middle school."

"Same history," Lucy refuted, a little bit cheeky as she did so.

That got her a smirk and a head shake that looked something like defeat.

When he didn't respond right away, Lucy took the opportunity to poke a little at something she'd caught earlier. "You don't actually want to go back? To Pendleton? Or the military at all?"

"I don't know," he admitted, finally relaxing his hand and turning it over in hers to intertwine their fingers, which sent a little shiver up Lucy's spine. "I just… I feel like I've seen more than I ever needed to on these jumps. I mean," he laughed, bemused, "I enlisted to get out of Texas. I did that and then went back. In 1836. And then 1969. I mean, seriously," he shook his head, and Lucy gave him a smile and squeezed his hand. "But I have no idea what I would do instead."

Lucy was quiet for a minute after that, just running her thumb over Wyatt's hand where they still clasped each other. "Then maybe," she started hesitantly, "I do try and get a job in… Ohio. Or wherever. And you… come?"

Of course, amid all the whatever this was that was going on, the teasing, snarky Wyatt she knew was still in there somewhere. And he made an appearance just then, with one questioning eyebrow raised as he asked, "And you can just be a sugar mama and support me?"

She scoffed, lifting their joined hands to knock his own knuckles against his leg. "How much do you think new professors make?"

He gave her hand a good-natured squeeze, then let go, instead slipping his arm over her shoulders and pulling her close to him.

Lucy relished the feel, letting her eyes fall closed and she rested her head on his shoulder.

"I could open a bar," he said after a minute, clearly only half-serious. "I feel like that would make money in a college town."

"I think they probably have bars already," Lucy laughed. But then she sobered a bit, another idea occurring to her. "You could do translating work, couldn't you?"

She felt him shrug .

"Or teach a language?" she continued.

He snorted at that. "I didn't go to college. I can't teach at one."

"You could go now then," Lucy reasoned. "Pretty much every school has cheap tuition for-" She caught herself, snapping her mouth shut just before her runaway imagination took things too far. They'd probably gone too far already.

But Wyatt had heard, and he didn't let it go. "For who?" he prompted.

At least with her head on his shoulder, he couldn't see the heat she felt flushing her cheeks pink when she admitted where her mind had gone. "…family members."

Not that she got to stay facing away from him. Rather quickly, Wyatt sat up behind her, turning to face her with raised, mischievous eyebrows. "Did I miss a proposal?"

Lucy felt her cheeks grow hotter. "Ha ha," she tried to deflect.

"Because," he continued, his eyes sparkling with teasing mirth, "if that's the case, let me just say as your husband, that I think we need to think of the children and I should consider just being a stay-at-home father."

For a second, Lucy was stunned at the proposition, but she quickly burst out laughing, with Wyatt right behind her as they both dissolved into hysterical laughter at just how preposterous they were being. But as the laughter waned, Lucy settled back against his shoulder, the butterflies back with a vengeance once more, because for as silly as they were being right now, she wanted it. All of it, that whole future.

And she still wasn't quite sure that Wyatt believed they could have it.

"Wyatt?" she piped up quietly.

"Hmm?" he murmured, pressing his face to her hair.

"I know this is insane," she conceded, "that we're talking about this crazy future when all we've had is a sort-of-date that I didn't even know was a date until after dinner ended, but are you actually… ok? With this?" she ventured tentatively. "And we can just figure out the rest later?"

Wyatt slid out from behind her once more, whispering, "C'mere," before pulling her in for a kiss, not unlike how he did once upon a time in Arkansas.

She melted into him, clutching at his shirt, but he pulled away all too quickly.

"I want this so much," he assured her, stroking her cheek with his thumb, "and I have, for a while. If we could somehow use that stupid lifeboat to jump forward to a life like that together, I'd do it. I- I just saw you there in front of that class, at this school, looking like you belonged there and I didn't, and then hearing you talk about how much you loved it, and…" he shrugged, bashfully apologetic, "I freaked out a little. Or a lot, I guess."

Lucy felt like her heart was about to burst; for the first time since they'd come outside to talk, she wasn't plagued by any lingering doubts about what they could or would be. As long as he wanted what she did, which he'd pretty well just confirmed, they'd figure it out. ""Well," she said, poking fun at his self-described freak-out, "you are a reckless hothead."

"Yeah, I am," Wyatt agree, chuckling, then turning more serious. "If you can handle that, I'm in," he promised. "We'll figure it out."

Lucy's reply came in the form of a quick kiss pressed to his lips, followed by a muffled "I'm in too" against his mouth, before he tugged on her lower lip with his teeth, coaxing her tongue into his mouth as he pulled her as close as she could possibly get on the bench without her straddling him.

In spite of the fact that they were out in public, Lucy was just beginning to debate doing exactly that when Wyatt's phone sprang to life against her leg in his pocket, Rufus' ringtone interrupting and putting a stop to the trail Wyatt's hand had been blazing up under her shirt.

"Shit," Wyatt breathed against her mouth.

Reluctantly, Lucy slid away from him ever so slightly to allow him to fish in his pocket for the offending phone. Swiping his thumb across the screen, Wyatt sighed his greeting of "When now?"

He listened for a moment, and Lucy was surprised to see a smile break out on his face, having fully expected it to be about another Emma issue.

But looking rather amused, Wyatt angled the phone away from his face for a second so he could mouth to Lucy, 'Not Emma.' To Rufus, he continued, clearly humoring him with an "Oh yeah? Four? Yeah, that is a lot, buddy."

And even though she couldn't quite make out what was being said on the other end of the call, Lucy couldn't help but smile, because Wyatt was smiling too, and he looked so damn happy, and she's so damn happy that they're going to be something and that she was able to quell his fears about whatever he'd assumed that she wanted her life to be.

She missed a little bit of the phone conversation; the next thing she realized, Wyatt was taking her hand again and squeezing, locking his gaze on her as he told Rufus, "Yeah, she's with me."

Lucy squeezed back as Wyatt assured Rufus, "Yeah, we'll be there in twenty minutes. Vanilla. Got it."

With that he hung up, smirking down at the phone. "They just made four apple pies," he explained. "And I think also drank about four gallons of cider - hard cider, from the sound of it."

A laugh bubbled out of Lucy as she tried to picture a drunk Rufus, with a slightly injured ankle no less, baking apple pies.

"We've been summoned to help eat pie and to bring ice cream," Wyatt informed her, re-pocketing his phone.

"Well, who can say no to two drunk physicists and pie?" Lucy posed with a grin as she reached for her bag.

Once she had it, Wyatt stood first, tugging her up off the bench after him. Which, given Lucy's clumsy tendencies meant that she stumbled slightly toward him. But she wasn't complaining when his arms went around her, stabilizing her, yes, but also pulling her to him for yet another kiss.

This one wasn't sitting at a kitchen table in a beat up cabin, nor was it sitting awkwardly side by side on a splintery park bench. This was, for the first time, full-body, hip to hip, chest to chest, her arms around his neck, his hands creeping lower and lower on her back.

Lucy couldn't really bring herself to care that they were probably getting carried away for standing in the middle of a path in the public arboretum. At least until the sounds of some snickering students managed to permeate the haze of their embrace, and she pulled away, sheepish and panting.

"We should go. Buy ice cream. Eat pie," she declared, though admittedly, she didn't sound particularly convincing.

Wyatt clearly didn't think so either, for his response was merely to pull her in for another kiss, mumbling "Mmhmm" against her lips.

She was more than willing to go along with it, at least until she felt Wyatt's fingers flirting with dipping beneath the waistband of her already low-rise pants. Not that she wasn't anticipating his fingers doing a whole lot more than that, sans pants, but they couldn't let anything else happen there, even if Rufus and Jiya weren't waiting for them.

"Ok, seriously," she said, reluctantly putting a couple of feet between them. "We should go. Separate cars," she added, a hint of warning in her tone as he began to make another move toward her.

Wyatt obediently kept his distance, managing to look at least a little contrite as he asked, "Where's yours?"

"Couple blocks that way," Lucy replied, nodding over her shoulder.

"Mine too," Wyatt replied, grinning. With that, he swung his arm over her shoulder again, and Lucy took the opportunity to loop her arm around his waist, resting her head against his shoulder once more as they walked.

They were amicably quiet for a bit; as happy as she was, Lucy still couldn't quite believe the ridiculous sequence of events since she'd been awoken by her horrible ex's ringtone that morning. If it weren't for the fact that they'd lived through far more implausible circumstances in the past, she might not have believed that it had all transpired, and that she and Wyatt were now happening. She also still couldn't quite believe the conversation that had set it all into motion.

She smiled to herself at their absurd musings back on the bench. Looking up at Wyatt, she smirked, asking, "Think Rufus and Jiya'll be surprised that we're supposedly planning to get married and move to small town Ohio to have kids and open a bar?"

Wyatt just chuckled in response and hugged her closer. "We can just tell 'em we learned to drive the lifeboat and that we're from a different timeline. They're smashed, they might believe it."

Lucy smiled at that notion, holding Wyatt a little closer as they approached her car, from where she could make out the silhouette of his Jeep just a few cars further down the block.

At her car, Wyatt slid his arm from her shoulders, turning her to face him, looking more sobered than he had since the early stages of their conversation on the bench. "I'm sorry for… today. I just managed to convince myself that it – we – couldn't ever work."

Lucy chuckled. "Considering I spent the last, what, seven? eight? months convincing myself the same thing- for different reasons," she allowed, and at Wyatt's questioning look, she shrugged, clarifying with a simple "Jessica." And when he immediately moved to contradict that statement, she shook her head gently. "I know, she's not… a hurdle… anymore; I trust you. I just mean I know how easy it is to convince yourself of the worst. But Wyatt," she promised, reaching for his hand, "I don't care where we end up whenever in the future. I do care about you, and I like us like this. We'll figure out the rest… whenever. Ok?"

He nodded, a grin spreading on his face. "Yes, ma'am."

"Good," Lucy said, grinning right back as she pressed a quick kiss to his mouth. "Now go; we have pie to eat. Meet you at the grocery store down the street from Jiya's place?"

Wyatt nodded and took off in a slight jog toward his Jeep.

Lucy couldn't have held back the smile on her face for all the money in the world. Not only did she have Wyatt, but she was quite sure she'd have him for a long time. And if he ever had any more insecurities in the future, she'd be more than willing to remind him of how good they already were together, like this.

(The ice cream was slightly melted by the time Lucy and Wyatt reached Jiya's; they'd managed to get a little distracted – by each other – in the grocery store parking lot.)

(Lucy was pretty sure that Wyatt's tale about them being from another timeline actually had Rufus half-convinced for a few minutes. Whether Jiya was convinced or not, who knew – she'd just been thrilled to learn that they were happening.)

(They didn't end up moving to Ohio, but they did spend a long weekend in a B&B there as part of their honeymoon.)

~FIN~

AN: Title from the Chainsmokers/Coldplay song 'Something Just Like This'. Something about those lyrics always sounds like a possible Wyatt/Lucy dynamic to me, so I tried to make it work here with her mini-return to academia.

Also, sadly, I think many orchards that the Time Team could go to are in the areas decimated by the wildfires to the north of SF. I had this idea before the fires broke out, so I left it in. I hope none of you reading have been affected by the fires there (or by any of the other wildfires, like southern CA, Montana, Canada… or by any of the hurricanes, or by any other way that nature has decided to wreak havoc.)

Thanks for reading!