Chapter Text
The thing you thought you wanted
Lucy
Lucy is the first to admit that silence has never been her forte. She’s always gotten just a little jumpy in the too-quiet moments. Especially in up-close situations—which definitely includes being stuck in a car with a person for hours on end. Maybe that’s why she’s usually prefers to think of a stake-out as a social opportunity rather than a lesson in boredom. As long as she’s got the right partner in the car, she prefers to treat it as an optimal time to shoot the breeze, trade snacks and perfect her working knowledge of every word game under the sun.
Another thing Lucy has never been good at is grey areas. That’s not how she likes her world to work. That’s what attracted her to law enforcement in the first place, that whole black and white of knowing who the bad guys are, the seduction of pure certainty.
Trouble is, this case may just be one of those. And she’s had enough of them in her life lately. This time it's desperate people doing something desperate because they can’t see any other way out. It doesn’t come up often in navy cases, but every now and then you’re stuck, maybe seeing why someone’s doing what they did, and it’s hard to decide where the sympathy lies.
The greyness of this case is bugging her like the silence usually would. But these days, Lucy’s all for the quiet. And Jessie is letting it happen, rather than slipping into their usual chitchat groove, telling her about something Heather told him this morning, or how Gracie got in trouble at school.
In fact, today, the silence and the sitting comes so easily that Lucy doesn’t even know how long they’ve been here. Time stretches and bends in all kind of ways when you’re on watch. She’s learned not to check the time—not if it’s just to know how much of your life has just passed you by in a hot car. It’s never a happy story. And she’s learned the hard way not to drink too many fluids, too. They don’t cover that in training. That’s what you learn from your superior, who's smirking as you writhe in your seat, laughing at your rookie mistake, buying an extra-large Slurpee on a sweaty day
But when she’s been silent so long a half an album of white boy rap has poured out of the store they’re parked in front of, Jessie finally asks, “Alright, Luce?”
She nods slowly, her gaze never leaving the street outside. “Yeah, just tired.”
He nods and goes back to staring. He’s being gentle with her. They all are. She knows it. And it’s annoying, because it acknowledges that this misery exists. So much that they can see it, too. It’s not just a mood she can just muscle her way out of with a quip or a latte.
This is a new turn that things have taken. Before the Apology, which she now thinks of as her life, BA, work was a salve. She could barrel right through her days, making the pain surrender to the urgency of Getting Shit Done. Even when Whistler was around, if the pace of a case was right, Lucy could kind of keep her head down and keep it together. It was only when she turned the key in her door at night that she’d be back to the sluggish sadness that dogged her, no matter how much she told herself she was over it. Or, in her more realistic moments, told herself that it was time she start trying to be over it.
Honestly, it was easier when she was angry. Anger keeps you moving, like a shark. Sadness is a stillness, forcing you to wallow.
And if she felt like talking about it—to Jessie of all people— or even remotely like talking at all, what would she even say? That today she came undone by the fact that she saw Whistler? Like, literally, just saw her. That’s all it took to feel raw all over again, like she’s peeled another layer off her skin.
They’d stopped at the FBI building to talk to a guy about a gun—many guns, in fact. Lucy knew it was a possibility, however remote, that they might run into her. That knowledge was was responsible for the shimmies of nerves she felt as they approached from the carpark.
“Boy she wasn't kidding,” she had muttered as she and Jessie strode through the sliding doors.
“Who about what?” he asked as they showed their badges to the guy at the desk.
“Nothing,” she said, looking around warily. “I just heard this building was wasting-tax-payer-dollars-levels-of-fancy.”
“Yeah Ernie would donate a kidney to have half the tech this building has.”
They were heading towards the elevators when Lucy turned her head to glance down a hallway. That’s when she spotted her, standing there next to a wall, frowning, listening to a woman tell her something. In just one brief glance she saw the way Whistler had her arms folded in that taut Whistler way, her lips bunched like they do when she’s focused, nodding to the beat of the information she was no doubt gathering.
It wasn’t the mere fact of seeing her that was so shocking. FBI Whistler’s been more common than DIA Whistler in the NCIS office lately. It was more the realisation that, since the Apology, they are now in completely new terrain. The terrain of supposed closure.
That was what got to Lucy, the fact that she realised that there wasn't a single thing she was supposed to do about seeing her. Even in the weeks after they split, they’ve been anchored to each other. Even if it was just by all the tension. They connected over and over along those stinging threads of unfinished business.
Now, it’s like the apology closed a door. Now they are supposed to be…what? People who walk right on by when they see you in the same space? Or maybe smile or wave if you happen to catch each other’s eye, because you’re playing nice now? How did this happen?
That’s why Lucy silent today. Because of the simple, mundane fact that she saw Whistler this morning and Whistler didn’t see her. And that it’s not even supposed to matter either way. And now all Lucy’s left with these sudden squalls of feelings that she can’t begin to name.
In all of the ironies she can think of, it was Whistler who described this feeling perfectly, although in a totally different context. It happened on a night that—if Lucy were to give it any thought (okay, clearly she has)—would be her favourite of all the nights they managed to accumulate in the short time they were together.
Actually, it was the next morning to be precise. They were still caught in the afterglow of a Friday night where they’d skipped dinner and drinks and all those pretences, and made their way straight to Whistler’s apartment. By this stage, they had reached the point where it was partly lust that sent them there, but also this mutual craving to return to the world they made when they were alone together.
And it was Saturday, so Whistler actually stayed in bed beyond waking. That first thing that Lucy learned about domestic Whistler was the way she was always, always, up before Lucy. Which, to be honest, was slightly annoying. The woman clearly didn't see the value in the early morning snuggle. Weekdays, Whistler snapped to attention like a soldier to her alarm, leaving nothing but a warm spot between the sheets by seven.
But the most surprising thing was the way that, even as she followed her own strict morning routines, she tended so generously to Lucy, even in their earliest of days. She found her fluffy towels for her shower before she’d even surrendered the bed. She cut her fruit for breakfast and stuck her head through the bathroom door to ask how she wanted her coffee so it would be ready when she got out. Kate Whistler didn’t seem the type for that, but apparently she was.
And even better, on weekend mornings, Whistler made up for all those other days by not setting an alarm, by refusing to relinquish the sheets and skin and small, sleepy murmurs. The morning started in sex, of course. The distance of sleep awakened their greed. It was that delicious, lazy, morning sex, stripped of the urgency of last night. No fingertips streaking through hair or the breathless heat of urgent kisses. It was all slow gliding touches as Lucy’s naked morning body became fact again under Whistler’s hands.
Maybe it is Lucy’s favourite morning because it was also the first morning-after where it was not assumed Lucy would leave, and they’d both get on with their own days. By now, they were way too caught up in the swell of each other to part so easily. Lucy didn’t even bother going through the motions of “I should get going” after that, the way she usually did as a litmus test of the mood in fledgling relationships. And Whistler made no move to leave their white, linen cocoon, except for short, naked journeys to bring them coffee and later, toast, and a paper. Lucy took a small satisfaction in the fact she never actually opened it.
That was the day that whatever this was forming between them became this warm and unstoppable thing, steady like light through a window.
From Whistler’s bed you could see raggedy little clouds tear across the sky, catching at the sun and letting it go, sending shadows scattering across the white sheets and walls. They ignored it and huddled in the bed’s embrace, swapping light touches and kisses and tales of the people they were before they met. And the whole time Lucy was recognising this new, faint voltage between them that wasn’t anything to do with sex.
That’s when Whistler described it. They were doing that thing you do in new intimacy, cataloguing each other’s bodies, sharing all the little histories of their skin. The monkey bars scars. The wonky healed break. The zipline scar of an injury healed. Whistler was telling her about a childhood broken wrist, the most random of accidents involving walking a fence. Lucy remembers how, as she talked, her finger ran idly back and forth across Lucy’s hip bone, fairy light in comparison to the grip she’d had on it earlier. Her touch brought on the delicious echo memories of earlier.
“I just knew it was broken,” Whistler said. “At eight, I knew what had happened." She smiles. "It was the complete opposite of that thing, you know when you’re little and you fall and you’re this screaming mess and some adult is asking you where it hurts and you don’t know because you're so shocked you can't even tell?”
Lucy nodded. “Yeah, you’re just so damn shocked that gravity pulled this prank on you.”
Whistler laughed. “Exactly. You don’t know the exact source of the pain but you just want to cry.”
That’s exactly how Lucy has felt since the apology, like she can’t name the shape or the exact source, let alone how she feels. She only knows it hurts just as bad. It is its own grey area. Even though she got what she wanted: her pain acknowledged. Whistler owned it all, took full responsibility. So why does it still feel like this? Lucy just knows it hurts. And the worst part is, apparently she can no longer hide it.
The music abruptly stops on the street outside, and Lucy's thoughts are yanked back to the car and to this endless watch. “Hey Jessie?”
“Hey Lucy.”
“How do you decide what’s right and wrong?”
“Um, the law?”
“No, personally.” She waves a hand. “Morally, whatever.”
He pulls a face. “I don’t know, you just know.”
“Do you?”
He glances at her. “Well, there’s right and wrong and then there’s how you feel about it. He shrugs. “That’s the hard part.”
She lets out a slow sigh. Lucy thought she was getting too old for learning curves, but here they are, a litany of crappy truths learnt.
That you can walk right past someone you’ve been so close to that you’ve felt their breath on your skin as it leaves their mouth, and it can not even make a ripple on the surface of their day.
That you can have been right about something and still feel so wrong, still.
That the thing you thought you wanted, wasn’t at all.
Not one little bit.