FIC: A Little Smoke Renovating [Timeless, Lucy x Flynn x Lorena & Iris]
Title: A Little Smoke Renovating
Author: Omnicat
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: NBC’s Timeless
Warnings: Aftermath of a fire. Mentions of canonical character deaths (all since undone) and Lucy having kind of a horrible mother.
Characters & Relationships: Lucy x Flynn x Lorena & Iris & mentions of Maria
Summary: Lucy set Lorena’s kitchen on fire. No big deal, no need to panic. // 1435 words
Author’s Note: I only realized after writing this that it’s basically an OT3 spin-off of a different fic I haven’t finished yet. I think it makes sense on its own, but the official backstory for how they got where they are here is: the dead have risen! Lorena and Iris spent some time in the bunker with the team. Once Rittenhouse was defeated, the Flynns moved (back) to Croatia, to an old family property near Flynn’s mother’s house. Lucy spent some time catching up with Amy and then followed them to pursue a threeway relationship. A pretty good time is had by all. (Also, every character mentioned in this fic except Lorena is some manner of friendly eldridge abomination capable of manifesting shadow tentacles for fun, profit, and freaky porn, but that’s not actually relevant to this fic, just the thesis statement of the one it spun off from. 8D )
Enjoy!
A Little Smoke Renovating
Taking in the damage, Garcia turned in a slow, dismayed circle. When his eyes finally came to rest on Lucy herself, he covered his mouth with his hand. An admirable effort, but there was no hiding the faces he kept making, apparently unable to stop himself.
Lucy sighed and crossed her arms defensively. “Alright Flynn, out with it before you explode.”
“Flynn? We’re back to ‘Flynn’ again?” His eyebrows squiggled as if they weren’t sure whether to look amused or betrayed. “What did I do?”
Get a fifteen-year head start on your relationship that I’ll never catch up on, Lucy thought morosely. But that wasn’t an insecurity she wanted to go into right now, under these exact circumstances, so she settled for that other elephant in the room: “I know what you’re going to say, that’s what. So, go ahead.”
“Well, if you insist - I guess it’s a good thing this place went to the dogs while we were all various combinations of dead, because it’s not technically speaking your fault we have to redo most of the kitchen!” he said cheerfully.
Lucy threw a lump of cookie dough-based charcoal at him. Her aim was off, because apparently she hadn’t humiliated herself enough yet today, and the only reason it glanced Garcia after all was because he stumbled from the force of how hard he cracked up.
“What did you do?” he asked, clutching his chest with one hand and gesturing around the ruined kitchen with the other.
Closing her eyes tightly, Lucy pursed her lips and shook her head at herself. Every surface of the kitchen that wasn’t covered in fire extinguishing foam (and, obviously, most of it that was) was scorched. The exhaust hood and the ceiling above the stove especially looked like someone had taken a flamethrower directly to them. There was a hole in one of the kitchen cabinets and the cute, authentic old-timey tiles against the back wall were cracked, from where Lucy had swung the fire extinguisher around to catch stray flames with a little too much abandon. Her leftover ingredients - which, okay, leaving those out had nothing to do with being a bad cook and everything with being a scatter-brain who didn’t think this through - had been knocked and foam-blasted all over the place. Somehow, in the smoke and chaos, she’d managed to flood the sink. How the hell did she do that? She couldn’t even remember turning the water on!
“I knew you were a bad cook, but how this?”
Lucy pelted him with another handful of ex-cookie and, laughing, he half-collapsed on her, taking her in his arms and swinging her around.
“Good god, Lucy, I’m impressed,” he said, laying a kiss on her hair.
She blindly groped for more baked good detritus from the tray on the kitchen counter. Crushing it into his hair, Lucy admitted: “I wanted to impress Lorena. There were step-by-step instructions on the box, I thought ‘how hard could it possibly be?!’.”
He went very still. Too still.
“Don’t explode,” she reminded him, poking him in the ribs.
He promptly had another silent giggle fit.
“That’s very sweet,” he rasped eventually, and cleared the laughter from his throat. “But if you’re going for impressed impressed, baking’s not the way to go with Lorena. She’s won a contest with her baking at least once a year for every year we’ve been married. She taught me everything I know, and even my own mother was impressed with me after. Or so I’ve been told.”
“Ah, so I failed miserably at something that was pointless to start with,” Lucy mumbled. She felt her insides shrivel up and had to forcibly remind herself that neither Garcia nor Lorena Flynn were anything like Carol Preston. “Excellent. Should balance out.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. The point is -”
“Oh, what am I saying?!” Lucy banged her forehead into his breastbone and felt him cringe in tandem with her. “Ow,” she said, stumbling back, and rubbed both of their sore bones. “Sorry, sorry. And you, are you kidding? I ruined your kitchen!”
He waved that away. “Eh, the kitchen was already ruined.”
“No, the kitchen was a dump. Now, it’s a safety hazard.”
Lucy grabbed the burned remains of a wooden spoon that had gotten wedged in a gas burner somehow and jabbed the reinforced glass of the oven door with it. The glass shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. Yelping, Lucy and Garcia jumped back.
“See?” Lucy said. “See?!”
“Honey, it’s the thought that counts. Lorena will love that you tried.” He shot a nervous look over Lucy’s shoulder, through the door to the living room. “Right?”
“My other significant other loves to bake and cook and I destroyed her kitchen!”
“Oh, Lucy, what did I ever do to deserve you?”
Lucy froze, wide-eyed.
No, she mouthed desperately at Garcia.
Yes, he mouthed back, and grinned a slightly maniacal grin. Like a traitor. And, like a dirty rotten traitor, he grabbed Lucy by the shoulders and turned her around to face Lorena.
Who... didn’t look apoplectic with rage yet, but the awe on her face as she took in the devastation of her sanctuary couldn’t last forever. At her side, Iris’s little mouth hung open.
“Lorena! You’re home early,” Lucy squeaked.
“Hardly, it’s after six,” Lorena said.
“Aunt Lucy, what did you do?” Iris asked.
“I - I -”
“Aunt Lucy tried to bake you and mama cookies,” Garcia supplied, ever so helpful.
Lucy had the distinct impression that he was hiding behind her until all possible shoes had dropped. She jammed her elbow back wildly and was gratified to actually hit him. “Lorena, I am so, so sorry. I’m sure it can be fixed, I’ll pay for every-”
“Lucy, are you kidding? This is amazing!”
Lucy’s hands, which she had raised as if to placate an angry bear, drooped. “I’m sorry, what?”
Clutching her prominent baby belly, Lorena beamed at her. “I can’t cook in this mess. I could cook in the mess it was before, but not in this! Now I’ve got no choice but to go over to Maria’s place to cook until the kitchen has been renovated!”
“And that’s a good thing?” Garcia asked, not entirely hiding his caution.
“Absolutely. I hated cooking here in the condition it was in, but I couldn’t have possibly asked such a favor of her before. Now I have the perfect excuse! And I didn’t even have to jokingly suggest setting the place on fire for it to happen!” Lorena turned to Iris and held up a finger. “Never, ever tell grandmama I said that, okay?”
Giggling, Iris dutifully made a mouth-zipping motion.
Lucy’s hands dropped the rest of the way all at once. Huh.
Garcia let go of Lucy’s shoulders and went over to give his daughter a hug. “What do you mean, you couldn’t possibly have asked? Of course she’d let you borrow her kitchen.”
“Usually I would have agreed, but asking to borrow her kitchen every night and randomly in the mornings and afternoons for an indefinite period of time would have been far too much of an imposition.”
“She’s my mother. Your mother-in-law. She loves you.”
“I’m sure that’s true, but I don’t remember her take on the first fifteen years of our marriage any more than you do, so that remains a bit hard to internalize. Also, not the point.”
“You couldn’t have just said Iris would’ve liked it?”
“Iris is right here, you know, tata,” Iris said, gravely offended.
Garcia gave her his most innocent look. “But it’s true, isn’t it?”
Lucy carefully stepped away from her trail of destruction. “Okay, I’m just going to... find a mop. And a broom. And maybe see if I can dig up an industrial shovel somewhere.”
“I’ll help with anything that doesn’t involve bending over,” Lorena said. “After I’ve ordered in pizza.”
Iris whooped for joy and ran for the hills, fists pumped. Probably to avoid being roped into helping clean up. This was no job for a child anyway, but Lucy had to admire her impeccable sense of timing.
“You don’t have to, this is my fault,” she told Lorena.
“Still my house too.”
“I’ll bend over for the both of you,” Garcia promised with a wink.
Lorena kissed Lucy in passing and laughed. “I love you. Seriously, don’t worry about it. But you never, ever lay hands on the new oven once we have one, understand?”
“Trust me, that urge has been completely eradicated,” Lucy said emphatically. “Next time I’m overcome with the desire to make a gesture like this, I’ll write you a thesis instead.”
Author: Omnicat
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: NBC’s Timeless
Warnings: Aftermath of a fire. Mentions of canonical character deaths (all since undone) and Lucy having kind of a horrible mother.
Characters & Relationships: Lucy x Flynn x Lorena & Iris & mentions of Maria
Summary: Lucy set Lorena’s kitchen on fire. No big deal, no need to panic. // 1435 words
Author’s Note: I only realized after writing this that it’s basically an OT3 spin-off of a different fic I haven’t finished yet. I think it makes sense on its own, but the official backstory for how they got where they are here is: the dead have risen! Lorena and Iris spent some time in the bunker with the team. Once Rittenhouse was defeated, the Flynns moved (back) to Croatia, to an old family property near Flynn’s mother’s house. Lucy spent some time catching up with Amy and then followed them to pursue a threeway relationship. A pretty good time is had by all. (Also, every character mentioned in this fic except Lorena is some manner of friendly eldridge abomination capable of manifesting shadow tentacles for fun, profit, and freaky porn, but that’s not actually relevant to this fic, just the thesis statement of the one it spun off from. 8D )
Enjoy!
A Little Smoke Renovating
Taking in the damage, Garcia turned in a slow, dismayed circle. When his eyes finally came to rest on Lucy herself, he covered his mouth with his hand. An admirable effort, but there was no hiding the faces he kept making, apparently unable to stop himself.
Lucy sighed and crossed her arms defensively. “Alright Flynn, out with it before you explode.”
“Flynn? We’re back to ‘Flynn’ again?” His eyebrows squiggled as if they weren’t sure whether to look amused or betrayed. “What did I do?”
Get a fifteen-year head start on your relationship that I’ll never catch up on, Lucy thought morosely. But that wasn’t an insecurity she wanted to go into right now, under these exact circumstances, so she settled for that other elephant in the room: “I know what you’re going to say, that’s what. So, go ahead.”
“Well, if you insist - I guess it’s a good thing this place went to the dogs while we were all various combinations of dead, because it’s not technically speaking your fault we have to redo most of the kitchen!” he said cheerfully.
Lucy threw a lump of cookie dough-based charcoal at him. Her aim was off, because apparently she hadn’t humiliated herself enough yet today, and the only reason it glanced Garcia after all was because he stumbled from the force of how hard he cracked up.
“What did you do?” he asked, clutching his chest with one hand and gesturing around the ruined kitchen with the other.
Closing her eyes tightly, Lucy pursed her lips and shook her head at herself. Every surface of the kitchen that wasn’t covered in fire extinguishing foam (and, obviously, most of it that was) was scorched. The exhaust hood and the ceiling above the stove especially looked like someone had taken a flamethrower directly to them. There was a hole in one of the kitchen cabinets and the cute, authentic old-timey tiles against the back wall were cracked, from where Lucy had swung the fire extinguisher around to catch stray flames with a little too much abandon. Her leftover ingredients - which, okay, leaving those out had nothing to do with being a bad cook and everything with being a scatter-brain who didn’t think this through - had been knocked and foam-blasted all over the place. Somehow, in the smoke and chaos, she’d managed to flood the sink. How the hell did she do that? She couldn’t even remember turning the water on!
“I knew you were a bad cook, but how this?”
Lucy pelted him with another handful of ex-cookie and, laughing, he half-collapsed on her, taking her in his arms and swinging her around.
“Good god, Lucy, I’m impressed,” he said, laying a kiss on her hair.
She blindly groped for more baked good detritus from the tray on the kitchen counter. Crushing it into his hair, Lucy admitted: “I wanted to impress Lorena. There were step-by-step instructions on the box, I thought ‘how hard could it possibly be?!’.”
He went very still. Too still.
“Don’t explode,” she reminded him, poking him in the ribs.
He promptly had another silent giggle fit.
“That’s very sweet,” he rasped eventually, and cleared the laughter from his throat. “But if you’re going for impressed impressed, baking’s not the way to go with Lorena. She’s won a contest with her baking at least once a year for every year we’ve been married. She taught me everything I know, and even my own mother was impressed with me after. Or so I’ve been told.”
“Ah, so I failed miserably at something that was pointless to start with,” Lucy mumbled. She felt her insides shrivel up and had to forcibly remind herself that neither Garcia nor Lorena Flynn were anything like Carol Preston. “Excellent. Should balance out.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far. The point is -”
“Oh, what am I saying?!” Lucy banged her forehead into his breastbone and felt him cringe in tandem with her. “Ow,” she said, stumbling back, and rubbed both of their sore bones. “Sorry, sorry. And you, are you kidding? I ruined your kitchen!”
He waved that away. “Eh, the kitchen was already ruined.”
“No, the kitchen was a dump. Now, it’s a safety hazard.”
Lucy grabbed the burned remains of a wooden spoon that had gotten wedged in a gas burner somehow and jabbed the reinforced glass of the oven door with it. The glass shattered into a thousand tiny pieces. Yelping, Lucy and Garcia jumped back.
“See?” Lucy said. “See?!”
“Honey, it’s the thought that counts. Lorena will love that you tried.” He shot a nervous look over Lucy’s shoulder, through the door to the living room. “Right?”
“My other significant other loves to bake and cook and I destroyed her kitchen!”
“Oh, Lucy, what did I ever do to deserve you?”
Lucy froze, wide-eyed.
No, she mouthed desperately at Garcia.
Yes, he mouthed back, and grinned a slightly maniacal grin. Like a traitor. And, like a dirty rotten traitor, he grabbed Lucy by the shoulders and turned her around to face Lorena.
Who... didn’t look apoplectic with rage yet, but the awe on her face as she took in the devastation of her sanctuary couldn’t last forever. At her side, Iris’s little mouth hung open.
“Lorena! You’re home early,” Lucy squeaked.
“Hardly, it’s after six,” Lorena said.
“Aunt Lucy, what did you do?” Iris asked.
“I - I -”
“Aunt Lucy tried to bake you and mama cookies,” Garcia supplied, ever so helpful.
Lucy had the distinct impression that he was hiding behind her until all possible shoes had dropped. She jammed her elbow back wildly and was gratified to actually hit him. “Lorena, I am so, so sorry. I’m sure it can be fixed, I’ll pay for every-”
“Lucy, are you kidding? This is amazing!”
Lucy’s hands, which she had raised as if to placate an angry bear, drooped. “I’m sorry, what?”
Clutching her prominent baby belly, Lorena beamed at her. “I can’t cook in this mess. I could cook in the mess it was before, but not in this! Now I’ve got no choice but to go over to Maria’s place to cook until the kitchen has been renovated!”
“And that’s a good thing?” Garcia asked, not entirely hiding his caution.
“Absolutely. I hated cooking here in the condition it was in, but I couldn’t have possibly asked such a favor of her before. Now I have the perfect excuse! And I didn’t even have to jokingly suggest setting the place on fire for it to happen!” Lorena turned to Iris and held up a finger. “Never, ever tell grandmama I said that, okay?”
Giggling, Iris dutifully made a mouth-zipping motion.
Lucy’s hands dropped the rest of the way all at once. Huh.
Garcia let go of Lucy’s shoulders and went over to give his daughter a hug. “What do you mean, you couldn’t possibly have asked? Of course she’d let you borrow her kitchen.”
“Usually I would have agreed, but asking to borrow her kitchen every night and randomly in the mornings and afternoons for an indefinite period of time would have been far too much of an imposition.”
“She’s my mother. Your mother-in-law. She loves you.”
“I’m sure that’s true, but I don’t remember her take on the first fifteen years of our marriage any more than you do, so that remains a bit hard to internalize. Also, not the point.”
“You couldn’t have just said Iris would’ve liked it?”
“Iris is right here, you know, tata,” Iris said, gravely offended.
Garcia gave her his most innocent look. “But it’s true, isn’t it?”
Lucy carefully stepped away from her trail of destruction. “Okay, I’m just going to... find a mop. And a broom. And maybe see if I can dig up an industrial shovel somewhere.”
“I’ll help with anything that doesn’t involve bending over,” Lorena said. “After I’ve ordered in pizza.”
Iris whooped for joy and ran for the hills, fists pumped. Probably to avoid being roped into helping clean up. This was no job for a child anyway, but Lucy had to admire her impeccable sense of timing.
“You don’t have to, this is my fault,” she told Lorena.
“Still my house too.”
“I’ll bend over for the both of you,” Garcia promised with a wink.
Lorena kissed Lucy in passing and laughed. “I love you. Seriously, don’t worry about it. But you never, ever lay hands on the new oven once we have one, understand?”
“Trust me, that urge has been completely eradicated,” Lucy said emphatically. “Next time I’m overcome with the desire to make a gesture like this, I’ll write you a thesis instead.”