I couldn't watch the episode due to timezones, but, omg?! And it's in the 100th episode too😭
I like it that Buck didn't kiss Eddie, but Tommy.
Like, I love Buddie (one of my favorite ships ever), BUT I also love this plot that Buck explores his sexuality without the main characters.
This part of Bucks life where Eddie isn't really involved, but kinda is (I mean he played, not knowing, the wingman) and ARGHAGRAGDJ
Idk what to say, but thank you abc for the Bisexual representation.
You don't always know that you're Bi because you're still attracted to the opposite gender and that Buck figures it out so "late" in life is so believable. How he even tries to handle it in the promo for 07x05 is so believable.
I'm reading a lot (like two!) putting Jeremy Strong on their Emmy Dream Non for Succession and I can't wait to see him be ignored for someone who gave a mediocre performance.
While realistically Emma would probably have been offed long before the NBC showrunners thought to give her a redemption arc, I’ve been playing around recently with an S3 AU where she ends up willingly with the team because Flynn wasn’t enough goddammit I need more.
So. Mild Emma whump, Emma/Lucy, background everything, set in an imaginary post-S2, no warnings necessary.
Emma’s been slinking around the safehouse so subtly these two weeks, one could almost forget she’s there.
Almost. Flynn’s pepper cakes disappear from the kitchen a little faster than they had before, and their missions rely on slightly more accurate information these days, and on rare occasions Lucy glimpses a flash of red hair disappearing around a corner. It makes her feel somewhere between watched and shunned, but it’s almost better than Lucy had expected when she’d dubiously agreed to let Emma join the team.
Like how Wyatt felt when we brought in Flynn, Lucy thinks with a prickle one morning, watching a bare heel vanish down the hall. Except that Flynn had immediately settled in as “the creepy uncle,” as Rufus had put it, and had joined their planning meetings even when he had nothing to contribute. By contrast, Emma doesn’t show up to planning sessions even when she’s needed (though Lucy suspects she’s relaying information through the more forgiving Rufus), and in fact seems to be going about barefoot in order to move more quietly. She’s rather like a skittish cat.
Or a woman in the attic, Lucy realizes, the first night she hears it.
Their current safehouse has a record number of bedrooms, which Lucy had originally taken as a blessing. Now, some sleepless hours into another long night, she’s realized why they all looked at her so strangely when she claimed her own bedroom. It figures she’d be the last to know that she’s gotten too used to sharing a bed to sleep alone.
Then Lucy rolls onto the far side of the bed, directly under an aging heat vent currently turning the room to an icebox, and catches the strangled sob above.
Lucy lies perfectly still, holding her breath and listening, trying to be sure. She wouldn’t have believed that Emma could cry, if she hadn’t heard it herself, but there’s no denying the broken little sound that comes next. Lucy could snort if the naked agony there didn’t ache her.
She wants to ignore it--and she could, easily enough, just roll over to the other side of the bed, out of earshot of Emma’s crying. But she doesn’t, and feels sick for it.
The next wail tears through Lucy like a lightning bolt. It figures that Emma doesn’t cry soft and gentle, but rather in ragged, drawn-out wails. It sounds as though she’s trying to stifle herself in a pillow. It sounds--pitiful.
Lucy tells herself that she needs to see it. That’s the only reason she’s propelled out of bed, and the only reason she storms out of her cold room and down the equally chilly hallway. It has nothing to do with her bed being too large, or her arms being empty.
The rest of the team has occupied other bedrooms along this floor of the safehouse, and Lucy considers-but-not-really walking into one of them instead. Any of the others would accept her presence gladly, or at least less grumpily than she expects Emma will. But none of them need her, and she’s not ready to admit how much that hurts.
I must be a masochist, Lucy thinks as she climbs the creaking stairs. I must be crazy. This is--ridiculous.
Why are you doing this? she asks herself, stopped in front of the attic door.
The sob inside sounds clear as day, and Lucy knows the answer in her bones.
If Lucy had thought her room was small, it’s got nothing on the attic chamber. She draws a shaky breath as she slips inside, but Emma’s sharp eyes upon her remind Lucy not to show weakness here.
Emma gives a raw little laugh. “What, come to watch me break down?”
“Nope.” Lucy clicks her tongue as she approaches the bed. “Come to help.”
Emma sneers, but her bare throat is working in a way that suggests she’s on the precipice of breaking. She lies on her side in a pool of yellow light cast by a streetlight outside the attic window, the blanket kicked down to her knees although the room is close to freezing, shuddering from head to toe. Emma’s red hair is a messy halo around her, and shining in the yellow light as brightly as her eyes are.
This part is not like it was with Flynn. Lucy didn’t see him cry until months after their first night together, and it took even longer for her to understand the full extent of his need.
This situation is clearer, possibly.
“You think you can help me,” Emma whispers, her voice thin with disgust. Lucy looks down at the ruined woman on the bed, and doesn’t flinch away. This anger is familiar ground for both of them. And Lucy has seen it in others, who sleep more soundly, tonight.
“I think I can help both of us, actually.” It’s the first time she’s ever spoken it aloud, the way their distinctive angers reflect each other like mirrors in the darkness. “But I’ll leave if you want.” She says the words as easily as she’s capable, and tries not to make them sound like a threat.
Emma flops onto her back, making space in the bed. The motion draws a sharp breath from her throat, but she doesn’t say anything more.
Lucy eases into the bed slowly, giving Emma time to kick her out if she changes her mind. But Emma remains perfectly still, staring up at the ceiling and swallowing over and over again. When Lucy pulls the blanket up over both of them, Emma turns her head away, and Lucy thinks she sobs.
“Why are you here, Princess?” Emma whispers.
“Like I said.” Lucy’s voice is silk on a blade. “Because you need me.” And I need to be needed. She can’t admit it to herself in daylight, but here, in the safety of the worst person she’s allowed into her spaces, she feels she could admit anything, even the worst of herself.
But there’s no time to think of that when Emma is audibly weeping now, her choked-off little wails filling the silence. Lucy shushes her, a little more sharply than she means, and Emma’s head snaps around towards her and hisses through her teeth. For a long moment, they watch each other across eight inches of cold air.
Then Lucy reaches out to slide an arm beneath Emma’s soft, warm neck.
Emma’s eyes are red-rimmed and emerald in the dim light, and Lucy thinks again how catlike she is, how uncertain, how trusting.
Tortuously slow, Lucy draws that stiff body against her, and Emma jerks her chin up defiantly even as her jaw begins to tremble. Lucy is lying slightly higher up on the bed, and she looks down at Emma, and hooks a finger under her chin.
Emma’s lashes flutter, and those green eyes flicker to her lips.
I could kiss her, Lucy knows, and Emma might let her. There’s a terrible kind of power to that, but it’s all wrong. Emma is all ice and sharp nails and rippling muscle that could all-too-easily throw any of them up against a wall, and when Lucy wants her (and she has wanted; she may as well admit that too), she wants the steel, not this shuddering live wire. It’s not right.
So Lucy slides her free hand into Emma’s hair, cradling her head. It’s a controlling move, and Emma tenses, but Lucy just tucks Emma’s head gently against her chest. They lie there for a long moment, gasping softly, as the tension eases.
The moment has nearly passed when Emma’s free hand wraps around Lucy’s back and slides up to press between her shoulderblades, digging in with sharp, desperate nails. With her mouth in Emma’s soft hair, it’s hard for Lucy to hide how that takes her breath away.
She covers it by pressing a kiss into the fragrant hair part at her lips. There’s a huff against her chest--a laugh, maybe--and Emma’s hair tickles her collarbone.
“If you think this means I’m buying any of that adopted family crap Rufus’s always spouting,” Emma mutters, “Forget it, now.”
“Shut up, will you...?” Lucy mutters without opening her eyes. “If anything, I’m doing this for me.”
“Yeah? How’s that, Princess?”
Lucy feels safe enough to admit in a growl, “My bed was cold.”
The implications of that hover in the air for a long moment. Then Emma says uncertainly, “This...never happened.”
“What never happened?”
Lucy smiles in the darkness, and feels Emma’s warm mouth curl against her chest.
They're wondering aloud in the planning meeting the next morning where Rittenhouse will strike next when a voice from the curtained window drawls, “New Orleans, obviously,” and they all jump. The curtain sweeps aside, revealing Emma perched on the windowsill like a cat in sunlight, her impeccably coiffed red hair shining in the sun.
Wyatt crosses his arms over his chest. “You know what they say about gingers, right?”
Emma smirks right back. “You want my information or not, soldier?”
When the meeting is finished and they’re all dispersing, Emma approaches where Lucy is packing up books, without ever looking at her directly.
Lucy duly refuses to look up until Emma deigns to clear her throat.
“This isn’t exactly my strength.” Emma’s voice is low. “But I guess I owe you something now. Like an apology, maybe.”
“Maybe?” Lucy snorts, but when she looks up, Emma ducks her head in a way that speaks to a deeper hurt than they’re willing to acknowledge. Lucy swallows and goes back to stacking books. “Let’s just forget it. Sound good?”
“Fine by me,” Emma says, her voice a little too light. “Thanks.”
“No need to thank me.” Lucy hoists the pile of books into her arms. She means to just walk away, but can’t keep her eyebrows from wiggling as she adds, “Nothing happened, remember?”
“Oh, I remember.” Emma unloads half the books from Lucy’s arms without asking, the hint of a smirk playing around her freckled features. “Tell me where we’re taking these?”
As Lucy sets off with Emma walking behind, she says softly over her shoulder, “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, Princess.” Emma has imitated her mockingly before, but this time there’s an affectionate edge to it. “I’ve done nothing to earn it, right?”
That’s not right, Lucy knows. Someone gave someone something, but the more she turns that night over in her head, Emma’s warmth following her like summer sunlight, the less certain she is as to who was helping whom.
this is the best girl in the world, one of my sweetest, most considerate people in my life and i decided to draw her. gardenias for purity and sweetness, and yellow roses for deep friendship/love.
