FIC: A Little Lawn [Timeless, Rufus & Flynn x Lucy & Denise & Connor]
Title: A Little Lawn
Author: Omnicat
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: NBC’s Timeless
Warnings: Canon-typical drinking, one mention of canonical suicide, and humorous cat bodily fluids.
Characters & Relationships: Rufus (x Jiya) & Flynn (x Lucy) & Denise & Connor
Summary: “Okay, who put ‘grass’ on the grocery list and why?” // 1662 words
Author’s Note: Inspired by and dedicated to Thealocksly’s incredibly adorable bunker cats headcanons and art. ( https://omnicat.tumblr.com/tagged/bunker-cats/mobile ) :D Enjoy!
"Even more booze? Really, Connor?" a testy Denise said.
She’d come over to perform her scheduled check of the bunker and its inhabitants and brief with Wyatt about his double agent wife’s status, and was on her way out, the team’s weekly grocery list in hand, when she’d stopped in her tracks and turned on her heel. Everything about her demeanor that evening said ‘I’ve had a long, exhausting day at the office and don’t want to deal with you people on top of it’. Connor, who had taken to jogging laps through the halls, run approximately a thousand that day alone, and still complained of feeling like the walls were closing in on him, clearly did not sympathize.
"Oh, it’s my fault we keep running out prematurely now, is it?" he griped back.
"It’s your handwriting."
"Of course it’s my handwriting, I’m the one who’s always coming up empty because certain other people keep drinking everything they can get their hands on before I get around to it."
"Find a better hiding spot, you make it way too easy," Lucy mumbled from beside Flynn on the couch.
Denise’s eyes narrowed. "What was that?"
"Common wartime phenomenon," Flynn quipped without looking up from his book. "Soldiers stuck waiting for the next time they’ll get blown up or shot at or stabbed again will do anything to keep their minds off of the impending mortal peril. Better not start skimping on the enrichment materials if you don’t want your bunker rats going stir crazy."
"I let you have the cat. You better behave if you don’t want me to feed you bunker rats to it. Speaking of, ‘more kitty litter’ too?"
"We need to be able to change his litter box more often, yes. He walks away and finds a more civilized spot to relieve himself if we put off cleaning it for too long."
"...oh. That’s why you’re out of bleach?"
"Yep," Flynn, Connor, and Lucy chorused.
"Okay, okay," Denise said, and pinched the bridge of her nose. "And who put ‘grass’ on the supply list and why?"
Finally looking up, Flynn lowered his book in exasperation. "Does it matter? Are you going to interrogate us about the eggs and cereal and vitamin D supplements too?"
"I trust the motives and the truthfulness of the needs expressed by some of you more than others," Denise said with a flat, unimpressed look.
Flynn deadpanned right back at her. "I need ten bags of fertilizer, boss. I just do."
"What’s the grass for, Flynn?"
"Rufus!" Flynn said, raising his voice. "Did you put grass on the grocery list?"
"Yeah, man, days ago," Rufus yelled back from the Lifeboat bay.
"There, happy now?" Flynn asked Denise.
"Why?" Denise called out to Rufus.
The Lifeboat bay went silent for a long moment.
"Because we need it?"
"Why?"
"You know, because. Reasons."
Tools clattered and Jiya let out a yelp as Rufus tried to extricate himself from the Lifeboat guts they were working on and come over to talk.
"You know what, whatever," Denise yelled before he could get there, and sighed. "You can’t end the world with grass. Fine. I’ll get you your grass."
"Wonderful." Flynn clapped his hands together in satisfaction. "Oh, make sure you get full-grown sods, though. A bag of seed won’t cut it."
She stuffed the grocery list in her pocket and walked away. "Don’t push your luck."
The heavy entrance door had shut and locked behind her by the time Rufus appeared in the common area.
"Is she getting our grass?" he asked, wiping his greasy hands on a rag.
"Yep," Flynn said.
"Yes!" Rufus raised a hand, and Flynn returned the gesture for a high five.
"What?" Rufus asked the next day, making a face as Denise handed him a damp cardboard box containing a whole whopping arm’s length of messily extracted lawn. "That’s it?"
"The list just said ‘grass’. If you wanted enough to turf the entire bunker, you should’ve specified."
Denise neither smirked nor scowled, but she did go on lowering her bags of groceries down the escape hatch with a palpable air of ‘ha’.
Rufus let his head fall back and rolled his eyes. Yep. Should’ve thought of that.
"Next week, then," he said, almost apologetically.
"I’m certainly not coming back any sooner."
Setting the box of grass aside, Rufus helped Denise get the groceries into the common area, smuggled one of the liquor bottles into his and Jiya’s room before everyone else pounced on it, and told her "Thank you!" as she left. When he turned back to where he left the box, he found Tesla already happily rolling around in the fresh green carpet of grass.
"I knew you’d like that," he said with a grin. He scooped up the box, cat and all, and carried it into the common area to show his successful first-time cat dad moment off to Flynn. Tesla braced himself against his chest and mreowed in excitement. "Don’t you, fuzzy-wuzzy buddy-buddy?"
Tesla purred. Flynn was duly impressed. The guy had such a sarcastic baseline it was always hard to tell how sincere he was about anything, but Rufus was pretty sure his huge, almost incredulously delighted grin as he watched Tesla repeatedly go if-it-fits-I-sits in his box of grass meant he was impressed.
"Ha, see?" Rufus said, wagging a finger in his face. "I rule."
Flynn huffed out a laugh and looked up at him with an affectionate smile. "Rufus. Why do you think you were the only one I ever actively tried to have killed? I mean, I’m sorry I did that, but I always knew you ruled higher than anybody else in this rust bucket."
It was the weirdest and, weirdly, the best declaration of friendship Rufus had ever received.
"And don’t you forget it, cat uncle," he said, and clapped a hand over Flynn’s shoulder.
Flynn’s eyebrows shot up. "Cat uncle? Not creepy uncle? I got promoted?"
"Keep up the compliments and tone down the suicidality of the stunts to save my life, and you might even get a raise to go with it."
"Yay."
Of course, the downside to importing grass into the confines of the bunker for the cat’s benefit was that the cat was still confined to the bunker when the grass started taking its most predictable effect.
"Gollum! Gollum!" came from somewhere behind Rufus.
His hand froze halfway to the handle of the fridge, and he looked around in alarm. "Did anybody else hear that?"
"Hear what?" asked Flynn. He was sitting at one of the tables with Lucy, her legs thrown over his as he gave her a foot rub and listened to her talk about the antics of medieval Croatian royalty or some other unsubtle humanities mating ritual like that.
"Gollum! Gollum!"
"That!"
"Oh, hairball incoming. Don’t worry about it, there aren’t any carpets down here for him to ruin," Lucy answered casually, before picking up where she’d left off seamlessly. "So then Krešimir and Gojslav went to Samuil of the Western Bulgarian Empire -"
Something small and tan hurried through the common area in fits and spurts, emitting horking noises at every pause. Cat newbie Rufus watched him like a hawk, unsure of what to do but too afraid to ask. Nothing-surprises-or-phases-me-Flynn, cat person experience status unknown, shot Tesla the occasional sharp look but mostly focused on Lucy’s ramblings and sore feet. Lucy, the only confirmed seasoned cat owner in the joint, ignored the Andy Serkis imitation (inspiration?) completely.
Yet, when Tesla inexplicably jumped on top of their only couch right before the gagging and creepily visible gut-convulsions started picking up speed, she was the first to snap to attention and point and yell, "NO, NOT ON THE COUCH!"
Rufus jolted into frantic motion. Flynn was out from under Lucy’s legs and on his feet in a flash. They came at the couch from different angles, but reached it at the same time. Tesla’s head shot up, and his nails left scratches in the ancient pleather of the couch as he scrambled to get away from his crazed humans, horking momentarily forgotten.
Once initiated, though, Rufus and Flynn’s respective dive-bombings were impossible to abort, so as their outstretched hands closed around air and a few fallen cat hairs, their skulls cracked together.
"Oh my god!" Rufus heard Lucy exclaim, and then everything went black for a bit.
When Flynn could see again through the stars in his vision and feel anything other than the ringing bell of pain in his head, Lucy’s hands were in his hair and on his face. All over his face. The frenzied scrabbling and prodding of her fingers was more disorienting than the impact and subsequent fall had been, and he moved gingerly to dislodge them.
"Lucy, please stop that," he groaned.
Lucy wasn’t listening. "Oh god, how do I detect skull fractures?!"
"Lucy, where’s Tesla? Where are the hairballs going?"
"JIYA!"
He winced. "Where’s Rufus?"
"JIYA, RUFUS MIGHT HAVE A CONCUSSION BUT I DON’T KNOW HOW TO CHECK!"
Well, that answered that question, he guessed.
Elsewhere in the bunker, the rusty hinges of a door let out a screech. Followed promptly by a human being letting out a screech.
"What the fuck?! Who left this shit in front of my door?!" Jiya yelled.
And that answered that question.
Another door opened, and another high-pitched scream resounded, this time accompanied by Wyatt cursing up a storm.
"Oh well," Flynn stage-whispered, cracking open one cautious eye. "At least the couch is saved."
Lucy smothered a laugh. Rufus, clutching his head on the other side of the coffee table, did not. Lucy helped hoist them into the couch and the armchair respectively, Jiya came limping into the common area, Wyatt spewed obscenities all the way to the bathroom, and Tesla appeared from behind the couch looking like nothing at all had happened.
"Proud of yourself, are you?" Flynn asked him.
Tesla mrowed happily and gave him the first ankle rub in a round of ankle rubs for everybody.
Author: Omnicat
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: NBC’s Timeless
Warnings: Canon-typical drinking, one mention of canonical suicide, and humorous cat bodily fluids.
Characters & Relationships: Rufus (x Jiya) & Flynn (x Lucy) & Denise & Connor
Summary: “Okay, who put ‘grass’ on the grocery list and why?” // 1662 words
Author’s Note: Inspired by and dedicated to Thealocksly’s incredibly adorable bunker cats headcanons and art. ( https://omnicat.tumblr.com/tagged/bunker-cats/mobile ) :D Enjoy!
"Even more booze? Really, Connor?" a testy Denise said.
She’d come over to perform her scheduled check of the bunker and its inhabitants and brief with Wyatt about his double agent wife’s status, and was on her way out, the team’s weekly grocery list in hand, when she’d stopped in her tracks and turned on her heel. Everything about her demeanor that evening said ‘I’ve had a long, exhausting day at the office and don’t want to deal with you people on top of it’. Connor, who had taken to jogging laps through the halls, run approximately a thousand that day alone, and still complained of feeling like the walls were closing in on him, clearly did not sympathize.
"Oh, it’s my fault we keep running out prematurely now, is it?" he griped back.
"It’s your handwriting."
"Of course it’s my handwriting, I’m the one who’s always coming up empty because certain other people keep drinking everything they can get their hands on before I get around to it."
"Find a better hiding spot, you make it way too easy," Lucy mumbled from beside Flynn on the couch.
Denise’s eyes narrowed. "What was that?"
"Common wartime phenomenon," Flynn quipped without looking up from his book. "Soldiers stuck waiting for the next time they’ll get blown up or shot at or stabbed again will do anything to keep their minds off of the impending mortal peril. Better not start skimping on the enrichment materials if you don’t want your bunker rats going stir crazy."
"I let you have the cat. You better behave if you don’t want me to feed you bunker rats to it. Speaking of, ‘more kitty litter’ too?"
"We need to be able to change his litter box more often, yes. He walks away and finds a more civilized spot to relieve himself if we put off cleaning it for too long."
"...oh. That’s why you’re out of bleach?"
"Yep," Flynn, Connor, and Lucy chorused.
"Okay, okay," Denise said, and pinched the bridge of her nose. "And who put ‘grass’ on the supply list and why?"
Finally looking up, Flynn lowered his book in exasperation. "Does it matter? Are you going to interrogate us about the eggs and cereal and vitamin D supplements too?"
"I trust the motives and the truthfulness of the needs expressed by some of you more than others," Denise said with a flat, unimpressed look.
Flynn deadpanned right back at her. "I need ten bags of fertilizer, boss. I just do."
"What’s the grass for, Flynn?"
"Rufus!" Flynn said, raising his voice. "Did you put grass on the grocery list?"
"Yeah, man, days ago," Rufus yelled back from the Lifeboat bay.
"There, happy now?" Flynn asked Denise.
"Why?" Denise called out to Rufus.
The Lifeboat bay went silent for a long moment.
"Because we need it?"
"Why?"
"You know, because. Reasons."
Tools clattered and Jiya let out a yelp as Rufus tried to extricate himself from the Lifeboat guts they were working on and come over to talk.
"You know what, whatever," Denise yelled before he could get there, and sighed. "You can’t end the world with grass. Fine. I’ll get you your grass."
"Wonderful." Flynn clapped his hands together in satisfaction. "Oh, make sure you get full-grown sods, though. A bag of seed won’t cut it."
She stuffed the grocery list in her pocket and walked away. "Don’t push your luck."
The heavy entrance door had shut and locked behind her by the time Rufus appeared in the common area.
"Is she getting our grass?" he asked, wiping his greasy hands on a rag.
"Yep," Flynn said.
"Yes!" Rufus raised a hand, and Flynn returned the gesture for a high five.
"What?" Rufus asked the next day, making a face as Denise handed him a damp cardboard box containing a whole whopping arm’s length of messily extracted lawn. "That’s it?"
"The list just said ‘grass’. If you wanted enough to turf the entire bunker, you should’ve specified."
Denise neither smirked nor scowled, but she did go on lowering her bags of groceries down the escape hatch with a palpable air of ‘ha’.
Rufus let his head fall back and rolled his eyes. Yep. Should’ve thought of that.
"Next week, then," he said, almost apologetically.
"I’m certainly not coming back any sooner."
Setting the box of grass aside, Rufus helped Denise get the groceries into the common area, smuggled one of the liquor bottles into his and Jiya’s room before everyone else pounced on it, and told her "Thank you!" as she left. When he turned back to where he left the box, he found Tesla already happily rolling around in the fresh green carpet of grass.
"I knew you’d like that," he said with a grin. He scooped up the box, cat and all, and carried it into the common area to show his successful first-time cat dad moment off to Flynn. Tesla braced himself against his chest and mreowed in excitement. "Don’t you, fuzzy-wuzzy buddy-buddy?"
Tesla purred. Flynn was duly impressed. The guy had such a sarcastic baseline it was always hard to tell how sincere he was about anything, but Rufus was pretty sure his huge, almost incredulously delighted grin as he watched Tesla repeatedly go if-it-fits-I-sits in his box of grass meant he was impressed.
"Ha, see?" Rufus said, wagging a finger in his face. "I rule."
Flynn huffed out a laugh and looked up at him with an affectionate smile. "Rufus. Why do you think you were the only one I ever actively tried to have killed? I mean, I’m sorry I did that, but I always knew you ruled higher than anybody else in this rust bucket."
It was the weirdest and, weirdly, the best declaration of friendship Rufus had ever received.
"And don’t you forget it, cat uncle," he said, and clapped a hand over Flynn’s shoulder.
Flynn’s eyebrows shot up. "Cat uncle? Not creepy uncle? I got promoted?"
"Keep up the compliments and tone down the suicidality of the stunts to save my life, and you might even get a raise to go with it."
"Yay."
Of course, the downside to importing grass into the confines of the bunker for the cat’s benefit was that the cat was still confined to the bunker when the grass started taking its most predictable effect.
"Gollum! Gollum!" came from somewhere behind Rufus.
His hand froze halfway to the handle of the fridge, and he looked around in alarm. "Did anybody else hear that?"
"Hear what?" asked Flynn. He was sitting at one of the tables with Lucy, her legs thrown over his as he gave her a foot rub and listened to her talk about the antics of medieval Croatian royalty or some other unsubtle humanities mating ritual like that.
"Gollum! Gollum!"
"That!"
"Oh, hairball incoming. Don’t worry about it, there aren’t any carpets down here for him to ruin," Lucy answered casually, before picking up where she’d left off seamlessly. "So then Krešimir and Gojslav went to Samuil of the Western Bulgarian Empire -"
Something small and tan hurried through the common area in fits and spurts, emitting horking noises at every pause. Cat newbie Rufus watched him like a hawk, unsure of what to do but too afraid to ask. Nothing-surprises-or-phases-me-Flynn, cat person experience status unknown, shot Tesla the occasional sharp look but mostly focused on Lucy’s ramblings and sore feet. Lucy, the only confirmed seasoned cat owner in the joint, ignored the Andy Serkis imitation (inspiration?) completely.
Yet, when Tesla inexplicably jumped on top of their only couch right before the gagging and creepily visible gut-convulsions started picking up speed, she was the first to snap to attention and point and yell, "NO, NOT ON THE COUCH!"
Rufus jolted into frantic motion. Flynn was out from under Lucy’s legs and on his feet in a flash. They came at the couch from different angles, but reached it at the same time. Tesla’s head shot up, and his nails left scratches in the ancient pleather of the couch as he scrambled to get away from his crazed humans, horking momentarily forgotten.
Once initiated, though, Rufus and Flynn’s respective dive-bombings were impossible to abort, so as their outstretched hands closed around air and a few fallen cat hairs, their skulls cracked together.
"Oh my god!" Rufus heard Lucy exclaim, and then everything went black for a bit.
When Flynn could see again through the stars in his vision and feel anything other than the ringing bell of pain in his head, Lucy’s hands were in his hair and on his face. All over his face. The frenzied scrabbling and prodding of her fingers was more disorienting than the impact and subsequent fall had been, and he moved gingerly to dislodge them.
"Lucy, please stop that," he groaned.
Lucy wasn’t listening. "Oh god, how do I detect skull fractures?!"
"Lucy, where’s Tesla? Where are the hairballs going?"
"JIYA!"
He winced. "Where’s Rufus?"
"JIYA, RUFUS MIGHT HAVE A CONCUSSION BUT I DON’T KNOW HOW TO CHECK!"
Well, that answered that question, he guessed.
Elsewhere in the bunker, the rusty hinges of a door let out a screech. Followed promptly by a human being letting out a screech.
"What the fuck?! Who left this shit in front of my door?!" Jiya yelled.
And that answered that question.
Another door opened, and another high-pitched scream resounded, this time accompanied by Wyatt cursing up a storm.
"Oh well," Flynn stage-whispered, cracking open one cautious eye. "At least the couch is saved."
Lucy smothered a laugh. Rufus, clutching his head on the other side of the coffee table, did not. Lucy helped hoist them into the couch and the armchair respectively, Jiya came limping into the common area, Wyatt spewed obscenities all the way to the bathroom, and Tesla appeared from behind the couch looking like nothing at all had happened.
"Proud of yourself, are you?" Flynn asked him.
Tesla mrowed happily and gave him the first ankle rub in a round of ankle rubs for everybody.