Because I owe Lucy a little fun frivolity after torturing her in Timing :)

Lucy sighs and halfheartedly rifles through a stack of sweaters on the shelf in front of her. It's not that she doesn't appreciate Jiya's efforts to cheer her up and have a little 'girl time' after being stuck spending day after day and week after week and jump after jump with just the guys, she does. And she really likes Jiya the more she gets to know her.

But shopping was – is, Lucy corrects herself harshly, still is – Amy's thing. Amy's the one who always knows how to throw together just the right combination of jewelry and scarf and bag and shoes and this color and that fabric, the one who's been picking out outfits for Lucy and dressing her like her own personal Barbie doll for the past decade and a half.

So being out with Jiya just feels a little disingenuous.

At least, Lucy admits, they'd ended up at a Gap. Even when Amy was around, Lucy pretty much stuck to simple places like Gap and Banana Republic outlets when left to her own devices. Most of the stuff there was reasonably safe for a teaching wardrobe, and nothing was ever so outrageous or overly trendy that she risked making a true fashion faux pas and looking dumb in front of her students.

Lucy's just a little surprised that Jiya's the one who'd insisted they head there. Jiya definitely doesn't have the same style as Amy, but Lucy is still pretty envious of her ability to throw together eclectic outfits that really work for her, much like Amy had always done, and much like Lucy never feels she's much good at. But given that cool, punk-ish, eclectic spin on her outfits, Gap just doesn't quite seem like something Lucy would have figured would factor much into Jiya's repertoire.

But Jiya insists that she actually does like their jeans, even if most of the tops are a little boring for her.

Boring for Jiya is pretty much exactly Lucy's speed, so even though she doesn't really need anything, she pokes listlessly through a few more sweaters and some blazers while Jiya is in the fitting room trying things on.

Nothing's really jumping out at her, so she wanders a little deeper into the store to kill time while she's waiting.

When she spots the display, she doesn't actually see the jeans at first. It's just another sweater, but it's the only red one she's seen thus far in the store, and she realizes that she does actually need to replace the one she already has that had started to fray a little along one of the wrists. But then she looks up and happens to catch a glimpse of the mannequin on that particular display, and she can't help but smile to herself a little.

And then suddenly, she's startled out of her daze by Jiya snapping her fingers in front of her face.

"Earth to Lucy?" she prompts, looking concerned.

Lucy blinks, tearing her gaze from the mannequin to focus on Jiya. "Huh?" she asks absently.

Jiya just frowns at her, looking even more worried. "Ok, what was that? You were completely out of it right there." She wrinkles her nose and eyes the sweater still in Lucy' grasp. "You can't be that fascinated by a... red cardigan."

For half a second, Lucy's instinct is to defend the boring wardrobe staple, but then she's pulled back into the memory and just distractedly mumbles a reply, "Nothing."

The skeptical look she ends up being on the receiving end of tells her that Jiya is less than convinced about it being nothing.

"It's nothing," Lucy reiterates, a little stronger this time. "Just-" she starts, then says simply, "Button fly jeans at Gap." She punctuates the admission with a shrug and a wistful grin, still inwardly laughing at the fact that they actually exist.

Jiya regards her with confusion. "And you're anti-zipper?"

"Huh?" Lucy asks again, before she realizes that of course Jiya has no idea what she's referring to. "Oh, no," she clarifies. "Wyatt. He had button fly jeans from Gap."

The next thing she knows, Lucy is being forcibly dragged from the open space in front of the cardigan display and finds herself shoved into a corner, practically into the display of peacoats and denim jackets.

Not to mention Jiya's face mere inches from her own, glowing with excitement as she demands, "Oh my god, what happened?"

Lucy just eyes her incredulously and tries to extricate herself from between the clothing racks. "Holy crap," she grumbles, "You tell me. What the hell?"

"Why do you know about Wyatt's fly?" Jiya hisses, practically vibrating with glee. "Are you sleeping together? Did you guys finally hook up?"

"What?" And that's when it finally registers for Lucy exactly how what she'd said must have sounded. "No," she hurriedly corrects Jiya. "No," she adds emphatically. In the meantime, she's just hoping that the heat she feels creeping into her cheeks isn't a sign that she's turning the same color as the cardigan she's still holding.

Jiya looks far less than convinced. "So you just happen to have pretty specific details about the crotch of his pants?"

"So does Rufus," Lucy huffs, trying to deflect. "And the ghost of Eliot Ness. They didn't hook up with him either."

Confusion is written all over Jiya's face after that comment.

Lucy sighs, trying to explain. "He just said it on a mission. In Chicago?" She shrugs and picks at the tag on the sweater. "I thought it was weird," she adds, continuing, "Who still has button fly jeans?" And nodding back toward the mannequin she'd seen, she points out, "Gap still does, apparently."

The explanation seems to help a little, but Jiya's still looking at her strangely.

"It's just funny, that's all," Lucy insists.

Jiya smirks and crosses her arms over her chest, eyeing Lucy knowingly. "Except for the fact that you do want to have firsthand knowledge of undoing those buttons," she counters.

Yes, Lucy's brain retorts. Yes, Lucy's flaming red cheeks chime in. "No," Lucy's voice lies.

"Yes," Jiya counters, grinning.

Lucy sighs in defeat. It's not like denying it is getting her anywhere anyway; all these jumps through history and all the alibis and alter-egos, and she's still terrible at lying. She does have feelings for him, and has for a while now. And at one point, just for a little while, there had even been a little flicker of hope that something might be there for him too. But… "It doesn't matter," she informs Jiya glumly. "He-" She shakes her head. "It's not happening."

Jiya just gives her that sad half-smile that she always does whenever the topic of conversation treads anywhere near Wyatt and feelings. But Lucy's grateful that she doesn't push any further, and she ducks out from where she's been cornered.

"You should get them," Jiya pipes up just as Lucy slips by her. "Some, like, cosmic signal to the universe that you guys have matching jeans so you should be together."

With a wan smile, Lucy regards Jiya over her shoulder. If only it were that easy. "Uh huh, right," she snorts softly. "They're the ones you made him change out of in 1954, so," she shrugs, "he doesn't have them anymore anyway."

They finish up with their purchases at Gap, then head off to a couple more stores. Lucy is just thankful that the topic of Wyatt and his jeans and any taking off of those jeans doesn't come up again.

If Lucy comes back by herself the next day, hurriedly grabs the button-fly jeans in her size from the stack on the display, glances around nervously as she pays for them, and then shoves them in the back of her closet at home with the tags still on, well, Jiya doesn't have to know about that.

TBC…

So this was inspired by me actually seeing a mannequin wearing button-fly skinny jeans at a Gap Outlet last summer. So Lucy's brain being all 'heh, Wyatt wears button-fly jeans from Gap' was basically my brain being all 'heh, Wyatt wears button-fly jeans from Gap'. And a plot bunny was born.