…And to all a good night

Just some silly, shallow, festive fluff. No beta, so anything off is all me.

I know Lyatt Christmas came a few days before the real day, but I hope all my readers/reviewers have/had a lovely holiday, if you celebrate. If you don't, enjoy the new year next week :)

Happy holidays :)

Lucy flopped onto the couch with an exhausted grunt. Tired, not to mention overwhelmed, didn't even begin to describe it.

She did, however, manage to muster just enough energy to inch closer to Wyatt when he dropped the baby monitor on the coffee table and collapsed down next to her just a few seconds later.

"Oh my god," he grumbled, drawing her against his side, "I thought they'd never be quiet."

"Was it worse than normal?" she mumbled against his chest. "It was worse, right? Like they know how much we have to do tonight?" she added with a groan.

Wyatt let out a wry chuckle that resonated against Lucy's cheek. "Worse, for sure," he agreed with a sigh. "Amy's usually so… chill. Even when Flynn is screaming. But tonight…" He trailed off, shuddering, clearly reliving the fiasco from upstairs.

"You don't have to tell me," Lucy echoed, wrinkling her nose the all too vivid memory of the mess they'd just had to tackle. "And we did not need that blowout."

Wyatt snorted. "And from the other end on the other one. Which…" He craned his neck, peering across to Lucy's opposite shoulder. "You got a little…" he gestured, pointing, "She got ya."

Lucy tugged at her shirt and wrinkled her nose when the streak of stray baby vomit became apparent. "Ugh. Ew," she lamented, squeezing her eyes shut. And, though not making a move anywhere, complained, "I'm too tired to go change." She did, however, let one eye open the slightest bit to peer at the messy array of boxes, shopping bags, and rolls of wrapping paper across the room. She winced and buried her face against Wyatt. "We didn't wrap anything yet, did we?"

"Jiya's. One of Mark's," he informed her, then adding hesitantly, "Barely."

She didn't even want to think about how many more they still had to tackle, even without bothering with the things they'd bought the babies.

And it wasn't just gifts. "We didn't do the cookies yet," she groaned.

"Shit…"

Before she knew it, Wyatt was gone from under her, leaving her to topple over toward his end of the couch.

"The oven has been on forever for no reason," he explained over his shoulder as he dashed away to the kitchen.

Lucy knew she should get up and follow him, throw the cookies in the oven and begin to tackle the wrapping. But she couldn't bring herself to move. She did, however, realize one other, even more important thing, and called out softly, wary of anything louder possibly waking two little someones upstairs. "Wyatt!" she hissed.

There may have been a muffled "Huh?" from somewhere in the direction of the kitchen, but, halfway to falling asleep, Lucy couldn't be sure. Still, she relayed her request of "Throw that laundry in!" in hopes that Wyatt had heard her.

She'd actually just started to drift off when she felt the couch cushion shift next to her.

A wan smile fought its way through the sleepy haze when she opened her eyes and zeroed in on Wyatt just setting a plate with a half-unwrapped roll of cookie dough on the coffee table. And then holding part of a slice of it out to her.

Lucy raised an eyebrow at the gesture, but still plucked the sweet goo from between his fingers. "We were supposed to bake that stuff."

"Believe me," Wyatt scoffed, "No one's gonna miss our 'gourmet' cookies tomorrow. Tastes better this way anyway," he shrugged, before forgoing the dough and tugging Lucy closer to him.

Which most certainly didn't provide Lucy with the motivation she needed to get up off the couch and be productive. Instead, she curled up against him, burrowing into his embrace as she yanked the blanket from the back of the couch over top of them.

"What time are we supposed to be there tomorrow?" she mumbled, already dreading a reply that would surely be far too soon.

"Ten," Wyatt groaned into her hair.

"Ugh, we'll have to get up so early," Lucy whined melodramatically before pulling herself up to a sitting position. "Do Michelle and Denise not remember what 4 months old was like?" she wailed. "And do they not know we have two?"

Chuckling, Wyatt pulled her back down against his chest. "Hey," he countered, with a smirk Lucy could hear in his voice, "at least they're too small to be up at 6 in the morning screaming about Santa."

"No, they'll just be screaming," Lucy pointed out, exhaustion still getting the better of her sense of humor as she wrapped her arms around Wyatt. "At 6. And at 3. And midnight."

Wyatt just pressed a kiss to the top of her head with another laugh. "So is next year the sweet spot? Less screaming, more sleeping, and they don't know what Santa is yet?"

At that, Lucy couldn't help but smile, visions of two sweet girls toddling around a year later. "Maybe," she murmured, still grinning at the thought.

"What about two?" Wyatt prodded further. "Are they still clueless when they're two?"

Lucy's grin faded at that notion, her thoughts suddenly turning to chasing after a pair of 2 year-old terrors, with a reckless streak inherited from Wyatt, doing all sorts of screeching, attacking the tree, breaking ornaments, and generally wreaking even more havoc than they had already as infants.

She shuddered, quickly pushing that thought away and focusing instead on the equally onerous task that was closer at hand. With a sidelong glance at the pile of gift-wrapping left to do, the half-decorated tree, the other decorations still packed away in a plastic bin pulled from her mother's attic before they'd sold the house.

Lucy groaned once more and pouted at Wyatt. "Do we have to finish this?"

Wyatt followed her gaze, casting his own defeated glance at the piles of stuff. "Wrapping?" he sighed. "Probably…"

"But the tree?" Lucy pointed out. "It can stay this sort of sad Charlie Brown look?"

"It's got lights," Wyatt assured. "That's the important part, right?"

Lucy frowned, torn between the pull of precious sleep and all the festive stuff she felt she should have been taking care of. "I guess…"

"Here," Wyatt murmured, giving Lucy's arm a squeeze before climbing off the couch. In the space of just a minute or so, he'd plugged in the lights of the sparse Christmas tree, flicked on the gas fireplace, and flipped off the rest of the lights in the room. And, as he settled back down on the couch, he scrolled through some music app, setting it to softly play "Silent Night". He reached to rest the phone next to the abandoned cookie dough, then pulled Lucy close yet again, smirking. "Better?"

Better was an understatement.

Lucy's eyes welled up, and, for the first time in days, felt a rush of something truly Christmas-y. For a split second, she even entertained the notion of going to get the girls to complete the family moment, but the drying spit-up streak still on her shoulder and the memory of the screaming earlier made her revise that back to just mom-and-dad time.

So she just brushed away those threatening tears and pressed a kiss to Wyatt's lips instead, then murmured her agreement with his assessment as she snuggled closer to him.

And with the flames flickering, the Christmas lights glowing, and their wonderful little girls finally asleep upstairs, it suddenly really did feel like the perfect Christmas Eve to Lucy, presents, ornaments, and unbaked cookies be damned.

Wyatt must have been feeling pretty similar; she felt him drop a kiss on the crown of her head, then hug her closer. "Can you believe how different this year is from last Christmas Eve?" he asked softly.

"1950 North Korea?" Lucy couldn't help but tease. "That assault upstairs wasn't too different from those communists," she added with a sleepy giggle.

But Wyatt wasn't taking the bait in terms of keeping the mood light. Sounding choked up, he gave Lucy another squeeze. "I'll still take this."

And the tears were back. Because, even at its worst, with screeching infants, piles of diapers, and no sleep, Lucy wouldn't trade their current life for anything in the world. "Me too," she echoed, pulling Wyatt in for a kiss before breaking away to rest her forehead on his.

It really had been an insane year – a different kind of insane from all their days of time travel adventures, but insane nonetheless.

Defeating Rittenhouse. Truly putting the past behind her and reconciling with Wyatt for good. Having to re-enter the real world, figure out where to live, if she could get back into her position at Stanford.

The utterly shocking string of doctor's appointments in which they'd found out in short succession that not only was she pregnant, but that they had almost surely conceived right there that first night back in the bunker, and that she'd been carrying twins. Between the two of them and everything they'd gone through, Lucy had thought them pretty unflappable by that point. But for each of those three revelations, you could have knocked either one of them over with a feather. Though once the staggering shock had worn off, Wyatt had been the best of fathers to the girls since well before they were born. Not to mention the best husband – once they'd slipped away for a small destination wedding-slash-elopement in Napa in May.

And everything else… Buying a house for their surprise family, selling her mother's. The misery of the later months of a twin pregnancy, though that still hadn't even come close to comparing to the terror when, after Amy had arrived just fine, if a little early, little Flynn's vital signs had gone haywire, necessitating an emergency c-section.

The stress of the recovery and that first week with both girls in the NICU, and then a whole different brand of stress when they'd taken them home and were suddenly faced with juggling twin newborns without the help of a team of nurses.

Which wasn't all that far removed from where they still were now, with the girls at four months. They'd come up with a bit more of a routine, and Agent Christopher was generously keeping Wyatt on somewhat of an unofficial extended paternity leave, assigning him only the barest of tasks for the time being. But those babies still more than kept their rookie mom and dad on their toes, that's for sure.

And Lucy loved it.

Yes, all in all, this Christmas, for all the unwrapped gifts and unbaked cookies, far outweighed one that had started with both her and Wyatt half-broken and full of heartache, yet still keeping each other at arm's length.

Except, perhaps for one thing, she realized, smirking to herself. "My boobs did hurt less then though," she pointed out with a tired smile up at Wyatt.

That one did manage to break through Wyatt's pensive mood. With a teary-eyed chuckled of his own, he reached to cradle Lucy's face. "I love you so much."

It may have been the lack of sleep that made the tears spill over, but the tug in Lucy's chest was the same one she felt every time she heard those words from him. "I love you too," she sniffled, wrapping herself around him in a tight hug once more.

Wyatt embraced her right back, murmuring in her ear, "Good year?"

"Good year," she echoed, squeezing her eyes shut in sheer happiness. "The best."

But in the end, closed eyes and being wrapped up in Wyatt were doing her no favors in terms of staying awake and getting things done. But she kind of didn't care. "Can we just stay here tonight?" she sighed against him, half-asleep.

"Fine by me," Wyatt replied, planting one more kiss on her head. "Fine by me."

"Santaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

Wyatt winced blearily, rubbing his eyes and squinting into the barest of dim morning light as the shrill squeals continued upstairs.

Shrieks of 'Santa!' eventually merged into a jumbled chorus of endless, nonsensical 'SantaMommyDaddyAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!' that grew louder, the slaps of two pairs of little bare feet on the stairs joining in.

"Three," he grumbled, doing his best to bury his face in the mess of wavy locks in the crook of Lucy's neck. "It's three when they get up at 6 screaming about Santa."

He could feel Lucy's chuckle as he curled around her and could practically hear the sleepy smirk in her voice when she corrected him. "5. Not 6. It's 5."

"How long does this last?" he groaned in protest against her neck. "Nine? Ten? And then we go back to no Santa?"

"Oh, stop," Lucy chastised, swatting his arm as she pried herself up and away from him to focus on the sources of the squealing, both now kneeling in front of their piles of gifts. "Hey you two," she scolded playfully, "no Christmas hugs for Mommy and Daddy?"

Even Wyatt had to grin as that set off another round of screeches as the girls scrambled up off the floor and launched themselves in the direction of the couch. And forget being a grouchy, sleep-deprived Scrooge – he was damn near beaming a split second later, arms full of one of his baby girls, the other just down the couch wrapped in Lucy's embrace.

And when his eyes locked with Lucy's over two little brunette heads, to see her just as excited as Flynn and Amy, he couldn't help but choke up.

He'd come so damn close to never getting any of this.

But god, was he so freaking grateful for every second of it.

Or almost every second of it.

For, with his emotions getting the better of him for a moment, Wyatt missed Lucy's giddy instruction of "Switch!" to the girls, telling them to trade parents for a second hug. Which meant he wasn't quite prepared for the flurry of little feet, knees, and elbows that ensued. One of which ended up catching him in a rather sensitive area.

So he was less than grateful for that particular second. Well, minutes.

Wyatt grimaced, hunching over in agony, even with Amy still clinging to him.

Of course, when he could finally see straight again and caught a glimpse of Lucy, she was failing spectacularly at stifling her laughter over his misery. He glared; she managed to coax her expression into looking nearly contrite as she mouthed "Sorry."

Though then Lucy leaned over to him, purposely cradling a little pig-tailed head out of earshot, and whispered mischievously, "I'll kiss it and make it better later."

Wyatt's eyebrows flew up, enticed. "Promise?" he asked, shooting Lucy a wicked smirk.

She just winked before turning her attention back to the antsy girls. "So do you guys think you were good enough for Santa?" She prompted. "Think he brought what you asked for? Go see!"

God, he loved her.

Even amidst the new round of ear-piercing shrieks she'd just set off as the girls were off and running back toward the tree. Even with his crotch still smarting. Even when, every year, they never get as much done on Christmas Eve as they should and end up nodding off together on the couch all night.

He loved her. Always.

So Wyatt didn't hesitate in hauling Lucy back across the couch toward him for the biggest of hugs. "Merry Christmas," he murmured against her shoulder.

He was, like every year, thrilled to hear Lucy's contented, happy sigh in his ear as she echoed, "Merry Christmas."

~FIN~