Title: No Doubt

Pairing: L/J

Rating: K+

Summary: Some things are better left in the moment. No real spoilers. Semi-future fic.

He has always had a tenuous grasp on the bigger picture. It is perhaps the most unfortunate symptom of the high intellect that garnered him a spot with the team, this ability to hyper focus on a single moment while the rest of the world slouches on ahead.

Or perhaps it is that Lloyd is so used to avoiding the future after all his failures past and present. Julianne notices that now he cringes slightly when she looks at him. She has an idea that Lloyd believes she finds his past transgressions distasteful—and Julianne does, but after a moment of introspection she realizes that it is the act and not the man she dislikes. Lloyd is so willing to overlook the damage inside her Julianne is struggling to fix that she cannot help but mentally extend the same consideration. It is the admission of regret that moves her—for all Erica, Shea, and even Ray offer some mention of guilt, Lloyd is the only one who revealed an undercurrent of shame. And Julianne understands shame: it helped keep her in her mother's basement for three years.

Ray had hesitated only a few days before he mentioned it. They had gone for coffee at a café near her home.

"Lowery has eyes for you," he mutters against the rim of a cup. Julianne can feel the weight of his gaze. "I told him to buy you flowers."

"Oh." She can feel her face warming up. Ray is smirking.

"No fraternizin' on the job, okay?" His smirk widens, and then the topic turns to Ray's hope for reinstatement, Julianne's eventual return to the academy.

That was five escapes ago, months ago, a span of time wide enough to give Julianne time to sort and settle her thoughts. She pays close attention to Lloyd, and something in her chest seizes when he catches her eye, flinches, and looks away. He still offers advice, even slips into conversation with her when she pushes herself to draw him out, but he is careful to maintain his distance. One day when she watches him rattle off the punch line of another joke to the others, Julianne is stung when he doesn't offer to repeat the joke. His eyes skate over her and dart away, back to the pictures of the latest escapees.

Later they are alone—the others are gone on the chase—and Julianne is finally fed up enough to walk up to Lloyd where he is sitting, hunched over the convict's psychological intake report.

"Tell me your joke," she says.

For a moment he does nothing, doesn't even glance up from the page, but Julianne knows by the sudden twitch of his shoulders that Lloyd has stopped reading.

"What?" Lloyd looks between Julianne and the page, finally steadying his gaze on her, head tilted up, watching. Julianne reads unease in the flickering smirk on his face and the way his hands flex and relax over the file.

"The joke you told the others. I want to hear it." Julianne is pressing him, so unlike her. But his small, simple tasks have done their job, building a small cache of confidence, of trust in her own abilities since their initial meeting.

Lloyd recognizes this and flashes his first genuine smile at her, straightening in his chair.

"I'll tell you a better one. How many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb?"

She waits for a breath and then asks, "How many?"

Lloyd's grin grows wider. "None. The lightbulb will change when it's ready."

Julianne laughs and Lloyd seems delighted by this. She pulls a chair over and sits across from him, their knees angled toward one another. Julianne cants her head over the spread of papers and pictures on the table. Lloyd is still smiling. They both are.

"How are you making out?"

He shrugs. "Fine. Ray and Charlie have all they need from me, really. This guy is so patterned it's almost a shame he bothered escaping. He'll be found in the next few hours at his ex-wife's house, trying to get her to come with him."

Julianne marvels at Lloyd's easy confidence in his own abilities, how he never doubts his inferences, his theories. They lock eyes again.

"You're doing well," he says quietly. She knows it is not a question—and it's true, she is doing well. Not perfectly, but even getting this far once seemed like an impossible task.

"Thanks to you," Julianne returns, going so far as to tap his shoe with hers. Delight uncoils inside her when Lloyd starts to blush.

"We got a new deal. Charlie worked it out," he says in a rush. "The same month off we were offered plus accelerated parole. Which means we could be out in two, maybe three years. Contingent on a continued contract with the Marshalls. No in-statement as deputies, of course—the felony status stays, but—"

He is babbling. Julianne watches Lloyd stumble rapidly over his words, realizing that he is offering her some sort of explanation. That he is detailing, in his convoluted, too-complicated way, his future for her, laying out a glimpse of something more than a shared joke in a dingy loft. She listens to him talk about boundaries with his mother, and how he is seeing a therapist in Maybelle. Lloyd licks his lips and takes a breath, his eyes fixed on her.

"I know this is so, so far in the future, but, I mean, it's difficult not to plan when you have so much time, right? Anyway, there's, uh, down the road there's a café, and if you're free in two to three years…"

Julianne kisses him then, simply rolls her chair forward and leans in. Lloyd is mid-word when she does, already trying to retract his question. He lets out a pleased, surprised noise against her mouth, and when he does Julianne takes the opportunity to skate her tongue along his lower lip, just to see what happens. Lloyd goes rigid in his chair and mumbles something—"oh" or "wow"—and then he moves forward, a hand going behind her head, along the nape of her neck.

Julianne thinks distantly that they are fully making out. Lloyd is surprisingly good at this. He recovers from the initial shock, takes her bottom lip between his teeth, and presses down just hard enough to make her whimper. Her hands are fisted in his plaid shirt, his are stroking up her legs. Julianne has never done anything like this—never thought about it, really, but there is something so good about Lloyd's earnest mouth, the little growl he utters when she finally reaches up and tugs at his hair. When they finally part to breath, he rests his head in the crook of her neck, thumbs stroking her knees. She can feel the stubble on his cheek against her skin, and the twitch of his mouth when she shivers.

"That was unexpected," Lloyd says, his voice low and gravelly. He pulls back to look at her.

"I'm trying to live in the moment. You suggested it last week," Julianne quips, thrilled beyond all reason when Lloyd beams at her. "And yes, I'll go for coffee with you. We could go now."

"Why wait?" Lloyd agrees. He is looking at her mouth. Julianne leans in and kisses him again. They stand up and he is able to pull her flush against his body, giving him access to the sensitive skin along her neck.

"We'll take it slow," Lloyd murmurs, his mouth under her ear. "I'll write you letters. I'll—"

"Lloyd, don't overthink this," Julianne says. "Let's start with coffee. We have time. You know that poem, the Desiderata? There's a line in it, something like, 'and whether or not it is clear to you—"

Lloyd presses his forehead against hers. "'No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should'. Okay. I get that."

Julianne smiles. "Good. Let's go get some coffee."