Lucy is so ridiculously brave in this episode.
Scene 1 (the search isn't giving me good gifs of it, but you remember), she's about to say it, to say, hey maybe I could move in here? Maybe we could live together? And then Kate jumps on board Operation Find Lucy Somewhere Else to Live, and Lucy doesn't bother to hide her disappointment. She's not terribly good at hiding it anyway, but she's so obvious that we have to imagine that she's okay with Kate knowing she's disappointed, that there's something off. That this isn't what she really wants to be happening.
Season 1 Lucy would have left it there, because Season 1 Lucy didn't push. Season 1 Lucy took what she could get from Kate, gathered up the scraps of affection Kate deigned to give her and tried to make them feel like they were enough. She fell in love with the pieces of Kate she had access to, but she knew all she had was "distracted Whistler," secret Whistler. And the one time she tried to ask for more, when she came over before going undercover, to ask Kate for love and support and to say goodbye just in case, obviously she was burned.
But Season 2 Lucy is braver. She's been loved better, she's been given so many more pieces of Kate. She's not living off scraps any more, she has huge swaths of Kate now. But Kate made her a bunch of charts instead of asking her to move in, and instead of going with it—picking the condo three blocks away and feeling like shit for it—Lucy does this:
She just says it. I could just move in with you. And then she panics, because Kate's face is so slow to react to her. (Side note: I love how slowly Kate reacts to her when she's surprised. When Lucy said "I loved you, Kate," there's the longest pause before Kate's face responds. Which I know is partly the editing, but also it feels like Kate just takes a minute for things to land, and I love thinking about her big brain spinning in place when a conversation doesn't go the way she expected).
But so there's this long pause, and then Lucy says "Kidding" because it fucking hurts to be always asking for more and more and more of Kate. First for Kate's sole attention, then for her honesty, her story, her fears, and now for this. But even in this hurt, which we know has to be dredging up all the old hurts along with it—I want you so much but you have this other girlfriend, I want to take you out but you're embarrassed by me, I loved you but you threw it away this easily—she says, "I didn't want to force you..." She doesn't say "Kidding, this is a horrible mistake," or something like she would have in Season 1. She says kidding, but then she kind of doubles down. She doesn't say "Kidding, I don't want to move in with you," she says "Kidding, I know you're not ready for that."
She says "I'm not going to move in because you don't want me to," not because I don't want to, or because I don't love you enough.
BRAVE.
And then for a second it goes great until Kate gets anxious and tries to back up her emotional response (want Lucy) with something she sees as a valid reason for doing it (practicality and financial responsibility), because poor Kate doesn't think her feelings are important enough to act on. And Lucy thinks feelings are the best thing to act on, and she's probably spent her entire life being told to do the practical and financially responsible thing, and she hasn't. She hasn't joined the oil business, she hasn't stayed in Texas with the family, she hasn't accepted the family money.
So Kate saying they should do this to be rational and practical, that must hurt Lucy beyond thinking maybe Kate doesn't love her like Lucy does. It's Kate saying Lucy's way of deciding things, picking things, isn't good enough. That Lucy's gut can't be trusted with important shit, which is what her parents must have said, thought.
Lucy has probably been told her entire life to do things Kate's way, and she's run as far from that life as she could, and now her girlfriend is doing this same shit? Basically telling her to be less emotional, to think things through, to make the smart move, to plan ahead and be rational? That must hurt so badly.
And this whole season has been Lucy supporting Kate. Supporting her with breakfast, with coming out, with her undercover mission. Lucy has been falling all over herself to give Kate everything she needs and more, because she loves her. She makes her more breakfast than they can eat because she feels that much. She makes enough food for all of the feelings she has for Kate, and who the fuck cares if it's not practical or responsible. And then Kate says it's too much, and Lucy's face falls, she curls in on herself.
But Lucy doesn't just move in because it's practical, and she doesn't just not move in because she's sick of being fucking practical.
She goes BRAVE and she shows up to Kate's door to be honest. She says, "I don't want it to be about finances. Or being practical, or prudent, or smart." She says, "We can't move in just because it's rational and responsible." She says:
She actually fucking says it. She says I need this from you. I need you to say that you care about me with your heart and your guts, not just your brain and your wallet and your spreadsheets. I'll only move in if you can't bear to spend a night away from me, if the idea of me not being here hurts you like it hurts me. If you love me like I love you, if you want to give me all of you, like I've given you all of me.
[Of course, the way Kate shows her love is by rationalizing and putting those emotions into neat little spreadsheet boxes she can color code and squint it, to wave around and say "I promise this is backed up by the data!" but that's a different character study for another day]
Lucy knocks on her door—the first time we've seen her knock since Cara—and says, I need you to do this my way. I need you to give me this piece of you. I'm not going to gather up the scraps you leave me, to connect the dots between rational adult decisions and financial responsibility and commute times to guess that you love me enough to want me to move in. I'm going to make you say it, I need to hear you say it.
BRAVE.
And of course Kate falls all over herself to say it as quickly as she can, because she's a fucking goner for Lucy, and everyone except Lucy sees that pretty fucking clearly, but still.
Lucy didn't know, she wasn't sure, this all brought up a whole fun-house tour of Lucy's baggage—Cara, secrecy, her parents, her career, being too much—and still Lucy was brave enough to swallow all of that down and ask for what she needed, to tell Kate what she needs from her.
And I think that's pretty badass for our tiny scrappy little NCIS agent, that's all.
