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The scene is this: Lucy and Lockwood are in the library and it’s nearing midnight. Lucy is scribbling notes in the margins of a pamphlet, trying to find something to link the recent string of cases they’ve had in the same borough of London. Lockwood is pretending to read one of his parents’ old papers but is instead watching her.
Not because she looks especially pretty (she does) or because he loves her (he does), but because of something else, something he can’t quite put into words. Can you be nostalgic for a moment you’re currently living through? It makes no sense but it’s the closest he can get to describing it, watching her over the top of his papers, tracing the feathery shadows her lashes cast down her cheeks in the lamplight.
It all feels achingly familiar and he can’t for the life of him work out why until Lucy sleepily scrawls another note, frowning when the ink runs dry, touching the nib of the pen to her tongue, and he’s suddenly reminded so violently of his mother that it hurts, a dull ache flaring beneath his ribs.
Not that Lucy is anything like his mother; if anything her temperament is closer to Jess’, stubborn and soft all rolled into one maddening contradiction of a girl.
But how many times as a kid had he snuck down the many flights of stairs from his little attic haven for a glass of water in the middle of the night to find his parents in this very scene?
Because that is where his mother used to sit and this is where his father used to sit, a pot of tea going cold on the table between them as they worked into the early hours of the morning, absorbed in their research.
His dad would always give up to sleep first, slinking off to bed after giving his wife a soft reminder not to stay up too late and a kiss goodnight and which she would naturally ignore, always telling him I’m going to keep going, just a little while longer and race the moon to see who gave up first.
The Lockwoods might be gone, but their house is filled with love once more and he thinks that they’d like that. They’d like George and Luce and this place they’ve rebuilt between them.
Lucy shifts in her armchair, rearranging herself so she is leaning up against one overstuffed arm, bare legs hanging over the other. He looks at her socks, oddly loose on her tiny feet and realises with a start that they’re not hers at all, but a pair of his. Their laundry must have gotten mixed up this week or perhaps she purposefully stole them after he heard her complaining that the attic was freezing at this time of year and he had teasingly told her she was supposed to be a hardy northerner. The heel of the navy wool is bunching around her delicate ankles as she settles back into the chair to get comfortable, the toes of one foot catching at the instep of the other in a fruitless attempt to pull the baggy material taut.
“All I can find to link the Visitors,” Lucy says suddenly, and he almost jumps because he’s been so absorbed in observing her like she’s a piece of art, respectful and from a distance, that he almost forgot she was real and not a figment of his hazy imagination, half-stuck in the past. “Is this one poem that is found on multiple headstones in the graveyard that is having so many disturbances.”
“What’s that?”
She frowns at the page before her. “’Let Me Go’ by Christina Rossetti. Do you know it?”
Lockwood drops the papers onto his lap, all pretence of reading them forgotten as he tips his head back to look at the ceiling.
“When I come to the end of the road/and the sun has set for me/I want no rites in a gloom filled room/why cry for a soul set free?” Lucy reads from the pamphlet in her lap and he closes his eyes.
“Miss me a little, but not for long/and not with your head bowed low.” He picks it up from memory, can almost taste the snatches of memory they bring forth; black suits and the best china, tiny sandwiches and the scent of Jess’ perfume, something too mature for her that tickled his nose as she held tightly to his hand. “Remember the love that once we shared/miss me, but let me go.”
The air hangs still around them, the silence heavy but not oppressive.
“My mother liked Rossetti.” He offers. He can feel the full weight of her attention on him, perking up further at the mention of his family. He doesn’t mean to drip feed her his past to be cruel, but he can only manage to draw out tiny pieces of it at a time, can hardly bring himself to look at the big picture as much as he knows she wants to see it. “Jess read that one at the funeral.”
He opens his eyes to find hers are glossy, regarding him carefully with a cautious look, like he’s a rabbit she doesn’t want to startle.
“Anyway.” He says with an air of finality, one that says that’s all he can give her right now, and she doesn’t push back, just softens her gaze and lets one side of her mouth tick up in a half-smile he thinks means thank you for sharing that. “Good find, Luce.”
Miraculously, she not only lets him deflect, but moves on herself. “Ironic, really, having an engraving about souls being set free on your grave and then coming back as a Visitor.”
“I suppose it is.” Lockwood agrees, and then they’re back to business, him shuffling his papers back together busily as Lucy resumes chewing on the end of her pen, drawn back into her research as easily as he is drawn back into watching her.
He blinks and suddenly the room has shifted, the lamp that was on beside him turned off so the one near Lucy’s chair is the only source of light. It casts her in a halo, picking out the golden flecks in her mussed hair, highlighting the delicate curve of her nose in profile. Her knees are drawn up to her chest now, feet on the seat of the armchair, her socks - his socks – pulled so they sit half way up her calves.
She looks devastating, even more so when her glance flicks up over the book she’s moved onto and catches his.
“Hey sleeping beauty.” She says quietly, when she notices him shift. “You dozed off for a bit there.”
“You didn’t wake me?”
“You looked peaceful.” She shrugs and even in the dim light he can see the rosy bloom of blush spreading over the apples of her sweetly rounded cheeks.
“I was reading.”
“Were you?” She challenges innocently, tilting her head at him coyly and it suddenly feels very warm despite how notoriously drafty the library gets. “Seems like you hadn’t turned a page for hours.”
She’s got him there.
“Time for bed I think.” Because he’d rather admit his tiredness than to the fact he barely made it a sentence into his parents’ paper in favour of observing her.
Lucy stifles a yawn and he smirks slightly as he gets to his feet, setting the papers on the coffee table with their empty teapot and mugs, even though he knows George will whine at them for it in the morning.
Lockwood moves towards her, setting a hand on the top of her chair. “You coming?”
Lucy is obviously tired but fighting it (stubborn and soft, stubborn and soft) and he can tell because instead of turning to look at him, she simply tips her head all the way back over the arm of the chair so he’s looking at her upside down. He can’t help but smile at how silly the movement is, tipping his head down and leaning over her slightly so their faces are parallel.
“I’m going to keep going,” She tells him, fringe slipping over her forehead so it sticks up in all sorts of odd directions. “Just a little while longer.”
“Okay.” He says fondly. “Don’t stay up too late.”
And then he ducks down to kiss her goodnight like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
He makes it almost to the door before he realises that he’s followed his parents’ script and not his and Lucy’s, caught up in his tiredness and the goofy glint in her eye and not-nostalgia of it all.
He almost trips over his own feet as he wheels back round to her, entirely horrified at himself. She’s staring at the book balanced against her knees, shoulders stiff, and panic lashes up his spine.
“Luce I’m-“
“Don’t apologise if you meant it,” Her voice is calm. She carefully jots down a note then sets her research aside, tucking her knees under her body so she can turn and look at him expectantly. “Just come here and do it again.”
The panic drains from his body.
“Okay.” Lockwood says. “Yeah.” And stumbles back across the library as she rises onto her knees, balancing on the seat of the chair, leaning over the arm as he takes her face in his hands to kiss her and kiss her and kiss her.
He still has to stoop a little even though the chair boosts her height but it hardly matters when he can feel her smiling against his mouth, the heat of her pink cheeks beneath his fingers. Her hands are grabbing his shoulders, the collar of his shirt, pulling him down even as she stretches up to meet him and he thinks vaguely that they’re going to have to get creative in the future to work around their height difference. And then he stops thinking about the future, as thrilling as it is, to commit to the present, to sear the feeling of Lucy’s lips parting beneath his into his memory, to taste the soft sound she presses into his mouth.
Lockwood draws back, rests his forehead against hers. He’s almost scared to open his eyes, worried he’ll find himself back on the sofa having drifted off again and the last few minutes are a cruel dream unearthed by his subconscious, muddling up his memories and his wants and giving him this perfect combination of both.
“Do you know,” Lucy murmurs and he feels the words wash over his chin, flutters his eyes open to see hers glimmering in the lamplight. “I think I will come to bed after all.”