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Of all the uncomfortable places that Lucy Carlyle has been trapped in, she’s pretty sure this takes the cake.
She’s currently crouched on the floor of a closet, crushed as far back as she can get, trying not to breathe too loudly. The sound of footsteps grow near and far in an unceasing pattern as someone paces just outside the closet door. On each pass, they momentarily block the thin thread of light spilling from the crack in the door, only for it to flash bright across her socks a second later.
Lucy’s heart is in her throat. A chest-numbing fear grips her, rivalling that caused by the worst Rawbones or Screaming Spirit.
Except it’s not a ghost outside the closet door.
It’s Lockwood.
Because this is his bedroom, and Lucy is the one who isn’t supposed to be here.
Ten minutes ago, the four of them had all been clustered in the kitchen of 35 Portland Row, running over the simultaneous disaster and boon that had been the Fittes and Rotwell parade. There had been sun streaming into the room, buns on the table and a warmth all through Lucy every time Lockwood looked her way, just from the memory of how well the two of them had worked together. It was just starting to feel like maybe things were settling from the upheaval of Holly’s hiring, that Lucy was finding her place again by Lockwood’s side, trusted above all others the way she longed to be.
And then Lockwood proposed a toast. Said one member of the agency deserved to be singled out for praise.
And he’d looked at her. And she’d glowed.
And he’d turned and showered praise on Holly instead, for what felt like the umpteenth time, as if he hadn’t even noticed Lucy lighting up at the idea that he might be about to compliment her. Or worse — as if he had noticed and wanted to put her in her place, remind her that as far as he was concerned, Lucy was the same as any other associate, regardless of what they’d been through together.
She’d left the three of them behind in the kitchen, feeling empty and stupid.
It was that feeling that had brought her to Lockwood’s bedroom — a place she’d only been in a handful of times before to wake him up in emergencies or to bring him food when he was laid up in bed after the Wintergarden case.
Just what she was looking for in there wasn’t clear, even to her. Photos? Secrets? Some sort of hidden trinket which proved she held a greater connection to him than anyone else?
Maybe she just wanted to sit on the bed where he slept and try to imagine the thoughts that kept him up at night. Stare up at his ceiling and wonder if their nightmares would match.
She’d been rifling in the bottom of his closet when the door handle to his bedroom started to turn.
This is when a normal person would’ve backed away from the closet, let themselves get caught, and then claimed to have been looking for a lost piece of laundry or something.
But Lucy’s never seen a bad decision she didn’t sprint towards, and so instead of the rational move, her first instinct was to climb inside the closet and yank the door shut behind her.
She’s still there now, listening to Lockwood move around his room. He quits the pacing, drops something with a slap — a book onto his nightstand, maybe? — and then there’s the scrape of a drawer opening, papers and cloth being sorted through.
Maybe he’s just looking for something and he’ll be gone in a minute, back to the kitchen to continue poring over new cases with Holly and George. Lockwood doesn’t usually spend much time in his room, apart from when he sleeps, and she clings to that thought for dear life. The closet isn’t all that big. With her back pressed into the back corner, she has to have her bent legs stretching along almost the entire floor of it, and it's not exactly a position she can be in comfortably for long.
A thump of a comforter being impacted — Lockwood’s probably tossed himself into bed. Lucy tips her head against her knees, swearing internally. What if he settles down for a nap and then she falls asleep herself and only wakes up hours later when he opens the door to the closet and she tumbles out?
She listens carefully, trying to suss out if his breathing is getting slower, more even.
There’s the sound of a zip. The rustle of clothing. A snap that reminds her of popping open her shampoo bottle. Then Lockwood is easing out a long, slow breath, as if it’s the first exhale he’s had all day.
Lucy leans forward as carefully as she can, trying to line her eyes up with the thin crack of light from the closet door. For a moment, she can’t get the image to resolve, wavering all around his room. And then the lower half of Lockwood’s bed comes suddenly into view.
He’s lying on the bed alright, legs splayed. Shirt untucked. The tongue of his belt hanging loose over his thigh. All irrelevant compared to what his hand is doing.
Through the crack in the closet door she sees it: Lockwood’s hand, framed by the vee of his long legs, pulling up slowly from the open fly of his trousers and then back down to reveal the gleaming wet head of his cock.
He’s jerking off.
A tidal wave of heat crashes through her, slamming through her chest down to the pit of her stomach in one devastating rush. For a second Lucy is glued to the spot, watching Lockwood tug on his dick — his hard, big, weirdly pretty dick. By the time she’s able to wrench her head away from the crack, cutting off the visual, it’s too late. It’s emblazoned on the inside of her eyelids. The thickness of his knuckles. The urgent, flushed colour of his cockhead against his fingers.
Lucy struggles to keep her breathing steady, quiet. Except then she can hear him better — the subtle, slick sound that she knows now is the stroke of his fist, the soft shush of bedsheets under him, his even, relaxed breathing.
She cannot be here. She cannot be hearing this.
Except she is, and there’s no way to stop it, not without revealing to him that she had been in his room, going through his things.
It would’ve been bad enough to be caught five minutes ago. But now she’s disturbing his privacy in one of the most horrible ways possible. If he finds out that she’s in here, he’ll never look at her the same way again.
All she can do is hope that Lockwood is quick, and that he leaves the room afterwards without opening the closet first.
Quick.
The image of just what Lockwood is doing mere metres from her flashes vivid in her mind again — except this time her brain has filled in the details, taken the glimpse she got through the crack of the closet door and expanded the view so she’s picturing the whole of it: Lockwood’s body stretched luxuriously out on his bed, his head probably thrown back into a pillow, legs tensing and relaxing, his hand moving in an unhurried stroke up and down.
Maybe he’s got a knee bent up now, foot planted for some leverage so he can roll his hips into his hand better. Maybe he’s loosened his tie, unbuttoned his shirt so he can get some air on his torso as he starts to sweat from how good it feels.
Lucy presses her hands over her ears and puts her face in her knees, trying determinedly to think of anything other than what is happening outside the closet.
A sound filters in anyway — a stifled grunt of pleasure. A creak from the bed itself. Is he thrusting up into his fist with enough force to shift the whole bed? Is she going to start hearing that creaking fall into a consistent rhythm as he tries to come? The glimpse she’d gotten wasn’t enough to tell her if he’s going for a long wank or is desperate to get off fast. He’d looked really hard, but his was also the first erection she’d ever actually seen in real life, so maybe he’d only been at half-mast.
That can’t be the case, she decides. Any bigger and surely he wouldn’t be able to fit it in anyone.
The crassness of the thought makes her shudder. She stares blankly at the wood grain beneath her socked feet, heart going hummingbird fast, feeling abruptly too small and childish for the heat coursing through her to make sense.
The knowledge of what Lockwood is doing right now has wiped her mind clean. She’s not prepared to be thinking about the size and shape of a man’s cock when it’s hard and ready for action. Lockwood’s not even a man yet, with barely a year on her, but the heft of his cock in his hand seems like something that belongs to an older version of him, something far more adult than his skinny frame and narrow shoulders would imply, and it makes her feel weak and shivery and confused.
Controlled, rational Lockwood, with his perpetual suits and charming smile, still gets hard and desperate for touch like any other teenage boy. He’s got his prick gripped in his fist right now. She can still hear the wet slide of it, no matter how hard she tries not to listen.
How is she supposed to go on missions with him, pass plates to him in the kitchen, smile at him like everything’s normal, when she knows what he’s packing now? That behind the fly of his pressed trousers sits something thick in a way that makes her jaw cramp up, flood with saliva —
She’s officially a disgusting person. If she thought she was a pervert for stealing her sister Mary’s romance novels from under her bed at age 13 to read in the bathroom in twenty-minute intervals, sweaty and terrified, well, now at least she knows for certain that it’s true.
More noises break through the protection of Lucy’s hands over her ears, slightly muffled like Lockwood is moaning into a pillow. Maybe he’s turned over onto his stomach now, and if she peers through the closet door she’ll see his hips rolling down in the kind of sinuous arc he’d use if there was someone underneath him. And isn’t that a visual: posh, buttoned-up Lockwood fucking someone.
Maybe that’s what he’s imagining as he strokes himself. Maybe he’s thinking about thrusting into someone, pressing that big, pretty cock deep into —
Lucy’s throbbing between her legs. It’s impossible to ignore; when she shifts the tiniest degree, the seam of her tights pulls against her like a finger running up her centre. She’s going to spontaneously combust. She’s going to leave a puddle on the bottom of Lockwood’s closet.
She shuts her eyes tight, stiffening her hands over her ears so she won’t slide one of them down to test how wet she knows she is. She’s hiding in Lockwood’s closet, horribly turned on just from hearing him touch himself — she won’t make this worse by secretly jerking off to him while she’s in the same room.
Especially since he’s probably thinking about perfect miss Holly Munro right now.
The realization is a leaden weight in her gut. It’s the only thing that could make this situation more mortifying — the knowledge that if something’s got Lockwood strung tight enough to retreat to his room to jerk off in the middle of the day, it has to be Perfection Herself, with her flawless complexion and beautiful hair and a body that makes Lucy look like a potato sack in comparison.
She probably looks even more incredible naked, and that’s probably what Lockwood is picturing right now. Lucy can see it in her mind’s eye, an insistent thought as stomach-clenchingly hot as it is horrific: Holly sat astride Lockwood, his big hands cupping her breasts, thumbs petting over her nipples. Lucy shakes her head, trying to dispel the image. She may not like Holly, but it’s sick of her to picture her like this, especially when the confusing image of Holly taking Lockwood’s cock is making Lucy’s brain fracture even further, the wet patch on her knickers sticking to the insides of her thighs as she presses them together.
Lucy takes full stock of her situation: crammed into the back of a closet, breathing in the uncertain smell of old leather dress shoes as a forest of identical white button-ups caress her neck and shoulders, trying her hardest not to make any sort of noise lest the boy she’s been hopelessly bending towards for the last year and a half cottons on that she’s in here listening to him get off.
She’s pathetic.
Lockwood groans suddenly, shockingly loud after the muffled sounds from before. A wavery, needy sound almost falls out of Lucy’s mouth in response — she has to yank one hand away from her ears to clap over her mouth, keep it in.
She's hearing it properly then: a schluck-schluck noise that tells her he’s really pumping his cock now, clearly slickened with what sounds like a boatload of lube. It sounds obscene. It makes her body feel empty, an alien, unexpected sensation between her legs. Suddenly, Holly winks out of existence and it’s Lucy in Lockwood’s lap, then Lucy pinned under him, and she’s imagining, helpless not to, exactly what it would feel like to take him — blunt pressure at her core, a stretch, an inexorable slide into her, filling her, his face swaying above her.
A rush of nauseous images: she’s gotten so wet he can smell it, he knows she’s there, he pries the closet door open and hauls her to her feet, throws her on his bed and climbs on top, he’s disgusted, he needs to punish her, no, her mind tilts away from this, replaces it with he’s relieved, his hand wasn’t enough, he needs her, he fits his prick into her soaking cunt and fucks her, fucks her, fucks —
Her body clenches on nothing. Her face is wet. It isn’t just his presence at her side on cases that she wants, she wants this, wants his focus and his skin on hers so badly that it hurts. She’s more than prepared to think about it, she’s ready to have it, if it’s him. What a time to realize you’re in love with someone: when you’re trapped in their closet overhearing something you were never meant to, your very existence made monstrous by circumstance and desire.
His breathing sounds ragged. He must be close now. More than anything she wants to see it: wants to know how Lockwood’s face looks, how much come he has to unload, whether it’ll all shoot out in one big spurt or in slow, aching blurts of come that coat his fingers.
She doesn’t look. She’s breathing so fast and loud she’s getting dizzy; she puts her other hand over her mouth to join the first, trying desperately to muffle herself.
Outside the closet, Lockwood gasps. The wet sound of his hand speeds up. The bed makes a complaint. There’s a sharp noise, like he’s slapped his free hand against the headboard or the wall. And then —
For a second, she imagines he’s going to say a name as he comes, like in her sister’s romance novels, so overwhelmed that he can’t help it. But of course, he doesn’t, just makes a sweet, puppy-ish whine, bedsheets swishing like he’s writhing with the feeling. Lucy’s thighs tense, the darkened world of the closet swimming in front of her eyes as she listens to Lockwood shake through his orgasm.
It seems to go on forever, even though it’s probably only a few seconds before his voice trails off into a few heavy exhales.
“Fuck,” Lockwood says quietly. He sounds wrecked, but satisfied. Lucy bites down on the side of her palm, hard enough to hurt.
At least it’s over now, she tells herself, feeling slightly hysterical.
Except she’s still in the closet.
There’s very little sounds making their way to her suddenly — even Lockwood’s breathing has become abruptly harder to hear.
This is the truly terrifying part, where she could get caught. What if he came all over his shirt and needs a new one from the closet?
She hasn’t looked out the crack in the closet door since that first, life-shattering glimpse, but she has to now, she reasons. Just to know if he really is finished and if he’s getting up or heading towards the closet. If he is heading this way, she might have to risk making noise to try and cover herself with a coat or something.
She’ll take the tiniest of peeks, just to confirm.
Lucy leans towards the door, bringing her body into the same alignment it’d been when she first looked.
The angle is perfect — she can see the top of his legs and the bottom of his torso. His softening cock rests tenderly against the inside of his wrist, his hand curled softly down over the base and disappearing into the fly of his trousers. He’d pulled his shirt up before he came, and there’s a streak of white fluid sitting on his stomach. It’s such a vulnerable, open picture that she immediately feels a wave of guilt.
But still she shifts even closer to the crack in the door, trying to widen her field of view.
The strip of room revealed to her through the crack shifts as she does, sliding up his torso, his shoulders.
Except where his head should be, there’s nothing but a mass of dark blue fabric.
No — it’s only his face that’s covered. She can see the line of his neck, the edge of his hair and one ear. But he’s holding a wad of fabric to his face. It looks like he’s inhaling deeply, his shoulders moving with it. The arm still in his lap twitches, and she shifts her vision back down to his lap to see that he’s absently playing with his cock still, drawing his fingers over the sticky head of it. She looks quickly back towards the top of the bed, where he’s still breathing in the fabric like it’s the best thing he’s ever taken into his lungs.
Then he’s pulling the wad of blue away from his face, sitting up all at once with a groan of effort, and Lucy shrinks back before she can take in his expression. She can’t do it, she can’t look at his face all soft in afterglow. If she misses the opportunity to hide herself better because she can’t see him coming towards the closet, well, maybe she deserves to get caught. Maybe she deserves to be thrown out onto the street like the creature she is.
But that’s not what happens.
Instead, Lockwood rattles around the room for a few more minutes — his movements punctuated by the sharp pull of tissue from a box, the opening of drawers and the ring of a belt buckle — and then his footsteps cross to the bedroom door, moving right past the closet without pausing, and he’s pulling it open and then shut.
Lucy sits in the closet for a long while after, waiting for her heart to calm down, making sure he wasn’t just going to the bathroom.
It isn’t until she hears Lockwood yell for George somewhere in the house, saying something about the basement and rapier practice, that she slowly pushes the closet door open and gets out.
Lockwood’s bedroom is empty, looking just like it did twenty minutes ago when she came in here. It’s almost disorienting, as if she’d imagined the whole debacle.
Even the bed looks almost the same, bedsheets disturbed in a way that suggests only sleep, no distinct folds or stains that would reveal he had been panting and fisting his cock there only moments before.
She’s so on edge that she spooks when she notices a girl standing on the other side of the room, only to realize it’s her own reflection in the mirror above Lockwood’s dresser. Her mouth is bitten red and raw, eyes glassy and wet. She quickly pulls her sleeve up over her hand and wipes at the snot and tears that had gotten all over her, trying to reset to some sort of normal.
Of course, nothing’s ever going to be the same again, but she shouldn’t let it show on her face.
She carefully ducks out of Lockwood’s room onto the mercifully empty landing, and darts soundlessly upwards to the loft.
Once the door is shut behind her, she doesn’t even bother to take her shorts, tights or knickers off. Just collapses on her bed, jams her hand under all three waistbands and brings herself off in less than a minute, with two fingers digging up inside her and the heel of her hand mashed against her clit.
It shouldn’t be good, not after everything she did to get there. But it is.
-
Lucy’s practiced in the mirror how she’s going to act normal when she sees Lockwood the next day, so she doesn’t jump more than a few centimetres when she runs into him on the stairs the following morning.
He’s wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt, his hair pleasantly rumpled and his eyes soft at the corners, a laundry basket balanced on his hip. It makes her want to throw herself out a window, or throw herself at his feet and beg forgiveness. All she actually does is give him a wan smile.
“Hiya Lucy,” he says, voice a little sleep-rough still. “Did you sleep alright?”
“Can’t complain,” she says. “You?”
“Had a bit of a weird dream,” he says, wrinkling his nose. “I think George’d run away to join the circus, and you and I were trying to track him down? There were clown costumes involved.”
“What was his act in the circus?”
“George? You know, I don’t think I ever found out.”
“Some friends we are, not even supporting his hobbies,” Lucy jokes. “You’d think we’d have watched at least one show.”
Lockwood grins up at her, his face lit up by the morning glow and something else, some internal vibrance she's never been able to figure out. Maybe, just maybe, she'll be able to pull off things being normal.
“I was actually on my way up to the loft to see if you were awake yet,” Lockwood says, swinging the hamper around to the front of his body. “I was doing a spot of laundry — things that didn’t make it into Holly’s last big batch — and noticed something of yours got mixed up in my things.”
He reaches casually into the hamper and pulls out a jumper, carefully folded.
A dark blue jumper.
It’s a thin one, with billowy sleeves, the same one she’d misplaced earlier this week. But that’s not why it looks familiar now.
She remembers asking Lockwood about it days ago, checking if he had seen it somewhere about the house. He’d merely shrugged, distant and polite as ever, with a thin smile and a dart of those dark eyes. “Sorry, Luce, I’ll keep an eye out,” he’d said.
He places the jumper into her outstretched hands, not seeming to notice how still she’s gone.
“It is yours, right?”
“Yes,” Lucy blurts. She looks from the jumper to his face. There’s a distant thundering in her ears, like a stampede on the horizon, heading her way. “Yeah, it’s mine.”
A flicker in his expression, almost like nervousness. Then he nods, smiles again, and heads back down the stairs.
She stands there, staring at the place where he’d disappeared, the seconds ticking away. When she lowers her face to the dark blue fabric in her hands and takes a deep inhale, it smells like laundry detergent, and Lockwood, and maybe the faintest thread of hope.