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Lockwood was in the shower when he started to feel it. Dull flickering at the edge of his vision, a wave of vertigo when he reached for the soap.
Shit.
He stood there for a minute under the spray, taking deep breaths and considering his options. Tonight was the second annual DEPRAC ball since Solving the Problem, and he’d been looking forward to it for weeks. He’d even talked George into getting a tie for the occasion (a clip-on, but still). He tried to tell himself it would be fine– if he took the maximum dose of Imigran, he might be able to push through for a few hours. Then again, with an aura like this what followed promised to be excruciating, and the bright lights and loud music at the venue would be the opposite of helpful.
With a long sigh of resignation, Lockwood shut off the shower and toweled off quickly before retreating back to his room. After another five minutes sitting on his bed unsuccessfully trying to talk his body out of revolting at precisely the wrong moment, he gave up and got dressed. Skin suddenly oversensitive, he passed over the suit he’d carefully laid out this morning in favor of sweatpants and his softest t-shirt, before stepping out into the hallway.
George, busy fiddling with his tie in the front hall, barely glanced at him before turning back to the mirror. “Why aren’t you dressed yet? After all that yelling at me for taking forever.”
Lockwood opened his mouth to answer, but before he could Lucy emerged from the attic, one earring still in her hand. Her dress tonight was a deep indigo, with a lower neckline than she normally favored that showed off her collarbones to excellent advantage, his mother’s necklace as always nestled between them. He swallowed, disappointed all over again he’d miss seeing her in the light of a ballroom chandelier.
She looked a little more closely and frowned. “Lockwood? What’s wrong?”
He let out a breath, and with as much dignity he could manage while standing in his pajamas in front of his dressed-up friends and blinking through a growing blind spot in his left eye, said, “I’m not going tonight.”
“What? Why?” George and Lucy’s voices overlapped and Lockwood had to hide a flinch. Great. The noise sensitivity had already kicked in.
“Migraine coming on,” he said shortly. “I’ll be useless in an hour or so. You two should go without me. Enjoy yourselves.”
What followed was a brief argument in which George and Lucy protested, citing the fact that they wouldn’t enjoy this event half as much as he would, asking if he really didn’t want someone to stay behind should he need anything, and did any of them need to attend this event, really?
In the end, he practically had to shove them bodily out the door, arguing that Lockwood and Co. had to be represented, especially since he couldn’t be there himself, neither of them would want to go by themselves, the last Tube before curfew was leaving in half an hour, and he really wasn’t going to do anything besides take some pills and try to sleep, anyway.
By the time the door closed behind them, he was dizzy with the exertion and barely managed to stumble to the bathroom for the medicine and a glass of water before collapsing into bed, praying for sleep to come before the pain really hit him.
It didn’t, of course, because he could never be that lucky, and before long there was an icepick being driven firmly into the left side of his head, and he since he was definitely alone didn’t bother suppressing a whimper as he tried to bury himself deeper into the blankets.
Fuck migraines.
The first time it happened, he’d been twelve and still working for Gravedigger Sykes. That time, it had been triggered by death-glows at a cluster haunting that had killed almost ten people before an agency had been called in to get it sorted.
Sykes had only grunted, dosed him with children’s paracetamol, and tossed him his first pair of sunglasses. They were scratched and comically large on his pre-teenaged face, but did the job and prevented another attack for over a year.
The next one didn’t seem to be triggered by anything, which was irritating enough on its own, and for an extra dose of misery came with nausea so bad he actually vomited. He was living at Portland Row again, and had only days previously filed the paperwork to incorporate Lockwood and Co. Psychic Investigations, current membership: one.
Well, hopefully two as of next week. He was optimistic that George From The Archives would sign on with a little more convincing, and Lockwood hoped to sweeten the deal with an invitation to move into the second bedroom, since most of what George talked about outside of possible origins of the Problem were the trials of living with one’s extended family.
Slumped in the hallway outside the bathroom, Lockwood glanced around the house, the utter silence echoing around him. Certainly no bothersome extended family to be found here. His gaze slid over Jessica’s door, newly reinforced with iron bars. Well, not living anyway.
That meant there was no one to witness him literally crawling back to his bedroom, which meant his pride remained (somewhat) intact, but also made him feel horribly lonely. Even though the pain had receded when he woke the next morning, the hollowed-out feeling was still there, and persisted as he spent the entire day in bed, not because he still felt sick, but because he couldn’t convince himself it really mattered if he got up, showered, dressed, ate something. No one was around to care.
Then George moved in, bringing with him a skull in a jar, several milk crates of mysterious equipment apparently meant for experiments, and, upon surveying Lockwood’s dismally stocked kitchen, a small department store’s worth of secondhand household appliances.
It was quite nice, Lockwood realized, to have someone around all the time, even if that someone quickly turned the spare bedroom into a minor biohazard, was rather lax about personal hygiene, and liked to take up space on the Thinking Cloth with rude drawings and sarcastic comments. But more importantly, George was a top-notch agent and expanded the capabilities of Lockwood and Co. considerably with his talent for research, and actual Talents for Listening and Touch.
Lockwood only had one migraine in George’s first year at the agency, again death-glow-induced, and mightily inconvenient because it came on without an aura before they’d finished the job. George managed to find the Source and hold off the phantasm on his own, but nearly got ghost-touched in the process, and after Lockwood was feeling better, made no secret of his opinion on the matter.
“We need another agent.”
“I know.”
“Preferably a Listener, but even someone with better Sight than me would do.”
“I know.”
“I was almost completely blind in there without you, Lockwood! And neither of us could hear the damn thing– we’re lucky it only took me three tries to identify the Source!”
“I know. I’ll take an ad out in the paper today.” He refused to look at George, gaze fixed on the Thinking Cloth where he was attempting to compose the text of said ad. George was silent for a long time, and Lockwood briefly allowed himself to hope he wouldn’t bring up the Other Thing.
“So, about what happened–”
“I’m fine.” Lockwood’s pen pressed so hard into the paper it began to catch on the wood grain.
“…Right.”
“I forgot my sunglasses. Won’t happen again.” Probably. He was always losing track of the bloody things.
“Right.” George sounded slightly more reassured, and Lockwood started to relax. There would be no need to tell George about the previous, unprompted headache. It was probably a one-off, anyway.
The ad brought them Robin, a Listener who claimed to have received his Grade Four from Grimble, but was so amateurish in the field either Lockwood or George were forced to supervise him at all times. By the time they found out that he’d actually received is Grade Four from Bunchurch, and had soon thereafter been let go for incompetence, it was too late.
After a grim phone conversation with Robin’s next of kin, a somewhat senile great-aunt from Colchester, Lockwood revived the advertisement, and devised a series of tests to give the next set of candidates.
“I don’t care what they say about their work history,” he said, flipping his uncle’s pocketknife idly in his hand. “It’s got to be about skill. And,” he nodded to the skull, “strength of character.”
“You should include this in the tests.” George added his toothbrush cup to the coffee table.
“Why’s that?”
“To keep ‘em honest,” he said promptly. “If they make up some wild story because they think that’s how to please us, how do we know we can trust them in the field?”
He made an excellent point, although out of all their tests, lies about the toothbrush cup eliminated every candidate not overly repulsed by the skull. That is, until Lucy.
Lucy, in many ways, was a revelation. Not just in terms of what was possible with a strong Listener on their team, but more importantly he didn’t think he’d ever met anyone who came close to equalling him in sheer bloody-mindedness. Frankly, it drove him crazy. (He kind of enjoyed it.)
Still, he didn’t have any migraines for a long time after Lucy joined, and was tempted to believe she was somehow the cure for them. Until the conclusion of the Bickerstaff case, when he finally decided to show George and Lucy Jessica’s room.
The whole ordeal left him feeling somewhat raw, and a few days later he slipped away to the Marylebone cemetery, where he sat on Derek Tompkins-Bond’s headstone staring at the nearly-full family plot until his legs grew numb, until the wind started whipping through the brambles in a way that meant rain.
There was an aura that time, but he ignored it. In a fit of self-destructiveness, he allowed the pain to set in before he started back to Portland Row, and was dizzy with it by the time he made it home. Luckily, George was away at the Archives doing research for their next case, and Lucy was holed up in her attic, probably talking to that bloody Skull.
He stumbled into bed without incident, and ignored all attempts by his housemates to call him down to dinner. They’d probably want to care for him if he let them in, shooting him horrible, pitying looks when they thought he couldn’t see, now that he’d shown them Jessica’s room and they knew how utterly alone he was. So he pulled a pillow over his head until they went away, all but forcing himself to go to sleep.
The next morning, he all but convinced himself he’d gotten away with it, until George cornered him in the kitchen.
“You had a migraine last night.”
Lockwood raised an eyebrow. “Good morning to you, too.”
“Don’t try to distract me,” George said. “And don’t try to lie– I can tell you’re still in the postdrome phase now.”
“The what?”
He snorted. “Never mind. And you’re making coffee– the last time you did that you were recovering from the death-glow headache on the last job before Robin. Although I hate to tell you it probably won’t help, according to my research caffeine is most effective before the headache.”
“You’ve done research on this?” Lockwood felt himself getting irritated, and started looking for a way out of the conversation. But he felt slow and vaguely achey, as he often did on days after a really bad one, so when the coffee was done sat down at the table with the mug between his hands, resigned.
“Of course I have,” George said. “But that’s not the point. You gave me the impression you got these as a result of overly bright death-glows. But we haven’t been on the job for a few days, so unless you’re moonlighting without our knowledge you haven’t had occasion to see a death-glow recently.”
“I could’ve been hanging out in Jessica’s room.” Lockwood wasn’t sure what made him say it. Maybe because he knew it would get George to shut up. Which it did, but only briefly.
“Well, have you?” His voice was soft, but firm.
Lockwood looked away. “No.”
“It wasn’t death-glow-related this time, was it?”
Lockwood closed his eyes and sipped his coffee, as if that would convince George to drop it.
“Lockwood.” George waited until Lockwood opened his eyes. “If you tell us when you start to feel bad, we could help you.”
“I appreciate that, George, but as you can see, I’m fine.”
There was a brief stare-off, at the end of which George said, “We wouldn’t look at you any differently, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“It’s not,” Lockwood said. A lie.
“Well, even so.” George graciously looked past it. “We’re a team, yeah? You can trust us.”
“I know.” He showed them Jessica’s room, didn’t he? Lockwood shifted uncomfortably. Why couldn’t that be enough? And why did letting people in have to be so difficult?
Lucy shuffled into the kitchen just then, and George made a big show of dropping the subject. Lockwood was initially grateful, and took the opportunity to put on his best Everything is Normal performance, which she seemed to accept.
It wasn’t until several months later, when he was deep in the grips of another one, that he realized the George must’ve told her at some point when they were alone. How else would the house have gone so eerily silent when all three of them were home?
George, as he should’ve predicted, had immediately set about implementing everything he’d learned in the course of his research– immediately fetching the paracetamol when he noticed Lockwood was in pain, cooking dinner that would be easy on his stomach, and delivering a flannel soaked in cold water when the icepick sensation had truly set in.
A flannel that was now quite warm, which he was forced to toss aside in disgust as the damp material went from refreshing to slimy. It was an unseasonably warm day in September, and Lockwood longed to open his bedroom window just for a bit of fresh air, if it wouldn’t also let in the sounds of the street and children shrieking in adjacent gardens.
So he just laid there, wallowing. Lucy and George were prepping for their respective jobs tonight– separate, because they’d been so overbooked lately. He was meant to be preparing for his own, a supposed specter in Wandsworth, but as the evening wore on it grew more and more likely he’d have to cancel.
At some point, just as the natural light he hadn’t been able to fully block out was beginning to fade, the door to his room eased open to reveal Lucy, barely a shadow in the also-darkened hallway.
“Lockwood?” her voice was a low whisper.
“Yes?”
“Your job– is it in Clapham South or Clapham North?”
“…South.” He had to think about it for a moment, but he was fairly certain that was correct.
“Alright.” She nodded. “I’ll take care of it on my way home, if you like. It’s just a specter in a clothing shop, right?”
“Right.” He closed his eyes again, brow furrowed. “That’s not exactly on your way back, isn’t it?” He was pretty sure her job was in northern Hammersmith.
Her sweater rustled as she shrugged. “Near enough. Mine should be a type one, anyway. George will be all the way out in Hackney.”
Lockwood let out an aborted sigh and rubbed his temples in a useless attempt to drive the headache away. There was probably little he could do to stop her. “Fine. Please be safe.”
“Okay.” She shifted her feet, eyes roving around the room on anything but him. “You don’t– can I get you anything?”
“I’m fine.”
“Okay.” Her gaze seemed to linger for a moment on the discarded flannel, but soon after she made a hasty exit, and Lockwood breathed a longer sigh of relief. Not that he didn’t appreciate Lucy’s awkward, somewhat brusque attempts to care for him, but lately he’d started to feel somewhat… funny around her.
He found himself anxious to know where she was at all times while on jobs, in a way he tried to convince himself was his professional duty, but he knew deep down was different from the way he kept tabs on George. Namely, that the anxiety seemed to extend beyond jobs, too. It was like he was constantly hyperaware of her presence wherever they were, whatever the circumstances.
Without meaning to, he’d somehow learned just what her presence felt like in his house– her rattling around in the kitchen for a midnight cup of tea, the sound of her rapier on Floating Joe or Lady Esmerelda. Her quiet footsteps in the hall outside his bedroom much later that night.
There was a soft rustling of plastic when the door opened, and Lockwood’s curiosity won over the urge to pretend to be asleep.
“Sorry if I woke you,” Lucy said, eyes mostly on the floor, probably to keep from tripping in the dark. She placed the contents of a plastic bag on his bedside table. “Just something I found in an all-night convenience store. They’re obviously room temperature now, but… for next time.”
She disappeared before he could ask any more questions, and he shuffled forward to get a better look at what she’d brought. He was feeling considerably better after a few hours of sleep, but wasn’t about to risk turning on the lamp, so he reached out to bring the items closer.
They were three ice packs– flat, made of soft plastic, and filled with the sort of gel that would get cold without freezing. In other words, the nice, expensive kind that would work better and for longer than a flannel held under the tap.
Lockwood meant to thank her for them, he really did. Over the next several days he mentally wrote and discarded several heartfelt speeches. There just… didn’t seem to be a way to do it without making it awkward. Which was crazy, because if it had been George, it wouldn’t have been awkward– just a, “thanks, mate,” followed by a “you’re welcome.” Why did it always have to be different with girls? (Lockwood refused to think, for the sake of his own sanity, that it was only different because it was this specific girl.)
So in the end he never thanked her explicitly, with his words at least. He just couldn’t risk making things weird, not when his little agency finally seemed to be finding its rhythm. Sure, the work was constant and grueling, but that was better than the alternative. They were finally making progress on paying off some of their debts, and if anything, Lockwood preferred constant distraction to any sort of downtime.
Then he hired Holly, and everything very quickly went to absolute shit.
In hindsight, the whole affair was a trainwreck from start to finish– a very slow sort of trainwreck he was only able to watch without any ability to stop it. From the Case of the Bloody Footprints to the Chelsea Outbreak to the cluster under Aikmere’s, nothing seemed to go right, and just when he thought they’d gotten through it all relatively unscathed, Lucy announced she was leaving.
Lucy. Leaving.
At first, his mind refused to accept it. He’d concede it had been a rough couple of weeks, but he went into their interview at the café confident he could fix whatever she felt was wrong. Lucy leaving simply made no sense. She belonged at Lockwood and Co.– with them. With him. But she wouldn’t listen to reason, and when he woke up the next morning to find her attic empty and the Skull missing, he felt like something deep inside him had been ripped away.
George found him hours later, sitting on the roughly-made bed as if frozen, caught somewhere between shock and disbelief. It was as though if he didn’t move, he didn’t have to admit this was real, and he could pretend it was a horrible dream, worse than any nightmare he’d ever endured.
“I’m sorry, mate,” he said, sitting beside Lockwood and placing a hand on his shoulder. “I know she meant– I know you felt–” He stumbled over his words, but somehow that was enough to break Lockwood out of his trance.
“She was an employee,” he said woodenly, slowly and methodically gathering his swirling, all-consuming emotions and packing them carefully away.
George leaned back. “You know she was more than that.”
“She was an employee,” he said again, standing up suddenly. “And her contract stated nothing about requiring notice before a resignation. An oversight on my part, possibly. Holly’s not nearly ready to take over that level of field work. But no matter.” He moved almost mechanically to the stairs. “Come on, George. I believe we have a job tonight.”
Slowly, George followed him, looking equal parts sullen and resigned.
That winter, work was the only thing that kept him functional. If he was working, he wasn’t thinking about Lucy. Or, she wasn’t at the very front of his mind– the adrenaline of life-or-death situations just about enough to push her to the second row. When he wasn’t working or forcing down the bare minimum number of calories necessary to survive (even George’s spiciest curry managed to taste bland and uninteresting), he was sleeping. Or, more accurately, trying to sleep.
It was always the worst time of night (or occasionally, day) when his carefully packaged Box of Feelings was the closest to bursting, and only the deepest sort of exhaustion could hope to overpower it. Accordingly, he did his best to work himself into that state as frequently as possible.
Dimly, he was aware that this was not an advisable strategy. He was pretty sure George regularly tried to tell him so, but Lockwood pretty much tuned him out, along with his own better judgment.
Holly didn’t even try, although to be fair, his previously easy rapport with her had deteriorated in the face of Lucy’s departure. She didn’t seem to believe him when he insisted he didn’t blame her for the incident– and to be fair, he wasn’t sure he believed him, at least not at first. He didn’t tell Holly that he’d offered to fire her to get Lucy to stay, but he suspected she knew anyway.
It was a full six weeks before they spoke about anything other than work, and it started over his alleged abuse of paracetamol.
“You know that stuff can cause liver damage if you’re not careful.”
Lockwood blinked, pills halfway to his mouth. It wasn’t a very Holly thing to say, but they were both quite tired, and tempers were wearing thin as they waited in sub-zero temperatures for a Night Cab to show up. “Good thing I’m being careful.”
She snorted, again not very characteristic, and stamped her feet in an attempt to boost circulation. “I’d be surprised if you knew that word at all, the way you’ve been acting lately.”
Who was he talking to– George? “As your boss how I act is hardly your business.” He tossed back the pills, swallowing them dry, a trick he’d mastered in recent weeks after discovering that taking the maximum allowable dose just as a headache began made it just possible for him to work through the pain. He pulled his coat tighter around himself. “Where the hell is the bloody cab? Are you sure you got through to them when you called?”
“Of course I’m sure,” she said. “They warned me it could be a while– they’re massively overbooked with all the agents needing them every night, and fewer and fewer people willing to drive.”
Lockwood stifled a groan and squeezed his eyes shut. They still had another job to get to Croydon, their third that night, and his head was already throbbing. “Call them again.”
“It won’t make a bit of difference and you know it,” she said in that prim, controlled way she had. “Although when it does get here perhaps we can tell the driver to stop at Portland Row first and drop you off. I can handle the last one alone.”
“No,” he said reflexively. “We talked about this, Holly. You’re not ready for solo work yet.”
“Well unless you want to cancel the job entirely I think I’d be better off on my own than trying to cover for you when you’ve got a migraine.”
He looked sharply at her, and resisted the urge to clutch at his neck. “I’m fine.”
“Oh please, you’ve been squinting since we got to this house, and there weren’t even any death-glows.”
“Still fine.”
“Even if that were true, the training wheels have to come off eventually, Lockwood. Our schedule is suffering without three independent operatives, and you’ll remember I was an agent at one point. It’s just a matter of dusting off the cobwebs.”
He didn’t answer, his breath coming in visible puffs into the frigid air as he stared impatiently at the street, willing the Night Cab to come.
“You know, I’m beginning to think this extended training period is just an excuse to overwork yourself until you physically drop.” Holly was beginning to raise her voice. “It certainly isn’t protectiveness. You wouldn’t care one bit if I died on the job– beyond the inconvenience of finally having to hire someone else.”
“That’s not true,” he said sharply.
“Isn’t it? Admit it– you blame me for her leaving.”
She didn’t even have to use the name and Lockwood still flinched. Right on cue, the pounding behind his temples ratcheted up a notch. Since Lucy left they seemed worse than ever, not to mention more frequent. Hence the recurrent use of paracetamol.
Before he could respond, the Night Cab arrived and Holly shouldered past him into the passenger seat, leaving him to load their gear into the boot. Once inside he rested his head against the window glass and became so focused on breathing through the pain he didn’t realize Holly’s eagerness to get in the cab was so she could tell the cabbie where to go.
“35 Portland Row, Miss.”
“Holly!” He barely had a chance to protest before she all but pulled him out of the cab and up the stairs to his house, both their bags swinging awkwardly off one shoulder.
“Don’t even start.” She unlocked the door and herded him inside. “Even you have got to know you’re a liability right now. You might have a poorly-concealed death wish at the moment, but you’re not getting me killed tonight too, which is what’s going to happen if I have to watch you and the Specter in Croydon.”
“I do not–”
“Shut up!” All at once, Holly seemed to lose all composure, and in his compromised state it was enough to send Lockwood a few stumbling steps backwards, catching himself on the bannister. For a brief moment, she looked vaguely apologetic, but refused to back down. “No more excuses, and no more lies, not to me,” she said. “Or so help me, I’ll quit, too.”
That chilled him down to his core. “But you said…”
“I said I’d stay because you promised I had nothing to do with her leaving and, against my better judgment, I’ve chosen to believe you.”
“It wasn’t because of you.” God, he hated how weak his voice sounded. It was because of me. It was all because of me.
She snorted. “You’re such a prick.”
Lockwood had been called a prick many, many times– both to his face and behind his back, but for some reason, hearing it from Holly’s usually prim and proper lips, he flinched.
The clock on the mantle chimed two hours past midnight. Lockwood’s hands flew to cover his over-sensitive ears, and Holly shook her head. “We’ll talk about this later. I’ve got to get to Croydon, you should be in bed.”
Lockwood automatically straightened his back at the suggestion, but she just rolled her eyes.
“Don’t make me force you.”
Christ, Holly’s attitude could rival Lucy’s when she was angry. “Fine,” he bit out, if only to get rid of her. He was starting to feel nauseous, and if he could drive her away at least he’d be left to throw up in peace.
Roughly shaking her hand off his elbow, he threw his coat on the coat rack and marched upstairs, closing the door to his room as firmly as he could without aggravating his head. Luckily, he heard the front door open and close soon after, at which point he stole back into the hall to spend twenty or so minutes hunched over the toilet before stumbling dizzily back to bed.
The next morning, Lockwood woke late from an uneasy sleep with a hangover for the ages, and stumbled downstairs to make the strongest cup of coffee he could stomach. Unfortunately, George was already there and snatched the bag of beans from his hands in favor of a glass of water.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said, shoving the coffee into the back of the pantry before turning around with his arms crossed. “Holly just called saying she was taking the morning off, something about working overtime last night? I assume that has something to do with the reason you look like warmed-over shit.”
“I’m fine.” Even Lockwood had to admit it didn’t sound very convincing, coming out flat and dull as he begrudgingly sipped the water.
George scoffed. “I don’t know what I expected. And I don’t even have time to properly lecture you, not that you’d listen, because I’m massively behind on research since you’ve managed to book us solid until the end of bloody time and I’ve got to get to the archives if any of us want any chance of surviving the week.”
He stalked out of the kitchen, and Lockwood watched him go with something like guilt curling in his stomach. He knew George’s anger was because he cared, and he’d stay and fuss like a mother hen if Lockwood let slip even the slightest hint that he wanted that, but his pride kept his lips sealed shut, and he sat like a statue at the table until he heard the front door open and close.
Fuck, this was bad.
If Holly had any sense at all, she’d show up at Portland Row with her resignation in hand, typed up on a letterhead and vigorously proofread. Then it would be just be him and George, and if he couldn’t get George to come back around this time, then–
The front door open and he jerked his head up from where it had unconsciously come to rest pillowed on his arms. He gripped the table and blinked through the dizziness to see Holly breeze into the kitchen, hair washed and in an elegant twist, fingernails somehow still perfectly manicured.
“Lockwood,” she said, placing a tray of homemade scones on the counter, no doubt free of everything fun.
“Holly.” He braced himself as she took the seat across from him. He wouldn’t fight her if she wanted to leave, he decided. He’d already done that with Lucy. He was sure he couldn’t do it again.
“I’d like to apologize for what happened last night.”
He blinked, more than a little stunned. “You’d like to– what?”
“Apologize,” she said patiently. “I was tired, and upset, although that’s no excuse. I lost my temper, and said some things that, upon reflection, were unnecessarily harsh.”
“Oh. Well, uh…” Lockwood ran a hand through his hair. His head felt like it was filled with cobwebs, and it was a struggle to get his thoughts straight. “I wasn’t– you know. It was my fault, too.”
She nodded. “I appreciate you saying that.”
He regarded her, still somewhat nervous.
“For the record, I will be staying on, so these things aren’t really conditions, so much as… requests I’m going to make very seriously, in the hope that you consider them accordingly.”
Slowly, he nodded. Just requests, after all. No reason he couldn’t hear her out.
“Alright.” She took a breath and straightened her shoulders. “Firstly, I would like you to see a doctor about a prescription for your headaches. Something that’s safer to take on a regular basis– and before you argue with me on that one,” she cut him off as he opened his mouth, “consider that better medicine could allow you to work more effectively through them.”
He closed it again.
“Second, allow me to operate independently. You know I’m qualified, and you know it’s necessary with the amount of work we’ve been getting. And third,” her voice lowered, face becoming more serious, “stop taking your anger out on me and George. I’m not so optimistic as to believe you’ll actually talk to us, but the least you can do is treat us with a modicum of patience and respect.”
Shit. Lockwood swallowed and fiddled with the damp ring his water glass had left on the Thinking Cloth. “Sorry.”
“What was that?”
“I said, I’m sorry.” He lifted his chin, teeth clenched. That was as much as she was getting out of him today.
“I appreciate that,” she said, equally stiffly. “Now, would you like me to call and schedule that appointment for you?”
“Fine.”
“Good.” With that, she swept out of the kitchen, probably off to the front hall to make good on her promise immediately.
Much to his chagrin, the prescription medication he got from the doctor Holly contacted worked much better than paracetamol. It got him through the rest of the Black Winter, at least, a stint in hospital after an encounter with a sword-wielding poltergeist notwithstanding.
It was January, just after Christmas, and George left his brother and sister-in-law’s house early to see him home. “Oh, don’t look so surprised,” he said, tossing a change of clothes on the bed as Lockwood fumbled with the release forms. “You’d never get a cab wearing a shirt covered in blood.”
“How do you know what happened?” Lockwood muttered, self-consciously picking at the itchy tape holding the bandage over his neck.
George looked unimpressed. “I have unanswered calls to Portland Row forwarded to me whenever I’ll be away for longer than a night.”
Lockwood paused while doing up the buttons on his shirt, trying to decide if this was a violation of his position as homeowner and agency head, or a singularly thoughtful gesture on the part of a friend who, it must be said, he occasionally took for granted. He decided to go with the latter. “Thank you, George.”
He snorted. “If only that were actually worth something. Taking on a suspected poltergeist alone, Lockwood? What were you thinking?”
“I thought it would be fine.”
“That was a rhetorical question,” George said as they walked to the lift. “Obviously you weren’t, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone.”
Lockwood had nothing to say to that, and the cab ride home was endured in a chilly silence. George made Lockwood go to bed as soon as they were home, and even delivered tea and buttered toast to go along with his pain medication, all of which Lockwood ignored in favor of staring blankly at the ceiling.
He’d been trying to do better since Holly’s warning, but clearly with only limited success. For the past few months, attempting to operate as he had before felt impossible– like he’d lost a limb, or (in his more dramatic moments) a part of his soul. For lack of a better word, he felt incomplete, and he was beginning to accept that this feeling would persist until he found a way to bring Lucy back.
At long last, this came in the form of a job from Penelope Fittes. Through the Case of the Ealing Cannibal, he was able to establish a tenuous connection, which was solidified through the Case at Aldbury Castle. It couldn’t have worked out better if he’d planned it himself.
Well, it could’ve worked out slightly better. As enlightening as it was, he really could’ve done without the visit to the Other Side, and he especially could’ve done without Lucy’s spirit cape falling apart. For a long time, Lockwood had prided himself on suffering from very few nightmares– he hardly slept enough for that– but since that ill-fated sojourn they’d returned, in full force.
It wasn’t just reliving the moment he realized Lucy was going to die in that horrible other world. He started to dream about Jessica again, the sight of her ghost-touched body, the way the light left her eyes as she fell backwards onto her bed. Occasionally he even saw his parents, sometimes alive but usually as ghosts in the back garden, only visible to him, standing as if they’d come to say goodbye. Once, he thought he saw his mother’s lips moving, and for the first time he wished desperately he had any sort of Listening, so he could Hear her last words to him.
He tried to tell himself the dreams were a simple consequence of sleeping more. After the adrenaline of the case faded, he and Lucy crashed harder than they ever had upon returning to Portland Row. The day after Penelope (or was it Marissa?) Fittes’s ominous visit, Lockwood estimated he slept for almost fifteen hours, probably longer than he’d slept in the last five days combined, and still woke up feeling weak and ill.
But it was the middle of the afternoon, so he stumbled out of bed and downstairs to the kitchen, where he immediately put on the water for tea. He sat heavily in his usual chair, and realized either Holly or George (but more likely Holly, based on the way the envelope corners were square with the table) had gotten the mail.
He idly picked up the first one, the electric bill, and opened it to peruse the charges. Almost at once the text started swimming in front of his eyes, and when the water boiled he hadn’t managed to comprehend half of it.
The cup of tea didn’t help– if anything, the heat of the mug made him realize how cold the rest of him was, and the soft shuffling of papers as he went through the mail emphasized the utter silence of the rest of the house.
George must be out, he realized. Where, he couldn’t guess. The Archives, maybe, feverishly doing research on this new hint on the origin of The Problem. Maybe visiting his family. Lockwood hoped it was the latter. George deserved a day off.
Lucy, if she felt anything like he did, was likely asleep in the attic. Despite himself, he felt a ridiculous grin spreading across his face at the idea. Lucy, under his roof again. On second thought, he’d take a dozen visits to the other side if this could be the outcome.
Rather without meaning to, Lockwood fell asleep soon after this thought– a peaceful, dreamless sleep he only realized had happened when he woke up to a sore neck and cold half-drunk mug of tea.
The house wasn’t quite silent anymore– he could hear quiet footsteps on the stairs. Not George’s, not Holly’s, which meant it had to be–
“Luce.” He greeted her with all the enthusiasm he could muster, which wasn’t much more than a tired smile.
“Lockwood.” She nodded vaguely, looking about as out of it as he felt, drifting towards the kettle.
“Did you sleep well?”
She shrugged.
“How are you feeling?”
Another shrug while she refilled the kettle, before turning around to peer at him more closely. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” Actually, his neck really bloody ached– his own fault for falling asleep on the kitchen table, although if he was honest it hadn’t really stopped hurting since their return from the Other Side. His hand drifted to the back of his head. As if emboldened now that he’d acknowledged it, the pain crept upwards and before he knew it had wrapped around his head like a vice.
Fuck.
“…Lockwood?”
He blinked.
Lucy was leaning forward over the table now, brows furrowed in concern.
“Um…”
“Have you got a headache?”
He almost nodded, before realizing that would be a terrible idea. “Yeah,” he whispered.
There was a gentle hand on his elbow. “Let’s get you upstairs, then.”
“But… your tea…” The kettle would boil soon.
“My tea will be fine.”
Light was starting to become a problem, so he closed his eyes and allowed her to guide him up the stairs to his room, where he sank gratefully down onto the bed. Christ, he felt awful. He barely had the strength to shift as Lucy tugged the quilt out from under him so she could lay it over his lower half.
“Can I get the paracetamol?” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper.
He almost nodded, then remembered. “No, I have a prescription now. Medicine cabinet, top right.”
“Okay.” There was the barest hesitation in her voice before she left, probably wondering if she should acknowledge the change, but she slipped out of the room without saying anymore.
He managed to fall into a doze while she was gone, coming back to awareness when the floorboards creaked again.
“Sorry.”
“‘S okay.” He took her outstretched hand and allowed her to help him sit up so he could take the pills and drink some water.
She closed the medicine bottle and placed it carefully on the bedside table. “These are new.”
He swallowed, carefully considering his next words. “Holly made me get it. Said too much paracetamol was bad for me.”
Lucy nodded, her face still carefully neutral.
“I… I had more than usual. While you were away.”
Her face pinched, and he immediately felt bad.
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “I think I was just… stressed. And– I missed you. So fucking much.”
“I missed you, too,” she whispered. “And I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. This was a terrible time to talk about this, but the last time he’d tried they’d been interrupted by the Creeping Shadow. “You did what you had to do– or, thought you had to do– and you’re back now.” Just please don’t leave me again.
“Okay.” Her voice was small, but she didn’t argue.
Fuck, his head was throbbing. Lockwood felt himself hunch over, hands pressed to his eyes so hard he could feel moisture leaking from them. His skin was beginning to feel overheated, and if Lucy weren’t around he might’ve stripped off his shirt. He should probably ask her to go, leave him to his misery in peace, but he just couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.
“…Lockwood?”
“Sorry,” he gasped. “It just– hurts.”
“Don’t apologize.” She mirrored his earlier words, and they both gave a nervous chuckle. “Just… hold on for a minute. I’ll be right back.”
He heard rather than saw her leave, and immediately missed her presence. Vaguely, he recognized this for the damning evidence it was– evidence for something he’d been slowly forcing himself to accept over the past several weeks. He liked Lucy Carlyle. Liked her a lot. Liked her a different way than he liked George, liked her as more than a friend. There was also another L word hovering around the periphery of his thoughts he had so far refused to touch, mostly because it terrified him to no end.
Unconsciously, his breathing began to speed up. He hadn’t wanted this– never imagined it was possible the way he was so careful to keep people at a distance, but somehow George had broken through nearly all his barriers, and Lucy had obliterated whatever was left with a sledgehammer.
Although his eyes were still closed, he sensed her return at once and felt himself relax. Any frustration at the reaction paled in comparison to the relief that in spite of everything, she was still here. He reached out to touch her as she sat carefully on the bed, even though his skin felt prickly and sensitive, but instead of taking his hand she placed something soft and cold in it.
It took his foggy brain a shameful amount of time to process it, but after a few long seconds he realized it was one of the ice packs she’d bought him all those months ago, wrapped in a dishtowel to temper the chill.
He nearly wept in relief as he lowered himself back onto the pillows, breathing hard as the cold finally took the sharpest edges off the pain. The sensation was so intense he barely noticed Lucy hadn’t stood up, and when he was finally able to crack one eye open was surprised to see she’d laid down next to him, head on the unused pillow.
“…Luce?”
“Sorry,” she mumbled, eyes half-closed. “I didn’t quite realize… I think I’m too tired to make it back up to the attic just now. Just give me… a few minutes.” She looked about as exhausted as he was, and if he’d had the energy he might’ve laughed.
“No need,” he said. “I don’t mind. Stay all night, if you want to.” Or forever, if you can bear it.
“Alright.” She sighed, and fell asleep very quickly.
Lockwood was awake for much longer, as the pain was slow to fade and he breathed through the faint stirrings of nausea. But by the time the icepack reached room temperature he was feeling a little bit better, and his eyelids grew heavy as he stared at Lucy’s peaceful face, her stomach rising and falling in steady breaths.
After a few minutes, he allowed a sense of peace, of rightness, to wash over him, and fell asleep wondering what it might be like to spend every night next to her, and if he would ever be so lucky to experience it again.
But when he woke early the next morning, dawn peeking through the curtains, he was alone, and might’ve convinced himself he’d dreamt the whole thing, if not for the strands of ruddy hair on his pillow, and the faint smell of her favorite lotion on his sheets.
Predictably, they never talked about that night, and never shared a bed again as they slowly recovered their energies over the next several weeks. At first Lockwood felt like there just wasn’t time, and with Kipps informally joining their little team and the whirlwind of preparations to break into the Fittes Tomb, soon they hardly got a moment alone.
But even when he took her aside to show her his family plot, and even when the ghost of Doris Blower, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, showed him just how fragile he really was, put an unmistakable face to his biggest weakness, he just couldn’t bring himself to say the words. It took the threat of death at the hands of Julius Winkman to present her with his mother’s sapphire necklace, but before he could really express what he meant, of course they were interrupted.
So it was that the next time they shared a bed was nearly six months after the first, but Lockwood considered the wait well worth it. Against all odds, they had survived the combined threats of the Winkmans and Fittes House, Lucy now wore his mother’s necklace everywhere she went, and this time he was holding her in his arms.
They were tired and sore after a night battling a dark specter, but essentially in one piece, if still a little keyed up from the excitement. But just like last time, Lockwood could feel the tension draining away the longer they laid there.
It had been a little awkward at first, figuring out how their bodies best fit together, but they’d ended up with Lockwood on his back and Lucy on her side, head tucked into his shoulder and one arm across his chest. Like him, she’d been stiff, but relaxed as he did, soon enough Lockwood was convinced there wasn’t a more comfortable position in the world– this one or the next.
They’d meant to lie down for only a few minutes, still in their plasma-stained clothes, but after nearly an hour, and after the third time his head nodded, Lockwood said, “We should probably get up and change, at some point.”
“Yeah,” Lucy said, although she made no movement to get up, and neither did he.
“I…” The L word was there again, this time on the tip of his tongue, but he bit it back at the last minute. Not right now. Not yet.
But he’d already started, and Lucy raised her chin to look at him.
“I… like it when you’re here,” he finished awkwardly, flushing at the way it sounded. “Lying with me, I mean.” Dear God, that’s not better.
But she seemed to understand, giving him only an amused sort of smile before tucking her head back into his chest. “I like it, too.”
He hoped she couldn’t feel his heart start to race. “We should do it more often.”
“…We should,” she said, after a pause that might as well have lasted an eternity.
Then she shifted up to kiss him, and all the bruises and fatigue from their night on the job seemed very far away.
Lockwood was awake when Lucy and George returned from the DEPRAC ball, rather earlier than he expected, not that he felt up to scolding them for skipping out early at the present moment.
George, probably hoping he was asleep, lumbered more quietly than usual to his own room, but Lucy eased open the door to Lockwood’s room– the hall light off– and stepped fully inside when she realized he was awake.
“Hey.” Her skirts rustled as she picked her way through the gloom before her eyes quite adjusted. “How was your evening?”
“Much less exciting than yours, I imagine.”
“Mm.” She sat next to him on the bed and stroked his hair. “How are you feeling?”
He shrugged.
“Any better?”
“Maybe a little.”
She glanced at the room-temperature ice pack on the bedside table. “Do you want another cold compress?”
“No.” He reached out and caught her hand as she made to withdraw it. “Just you.”
“Are you sure?”
“More than anything.” He tensed at first when she began to pull away, but relaxed when he realized it was to slide out of her dress. After allowing him a hazy moment to appreciate the sight of her in just her knickers, she slipped around the bed to what he now considered her side and he felt the mattress dip with her weight.
“I hope the event wasn’t too trying without me,” he murmured.
“It wasn’t so bad,” she said. “Holly and Bex met us there.” Her fingers ghosted his neck and he shuddered, muscles unwinding he didn’t even realize were tense. “But truthfully I’d rather be here.”
He let out a long breath. “I love you, Luce.” He said it without thinking, and, somehow, without too many nerves. All at once, he couldn’t ignore the truth of it any longer. She deserved to know what he’d known in his heart for years now, what had been growing since the moment she stormed into Portland Row threatening bodily harm to George and criticizing his interviewing style.
He didn’t expect her to say it back, would’ve been content if she’d just continued to lie there with him, accept the whole truth of him, become the first person to truly stay.
But then he felt her lips on the nape of his neck and the ghost of her breath in his ear. “I love you, too.”
He clasped the hand that strayed over his shoulder, and drifted off thinking perhaps this had been a very good evening, after all.