Chapter Text
They had barely scraped through with their lives.
Lockwood sat awkwardly in the back of the cab, picking at the dirt around his fingernails. He hadn’t looked at Lucy in the past fifteen minutes - he wasn’t sure what he’d see on her face, and even less sure about what he wanted to see. He, as inconspicuously as possible, pressed himself next to the car door, as far away from her as he could possibly get.
Mentally, Lockwood cursed himself. His brain tore through all the possibilities of what she could be thinking. This train of thought devolved into a series of ‘what ifs’ - what if she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary? What if she had? What if he’d made the wrong decision? What if he’d done something differently? Would she be talking to him now? Why wasn’t she talking to him? What if she thought he was incompetent, or a bad boss?
What if she hated him?
But he’d saved her life after all. Well, he’d tried to, but brilliant, beautiful, quick-thinking Lucy had been way ahead of him. When things had started to turn sour, all rational thought flew out the window. His only concern had been Lucy’s safety. He screamed at the ghost, rushing to shield her from its deadly ectoplasm, dropping his rapier in the process. He felt like he was running in slow motion as his brain calculated who would get to her first. Lucy, head still screwed on straight, threw a magnesium flare at the attacking ghost just as Lockwood collided with her. The impact knocked them both to the ground, Lockwood’s arms wrapping around her to break her fall, his coat fanning out over them both.
The flare hit its target, and the ghost evaporated. The previous seconds caught up with Lockwood and he suddenly realised he was cradling the love of his life, after essentially trying to sacrifice himself for her, and screaming something at a ghost which, now he thought about it, had sounded a lot like an indirect love confession.
Embarrassment coursed through him, and he quickly scrambled off her without looking at her, mumbling something about locating the Source. He kept his back to her, hiding his face (which was now burning) and taking deep breaths to steady his heart. He grabbed a silver net and threw it over the Source. Without a word, Lucy left the room and hailed a cab, leaving Lockwood nervous and unsure in his current predicament.
Nervous and unsure were two things Lockwood hated being.
Really, a lot of his uncertainty stemmed from the two main outcomes of this. Three, if he was optimistic.
One: she hates him. The most obvious, and most likely result.
Two: she didn’t notice. The only strange thing to her is Lockwood hasn’t said anything in twenty minutes. If this was the case, he could talk his way out of it. But, to his chagrin, this was extremely unlikely.
Three: she returns his feelings. Only marginally more likely than result number two.
He didn’t know which out of one and three stressed him out more. On the one hand, he very much wanted three to be true. But he’d never been in a relationship before, he’d never even really had a proper friendship, after his family died, until George. He couldn’t really remember much about how his parents’ relationship functioned. He had no role model. What if he was a terrible boyfriend?
On the other hand, he didn’t know if he could function if she rejected him. But if she hated him, he would be able to handle it. He’d lived with plenty of criticism around him, whether mild comments from George, or major threats from DEPRAC, he could deal with it. So, maybe that would be the better option.
He really didn’t know.
Movement he saw in his peripheral and the sound of a door opening jolted him out of his thoughts. He put on his charming smile, thanked and paid the driver, then hurried after Lucy. He didn’t know what he wanted, but he was going to make sure he found out before she disappeared into her bedroom.
He slipped through the already ajar front door, saying, “Look, Lucy-”
He only just managed to get her name out before he was aggressively pushed by the lapels of his coat against the door, slamming it shut. He barely registered the sound, though, because Lucy had pressed herself as close to him as she possibly could and firmly pressed her lips to his. His arms flew out to cling to the doorframe, as his knees had suddenly forgotten how to hold him up. Vaguely, he thought it was lucky she had him so firmly pinned against the door, otherwise he’d be on the floor.
Every nerve in his body was standing at attention. He could feel her warmth seep through his clothes, every body part trying to fuse with hers. He felt her hands slide up behind his neck, their coolness contrasting with the growing heat there, making him shiver.
His brain finally caught up, allowing him to finally kiss her back, to indulge in the fantasy he had been harbouring for so long. Her lips were soft and strawberry flavoured, moving gently over his. He could feel what was left of her lip balm smudge over his skin, but he didn’t care.
Lucy pulled back, Lockwood’s head leaning forward to follow her, not ready to stop. He couldn’t open his eyes, in case he was dreaming.
“I couldn’t do anything in the cab,” Lucy panted, kissing the side of his mouth, “in case we got kicked out for indecency.”
Lockwood didn’t have the capacity to respond, so Lucy pressed her lips back to his. He groaned quietly, causing Lucy to giggle, and giving her the confidence to experiment. Her tongue brushed his, and he gripped the doorframe tightly, now solely relying on it and Lucy’s pressure to hold him up. She deepened the kiss, their noses bumping, teeth clacking. It was sloppy, but neither of them cared in the slightest.
Several minutes later, they pulled apart, desperate for air. They panted heavily, basking in each other, feeling slowly returning to Lockwood’s legs. When he opened his eyes, his pupils were dilated, and he was almost cross eyed.
Lucy leaned in to whisper into his ear. “I know you’re a romantic, Anthony Lockwood, but that was definitely one of the most romantic things you’ve ever done.”
Lockwood heard the words, but wouldn’t register what she’d said until later.
She gave him one last peck on the lips before she let go of him, making him stumble slightly, to go to bed.
Lockwood didn’t move for a minute, trying to work out if what just happened was real. Once he figured it out, a large smile, a smile he’d never smiled before, grew on his face. He couldn’t go to bed. He was feeling far too much to go to bed. He shucked off his coat, leaving it in a heap on the floor, and stumbled into the kitchen. He sat on the closest chair he could find, giving his knees a chance to fully recover.
He still couldn’t really believe what had happened. Or, at least, that it was real. But if it was a dream, it was so much better than any of the dreams he’d had before. His lips tingled as he remembered her soft ones, her confidence leaving no room for doubt about how she felt. All his anxieties from before? He couldn’t remember any of them.
“Hello? Lockwood?”
Lockwood cracked open and eye and noticed George sitting on the other side of the table, a cup of tea in his hand.
“Oh. Hello, George.”
George proceeded to ask a bunch of questions that mostly sounded like gibberish to Lockwood. Most of the meaning of them Lockwood gleaned from George’s tone. Lockwood mumbled replies that sounded right. He had no idea if they were or not.
The kitchen felt warm, too warm. Lockwood thought the kitchen was always supposed to be just right, temperature-wise. Maybe George had started a fire. Lockwood fiddled with his shirt, but his hands felt too fuzzy to be nimble enough to deal with the buttons, so he gave up.
Suddenly, one word in all the gibberish George was saying reached his ears very clearly.
“…Lucy…”
He got impossibly warmer, his ears feeling like they were about to start sweating. He recalled the sensation of her tongue on his, and he resisted to urge to stick out his tongue.
Lockwood didn’t hear what George said as he left the room, but that was a problem for another day. Tomorrow probably, if he didn’t die from heatstroke first. Could a blush give a person heatstroke? Lockwood was no scientist, but he was fairly sure you could.
So the only problems Lockwood was worrying about was not dying of heatstroke and being able to look Lucy in the eye after all the inevitable Lucy-centred dreams he was bound to have that night.