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Lucy wakes from an afternoon nap - ghost-hunting is not a career for anyone who likes a natural circadian rhythm - groggy, and pads downstairs for a cup of tea. The house is quiet. George is away overnight at some East London pop-up that marketed itself as a cleaning product/ academia crossover (actual Heaven for George), and Lockwood is in the basement sorting out supplies.
Or, she thought he was. As the kettle boils, Lucy gazes absently out of the window, eyes trailing the pink fingers of dusk walking themselves across the sky, and it’s then she sees it, on top of the loaf of bread - a note with her name in Lockwood’s scrawl.
Lucy
Went on a recce for a new client.
Back soon
L
She sighs, half worried, half pissed off. His shoulder isn’t fully recovered, and she’d asked him not to go anywhere without her or George, but this is Anthony bloody Lockwood here; he always does whatever he pleases. Perhaps less so since the Bone Glass, but, she reasons, it must be hard to change the habit of a lifetime.
She makes tea and drinks it, reads, watches telly.
The hour grows late, and she finds herself pacing the living room waiting, and that pisses her off.
By the time the door opens, she’s all but worn a path through the hallway floor, and she’s spitting chips. When Lockwood closes the door behind him, all swishing coat and nonchalant expression, she’s in his face in a heartbeat.
“Hey, Luce-”
“Oh, no you don’t. Do not “hey Luce” me. What did you think you were doing, gallivanting off like that, without so much as a word-”
Surprise flashes across his face. “I left a note-”
“While I was asleep!” She snaps back.
He’s irritatingly calm, sliding his hands into the pockets of that black coat that looks too good on him, like it was tailored especially for his lean figure and long stride. “I wasn’t aware I had to ask your permission.”
“For fuck’s sake, don’t be like that. It hasn’t been that long since you were literally shot, and-” the memory of it, seeing him slumped over, the bloom of red on his usually pristine white shirt, cracks her wide open inside and she presses her hands to her face, tears burning hot as they rush down her cheeks.
And just like that, his cocksure, let-no-one-in facade drops and his hands shoot out to steady her, holding her up, his hands cupping her elbows gently, like she might break.
“I’m sorry, Luce. I’m sorry. I’m such a bastard.”
She hiccups and manages, “At least you’re not a dead bastard. That’s all I want. For you not to be dead.”
She peeks at him through her fingers and his eyes are dark and tired but soft. He always looks at her like she’s the most precious thing he’s ever seen; will ever see.
“I’m trying my best,” he whispers, and she thinks that maybe he actually is, and her fear isn’t that he won’t try, but that perhaps his card is marked and his time is running out, their time is running out, like sand through an hourglass, and the thought that she has limited time with him makes her bold; makes her do the thing she’s thought of a million little times.
She lowers her hands so he can see her face, and steps forward, crowding him until he has to fall back against the door, caged in.
Lockwood’s cocoa-brown gaze searches her face, but now, there’s something dark and hot in there that she’s seen at least a dozen times a day - in longing stares across the breakfast table, in glances in the middle of rapier fights, when he says goodnight over a cup of tea.
“Please,” he says, so softly she almost doesn’t hear, and that little plea, that tiny spark of daylight in the coat of darkness he wears like a second skin, is enough. She leans up on her toes and presses her mouth to his, and just before her eyes shut, she sees his flutter closed.
He tastes of cold night air, earl grey tea, and a gasp of mint, and as his lips part under hers, she never ever wants to go back to not kissing him ever again.
His hands slide around to her back, pulling her closer, so their bodies line up, and they fit perfectly. Being this close to him, something settles inside her, a feeling of belonging, of what they’ve both missed their entire lives. It’s all she’s wanted, to belong to someone, to be theirs as much as they are hers.
Lockwood murmurs her name and she cups his cheek, feels the soft scrape of a day’s growth of stubble, too faint to see, a secret only she’ll know, and she wants more of that, more things about him only she’ll know, things she can hug close to her when she’s alone and missing him.
“Can I-” she mumbles against his lips, her fingers working at the lapels of his coat.
“Yeah. Yes. Yes,” he mumbles back, and she pushes it off his shoulders and it pools on the floor at his feet in a whisper of fabric, and she spreads her hands over his chest, warm under the pliable cloth of his shirt, and his heart is beating so fast, matching the ragged tattoo of hers under her blue jumper.
He’s lean but solid, a legacy of years of training with his rapier, of leaping through graveyards and free-running over rooftops, and she lets her hands wander, cupping her fingers around his upper arms as she presses into him, and she hears a needy little moan and realises that it’s come from her own lips.
“Luce,” Lockwood groans, and his voice is strangled. “Can’t tell you how often I’ve thought about this.”
About as often as I’ve thought about it, Lucy almost says, but instead she tries to commit those words in his voice to her memory, so she can bring them out and enjoy them later, over and over.
“How come you didn’t make a move?” she asks softly, stroking her thumb over the slight bulge of his bicep under the formal dress shirt.
His throat bobs as he swallows, his eyes lowered, gaze riveted on her face. Whatever Lockwood does, it has his full attention. The laser focus is heady, addictive. His hands are warm on her back, steadying. At her question, he huffs softly. “I’m a mess, Luce. A black hole of repression. I’m the last thing you need-”
She can’t stand him talking himself down; she hates it even more than she hates being told what to do, and how to feel, she shuts him up by kissing him again, and this time it’s fierce. Tongues and teeth and murmured endearments - from now on, she never wants Lockwood to call her anything except “darling” in that James Bond smooth accent - and then, when he takes her hands and leads them to his lazily knotted tie, she catches the meaning. It’s easy to undo it, lay it on his shoulders. Easier still to free the first button of his shirt from his eyelet, and then another, and another. And each little sliver of his bare skin is like another secret, binding him to her. His breath hitches as Lucy spreads her palm over his heart, and she looks up at him in the soft glow from the hallway lamp, and she asks him to take her up to bed.