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2023-02-22
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Did I dream, you dreamed about me?

Summary:

So he’s already been considering breaking their unspoken pact to, well, not speak about it, when he hears Lucy caught in another nightmare. He’s sitting in his room trying (and failing) to do paperwork when her scream echoes down the stairs. And for the first time, he can make out what she’s saying.

In which Lucy has a nightmare that Lockwood can't ignore.

Another Locklyle dealing with nightmares fic, because there can never be enough. Title from Song to the Siren by This Mortal Coil, as featured in Episode 4.

Notes:

So basically I was thinking about how Lucy always calls him Lockwood, and then I had the thought "what if the first time she calls him 'Anthony' is in the middle of a nightmare?" and here we are.

Hope you enjoy, sorry again for being American.

(See the end of the work for more notes and other works inspired by this one.)

Work Text:

Lockwood has never had what most would call a normal sleep schedule. It comes with running the best agency in England, and needing to be in top form in the wee hours of the morning. So even when they don’t have a case, Lockwood is often up and busy when most of the world is asleep. George has been on him about it recently (especially since he got shot), but George can’t talk, what with all his late night experiments.

Lucy’s been glaring at him a bit about it as well, but she just narrows her eyes and clenches her jaw and pointedly makes some more tea. He suspects that this is because she knows that if she says something about his sleep habits, he’ll say something about hers. Because Lucy, the rest of Lockwood & Co has discovered, gets nightmares.

They all do, honestly. It’s a hazard of the job. But still, Lucy’s seem worse. It might be because of her superior listening talent (“Burn out,” George murmurs to Lockwood significantly), or it might be because of something else, but regardless, she’s never slept well, and it’s only gotten worse since the Bone Glass. Lockwood and George can hear her thrashing around upstairs, and sometimes (in a way that Lockwood suspects breaks even George’s “touchy feely”-averse heart) crying.

And then sometimes she screams, and it rips Lockwood completely open. He’s pretty sure that she’s dreaming about that job back home when it gets that bad, and that she’s losing her first family all over again. Sometimes he can almost make out names he doesn’t know, but she’s never quite clear enough. But she sounds desperate, and panicked, and trapped. It’s awful.

So he’s already been considering breaking their unspoken pact to, well, not speak about it, when he hears Lucy caught in another nightmare. He’s sitting in his room trying (and failing) to do paperwork when her scream echoes down the stairs. And for the first time, he can make out what she’s saying.

“Lockwood! LOCKWOOD!” He’s out of his room like a shot, almost colliding with George as he hurtles towards the attic stairs. He climbs them two at a time, but when he gets to the door, he pauses. Because this is crossing a line, isn’t it? Sure, he was getting up the courage to talk to her about her nightmares, but in the daylight: not barging into her bedroom while she’s technically still asleep. But right when he’s about to chicken out, she speaks again.

“Anthony, please-” Lucy’s softly pleading through her tears, and he’s through the door in an instant. All thoughts of boundaries fly out of his head, because she sounds broken, and it’s all because of him.

She’s never called him Anthony before. It’s always Lockwood, or once Locky, when she and Flo were making fun of him for something he can’t remember now. And maybe he has idly thought about how “Anthony” would sound falling out of her mouth, but he never imagined it like this.

He approaches the bed as calmly as he can, not wanting to startle her. But she’s clearly still deep in the nightmare, crying and murmuring “please” over and over. He sits down on the edge of the bed, and takes her shoulders, gently shaking them a little.

“Luce, Lucy! Come on, wake up, it’s just a dream. It’s not real. Wake up, please, Luce.”

Her eyes fly open and she sits up, Lockwood only just managing to move his head out of the way so they avoid serious injury. Her eyes are wide and frantic, and her hands dart out and grab the sides of his neck, her thumb on his pulse. He reaches out and gently pushes the hair out of her face, where it’s stuck to her cheek with tears.

“Hey, hey, you’re okay,” he says softly. She shakes her head and pushes her thumb harder into his pulse. Oh. “I’m okay,” he says even softer, tipping forward so his forehead rests against hers, an echo of when she pulled him out of his panic at Winkman’s. “We’re all okay. I promise.” She takes a few more shuddering breaths, and then her shoulders start to relax, and her eyes are more focused and clear.

She leans back against the headboard, and lowers her hands into her lap. He lowers his as well, then on impulse reaches out and lightly laces his fingers with hers. Before he can second guess himself, she grips back.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he says, almost whispering. Lucy just stares at their linked hands, not moving for a long moment. He squeezes her fingers again, trying to convey that she can talk or not talk as much as she wants. But then she takes a deep breath.

“The catafalque was broken,” she says hoarsely, still not looking at him, “and we couldn’t get you help in time.”

Lockwood swallows thickly. He realizes absently that a few weeks ago this would have been his worst nightmare: someone caring so much about him that they have screaming nightmares about his death. It’s everything he tried for so long to avoid. But now, looking at Lucy already shrinking back into herself, he just wants her to feel less alone.

“It’s Winkman’s, for me,” he says, and Lucy jerks her head up, her eyes wide. “Except you never get back up.”

“I’ve never heard you,” she says.

“Yeah, well,” Lockwood replies, looking down and huffing out a laugh. “You know me.” He lifts his head back up and Lucy’s looking at him intensely.

“I do know you,” she replies, “do I need to remind you again that you can talk to me, Lockwood?”

“No, I know,” he says, unsure how it’s suddenly her who’s comforting him. Lucy Carlyle always tends to unbalance him. Lightly shaking himself, he tries to turn it back around. “You should try to get some sleep, Luce, I know that headboard isn’t comfortable.” She cocks her head slightly, raising an eyebrow, and Lockwood does his level best to ignore how cute she looks. But his brain is a bit scrambled anyway, which is the only explanation he has for what he says next. “This is my old room, remember? I miss it sometimes.” Shit.

“Oh, right. Well, do you want to stay then?” Huh. Not the response he expected. Lucy’s face turns bright red, but she seems determined not to break eye contact. There’s a bit of a challenge in her expression and Lockwood suddenly hears himself saying,

“Yeah, sure, if you don’t mind?”

“Not if you don’t.”

“Of course not,” he says, possibly a bit too quickly. But Lucy just slumps back down onto her pillow, and wriggles over to the side of the bed. Lockwood stands up and reaches to pull the covers back, stopping to look at Lucy at the last second. She just shrugs, so he climbs in. They both lie there staring at the ceiling, just far away from each other not to touch.

“No suit and tie tonight?” she asks softly.

“Nah, I was going to go to bed early,” he replies. Lucy looks over at him with an extremely judgmental expression. “Ended up doing paperwork, though,” he admits ruefully.

“Finish it in the morning,” Lucy says, and turns on her side, facing away from him. Lockwood takes that as his cue that the conversation is over, and closes his eyes. He thinks that it’s going to take him a long while to fall asleep, but Lucy’s steady breathing next to him lulls him into unconsciousness before he’s even really finished the thought.

When Lucy next wakes up, it’s to sunlight streaming in through the curtains of her window. She’s lying on her back, and slowly blinks her eyes open. She feels more rested than she has in a long time, and realizes that she didn’t have any more nightmares after…after…

…after Lockwood came up to her room and never left. After he got into her bed and never left.

Because Lockwood is most definitely still in her bed. His arm is across her waist, and his left leg is hooked over hers. His face is smushed into the pillow, giving him one of the worst cases of bedhead Lucy has ever seen.

Lucy stares at him for a long minute, trying to decide what to do. On the one hand, she should probably move him, right? They didn’t talk about this. The touching. He might be embarrassed. And it’s wildly unprofessional. But on the other hand, Lucy’s not sure she’s ever been so comfortable in her life. But then on the other other hand, the fact that she’s so comfortable with Lockwood curled around her like this is sending her into a bit of a panic.

“Stop thinking, Luce. Go back to sleep,” Lockwood says. His voice is rough and slightly muffled by the pillow, and turning her head Lucy sees that he hasn’t even opened his eyes. “You need to sleep more.”

“So do you,” she whispers.

“And yet you’re the one keeping us both awake,” says Lockwood, squinting one eye open and slightly wrinkling his nose at her. She can’t help but smile back at him. His face relaxes and he closes his eyes again.

“I didn’t have any more nightmares,” Lucy says, softly in case he really has fallen back to sleep already. But he tightens his arm around her waist.

“That’s good,” he mumbles into the pillow.

“Yeah, it is good,” says Lucy. And she closes her own eyes, and falls back to sleep herself.

Notes:

George finds them later and decides to let them sleep, but when they finally get up he's insufferable about it. As he deserves.