Work Text:
The first time the thought came to him, he was half asleep.
Lockwood was draped over his favorite chair in the library, legs thrown over the side and his head tucked into the wingback. One of his gossip magazines sat in his lap, but it had been over an hour since he’d turned a page. He’d been too busy dozing off. Well, dozing and looking at Lucy.
He was still looking at Lucy now, watching her even as he was mostly asleep. She was reading in the soft light of a lamp and the glow of the fire, eyes still swishing back and forth across the page even though they were rounding the corner of 3am. She looked stunning, snuggled up on the sofa with a blanket and her book, her trademark steeliness somehow present even in this soft moment. Even with his mind mostly gone, his body stirred with a desire to be near her, to feel how the fire had warmed her side, to feel the rustle of her arm as she turned a page.
So slowly, his feet found a way to the ground, his knees lifted him out of his chair, and his legs walked him over to plonk down next to her. His arm found its way around her waist and his head came to rest in her neck, and even in his daze, he heard himself give a contented sigh. Much better.
Lucy, for her part, wrapped an arm around him and dropped a kiss on his temple. “Hey, sleepyhead,” her voice came in his ear.
He snuggled in closer to her shoulder. It had been three weeks since she had joined him on that fateful walk, wearing his mother’s sapphire, and he had pushed her up against a lamppost and snogged her senseless. To be fair, she had kissed him first as he had been bumbling his way through an explanation about the necklace, unaccustomed to talking about his feelings inside of shoving them deep inside.
He was still pretty shit at expressing his feelings, honestly, but he was delighted that he could now make an utter tart of himself the way he was always wanting to and get a warm smile and a kiss on the head.
“It’s late,” she said, leaning her head against his. “We should go to bed.”
He hummed, feeling quite ready to spend the night right where he was. But he felt her body start to move, and he knew Lucy deserved a better night’s sleep than she would get on the couch. She was perpetually underslept, because some terrible boss of hers was always making her work nights and keeping her late on assignments that he should have done more research on.
Oh wait, right, that was him.
“Okay.” He withdraw her limbs from around her, felt her hand find his and intertwine their fingers. She pulled him gently to his feet, out of the library and up the stairs to his door. Lucy turned then, leaning him gently against his doorframe, and popped up on tiptoe to brush her lips against his.
Sparks flew behind his half closed eyes, and he made to rest his hands on her waist. She pulled back just slightly, lips still resting against his, and he could feel her breath against him as she whispered “Goodnight, Lockwood.”
Then she drew away from him and continued up to the attic, leaving him with a tingly sensation on his mouth and a thought he hadn’t had in almost a decade.
It might be nice, he thought, if she called him Anthony.
The thought was born in a sleepy haze and once it came, it simply would not leave him alone. It pestered him the next morning, when she greeted him in the kitchen with a peck on his cheek and a soft, sleepy “Thanks, Lockwood” as he placed her tea and toast in front of her. It plagued him when he was doing his rapier practice while Lucy and Holly were talking in the office, and he heard Luce say “I’ll ask Lockwood to pick them up this afternoon.” It even rose in the middle of their job the next evening, when he rushed into a room to check on her and despite being bent over with the exertion of fighting off a wraith, she smiled, rolled her eyes, and said “I’m fine, Lockwood.”
He had to talk to her about it but he was, as previously mentioned, still a bit shit on the communication side of things. What was he supposed to do, just bring it up over breakfast? Leave a note on the Thinking Cloth? Pull a Lockwood classic and give her a piece of jewelry with his given name on it and hope she got the message?
He discarded that last idea quickly because the sapphire had been an unmitigated disaster, between Quill’s interruption and his own cowardice to slip it in with paperwork of all things. He honestly wasn’t sure if it was better or worse than the dramatic flair of trying to tell Lucy he liked her with the phrase “undying devotion.”
So he flustered around, spirits falling just slightly every time she used his surname. He didn’t muster the courage until a fortnight later, after a different job. They’d all had their tea and crisps and George had gone to bed. Lockwood found himself thinking about his predicament in his bedroom, until he heard a small knock on the door and Lucy’s head appeared in the frame.
“Hey Luce,” he sat up and raked his eyes over her face. “Everything okay?”
“I can’t sleep,” she said, voice low. “Can I come in?”
“Of course.” It wasn’t the first time she had done this, but it was new enough that it set his heart to racing, having her in his bedroom in her pajamas, when the world had gone to bed. This time, unlike the others, she didn’t linger by the door and wait for his outstretched hand to pull her in. She closed it quietly, then softly but surely made her way across to his bed, threw a leg over him, and climbed in his lap.
He chuckled lightly. “Hello then.”
“Hello,” she said, voice stronger now that she was closer, or maybe now that she was with him. The thought made him feel like his body was covered with warm rocks.
And then his skin caught fire when she leaned in and firmly pressed her lips to his. As soon as he reciprocated, he felt her open her mouth to him and his hands reached for her of their own accord, one settling on the small of her back and one winding up through the hair at the nape of her neck.
He felt as if he might burn up, but her touch was electric and somehow the fire within him was growing even stronger. She shifted closer to him, bringing them chest to chest and hip to hip, and he heard a needy groan that he was 90% sure came out of his own mouth.
He chased that need across Lucy’s cheek, down her neck, and to the pulse point at her collarbone where, he was thrilled to now know, she was particularly sensitive.
He felt her hands tighten in his hair, her hips shift against him, and a beautiful moan build in her chest that came out alongside a breathy, dazed “Lockwood.”
He paused involuntarily, shocked first that he could make her sound like that — disheveled and wanting, needy for him. And then shocked that he wanted it to be a different name slipping past her lips in this moment of passion.
He pulled back a little further from her neck, and in classic Lockwood fashion, made a split second decision and implemented his plan immediately. “Luce,” he said, struggling to keep his voice steady.
Lucy caught the change of tone immediately, opening her eyes and examining him. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I…” the words caught in his mouth and his ears flamed. What if she felt chastised? They had just been kissing, he didn’t want her to think she had been doing anything wrong, not when every kiss since the first had thoroughly rocked his world.
“Am totally fine,” he finished, leaning back in. Lucy pulled back slightly, very clearly not believing him. But he pulled towards her insistently, and after a moment she relented and brought her lips back to his.
It was quite some time later that they lay back on his bed, breathing heavily and significantly less clothing on. Lucy’s head rested on his bare chest, his arm wrapped around her to play with her hair. He closed his eyes and let a deep sense of satisfaction wash over him. He was safe, he was loved, he was even happy. How did he get so lucky?
He felt Lucy settle her chin on his chest and gaze at him. It was the same sense that he got when a ghost watching him, but instead of making him feel unsettled, he felt cherished.
When he opened his eyes though, she looked a little less than thrilled with him.
“What happened there?” She asked, voice small. “When you pulled back, what was wrong?”
Well fuck him, he hadn’t asked for what he wanted and he managed to make her feel badly anyway. What an idiot.
“Nothing, Luce, seriously. I’m fine.”
She lifted herself up from his chest, hurt evident in her eyes.
“Lockwood, please, you know you can talk to me. Please don’t shut me out.”
He just kept digging himself deeper into this hole, didn’t he? He floundered for a moment, trying to find a way to reassure her that he wanted her on the inside of his walls more than he had perhaps wanted anything before. That he’d never let anyone else in like this, and he wanted her to know him, trust him, feel safe with him.
She started to pull away, and he instinctively grabbed her wrist to keep her close.
“Luce, hang on,” he said, feeling his heart beat race. “Hang on. Just, give me a second.”
Lucy folded her arms back over his chest and rested her head on them, waiting for him.
“I was thinking…” god he was such a wanker, he couldn’t believe he had cocked this up so properly. “I was thinking that maybe you could call me Anthony.”
His face flushed immediately, and he turned his head to the side, away from her gaze. He felt raw and open, exposed.
“But it’s not a big deal,” he added quickly, trying to crawl away from that feeling. “It doesn’t matter—“
Her gentle hand on his cheek brought him back to face her, and found her grinning. He felt her body shake slightly against him. She was… laughing?
Lucy pressed a quick kiss against his lips and smiled radiantly. “That’s what all this is about?” She asked. “These long pauses these past few weeks? Followed by an extra helping of Lockwood Charm?”
He hadn’t even noticed he was doing that, to be honest, but he supposed it added up. He nodded.
“You silly boy,” she kissed him again. “I would love to call you Anthony.”
If he thought his heart was racing before, it was nothing compared to the kick he felt when his given name came out of her mouth. In his chest and farther south.
In a second, he rolled her over, pressing his body along the length of hers and kissing her fiercely. When he came up for air a few minutes later, he could feel the gigawatt smile on his face.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Lucy nodded. “Just give me some time to get used to it, okay?”
It turned out they both needed some time to get used to it. The first couple of times she stumbled over her words, catching herself mid-Lockwood. And his heart continued doing a weird dance, freezing him for a moment and giving off the appearance that he did not, in fact, remember his own name.
They did this in private, thank god, and the first time it happened in front of the others was, to Lockwood’s dismay, on a job.
Just reckless enough, he thought to himself as he climbed to the third landing of a house that supposedly had a nasty Screaming Spirit inside. He had left Lucy at the base of the landing, insisting that he go first and scope it out given how this Type Two was likely to affect her. But he hadn’t bargained on the ghost being fully formed, rushing down the hallway at him the moment he reached the landing.
He parried with his rapier, a complicated formation coming out of muscle memory. But the ghost was insistent, pushing him back first into the wall and then down onto the top step. He leaned dangerously, swiping fiercely, and then whipped his arm over his eyes when he heard Lucy yell “Duck!”
But he still felt the impact of the salt bomb going off, and he slid to the side, legs crumbling as he fell down a few stairs.
“Anthony!” Lucy yelled, rushing up to catch him. Her arms cradled him, reorienting him upright, and then her hands were on his face. “Anthony, are you alright?”
From the landing, he heard a rustling as George and Kipps gapped at each other. “Anthony?” George whispered.
He grinned. “Right as rain, Luce. But maybe we go on together?”
She pressed her forehead to his. “Yes, we absolutely do.” She gave him a quick kiss, then pulled back to help him to his feet.
He looked down at George and Kipps, pulling his mind away from the way Lucy said his name, like he was something precious, and back to the task at hand. The ghost. His team.
“Right then,” he said. “She’s strong and angry. We should come up in pairs, Kipps and I will fight her off and create a path through for George and Luce to get to the source.”
Lucy nodded, but George and Kipps did not seem to be quite as attentive.
“Hello?” He said. “You two with us?”
George scowled lightly, but without heat. “She calls you Anthony now?”
Lockwood took a second to wink at Lucy before responding. “Yes. Any other questions? About the plan, perhaps?”
“Does this mean you’re okay with Tony?” Kipps asked, sounding a bit sad.
“Absolutely not,” Lockwood responded. “And stop calling me that. I sign your pay cheques. Let’s go.”
“Sure thing, Tony,” Kipps grinned as he made his way up the stairs, rapier leading the way.
In the end, it turned out to be too much for Luce to call him Anthony all the time. It never got less weird in the field, so she continued to refer to him as Lockwood to the team, DEPRAC, and the public. Other times, on date night or her tapes to Norrie, he was Anthony. And then he had a third name, which became his favorite, that Lucy called him in their quiet moments alone together, those special times when she held his heart in the palm of her hand and called him love.
And in those times he felt like it was an appropriate name because his whole body was consumed by this feeling of love that he had shut out for so long. Love for Lucy, yes of course, but also love that loving Lucy had opened him up to. Love of his team, love of his family, love of himself. Love he had shut down for far too long, that now threatened to brim over out of him.
Sure, maybe George never quite let it go after he heard Lucy call him love for the first time. Maybe the whole team took to saying “he’s being a real Tony today” when Lockwood was in a mood. But he, Anthony Lockwood, loved and was loved — and he now took on the Problem and the world not with recklessness, but with strength.