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Lucy’s practical about bodies.
She doesn’t bat an eyelash when George wanders around the house in only his pants, or when she runs into Lockwood coming out of the shower with only a towel wrapped around his waist. She just skirts around whoever it is and their nudity and goes back to doing whatever it was she was doing before they interrupted her day with their bare chests or thighs or what-have-you.
Lockwood appreciates that, particularly when he’s lying in bed late at night and definitely not thinking about her while his fingers definitely don’t stray past the waistband of his pyjamas.
Once, on a particularly bad case in a bar, her jumper had gotten spattered with plasm. She’d been in the middle of securing the Source, and finished doing so before standing and calmly stripping the smoking jumper off and tossing it away. A moment later, when she notices it sinking through her shirt as well, she takes that off too, tossing it the way of the jumper.
And then she’s standing behind the bar in just a bra and her jean skirt and leggings and boots, and Lockwood is definitely not staring. She’d not even blinked, just double checked to make sure the Source was secure and then went about transferring it to an iron box. It isn’t until George finally notices and squeaks in horrified embarrassment that she seems to notice as well. She wraps her arms around her torso, covering her stomach rather than her breasts.
“Sorry,” she says. Lockwood wants to say that she most definitely doesn’t need to apologize. If anything, he should be the one to say sorry for staring so rudely, but he can’t quite get the words together in his head. “My shirt was covered in ectoplasm, and I don’t have a back up in my bag…”
The three of them stand there frozen for a moment, until George elbows Lockwood with his needle-y elbow and hisses at him to offer her his coat.
That breaks him out of his daze and he does so immediately, circling around to the back of the bar as he shrugs out of it, and then holding it out for her, helping her to thread her arms through the sleeves. She buttons it all the way to her neck, and thanks him before grabbing her kit bag and walking calmly out the front door, a cab already hailed by the time he and George get out there with the rest of their stuff.
Lockwood definitely does not file away the view of her breasts cupped together by her bra, that pale creamy cleavage, and the view he’d gotten of them over her shoulder, for further use.
Because that would be wrong.
He tries not to think at all about rapier practice, which involves leggings and absolutely fantastic views of her hips and arse and thighs as she lunges and twists and shuffles across the floor. He loses that battle on a nearly nightly basis.
* * *
Between the three of them, at least one person manages to get decently ill at least once every two months or so. It’s Lucy’s turn now, and it seems wretched. Some sort of a stomach bug, which hit her hard out of nowhere. One day she’d been sitting at the table with them, drinking tea and eating toast, and the next moment she’d been across the kitchen, bent over the sink, her whole body wrenching with the force of her retching.
George, ever practical, had leapt to his feet and gotten her hair out of her face, holding it in a loose fist at the back of her neck.
She hadn’t been able to keep anything down since. Every so often Lockwood can convince her to nibble on some dry toast or a biscuit, but she’s heaving over the toilet within minutes every time.
He sends George down to Arif’s to get her some of those sugary high-calorie drinks they give to kids who aren’t growing as fast as they should or old folks who can’t eat enough solid food to support themselves anymore. It’s a revolting sort of clear pink color, but she sucks on the straw in the glass he’d brought her gratefully, and manages to keep it down for a full quarter of an hour. Surely enough time for at least some of those calories to be absorbed into her bloodstream, right?
He’d taken her upstairs after the first attack had passed. She’d wanted to take a bath, said she always felt disgusting after vomiting, so he’d deposited her at the first floor bathroom and gone the rest of the way up to fetch some pyjamas. He’d brought them down to her and then waited in his room across the hall until she appeared in the hallway looking as pale as a Visitor. He’d followed her up into her room. He’d thought she’d curl up in bed, but she’d grabbed a pillow and her duvet and set up camp on the floor of her little bathroom instead.
“I don’t wanna throw up all over my bed,” she said when he asked if she wouldn’t be more comfortable there.
“I could fetch you a bowl?” he asked. “Or a trash bin, or something?”
“No,” she said. “Knowing me, I’d hit it with my elbow and spill spew all over the place.” This image disturbs her so much that she’s hauling herself to her knees, hanging over the toilet bowl and retching wretchedly.
He’d spent the rest of the day ferrying up plates of toast, glasses of drink and water, and bringing her books and blankets so she can distract herself. He even digs an extension cord out of the basement and drags her little telly over into the bathroom, so she can watch Little Bear cartoons between bouts of nausea.
He’s coming to check on her as night starts to fall, having canceled their case for the night and referred the clients to Kipps and his team. That had been infuriating, but what else can he do? It turns out that the closest relationship he has with another agent outside of his own company is with Kipps, which is a horrifying thought if he ever heard one. And if it came down to asking Kipps for help for the sake of Lucy’s well being, well. He could suck it up when he had to. He’s halfway up the attic stairs when he hears her talking.
Shouting, more like.
“Shut up!” he hears her cry. “God, just shut up! For once in your miserable existence, leave me alone!”
“Lucy?” he asked cautiously, rounding the top of the stairs. “Everything okay?”
She’s dry heaving so, obviously not.
He crawls into the little nest on the bathroom floor with her. “Who were you talking to?”
“The skull,” she says after a long moment’s pause, waiting to see if the nausea would return. She sighs and curls up on the floor. Her hair is sweaty and she’s burst a blood vessel in one eye from all the vomiting.
“What was he saying?”
“Oh, the usual,” she says. “Normally I’d ignore him, but I can’t just listen to him natter on when I’ve been doing this for like ten hours, now. Aren’t I suffering enough?”
“Yeah.” He stops resisting the urge and reaches over, stroking the hair out of her face. “You are. If you still can’t keep anything down by the time curfew lifts we’re taking you into hospital.”
She makes a face at that, but doesn’t protest, which is honestly concerning. She must really be feeling terrible if she’s more or less willing to seek medical treatment.
“Why don’t I—”
“Why don’t you ever shut up!” she cuts him off, and then stares at him, wide-eyed. “Oh, god, that was for the skull, not for you. Sorry.”
“Okay, now you really have to tell me what he’s saying.” He smirks at her. “If it gets you this riled up I might have to give it a go.”
“Don’t you dare,” she warns. “It’s the usual sort of stuff. I think he’s actually trying to be comforting, he’s just also too much of a prick to do it in any way but awful. It’s all keep this up all night and maybe your waist will finally be smaller than your hips or this is good, you’ve been needing to lose a few off your arse anyway.”
She rolls over on the floor, groaning as her sore limbs come into contact with the hard, unforgiving lino. She sees Lockwood staring intently at her then. “What?”
“He says that sort of stuff?”
“Oh, yeah, all the time,” she snorts. “God forbid I ever eat a biscuit in front of him, I’ll be hearing about it for a week.”
Silently, he stands and crosses out into the room, reaching for the little lever and flicking it closed with extreme prejudice. He finds that it’s not nearly satisfying enough, though, so he spins it to face the wall as well.
He wants to take the thing directly to the furnaces, but Lucy views it as a weird sort of cross between a friend and a pet. She’d probably take issue with its complete and utter destruction.
“Thanks,” she says when he comes back to the bathroom, sliding down to sit behind her, folding up his legs to make space. “Maybe now I can get some peace and quiet.”
“Luce,” he says carefully. He doesn’t know how to say this without sounding placating or condescending. “You know none of that’s true, right?”
“None of what?”
“What he says. About your weight.”
She snorts. “Eh, he’s not that far off.”
“No!” he says. He twists around and lays down so he can look her dead in the eyes. “He’s so far off he’s not even aiming at the right planet. Lucy, you’re extremely healthy.”
She raises an eyebrow at him.
“Okay, well, obviously not right now, but I meant like, in general. You’re healthy, you’re strong, you’re incredibly fit,” she blushes and he realizes he just called her fit. “He shouldn’t be telling you to lose weight.”
“Come off it, Lockwood,” she says, entirely too cheery. Perfunctory and dismissive of her own warped self-image. “We all know I reach for the biscuit tin far too often. Between the doughnuts and George’s cooking, I’ve put on at least a stone since I’ve gotten here.”
“Lucy, when you got here you’d barely eaten for days,” he reminds her. “You’d just come out of that inquest, and you were grieving all your friends and incredibly stressed about your future. You were already below what your body’s idea of equilibrium is.”
“If you say so, Lockwood,” she sighs and shuts her eyes.
“I do say so,” he insists. “And the skull doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He was a Victorian servant. He was probably chronically malnourished. He probably had rickets.”
“I know you’ve thought it too,” she says with her eyes still closed. “That I need to lose weight. It’s okay.”
“No I haven’t!” he defends hotly. “I’ve never thought any such thing!”
“It’s okay, the skull told me.”
“And you trusted him?” The furnaces are starting to sound like a really good option. .“When he clearly has no idea what he’s talking about?”
“I don’t mind,” she says. “You were nice enough not to say anything about it. I appreciate that.”
“Lucy,” Lockwood says seriously. “What exactly did it say? When it told you that I’d said those things.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she frowns. “Maybe now you’ll lose that extra couple of pounds around your hips Lockwood’s always going on about. Something like that. I know it doesn’t inspire confidence in the agency image for the agents to look out of shape. I’ll work on it, I promise.”
“Don’t you dare!” he hisses, and the freezes when he registers what the skull had been talking about. He can feel himself going red all over.
“Oh, god, I know what he’s…oh, shit.”
“I told you, it’s okay.”
“No, it’s not, Lucy,” he needs her to understand him. “God, this is embarrassing. I may have…made a couple comments to myself over the last few months. Clearly I didn’t realize the skull was in the room, or that his lever was open. May have said some things about…oh, god, about how I got distracted easily by you. Your…body. Your, um, arse and hips and thighs in particular. In your workout leggings.”
“What?” she mumbles, tired, woozy brain clearly struggling to keep up.
“He twisted my words,” he says, trying to make her see that he would never, ever say something like that about her while also not revealing his hand. This was so not the right moment. “He took some comments I made about finding certain body parts of yours attractive and pinned them to his own weight-related bullshit.”
“You find my arse attractive?”
He buries his head in his hands, partially letting go of a hysterical laugh. “Yes. Very.”
“Oh,” she shifts on the floor. “Ow.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked, bending over her.
“Floor’s hard,” she mumbled. “Hurts.”
“Hold tight,” he says. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
He hurries down the stairs, gathering up what he needs, and then races back to her side.
“I’m gonna move you, okay?” he says.
“Okay,” she says. “But it’s not my fault if I get sick all over you.”
“I accept that.” He rolls her gently against the far wall of the little bathroom and spreads out a few layers of towels. He spreads his own duvet over them, folded in half to create extra padding, and then rolls her back on top of her little makeshift mattress, propping her up with every spare cushion and pillow he could carry.
She moans in relief and he’s so happy to make her comfortable he doesn’t even register that that’s the most erotic noise he’s ever heard in his life.
“I brought a book up,” he says. “I could read to you, if you like? Might help you fall asleep.”
“Yeah, okay,” she says, and then yawns. “What book?”
“It used to be one of Jessica’s favorites,” he said, flipping the orange cover open. He took another look at her pale, sweaty face, her brow scrunched up, and then starts reading. “The woman bore a scorch mark from her chin to her brow. The vision in her left eye was still blurry, as though she were looking through a scratched pane. She had been walking away from the burning for a few weeks by now and so supposed the eye would never heal, even if she lived long enough to give it time…”
* * *
When he wakes up there’s sunlight filtering through the room. According to his watch, it’s been almost four hours since Lucy last threw up. Her color’s looking better, too. He feels secure enough to move her away from the toilet, at least for the time being. He scoops her and the duvet up together, somehow managing to struggle his way up to standing without hitting her head on anything, and then carries her out to the bed and lays her down there, pulling the duvet firm around her.
She barely stirs through the whole thing, just scrunches up her nose and snuffles a bit. He watches her for a moment, and then, when he’s sure she won’t wake up, starts digging through the detritus collected on the surface of her desk. Her finds what he’s looking for pretty quickly, and grabs the skull off the shelf, holding the jar firmly between his knees. The skull is awake, and pulling faces at him.
Carefully, in his best cursive, he starts writing. Backwards, so that it’ll read the right way round to the skull. He’s considered this message all night. Firm enough to get the point across, not so much so that Lucy gets mad at him for being mean to it. Despite the fact that it’s, apparently, been absolutely horrid to her.
He holds it up to the mirror when he’s done, to make sure it all came out right. The skull is throwing an absolute fit at him now, having read the message, and looks like it’s starting in on a long tirade in response.
It’s pretty perfect, actually. There, in slanting, precise letters: You’re a fucking rat bastard.