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It was a relatively normal day for us, until it happened.
I was sitting at the kitchen table in our house on Portland row, with my old, grey pyjamas on and I was reading a book; some nonsensical, rambling, historical tome that related to a case we were working on.
George was sitting opposite me, scribbling on the thinking cloth, shovelling digestives into his mouth. We’d given him a free pass on the biscuit rule today because he was tired, he had the beginnings of a cold and he was very immersed in some intense research. He was making sure to take full advantage of the biscuit related freedom.
Lockwood was over at the counter, buttering toast and muttering something to himself about me not eating well enough, and how I should take better care of myself. I usually ignored his fussing but secretly it warmed me to know I was cared about here.
I smiled into my book, stretched my legs out and sighed, because I felt safe, happy and relaxed.
Which was probably why I let my guard down.
There was nothing at all extraordinary about the scene in front of me, literally nothing at all, but it would turn out to be the day my entire life would change.
Lockwood put a plate down in front of me and I looked up at him from upside down, leaning my head back in the chair.
He smiled down at me, booped me on the nose with his index finger, dark hair flopping, getting a little too long for how he usually kept it. He had that trademark, lopsided, confident grin on his face, the one that made my heart pound.
My tummy rumbled loudly at the smell of food and I was just so damned grateful for him in that moment, so blindsided by my feelings of contentment, without an ounce of self preservation, not a minutia of hesitation, I forgot to filter my thoughts and I spoke.
“You’re the bloody best Lockwood, god, I love you so much,” I moaned and I broke eye contact, snatched up the toast, which was cut into triangles and really buttery, just the way I liked it and I shoved a piece in my mouth.
I went back to my book.
I didn’t even realise I’d said anything wrong, not until long moments later, literally like two minutes, because Lockwood hadn’t moved from behind my chair and he was staring at me.
Toast bulging in both my cheeks, I looked back up at his shocked face. I replayed what I’d just said and I promptly choked on the toast.
George had to come and punch me in the back repeatedly, until I regurgitated a wedge of chewed up food onto my plate. My eyes were streaming, my nose was dripping and I must have looked as attractive as hell right then.
Lockwood had a white knuckle grip on the back of my chair and he was just gawping at me, mouth hanging prettily open, features vulnerable in a way I’d not seen on him before.
“Lockwood…” I began.
“You… you love me,” He said and it came out hoarse. He cleared his throat. “I mean. You love me? Is what you just said…”
I was fairly sure my red face would be seen from space. I stood up and grabbed his hand on the chair, which was a mistake because he took it back, snatching it out from under me and clenching it at his side.
I balked. Shit, shit, shit.
The thing was, it was so painfully and horribly true.
I did bloody love him, the massive dickhead.
It had happened both gradually and all at once, over the past year and a half of living with him. I didn’t even mean that I loved him in the platonic sense, which I guess I did love him that way too. Both him and George.
Lockwood though… I loved, loved him. As in, I may want to see him naked, loved him.
These thoughts weren’t helping me.
Plus, I think by his reaction to me grabbing his hand, I was suddenly getting the clarity I needed on the situation.
He looked like I’d just stepped on his hamster and squashed it dead. Not that he had a hamster. But if he did, I think that’s what he’d have looked like if I’d stepped on it.
Clearly, the idea of me loving him was not favourable for him, not at all.
I could fix this. I’d gotten out of worse.
“Oh. Sorry. No. What I meant was, I love you so much… erm… toast,” I wiped at my face with a napkin.
“Oh boy,” George pinched the bridge of his nose from where he was sitting, having returned to his spot at the table.
“You love me toast?” Lockwood frowned, which was a vast improvement on his earlier paralysed repulsion.
“Yes. I love you toast. You do the best toast,” I spluttered.
“I do the best… Lucy,” His frown was deepening. “That’s not even English.”
“All the cool kids are speaking like that,” I fronted it out.
In for a penny and all that.
”Liar liar, pants on fire,” skull piped up, from where it was situated on the sideboard. “You want to kiiiisss him, you want his baaaabies.”
“Piss off and die. Again,” I hissed at the skull, flipping the valve shut. “I just really like your toast Lockwood. Let it go. Please.”
“Right,” Lockwood said, face going through something fairly complicated, like he was about to say something else, but he turned his back on me.
I didn’t finish my toast. I did what any normal, rejected, eighteen year old girl would do and I scrambled off to the attic and went to bed, even though it was only seven in the evening.
I thought I heard a knock on on my door below about eight, but I couldn’t be sure. I was trying to smother myself with my pillow, to stop myself replaying the horrific scene from the kitchen, so my hearing was a little muffled.
—————
“In here, Luce, quick,” Lockwood swept past me in the graveyard, grabbed my wrist and shoved me into a tiny, stone crypt.
He jammed himself in after me and yanked the door shut, plunging us into almost darkness, a loose stone at the back letting in a sliver of moonlight.
He went to walk around, god knows where, and he smashed into me immediately with an oof.
He clicked his torch on, shining it right in my face, which coincidentally, was right in bloody front of his own.
There wasn’t any room at all. Three coffins lay side by side on raised stone platforms and there was about half a metre space between the nearest one and the door. Half a metre that Lockwood and I were jammed into.
He clicked the torch off with an awkward cough.
“Sorry. Bit of a tight squeeze, hmm?” Lockwood whispered.
Now that my eyes were adjusting, by the little bit of moonlight, I could see he’d pressed himself back against the closed door.
It still only left a couple of centimetres between us. I could feel his breath ghosting over my face, feel the heat of his body along my front. His coat grazed my leggings.
Lockwood smelled like earl grey tea and Tunnock’s caramel wafers, two enticing things that I unfortunately liked rather a lot.
I shuffled my feet awkwardly.
We’d been so careful not to be alone together after the kitchen incident the week before, using George and even the skull as a carefully placed buffer between us when we were in the house.
But tonight, George had finally succumbed to his brewing cold and we’d been forced to head out on our own. We were supposed to be doing some simple recon, so bringing skull hadn’t been essential and alas, here we were.
“Can you hear anything?” I whispered.
We’d stumbled upon some relic men who we knew were vicious lackeys of Winkman’s and they’d recognised us in a heartbeat.
Cue a ridiculous chase through the graveyard, because it would have been six against two, and fate, cruel mistress that she is, now had Lockwood and I stuck in a tiny tomb together.
“No,” he whispered back. “Can you hear anything?”
“No,” I said, keeping my voice low. “What do you recon, ten minutes and we make a break for it?”
“Should just about do it,” I could just make out Lockwood nodding.
We made it four minutes before my legs started cramping.
“Do you think it would be bad form to sit on top of one of these dead guys?” I asked Lockwood, patting the stone platform behind me.
He laughed and I was so happy to hear it, after a week of awkward and stilted conversations between us.
I grinned at him and I knew he could see me, because he was looking right at me.
“I wouldn’t, if I were you. The thing’s half covered in mould,” He pointed over my shoulder.
“How can you tell?” I tried to turn, but all it did was make me brush up against him and I stumbled forward.
Lockwood’s hands went to my hips to steady me, body leaning into me and suddenly I wanted both closer to him and out of there, in equal measure.
He didn’t let me go.
“Erm,” I said, intelligently.
“Quite,” Lockwood said. Which didn’t make sense.
We were too close. I could see every eyelash on his stupid face and the heat of him, under his long coat, it was too inviting in the chilly crypt.
I wanted to bury myself in him. I didn’t though. Obviously. I just stood there, not touching, him holding onto me.
He looked at the ceiling.
We were silent for another couple of minutes, then this time, he tried to stretch his long legs with a complaining moan.
Except it put one of his knees between my legs and I panicked and head butted him.
“Christ,” he complained, taking his hands off my hips to grab his face and I face planted his chest, off-balance.
“Oh my god. I’m so sorry,” I planted my hands on him and tried to use his chest to push away, his firm chest, his warm, lovely chest…
Oh my god, what was wrong with me.
“Just… stop bloody moving,” He hissed, right in my ear.
We heard a clang from right outside and raised voices.
“Shit,” my eyes went wide.
One of Lockwood’s hands slid over my mouth and he put a finger to his lips.
I didn’t move a muscle. We were trapped and these guys wouldn’t think twice about adding two more bodies to this tomb. I could feel myself starting to panic.
Lockwood, to his credit, slipped his arms around me, pinning me in place and my breathing eventually evened out.
The voices hadn’t moved on and I was getting a slight whiff of cigarette smoke.
We’d need to stay quiet for a few moments longer.
I made the mistake of looking up at Lockwood.
He was gazing down at me, puzzled look on his face, as if I somehow held the answers to the universe.
“What?” I said, fighting the urge to squirm under his intense scrutiny.
“Nothing,” he shrugged, eyebrows raised.
“You said you were done lying to me,” I whispered.
“I did,” he nodded and leaned down, speaking quietly. Those guys were still probably really close by and he clearly wasn’t taking any chances. “That was before you started lying to me.”
“I haven’t lied to you,” I lied to him.
“Clearly,” he didn’t look impressed.
“Ok… I haven’t lied to you where it wasn’t for your own good,” I offered.
He went quiet again as he processed that, his breath tickling my cheek.
My body felt like it was on fire wherever we were touching. He didn’t realise what he did to me. I was almost jealous that he was totally unaffected.
“You said you loved me toast,” he whispered next.
“God. Really. We’re going to do this now?” I groaned.
“Have you got a prior engagement? Somewhere better to be?” He challenged.
I didn’t say what I was thinking, that I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else, with anyone else.
Even with the danger lurking outside.
“Fair enough,” I allowed.
“So,” he said. “You said you loved me toast. But I think you meant something else.”
Screw him and his bluntness.
“Ok,” I said, voice unsteady.
“I think you meant something else first, except then you regretted it and took it back. You didn’t mean it. And now it’s a bit awkward between us,” He kept going, voice low and tinged with something sad, but it was all wrong, wrong, wrong. “So I just wanted to say, for what it’s worth. It’s fine. You don’t have to be weird about it. I wasn’t going to hold you to it. So, can we go back to being normal around each other? I miss you.”
I gulped. Shit.
“Ok. Look. Lockwood,” I could do this. I fought ghosts on the regular, I could tell my best friend I had stupid feelings for him and he was a good guy. He’d still let me live at the house, he wouldn’t hold it against me. I owed him honesty. “Say I did mean it? Say I did mean something else first… I get that you don’t. You know. Love me toast back. I could tell by the way you reacted in the kitchen. I won’t make it weird. Any weirder, I should say.”
“What,” he frowned down at me. “What do you mean, the way I reacted?”
“You pulled your hand away from me, you looked like you were going to barf,” I reminded him.
“Well yeah, I was surprised. No one’s told me they loved me since I was a kid and my parents died,” he huffed. “It was… nice. I was just a little caught off guard. Then you went and took it back.”
“Oh,” I frowned, then my heart loosened. “Oh. So you didn’t mind?”
“No,” he said, intense eyes on mine. “I liked it. I was just shocked. And a bit scared, I suppose.”
“Right. Well,” I said. “Well then, I did mean it, in that case.”
Another minute of dead silence.
“Did you mean, like you love me as a friend? Or like a brother figure?” He asked.
“Ergh, just shut up Lockwood,” I complained, legs cramping up again.
I shifted against him and his hands went to my sides this time, long fingers brushing the sliver of bare skin that was exposed, between my short, blue jumper and the top of my skirt.
I groaned at the contact. I was going to die here.
“Huh,” I could tell that Lockwood was grinning. “Guess it’s not like a brother then?”
“Lockwood, I’m going to run you through with my rapier when we get out of here, if you carry on. No. Not like a brother. I love you ok, you dickhead. Like I’m in love with you. Even though you drive me crazy on the daily. You don’t have to rub it in, not when you don’t feel the same,” I gave him a light punch to the chest.
He grabbed me by the face, big, strong hands cupping my cheeks and he crushed his lips to mine. He didn’t give me a second to catch my breath, his hands retuning to my waist and he pulled me into him.
I gave as good as I got, sighing with relief into him. My hands tugged roughly at his hair, giving back as much as one can, when being surprise kissed in a tomb in the dark.
When I parted my lips for him, he groaned into my mouth and it was a noise I wanted to hear every day, for the rest of my life.
He licked his way demandingly into my mouth, turning the kiss deeper and dirtier and I gasped when he ran his hands up my bare back, under my jumper.
“Fuck, Luce,” he whimpered, mouth against mine, voice half destroyed.
He buried his face in my neck, mouthing roughly at the skin there and I was about to beg him to take my virginity, right there, standing up in a crypt, when we heard a massive bang right outside the door.
We both froze. I looked at him and I had to suppress a giggle, he looked ruined. I supposed I didn’t look much better.
He grinned blindingly at me and pressed a soft, single kiss to my lips.
He moved his mouth to my ear and I shuddered.
“Luce,” he breathed.
“Ngggghh,” I said, feeling it all the way to my toes.
“I love you toast too,” He whispered.
“Oh piss off,” I groaned, knowing that I was never living that one down.
Lockwood suddenly pushed me as far up against the coffin as I could go.
“What?” I exclaimed but I knew why in the next instance. The crypt door was being dragged open from the outside.
Lockwood managed to turn around in the small space, god knows how, but I was pinned behind his body, him between me and the danger.
The bright, yellow moonlight glared in, blinding me after so long in the dark. Lockwood surged forward to tackle the intruder, as soon as he had the space to do so, me on his heels.
“Ow!” George’s snotty, cold ridden voice rang out, from where he was lying flat on his back under Lockwood’s body, both of them sprawled on the cold dirt of the graveyard floor.
Lockwood stood and brushed himself off and I offered George my hand.
“Christ. I only came to tell you both that Barnes called in earlier, said there’d been a report of a few grave robberies the last few nights over here. I was going to try and warn you, in case you ran into any trouble,” George complained, righting his wonky glasses. “I saw you run in here and I called DEPRAC, they just ran those guys off.”
“Thanks George, good man,” Lockwood clapped him on the back and he came back to my side.
“Why are you both holding hands?” George frowned at us.
“It wasn’t about the toast,” Lockwood’s grin was happy and directed at me.
“I told you it wasn’t about the toast,” George sighed, long suffering.
“Wait. You both talked about this?” My cheeks burned.
“Oh, yeah. Totally. Lockwood was agonising it about it all week,” George offered.
“Agonising is a strong word, Georgie,” Lockwood frowned.
“Moping?” George offered. “Certainly obsessing. Didn’t you catch the aneurism he nearly had when you came down the other morning in your summer shorts and that blue vest top? That’s why I had to change the thinking cloth twice that day, I couldn’t take any more of his crappy love poetry. It wasn’t hard to guess who his muse was, as he described the ‘Elusive blue butterfly’. Gross. Also, Lockwood, ‘butterfly’ doesn’t in any way rhyme with ‘wish she’d yank on my tie’.”
Lockwood made a dying sound and his cheeks were beet red.
I laughed, gleefully. Guess Lockwood was a bit more invested in me than maybe I’d realised.
He dragged me off by the hand, away from George.
He did practically wrestle me into his bedroom when we got home though, so I made allowances for his rubbish poetry.
—————
The next morning, when I mooched happily into the kitchen, clad in one of his white shirts and a pair of his thick socks to make some tea, I found Lockwood already there, making me toast.
He placed the plate in front of me and kissed me on the top of my head.
I moved the plate to the side, because I could see Lockwood’s barely legible handwriting on the thinking cloth, with a small picture of a butterfly drawn beneath it.
She is an elusive blue butterfly. She likes her toast, buttered by, me. She is beautiful, but often shy. Strong and fierce, untamed like the sky. I do wish she would Turns out, she LOVES to yank on my tie. She loves me toast.
George had to change the thinking cloth again that day, because I cut out a square and framed it.
—————