Chapter Text
“I can’t believe this,” Lucy Carlyle groaned as she rammed her shoulder into the unyielding door once more. Its solid oak surface creaked but didn’t budge.
She felt a pair of long-fingered hands grab her shoulders and pull her back from the door. “Luce, stop. You’re just going to hurt yourself.”
Lucy spun around to face her friend and employer, Anthony Lockwood, whose hands were even now slipping from her shoulders, leaving her almost blind to his position. The darkness of this closet was nearly complete, with only the faintest glow seeping through the crack at the bottom of the door. She couldn’t make out his features in the dark and until her eyes adjusted, she’d just be able to see his outline.
“I don’t see you doing anything about our circumstances,” she replied, crossing her arms. “How’d the poltergeist even pull that trick?”
Lucy had been sure they were walking into a bedroom where she suspected the poltergeist’s source was hidden. How they’d been turned around enough to end up in this storage closet, she didn’t understand. She shifted and her knee knocked into a cardboard box. A jingling sound echoed in the small space as something that might have been a Christmas wreath fell back behind the box. Mercifully, there were no shelves at her head height but she suspected Lockwood was having to duck to avoid bumping his head. Coats threatened to close in on them from either side and she reached up to push the coats on both sides of the rack further towards the walls to give them more space.
“It’s definitely stronger than what was reported.”
“Fancy that, a client didn’t tell us the whole truth,” she spat with bad temper, bushing away a stray cobweb tickling her eyelashes. “That’s truly unique to this case.”
“Sarcasm is hardly going to help,” he replied and he put his hands on her shoulders again, shuffling her around so they could trade places and he would be closer to the door. Her eyes were starting to adjust to the gloom. They had their flashlights if they truly needed to see but it would ruin their night vision to turn them on in here. Currently, they were better off without them.
“What are you doing?” she asked. From what she could see, he was running his hands all around the edges of the door. He bent to follow the seams of the door toward the floor and Lucy found herself pressed against the shelving on the back wall. She grimaced as something bit into her spine.
“I’m trying to do something about the circumstances,” he muttered. He stood and sighed. “I think it’s firmly locked. And the hinges aren’t on this side of the door so we can’t even pry those apart to get out.”
Lucy threw her hands in the air in frustration but in the closeness of the closet, she just managed to bang one elbow against a shelf and the other against Lockwood’s chest. One of those hurt more than the other. She could feel her temper rising, her pulse quickening, her throat tightening at the thought that they were well and truly stuck.
Lockwood reached for her in the dark, finding her hands first but moving his grip to her wrists. “George will find us in a few minutes, Luce. But you have to keep calm. The poltergeist will pick up on your panic and it’ll feed off it.”
“I know how they work,” she bit out. She knew he was right. Lockwood, as reckless as he could be, would also fight to keep her and George safe at all costs. He wasn’t reminding her just to be a prick, despite how his posh accent made his directions sound. She took a long and slow breath. She was better than this. She didn’t know what these feelings were. She’d never been afraid of small spaces before. “Lockwood, I think I’m picking up emotions that aren’t mine. I’m far more upset than I should be and I can’t seem to do anything about it.”
She could feel his thumbs tracing small circles on the insides of her wrists and she wondered if he could feel how it caused her heart to speed up impossibly. She was grateful the cover of darkness could hide the heat she was sure rose in her cheeks. It was unseemly to let your employer make you blush this way but theirs had never been the usual relationship. In all their time together, Lockwood had shown her again and again that these little touches didn’t affect him the same way they did her, because they didn’t mean to him what they meant to her. She swallowed hard and tried to focus on anything other than the riot of butterflies in her stomach.
“Let me see if I can help with that,” he said. He gently released her and dug around in his equipment belt instead. “What have you got left of your iron filings?”
She didn’t have much in her jar but she handed it over anyway. With a lot of shuffling of boxes and bumping of knees and elbows, Lockwood traced the walls of the closet with a mixture of iron and salt, hoping the combination of the two would make the shortage of both last far enough to cover the distance around the edges of the room.
Lucy felt it the moment the line connected and the malevolent presence causing her panic was banished from the space. She felt immediately exhausted and dropped to the floor, landing hard on her knees and knowing they’d both be terribly bruised by morning.
“Lucy!” Lockwood exclaimed, kneeling beside her, hands bumbling to find her shoulders and cupping the sides of her face instead. “What happened?”
Lucy’s breath caught in her chest. If she’d been able to see, she knew his face would be very close to hers right now. In fact, it was near enough for her to feel his breath on her cheeks and she smelled the minty aroma of the chewing gum they’d passed around earlier in the night. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t see him, she could breathe him. “The presence is gone. It just…I just need a moment. I didn’t realize it was affecting me so strongly.”
He mercifully, tragically, dropped his hands from her face and ran them down her arms instead. She was trembling. He rubbed her arms as though he could feel the cold as well. She was wearing her coat but it didn’t protect her from the tremors that shook her now. These shivers weren’t because of an external temperature change. This was an internal chill left behind from a paranormal experience.
“Are you okay?” he asked. She couldn’t see his expression but she’d heard that tone enough times to have a reasonable mental image of his worried frown, the dip between his brows that followed his concern. Most of the time Lockwood hid his thoughts and feelings brilliantly behind the confident facade he’d spent years building around himself. But if she or George were in trouble, cracks showed in his walls and Lucy was becoming all too familiar with them. Perhaps his recklessness was rubbing off on them.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I mean, I’m not. I’m cold and I’m tired but I’ve got my emotions back in check. Sorry about that. I should have realized what was happening before I let it get us trapped in a bloody closet.”
“We both could have been better prepared,” he conceded. “So I won’t allow you the full share of the blame. Shall we just call this a learning opportunity and be done with it?”
“On the condition we make it out of here alive, yes,” she answered and hated how her teeth clattered together as she did so. She knew Lockwood could hear how her voice still shook with the chills. She lamented the fact that she’d finished off the last of her chocolate on their previous case. She hadn’t replenished her stock and she promised herself if they made it out of here she’d have George put more on their shopping list.
Lockwood took her hands again and rubbed them between his, trying his best to help her get warm while fully understanding she wasn’t physically cold. “George will be round any moment, I’m sure of it.”
Lucy’s feet were starting to go numb and tingling from her position on her now-throbbing knees so she placed her hands momentarily on Lockwood’s chest to stabilize herself as she sat more firmly on the ground, twisting her legs around in the close space to find a more comfortable position. Lockwood followed the movement and when she tried to retract her hands he held them tight, keeping them pressed to the space just above his heart and still rubbing them to get them warm.
Suddenly she was warm, too warm in fact. Would he have held George’s hands like this? The chattering of her teeth had been replaced by a knot in her throat.
But this was Lockwood, through and through. He was full of careless affection. He never seemed to notice how close he stood to her, brushing against her in the kitchen as they went about setting the table, his knee knocking into hers as they rode together in a cab to an investigation, pulling her by the hand to get her to hurry from one thing to another, repositioning her rapier grip or nudging her foot with his to widen her stance during practices in the basement. Was it truly carelessness or did he seek out these moments the same way she did? She couldn’t make herself ask. She didn’t think she’d survive the answer, no matter which way it went.
Instead, she followed his lead, letting him continue to hold her palms against the starched white shirt he wore, grateful for the cover of darkness to hide how she bit her lip.
She started to speak but her voice came out rough and she had to clear her throat. “Should we call for him? So he knows where we are?”
From where her hands rested, she could feel him inhale deeply to speak but he was spared the need to answer by a loud banging on the door behind him. They both jumped at the sound and Lucy took the opportunity to gently withdraw her hands. The same cover of darkness she’d just been thankful for was now her frustration as she thought Lockwood relinquished his hold on her reluctantly but she couldn’t be sure as she couldn’t see his expression.
“Lockwood? Lucy? Are you in there?” called George Karim’s voice through the door.
“Indeed,” Lockwood replied. “Poltergeist locked us in. I don’t suppose you could let us out so we can wrap this up, could you?”
Gripping her elbow, Lockwood stood and helped her to her feet. By the time George had the door pried open, they were both standing and ready to be free of the tight space.
“How on earth did you let yourselves get locked in a closet?” George asked. Lucy was not amused by the grin plastered on his face.
“Oh, the usual way,” Lockwood replied, adjusting the hang of his long coat and shaking out his cuffs. “Misleading client and misinformation.”
“You’re right about that,” George replied. He took one good look at Lucy and frowned. “Are you alright? You look feverish.”
Lucy put her hands to her cheeks and felt how warm they were. Now in the dim light of the hallway, her embarrassment must have been clearly written on her face. Rather than cave to it, she lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes. “I’m fine. But I’m more than ready to be done here. Did you find anything while we were distracting the entity?”
He had and the rest of the investigation moved along smoothly. The source was located, secured, and the trio was able to pack up their supplies and make their way home. George spent a large portion of the cab ride home complaining about their lack of information from the client and how they should start charging a “negligent client” fee when they’ve been severely undersold the danger of a case. He and Lockwood debated the implementation of such a fee but Lucy didn’t engage in the conversation, staring out the window instead. She was tired, both from the strenuous nature of the case but also from the malevolent presence in the closet.
35 Portland Row was a welcome sight, as it always was at the end of a case. The boys went straight through to the kitchen after dropping off their effects in the hallway but Lucy wanted a shower and a change of clothes first. She pushed herself all the way up to the attic and took her time with the hot water. Her knees were indeed bruised but she’d had much worse injuries from cases with misleading information so she figured she should be grateful for getting home with no trip to the hospital in between.
Still, after changing into soft pajamas and warm, wool socks she had more or less decided that going all the way back down to the kitchen for tea and a snack wasn’t worth the trip back up and she flopped down on her bed instead.
She had just started to doze when she heard a knock at her door.
“Yeah?” she called, pushing herself up to her elbows.
The door opened and Lockwood appeared at the top of her stairs, a steaming mug in one hand and an unopened packet of biscuits in the other. “Are you alright?” he asked, echoing his concern from before. She could see him this time and she suppressed a grin upon seeing the exact expression on his face that she had imagined on him in the dark.
She sat up and drew her legs beneath her, nodding. “I’m alright. Just a few bruises.”
“And tired, I imagine,” he replied. He crossed the floor and handed her the mug. “But you have to eat something before you go to sleep. I thought you might have given up on the stairs.”
She took the mug and felt her heart jump as his fingers brushed hers and lingered a moment. He laid the snack on her side table. “Thanks, Lockwood,” she managed. “You’re right. That trek is brutal when you’re tired.”
He flashed her a crooked grin and she felt a flipping in her belly that had nothing to do with her being hungry.
“I’ll leave you to it, Luce,” he said and turned to leave. He stopped again at the top of the stairs and turned back to her. “I’m sorry we didn’t have good information going in. I’ll be strengthening our vetting process going forward.”
Lucy shrugged and looked down at the mug in her hands. “I appreciate that, Lockwood. But don’t do that on just my account,” she paused. “Do it for all of us, to keep all of us safe.”
He nodded and left her alone with her thoughts, which were frustratingly full of the memories of his hands on hers in the dark.