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It’s 2:27 in the morning and the kitchen lights are a warm yellow glow in 35 Portland Row, softly illuminating Lucy and Lockwood and the plates of freshly made toast and eggs on the table between them. George has long since tottered off to bed, claiming exhaustion — partially from the night’s ghost fight, but mostly from having to help Lucy carry a delirious Lockwood out of the cab, up the front steps, and deposit him on the couch in the library. But Lucy thinks he’d taken off because it was too difficult to see Lockwood like that, stitched and swollen and hopped up on pain medication.
(He’s fine — he’s going to be fine — but even he would admit it had been an uncomfortably close call. There’s cuts and bruises and a burn mark on his torso; he’d dislocated a shoulder; and something had put a slice through his eyebrow that required three stitches and will, much to Lucy’s chagrin, probably leave a scar that’ll make him even more attractive.)
Hence, painkillers.
But it’s been a few hours since his last dose and he’s finally started to become more coherent, so Lucy has gotten him settled in his chair at the table while she sets about fixing them — well, whatever meal it is you fix when it’s 2 AM.
They don’t speak; they don’t have to. Habits established long ago have him reaching for her toast to butter it while she prepares his tea, trading them back to one another with fond smiles when finished. It’s a routine and silence born of comfort, of familiarity, like a soft knitted blanket draped over them—
—and unraveled in an instant with the startling clatter of Lockwood’s suddenly dropped knife.
“Luce?”
She swallows, hard. “Yeah?”
“I just recalled the strangest thing. We were in the library earlier and I was loopy from the pills but I thought that I… and then you… but that’s ridiculous. I guess it was a dream? It didn’t feel like one…” he trails off, rubbing at his lower lip, a furrow in his brow as he studies her.
She shifts uncomfortably, the old wooden chair creaking beneath her. “Oh? Well, you know, those meds they gave you, they do crazy things to your mind.”
“Right. Yeah.” He shakes his head a little, a rueful smile tugging on his mouth. “That must be it.”
Silence descends again, more claustrophobic than before. Lucy is suddenly aware of every clink of cutlery and each of Lockwood’s swallows; her toast, while perfectly buttered, now seems dry and scratches at her throat.
“It just seemed so real,” he says again, because he’s Anthony Lockwood and therefore constitutionally incapable of leaving well enough alone.
Lucy won’t meet his eyes. “You’ve been through a lot, Lockwood. Probably shouldn’t think too much about it until you’ve had a chance to recover.”
He narrows his gaze at her. “Luce?”
“Yeah?”
“You haven’t asked me what it is that I dreamed.”
She tucks her hair behind her ears, studies the stack of dishes in the sink over his shoulder as if they were a work of art sculpted by Brancusi himself. “Given what we went through tonight, I assumed it was something horrifying.”
There’s a delay in his answer, long enough that Lucy chances a glance in his direction to make sure he hasn’t spontaneously combusted or suffered an alien abduction.
It's worse, actually — he's just sitting there, watching her. His eyes are warm and soft and attentive, like he’s trying to see straight through her — or like perhaps he already has.
“Not in the slightest.”
She nods, looks away again. “Okay then. Good. That’s good.”
Lucy lifts her tea with fingers that she somehow manages to keep from shaking and takes a long sip, trying to hide behind the cup. She wants to say something but she’s not sure what; her tongue is heavy with all the words she’s held inside for so long.
Instead, they let the silence take hold of them once more as they finish up the remnants of their middle-of-the-night meal.
For a minute, Lucy almost believes it’ll stick, that tonight will pass like so many others and tomorrow’s sun will send them scurrying back to hide in their usual routines, usual roles.
But then she stands, reaching over to to clear his plate, and Lockwood stops her with a gentle hand circling her wrist.
“I just…I’d like to check something,” he murmurs. “If it’s alright with you.”
She looks down at him and nods once, summoning her courage. “Whatever you need.”
He stands carefully, moving slowly, giving her a chance to pull away. Her breaths are shallow, her head spinning. With him this close, she has to crane her neck to look up at him — the tousle of dark hair on his forehead, the thick fan of his eyelashes, the faint stubble that’s appeared on his cheeks. He smells like a mixture of the familiar and foreign — the aftershave he always wears, the antiseptic they’d used to clean him up at the hospital.
Something begins to rattle inside her ribs; she thinks it might shake her apart.
Then Lockwood lifts his uninjured hand to her cheek, holding her like something precious, as he leans in and presses his lips to her forehead for one lingering moment. They’re warm and soft and even though Lucy feels as if wild horses are stampeding beneath her skin, his touch soothes them, quiets the deafening pounding of hooves. Her breath escapes on a gentle sigh.
Lockwood pulls back just enough to meet her eyes, silently checking in, then repeats the kiss on her cheek.
Lucy’s eyelids drift shut, a tiny hum in her throat; Lockwood slides his hand to the side of her neck, thumb stroking over her erratic pulse.
He drags his lips across her jaw to the sensitive spot just behind her ear, his long fingers weaving into her hair to hold it out of his way. He stays there, face turned into the crook of her neck; his eyes are closed as he breathes in the scent of her. Every exhale brushes against her skin, soft feathers trailing down to her collar. His bandaged hand rests on her hip, holding her steady, keeping her close.
Time turns to molasses, slow and sweet. The only sounds are breath and beating hearts.
When he finally speaks, his voice is raw, cracked open. “It wasn’t a dream, was it?”
Her cheeks are flushed, her heart so swollen it’s hard to force words past it. The hesitation is just long enough for him to pull back, to study her face.
“No,” she whispers.
“I asked you to kiss me here,” he says, pointing to his forehead, “and here,” moving his finger to his cheek, “and here,” the touch landing on his neck, “—and you did.”
“You said if I kissed your bruises they’d feel better.”
“It helped,” he said. “Better than the medication. And then I noticed your bruises—“
“—it’s nothing, honestly—“
“And I said it was only fair if I kissed you back.”
Lucy can’t speak anymore; she just nods. Something in his expression has her daring to hope, the feeling bobbing and buoyant, a balloon on a string.
He laughs once, the sound small and private. “It felt so good to finally kiss you that I thought it must have been a dream. God knows I’d imagined it enough times.”
The balloon of hope inside her chest grows and grows, expanding until it pops in a shower of confetti. “You had?”
He nods, then leans in and kisses her cheek again, this time tantalizingly close to the corner of her lips.
Lockwood pulls back just far enough to meet her eyes. “Was that— am I— is this out of line?”
Lucy grins as she pushes up onto her tiptoes and loops her arms around his neck. “Only if you stop.”