Chapter Text
Lockwood scowled as he caught himself stomping down the steps from the attic. It was childish and rude and fit his mood perfectly, which only served to annoy him further. As he passed Jessica’s bedroom, he grumbled, “Wish you were here. Lucy’s furious at me, and I could do with your advice to tell me exactly how I’m being an idiot.”
He made to continue down the hall, then paused. “I haven’t properly told you about Lucy yet, have I? She’s the new assistant I hired. She’s a Listener, one of the best I’ve come across, and handy enough with a rapier, too. She lives in my old bedroom, and let me tell you, if I thought it was bad living with George, I swear having a girl for a housemate is an exercise in insanity. One minute we’re laughing together and next she’s throwing balled-up socks at my head and won’t even tell me what it is that I’ve done!”
He gave a sort of half-hearted kick at the carpet outside Jessica’s door, then immediately rolled his eyes at his own theatrics. Childish.
“You’re a girl, surely you’d know what’s got her miffed. You all seem to just magically know these things. We were having a perfectly civil conversation, and I brought up her laundry and everything… Ah.” What was winding up to be a satisfying rant - in all but volume - halted in its tracks. A memory surfaced, a shouting match followed by a mutual sulk on separate floors, then Jessica doing her best to calmly establish rules for when they were allowed to move each other’s things, no matter how helpfully intended.
Laundry was something he and George hadn’t really had cause to disagree about, and really, if Lockwood had ever felt inclined to help with George’s laundry, the reaction was more likely to be delight at one fewer trip down to the basement than anything approaching grievance. But clothes had been high up on Jessica’s list of personal items to leave alone without a very good reason, and it was perhaps reasonable to expect that Lucy might interpret his friendly gesture as boundary crossing. Even if he went to the effort of carting it all up multiple floors. Even if he folded everything. Possibly especially if he folded everything.
“That’s hardly fair, though - if she’s going to leave her things in the machine for hours, she can’t seriously object to one of us moving them!”
Lockwood finished stuffing the remainder of his laundry into the basket to carry downstairs for a second load, but found himself hesitating with one foot on the top step. He glanced back at Jessica’s door and frowned.
There wasn’t even any guarantee Lucy was cross with him about laundry. It could be anything, really. Though the fact that she’d beamed at him when he showed up in the attic, and the conversation had remained cheerful until he’d passed the stack of folded clothes to her, did seem like a clue.
It was easy enough to summon Jessica’s advice now. Her voice rang in his ears in dozens of iterations, echoing their parents even before it was just the two of them. He heaved a beleaguered sigh. “I know, I know. Use my words, right?”
Chores could wait. He had something more important to do first. Reluctantly, he set the laundry basket down and turned back to the attic stairs instead.