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They had contained the Source, and that was what mattered.
Lucy had promised George – as she and Lockwood left Portland Row that night with kit bags double and triple checked for iron chains – that nothing would go wrong and that they certainly wouldn’t be setting fire to any more houses. To be fair, she and Lockwood had managed to get through the evening entirely free of issues regarding flammability, not a single flare being used between the two of them.
Unfortunately, something else had gone wrong despite this.
It was the final psychic blast from the Visitor that caused the issue. A rare, unfortunate burst of energy that Lockwood had luckily managed to avoid as he wrapped the Source in a silver net. It radiated out from the Visitor’s apparition, knocking picture frames off walls and sending everything from books to furniture shaking across the room.
Oh, and Lucy. She was also very much thrown across the room.
She had been drawing its attention, trying to gather information while also keeping Lockwood safe as he contained the Source. Her rapier had been drawn, dancing a simple knot of iron between her and the glowing apparition, a motion that Lockwood had taught her one late night in the basement of Portland Row when they both couldn’t sleep.
The thought of Lockwood’s hands slipping along her arms, shifting her movements ever so slightly, had caused a wave of some flittering emotion to rise in her chest. And, because Lucy had the worst luck of any agent in the business, the Visitor picked up on the emotion and got agitated.
Agitation plus Source disturbance equals violent reaction. Lucy was never good at math, but it was a simple formula to follow.
It was such a sudden thing that Lucy didn’t fully process that it had occurred until the room was still again. And then her first thought, before the pain washed over her, was that George was going to be so pissed that she got hurt.
Her second thought, once the pain hit, was ouch.
And the pain did hit. It wasn’t so much a wave as a stinging isolation of her body, constant and cold and overwhelming. It was everything in herself to stand from where she had fallen, rubbing the pounding headache away from her temples with one hand, rapier still clutched white-knuckled in the other.
The worst of it was on her left side, where some piece of furniture or décor had collided with her midair. It stung, almost as if it were burnt, like a scrape along her rib bones themselves, with a dull pounding bruise radiating across and through her very being. Lucy shifted her rapier to her left hand, using her right to put a dull pressure on the worst of the hurt, as if holding it would keep it from spreading out across the rest of her body.
“Luce! Are you alright?” Lockwood’s voice slid through the ringing in her ears, full of desperation and fear. She looked up, vision spinning slightly, to catch him rushing in her direction, hands reaching towards her shoulders, ready to assess the damage.
Images shifted through her brain in quick succession. Lockwood’s hands on her shoulders. Her collapsing into his arms. Him touching her wounds. Pain. Him telling George she was hurt. George never letting her and Lockwood on a duo mission alone again. Less profit for the Agency. They all get shut down because Lucy is weak and can’t handle a bit of pain on her own.
None of that would do.
Before Lockwood can touch her, Lucy shifts her rapier up ever so slightly between them. A gentle barrier that stops Lockwood a foot away, hands still raised. As Lucy’s vision settles, she realizes that he’s shaking slightly as well, and the sight sends her stomach into a sickening drop. It’s everything in her to keep the rapier up as a barrier, to keep from reaching out and pulling him into her arms to prove that she’s alive, that she’s okay, that she’s still here.
“I’m fine,” Lucy says instead, willing her rapier hand to steady and the ache in her side to let off for just a moment. “Just shocked is all.”
“That was… you were…” Lockwood runs a hand through his hair, eyes flashing with something Lucy can’t quite place as he searches for words. “You don’t look fine, Luce,” he finally says, more force in the words than Lucy was expecting.
“Well, I am, so we should probably start heading to the Furnaces to – ah!” Lucy had tried to step forward decisively, moving like a non-injured person might, just to prove her point. Halfway into the step, the room had spun, and a twist of pain had shot through her side and along her leg, causing her knee to give out entirely.
Before she could hit the floor for the second time that night, Lockwood – seemingly effortlessly – shifts to catch her weight, hands firm against her shoulders as he slows them both down to the ground. Lucy’s rapier is pinched between them still, clasped tightly in her left hand.
“Fine, was it?” He’s grinning.
“Shut up,” Lucy mumbles through a hiss, tightening her grip on the pain at her side.
Lockwood’s face softens. “Please, Luce,” he says, shifting her rapier ever so gently down and away, “let me at least take a look?”
Lucy tries to refuse him. She clenches her jaw against the cold throbs tearing through her body, tries to will them to subside. A few hours of pain to keep the Agency in business. She can do this.
But then again, Lucy had always found it impossible to resist Lockwood at the best of times. Now, barely able to see straight, it was everything in her to not go boneless in his arms just because he was willing to care about her.
“Fine,” Lucy says finally, the word coming out short and breathless.
“Thank you.” Lockwood brushes over her arms with shaking hands. “What hurts?”
“Everything,” Lucy groans with a roll of her eyes.
“What hurts most, then?”
Lucy looks pointedly away from him. “Left side,” she says, doing her best to not imagine what Lockwood’s hands would feel like brushing over that part of her body.
“May I?” Lockwood asks in a whisper, fingers faint along her tucked in sweater. A shiver of a touch where her equipment belt was tight against her hipbone.
Lucy takes a steadying breath that certainly had everything to do with the pain and nothing to do with that touch and shifts her gaze back to Lockwood’s. His eyes are wide, but soft, looking directly at her face. She knows, just by that expression, that he would stop if she asked. He would probably take her to A&E to get her properly checked out instead, but he would stop, and that thought alone sends her heart racing.
“Go ahead,” Lucy replies in a breath.
The feeling of Anthony Lockwood untucking her sweater and then lifting it ever so slowly, ever so gently higher… it was… it was... fuck, it was enough to make Lucy lose every coherent thought her brain had ever produced. It was almost enough to drown out the pain entirely, shifting from a tingling brush against bare skin into a full-bodied warmth radiating along her chest and through her throat. Her breath caught along with the motion, gasping out of her with a little puff of air when the wound was exposed.
Lucy took the edge of her sweater from Lockwood, shifting it to give him a proper view as he pulled his hands away. She focused in on his face, on the bob of his throat as he swallowed while he looked, the slight part of his lips when she raised her sweater just the smallest bit higher so that the edge of her bra was barely visible. Which she did to give him a better view. Or… or to just see what reaction it would get out of him.
Lucy could survive off of that reaction for ages and never want for more.
She wanted to make him make that expression every day of her life, to have him look at her that way forever.
“It–” Lockwood scratched his nose, shifting his head (and then his eyes) from her side and towards her face again – “it looks mostly bruised, not much I can do to help.”
“Thought so,” Lucy mumbled. Shaking away the thoughts spinning through her head, she lowered her sweater once again. Lockwood’s gaze doesn’t leave her side until she shifts her hand to cover the wound again, the pain throbbing through her.
Vaguely, Lucy thinks to herself that this is perhaps the worst first aid she’s ever received. She knows Lockwood is rather good at patching wounds after having many a scrape bandaged up by his long fingers. And she knows that there’s not much to be done for bruising when they’re in the field with no cold compress to numb the ache. But still; this is exceptionally bad first aid.
Lucy doesn’t mind one bit.
“We should get going,” Lucy says. “We’ve got the Source, right?”
“Right.” Lockwood is looking over her again, eyes dancing on every portion of her body, searching for anything amiss. His hands shift against her shoulders as he does this, thumbs rubbing absent circles.
Lucy wants to figure out a way to save that feeling forever. She wants the only thing left in her body, when she eventually dies and becomes a Visitor, to be the memory of his hands, his fingers, those circles he’s rubbing against her shoulders, ever so close to her collar bone, yet so far away all the same.
“It’s only…” Lockwood trails off, hands stilling. Lucy watches, breath caught as one hand raises up to her cheek, where the pads of his fingers touch her soft enough that she could be imaging it. He pushes her chin to the side slowly and rubs that infernal thumb along a spot at her jawline that she had barely realizing was stinging until he touches it. “You’ve got a cut here,” he says.
Lucy is going to die. She’s going to absolutely fucking die, and it will be the best thing that’s ever happened to her.
“I do,” is all she can manage to get out in response, eyes closing without a thought as she takes in the feel of his fingers spreading and glancing down her neck, just behind her ear, on her chin…
“Luce,” he says softly, and she leans into the touch, turning her head his way.
“Hm?” It’s a miracle that sound is able to escape from her body at all with the state she’s in.
“May…” a pause, a nervous swallow. Lucy feels as though she’s burning. “May I kiss you?”
“Yes.” She’s not sure if she thinks it or says it aloud, but she must have said it aloud, because Lockwood is leaning their foreheads together, hand still gently touching her face. He shifts it ever so slightly, thumb on her chin and fingers curled below, to tilt her head up and to the side.
And then they kiss.
First kisses are supposed to be awkward. They’re supposed to be a quick peck, a fumble to figure out who’s kissing top versus bottom lip, where you’re supposed to put your hands, and how you’re supposed to move your mouth. They’re supposed to be something to giggle about afterwards, to try over again to make them better each time.
This kiss is nothing like that, and if Lucy had enough brainpower left to realize it, she would be ecstatic.
Lockwood kisses her like the chance could fall away at any moment; slow, soft, and gentle. It’s like his lips are the one solid thing tethering her to reality, like if he moves too fast or takes too much then she’ll disappear from him forever. Even his breaths are soft, small little puffs of air in time with her own between every short connection of their lips. It’s as though he’s consuming every bit of her that he can in the small bits of contact between them. Hands, lips, and a brush of legs aside one another on the hardwood floor.
It’s addictive. Lucy feels as though she’s floating.
After a moment, he pulls away slightly, hand still along her chin, foreheads still touching. He’s breathing heavily, little pants that are mirrored by her own. She stares at him, watching as he darts his gaze between her lips and her eyes in quick succession, mouth parted slightly.
“Lucy,” he says, and the way he says her name is like a promise that there’s so much more to this than just a kiss. That there’s enough between them to build their own universe, solid and stable and permanent, and this kiss is just the spark that’s finally igniting its creation.
“Lockwood,” she tries to reply, to whisper out all the emotion swirling through her head in response. But she only gets halfway through before his thumb gently brushes against her bottom lip, and he kisses her once more.
Where the last kiss had been soft and slow, as if Lockwood was savoring every moment to last a lifetime, this kiss is hard and fast. It moves in time with Lucy’s heartbeat, frantic and twisting through her body in a soul-deep want.
Lucy shifts, adjusting so that she can run her hands through his hair. She dances them along the back of his hairline, and he kisses harder, a soft noise escaping from his nose. The sound has her pushing into him in return, instinctively drawing her hand down to his shoulder, to press her fingers against his collarbone in frantic desperation.
It feels like fire. It feels like Lucy is being burned from the inside out, like she’s been catapulted into some new world in which all that matters is her, Lockwood, and the way their mouths fit together to the matching beats of their hearts.
Lockwood’s hand shifts solidly from her shoulder and along her arm. She’s drowning in the feeling, aware of it even with the addictive buzz swirling through her brain from the kissing. She wants that hand… she wants it everywhere. On her back, in her hair, on her chest…
And then his hand shifts to her side, and for a moment Lucy feels like all of existence has aligned just for this perfect feeling to exist.
Then he’s pressing into her side, and pain radiates through the bruise they both seem to have forgotten.
Lucy flinches as the pain shifts to fill the place in her head that had been left joyously empty from Lockwood’s lips on hers. Lockwood pulls away fast at the motion, cold replacing every point where their bodies had been blissfully touching moments before. It leaves Lucy empty and dazed, shifting between the pain in her side and the reality of what just occurred in rapid succession.
“Sorry,” Lockwood says quickly.
Lucy’s lips are tingling. “Don’t you dare fucking apologize for that.”
“Alright.”
“Alright, then.” Lucy wills herself not to bring her hand to her lips. They feel different in a way she can’t quite explain, raw and sensitive and – in some weird way – like they’re partially his now too.
It’s not an unpleasant feeling. It’s just new.
“Alright,” Lockwood says again, and then clears his throat.
“That was…” Lucy can’t finish the sentence.
“It was,” Lockwood agrees.
Lucy thinks, vaguely, that she should say something more. That he should say something more. That they should talk about this… moment between them. That they should acknowledge what it means for their relationship, what it means about how they feel about each other.
There’s a part of her, though, that wants to stay silent about it forever. To steal kisses like this from Lockwood whenever she can, never having to talk about what it means.
It’s vulnerable, having feelings for someone. Lucy has never been good with vulnerable. And she knows that Lockwood’s never been good with it either.
Which is really why one of them should say something, instead of letting this silence build between them thicker and more fearful by the second.
“We should be going,” Lockwood says eventually, eyes pointedly avoiding hers.
“Right.”
He stands. “Here, let me help you up.”
A hand, reaching down for her own. She grabs it, raises to her feet, and leans heavily against the arm that Lockwood supplies her. Everything is spinning and numb and tingling and still painful and Lucy is just… she’s just tired. Too tired to navigate what it all means right now.
They move together downstairs, gather their kit bags, and begin the walk under the flickering Ghost Lamps to the nearest main street to call a Night Cab.
“I like you, you know,” Lockwood finally says into the night once they’re still, words swirling along the green Ghost Lamp beams. “Like, well and proper fancy you. And I don’t want to make things weird for us but… I do. And you should know.”
Lucy looks at him, taking in the twitch of his chin as he bites at his cheek. Their bags are at their feet, the two of them leaned against each other. With the Ghost Lamp’s light, it’s almost as if they’re isolated entirely from the world, their whole lives tied together in a private moment just for them.
“We can pretend that…” Lockwood swallows, fumbling his words. “That nothing… happened tonight if it makes things weird. I just… I like being around you, Luce, and that’s enough.”
Lucy sighs, staring at the pavement. “I don’t want to pretend nothing happened,” she replies finally. There’s more to say, more to admit, but the words get trapped on the way to her throat.
It should be easy, admitting her feelings after Lockwood’s already admitted his own. It should be a triumphant moment of discovery, where they embrace and begin planning dates and all those wonderful things that partners do. It should be a smooth transition from friends to more, and Lucy wants that more than anything.
But she can barely admit her feelings to herself. To say them out loud…
Lucy Carlyle is not a coward though. So, she takes a deep breath, fighting the anxiety rising into her throat, and says “I like… I like kissing you, Lockwood. I like being around you. I like… I like you.” She brings herself to look him in the eyes, melting slightly at the expression there as her voice shakes. “I like you too.”
Lockwood gives a gentle laugh, bumping their shoulders together. “I think I’d like to take you on a proper date then, if you’re amenable.”
Lucy chuckles, nerves shifting into something lighter as they stand so closely intertwined. “I’d like that,” she says. “Though can we wait until this godforsaken bruise is better?”
“Of course.”
“And don’t tell George.”
“Don’t… tell George?” Lockwood’s face flashes with confusion and a bit of disappointment, and Lucy realizes suddenly that he’s misunderstood her.
“Not about – I mean if you want to tell Goerge that we… that you and I…” Lucy feels her face heating. “No, I meant don’t tell Goerge I got hurt. I promised him that nothing would go wrong tonight. He’ll never let us off on cases just the two of us if we keep having disasters every time.”
“I’d say this night was far from a disaster,” Lockwood says with his full megawatt grin, and Lucy feels that she could stare at that face for ages.
“Lockwood.”
“Fine, my mouth is sealed.” A spark of something mischievous rises in Lockwood’s eye, and he leans his head in closer. “Whatever you say, my dear.”
“No, absolutely not.”
“My darling?” He tries, touching their foreheads together.
“Nope.”
“Luce,” he says, his lips so close that she can feel every movement of the nickname, and Lucy feels like melting.
“Perfect,” Lucy says, then shifts forward ever so slightly to kiss him, and the world feels complete.