Chapter Text
“Wait, Luce,” Lockwood said, from the top step. I was on the landing, and turned to face him as he approached. “I wanted to talk to you before tonight — do you have a minute?”
“What is it?” I asked. Lockwood had a funny expression on his face, one I didn’t much like the look of. Not that I ever really disliked Lockwood’s face, especially not like this, just inches from mine in a narrow hallway. But still, something about the set of his mouth told me to be wary.
“I love you,” Lockwood blurted, then stopped.
I waited. He didn’t elaborate.
“And?” I prompted.
Immediately I winced; I could have practiced a tad more tact, and I could practically hear Holly hissing at me. Not that I didn’t appreciate hearing that particular sentence from Lockwood, but, well, it wasn’t particularly a revelation. True, it wasn’t something he said all the time — Lockwood still preferred to express himself in other ways, like making my tea for me in the morning, or a hand on my back when we passed in the hall, or fending off George to save me the last doughnut, or compliments that always managed to catch me off-guard. Like the other day, when I turned around to see him watching me dart around steam jets and whale on Lady Esmeralda II, and he praised my form. I hadn’t noticed him standing there, and would have figured he’d wrapped up his own practice a while ago; only it must not have been that long, because his face was still sort of red and he seemed slightly out of breath. But still — it wasn’t news, and certainly didn’t explain the way he was sort of anxiously bouncing on his toes.
He swallowed, and then the rest came out in a rush: “And I’m concerned for you tonight, on this job. I don’t like it, and I don’t want you going.” Before I had a chance to protest, he finished, “I’m not forbidding it, or anything. I’ve learned my lesson. I’m just telling you.”
My mouth, open from preempted objection, flapped a bit like a fish out of water. I felt similarly baffled by my circumstances, truth be told. Lockwood, being honest about his worries for me, without invoking his authority to take me off the case? Lockwood, openly addressing feelings, full stop? Signs and wonders.
My instinct was still to tell him off for it, mind. But I waited a beat, watching him flex his hand and twist his ring back and forth with the adjoining fingers, and I let his words settle until I could carefully respond, “Why?”
He blinked. “It hasn’t gone well, historically, when I ask you not to get involved. Besides, you’ve got a habit of ignoring orders.”
My fringe was getting too long; I blew it out of my face, maybe more than slightly out of frustration. “I wouldn’t mind so much if you actually did ask me, Lockwood. It’s the jumping in to shield me without checking first that I don’t care for. Especially when it’s literal.” That had been our first big fight as a couple, not that long ago: Lockwood had leaped between me and a Raw-bones I most certainly could have fended off myself, later citing that I looked ghost-locked. “And that’s not what I meant, anyway.”
“I know you can handle yourself,” he said. “I trust you, and I trust your Talent. It’s not about that. It’s... Well, sometimes I think you put yourself at risk unnecessarily.”
I couldn’t quite suppress a small outcry at the hypocrisy.
“Oh, don’t... I’m trying, Lucy!”
I made some attempt to soften my glare. He took a deep breath, flexed his fingers.
“That’s my role on this team. To make decisions, to protect you and George and Holly. I wouldn’t be doing my job as a leader if I didn’t say something, much less” — his voice dropped a little — “your boyfriend.”
“I know you’re trying,” I ground out, resolutely ignoring the way my stomach still flipped at that last word. “And it’s not you making decisions that’s the problem.” Even if some of them tested my resolve not to throw any more punches until at least the new year. “But being a good leader means taking the opinions of your team into account, and it helps if you explain your reasoning.”
He nodded, inhaled. I tried, and mostly failed, to suppress some impatient foot tapping.
Holly’s voice rang out from downstairs. “Lucy? Would you mind helping me with these chains?”
Something must have shown on my face, because Holly didn’t try to engage me in conversation. Instead, we worked quietly side by side on preparing for the evening ahead, which gave me plenty of time to stew in silence. This was just like Lockwood, worrying over me at the smallest hint of danger, but oh, it was fine for him to throw himself headlong into any peril that came our way! That stupid Raw-bones — I had it, I was nowhere near ghost-locked, nothing I couldn’t handle. We had talked about this, that sacrificial impulse, and to his credit, Lockwood had been doing a pretty good job in general at letting me work the way I did best. So I felt fairly justified in my fuming at going backwards.
I plopped a canister of iron into George’s duffle bag with enough force that Holly frowned at me. “Maybe I should handle the flares,” she suggested delicately, and I bit my lip to keep from sulking at her directly. It wasn’t her fault Lockwood and I were in a row, after all. And she maybe had a point; I’d rather not have another explosion to explain away.
Impatiently, I swept my hair out of my eyes. I’d misplaced my favorite clips, the ones shaped like stars that George got me for my birthday, and would have to find something else to tame my hair before we left tonight. Because I was going, whether Lockwood liked it or not.
As I zipped up the last bag, I paused. Why did Lockwood have such a bee in his bonnet about me and this case tonight? I chewed my lip, thinking.
He was working on it still, but Lockwood was rarely reckless without reason these days. What he was still working to accept was the necessity, sometimes, of leading from behind.
Funny thing about that fight over the Raw-bones. It tended to get overshadowed in my memory, because that same week, we’d all split up while out on a job and oh-so-casually, as he directed me to the next wing of the decrepit old house, Lockwood had let slip, “Be safe, Luce, love you.” I don’t think he even noticed till later — my eyes had widened, lips parted in shock, but he’d already turned to go — and then all hell broke loose, when it rather suddenly turned out to be three ghosts for the price of one. (Not for long; Lockwood & Co. made out quite well on that invoice, in the end. The client tried to bluster his way out, but Lockwood and Holly stood firm.)
There was one ground truth at the center of most of Lockwood’s decisions. For better or worse, the needle of his compass tended to point straight at me. And while that came with plenty of advantages — some I was rather beginning to enjoy — it also came with a kind of responsibility I wasn’t entirely sure I’d earned.
I thought back to how this conversation had started, what I’d hustled us past. This was all weird and new, and Lockwood was just as uncertain navigating it all as I was. Maybe I owed it to us both to try a little harder to listen.
I stood in the doorway of Lockwood’s bedroom and knocked lightly, even though it was open. He glanced up and smiled at me, breaking his concentration so that he had to start over with his tie. “Hey, Luce. Everything packed up?”
“Just about,” I replied. “It’s lucky Holly was on it this time. I hadn’t realized how low we were getting on a few things, but she ran out to Satchell’s earlier. She picked up a few of those new flares you wanted to try, too.”
“Ah, excellent. We’ll have to report back to Quill, those were his suggestion.”
“Right.”
An uneasy silence fell. I reached for a conversation opener and found none. Lockwood cleared his throat.
“About earlier…”
“Yeah.”
“You asked for an explanation, and you’re right, you deserve one. It’s just…” He sighed. “Did you read any of George’s report?”
“Any? Ye-es,” I hedged.
This earned another smile. “I’ll take that to mean ‘mostly no.’ Well, by all accounts, this Visitor is a piece of work, Lucy. Apparently exudes some particularly malignant malaise; at least three people have killed themselves in that building since the original, the last one a Listener from Rotwell, six months ago. She was good — the best they had, according to the article George found. And we both know, whoever they had, her Talent couldn’t hold a candle to yours. So,” he shrugged, “I just didn’t want to throw you into all that. Still don’t, actually. Whatever’s in that death loop packs a real punch. I know you think I’m overreacting, but…”
“I don’t,” I said. “Or, I don’t know. I do, but I understand why, I guess.”
Lockwood raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything. Sometimes, I thought we understood ourselves best in the ways we misunderstood each other. But now wasn’t the time for that.
“You know I’ve got a secret weapon none of the others had, going up again this ghost,” I told him.
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“George’s report, for one,” I answered. “He’s the best researcher in London. If there’s something to know about this case, he’s found it. So I know we’re going in prepared. Not to mention” — I tapped him on the back of the hand; in return, he reached out and his fingers lightly encircled my wrist — “a leader who actually knows what he’s doing. So, you see, you really don’t need to worry.”
Despite my upbeat confidence, I watched Lockwood wrestle with his response. Well, that didn’t bode well.
Carefully, he said, “You realize I knew going into this I couldn’t really convince you to stay off the case.”
I snorted. “At least there’s that.”
“Lucy, you know this isn’t going to work if I can’t tell you when I’m worried about you.”
Splintering silence.
Tears welled. I flinched and broke his grip. I tried to speak casually around the ice in my lungs. “Are you… are you suggesting we break up?”
Lockwood paled in alarm. He could have passed for a Visitor, but for two small red spots of anger high in his cheeks. “If you think I’m going to break up with you just because we disagree about how to handle a job—”
“Well, Lockwood, what am I supposed to think? It’s not outside the realm of possibility! And if—”
My mouth snapped shut, but a fraying Lockwood waved an impatient hand to urge me to continue. “Go on, then. You’ve got something to say, let’s hear it.”
“I have everything to lose, and for you, it’s nothing!” I cried, and if I maybe stamped my foot a little, at least Lockwood had the decency to pretend he hadn’t seen it. “If this doesn’t work out, I don’t just lose you and George, I am out of home and job.”
“It would not be nothing to lose y—” he started, then inhaled sharply through his nose, closed his eyes momentarily before stating, calmly, “That will never happen, Lucy.”
“It could, though, Lockwood! You don’t get it — you are my boss, and landlord, my best friend, and now adding boyfriend on top of all that… It’s like, every role I’m in is blended, it all circles back to you, and if I mess up at any one of them, I lose everything.”
It’s fascinating, always, to watch Lockwood’s emotional safety switch at work. His eyebrows twitched — there was a matching movement from his hand, a motion to fold into a fleeting fist — and then again he breathed deeply and sought my gaze.
“Lucy Carlyle,” he said, slowly, solemnly. “Whatever happens, you will always have a place here, at Portland Row, in my company. There is nothing you could do, however either of us might feel in the moment, to change that. If this were ever too much, if you wanted to leave” — his jaw clenched, only for a moment — “even then, my home is yours. Everything I have is yours, if you want it.”
He swallowed. I let out a very small sound; my mouth had fallen open somewhere along the way.
With one long finger, he reached out to lightly lift the sapphire from around my neck. Gem balanced on a fingertip, he murmured, “Undying, I said, didn’t I?”
I must’ve just stood there for several voiceless minutes, just staring. My gaze kept flicking between the pendant and Lockwood’s face — maybe mostly his mouth — as I processed what he was saying.
Permanence, I considered, comes with compromise. Which was something Lockwood and I were going to have to get good at, with practice.
“I hear you,” I said finally, and if my voice came out a little wobbly, well, I think that would be understandable. “And, Lockwood, I’m still going out with you all tonight. But…” I took a deep breath. “I understand your concern, and you have my permission to pull me out if it looks like I’m, you know, Listening a little too closely. I trust you to look out for me and make that call. Agreed?”
The side of Lockwood’s mouth quirked upward. “Agreed.”
From downstairs, there was the sound of the front door flinging open, followed by Holly greeting George and asking after Flo. A moment later, George bellowed up the steps for us to say the taxi was here.
“Ready?”
“I’m right behind you, Luce,” Lockwood promised, and I knew he meant for more than just the short trip to the night cab waiting out front.