Chapter Text
Lockwood used to fall asleep in comfortable pyjamas. Long sleeves kept his arms from freezing when he preferred to sleep with them on top of the duvet. At some point after he turned eleven, he opted to sleep shirtless instead. It wasn’t as comfortable while he tried to fall asleep, but at least it meant he didn’t have to change pyjamas every time he woke up in a cold sweat.
Like tonight, for instance.
He ran a hand through his hair, attempting to catch his breath as the ceiling seemed to phase in and out of focus above him. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, opening them slowly — that was enough to get it to stop moving. Anthony attempted to sit up, using his left hand for extra support to push himself up. Not quite healed yet, the mere action of it forced a sharp intake of breath that he had to swallow to keep himself quiet. His eyes squeezed shut again, mouth set in a thin line. Slow breaths. In… Out… He eased his eyes open again and let his head rest against the head of the bed for a moment as he gathered his thoughts.
Anthony Lockwood had been used to the nightmares and the panic and the unfortunately familiar and overwhelming dread for almost longer than he’d even been aware of. But this… this was different. He tried shutting everyone out, to keep them safe, to keep everything separate. All that ever did was hurt them, the exact opposite of his intention. Ever since everything that happened with Bickerstaff and the Bone Glass, he’d been trying to stick to his word, to his promise to Lucy.
Just reckless enough.
He still wasn’t 100% yet, what with the bullet wound and falling down the shaft onto the catafalque. The only reason he wasn’t pretending to be completely physically fine was that he had zero faith in his own abilities to protect his friends if something went wrong. What if George was cornered by a Wraith and his shoulder pulled, stopping him from getting to a flare in time? What if Lucy ended up ghost-locked and he couldn’t do the right move with his rapier?
There were too many ‘what if’s that made his mouth go dry from even the thought of them.
So Lockwood vowed to be completely open from there on out about his physical wellbeing. Well, aside from the time a flare shattered a window and he received a gash that almost ran the full length of his arm — which he still maintains was just a ‘scratch’, despite insisting on taking care of Lucy’s similar injury that was in a much more minor form on the very same night. He didn’t rush into cases without the full information because if he wasn’t able to improvise as well if things went south, he’d never be able to forgive himself if something went wrong.
He suspected that Lucy and George had their own suspicions about his lack of sleep. Lockwood had been doing his best to hide it, but he’d never been a fan of makeup and the bags under his eyes were getting harder and harder to hide. If they had picked up on it, no one had mentioned anything yet, but it was only a matter of time. He was thankful that they seemingly indulged his fantasy for the time being, pretending everything was ‘fine’.
God, Anthony Lockwood had been anything but fine for a really, really long time.
He hesitated at his bedroom door. Leaving his room meant walking past Jessica’s and that was another thing that he really didn’t want to think about tonight. It also meant he would freeze again, something that was happening more and more regularly. It wasn’t ghost-lock — there wasn’t an active Visitor to cause it. It was just this feeling that presented itself in the form of an increasingly noticeable pressure on his chest and an inability to move. It wasn’t a full on panic attack, he knew enough about those to know the difference between that and whatever… this was. This had a very unavoidable trigger, which was only present at night, on the stairs of 35 Portland Row.
One of the only places he ever felt wholly and completely trapped. It was what Lockwood imagined his own personal hellish version of ‘between a rock and a hard place’ to be. Behind him, his sister’s bedroom. In front of him, Jack Carver’s death glow, somehow still just as luminous as it was when he first saw it. Like he needed the reminder that someone had died there. That someone else had died in this house. It got to the point where he wasn’t even sure if the trace was still there, or if his mind was just playing a nasty trick on him.
He took a deep breath, hand closing around the door handle. He could sit in bed taking unsteady breaths and making fists out of even shakier hands… or he could attempt to relax with a cup of tea, or hot chocolate and a biscuit, and sit in the library with a book until the words didn’t register anymore and his eyes fell shut of their own accord. It wasn’t a surprise the latter sounded more appetising.
Still, it meant crossing the landing.
Lockwood closed the bedroom door behind him. He leaned against it for a moment, eyes closed, willing himself to take the next few steps. He didn’t hear the creaking of a door opening upstairs, nor the subsequent click as it was carefully closed a few moments later. He finally opened his eyes and started down the stairs only to be frozen in the same place that he always was. Two steps from the top with one hand on the bannister. He swallowed thickly, staring straight ahead, but it was impossible to prevent his eyes from darting down towards the death glow in the hallway. His grip tightened on the bannister, knuckles growing white from the tension. A thread of pain worked his way up from his hand to his still-healing shoulder and if he had the ability to move, it would’ve made him shudder.
“Lockwood?”
He couldn’t draw his eyes away.
“Lockwood?”
He barely registered her voice.
All of a sudden, his hand was warm. That didn’t make sense, because his hands were cold and his bare feet were cold and even though he had pulled on a hoodie the feeling of the zipper against his bare skin was cold, cold, cold. Which meant his hand wasn’t warm.
Lucy’s was.
The simple action worked like an anchor, tugging his gaze away from the death glow and onto his hand on the bannister, and hers on top of it. She gave his hand a light squeeze, gently prying his fingers from around the wooden rail and taking his hand in her own instead, using it to turn him to face her. Lucy was so gentle, taking extra care not to tug on his injured shoulder.
Of course, the first words out of his mouth — once he regained the ability to form words, that is — were: “Are you okay?” Because if Lucy was out of bed, it meant she couldn’t sleep, and if she couldn't sleep, that meant—
“Are you?” She countered softly. She was still standing on the landing, and with Lockwood two steps down it was just enough to balance out their height difference. He swallowed, trying to think of an answer that wouldn’t make him sound like he was losing it. The last thing he wanted was for her and George to worry, although by the look on Lucy’s face it was already a little too late. Concern laced her features, as she gave him a once-over, eyes darting down and then back up again as if to check for damage. Not that any of the damage would be visible, anyway.
“Can’t sleep,” Lockwood admitted. Too tired to lie, too tired to keep up any sort of act. That was usually why he disappeared up to his room if it had been a long case, or if he needed to process something. It was easier to do that without having to keep up appearances. Part of him knew that he didn’t have to with them, but even after opening up about Jessica it still seemed like a mammoth task to let his guard down too much at once. If he did that, the dam might break completely and it would be impossible for him to rebuild any sort of defence.
Lucy didn’t push him, though. She just looked past him, down the stairs. “Kitchen?” She suggested, and all he could do was nod. She dropped his hand to go past, and instantly he found himself missing its warmth. It made sense though, the stairs weren’t really wide enough for two people to walk completely side to side, and she probably didn’t want to overstretch his arm.
What surprised him was that once she was a few steps further down, she turned back and held her hand out to him. He couldn’t help but see the death glow that seemed to frame her from behind, a silhouette highlighting how small she seemed now that she was the one on the lower step. Lockwood found himself taking her hand and following her down the stairs. He couldn’t help but look past her every now and then, let his eyes rest on the death glow out of some morbid habit that still made his chest grow tight no matter how much he wished it wouldn’t. But it didn’t matter, because every time he faltered, or felt trapped again, Lucy’s hand was squeezing his again, tethering him to himself.
As soon as they were in the kitchen, he shut the door behind them. Lucy let go of his hand to busy herself with what was probably hot chocolate and Lockwood let his hand fall limply back at his side as he leaned against the door, resting his head against it. “You didn’t answer my question.” He remembered, and his concern for her returned now that his own problems were separated by a wooden door. He could think a little clearer with them out of sight, and his attention became wholly focused on her. “Are you okay?”
“Couldn’t sleep either,” she admitted, turning around with the drinks already made. Oh, he must have been leaning against the door for longer than he thought if she managed to get that done so quickly. He took that as his cue to take a seat next to her at the table. She looked at him for a moment, like she was trying to find the right words. The right words to say what, he couldn’t tell just yet. “I haven’t been able to since the Bone Glass.”
Lockwood frowned, moving a little closer to her. “You aren’t mesmerised by it, are you?”
“I didn’t look directly, remember? So I can’t be,” she reminded him with a sigh. “And you know that spell broke when the mirror did.” Lucy nursed her hot chocolate, avoiding eye contact. She rubbed her hands against the outside of the mug to warm them up a little. “But it did… show me things.”
“What kind of things?” He couldn’t help but push, attempt to get her to share the burden in some way. He hadn’t been there when she faced the mirror — well, faced it via the Skull — mostly because he was in the middle of getting shot, but still, which meant that he had no idea what happened, other than what she and George had told him. Even then, he wouldn’t be surprised if they left out one or two of the most jarring details.
She still didn’t look up at him, pretending to be fascinated by the contents of her drink. “The kind of things that keep people up at night,” Lucy whispered. When she looked back up at him, finally allowing their eyes to meet, he was faced with a vulnerability she rarely let him nor George see.
“Luce.” His voice came out pained. Her openness let his own guard slip momentarily, and he reached for her hand on the table. “I can’t say I know exactly what that’s like… but I do understand, at least a little.”
“Is that… Is that why you’re awake?” Lucy looked at him again and god, if that didn’t start to chip away at his walls in a way that only she could.
“One of the reasons.” It slipped out, it hadn’t meant to. Even then, it didn’t give much away, but at the same time it opened up the opportunity for more questions. Questions that seemed harder and harder to lie to the closer they got to them.
“On the stairs, you…” She trailed off, either unsure of how to phrase it or unsure of what she’d seen in the first place. It was fair enough, Lockwood wasn’t even completely sure what he’d experienced, let alone how to describe it in full. Not that he’d want to, not entirely at least.
It was his turn to look away, searching everywhere in the room but her face for the answer. “It happens, sometimes,” he explained softly. “It’s not… It’s not as bad as at the auction. It’s not panic… I don’t… I don’t know what it is.”
“It doesn’t happen during the day, does it?”
She was getting closer to the truth now, but he didn’t make a move to stop her. “No, it doesn’t.”
“I thought so. I would’ve noticed.” Her reply was so quiet, it was hard to tell if he was meant to hear it or not.
Still, Lockwood made a weak attempt to lighten the atmosphere. “Ah, and here I thought I was doing so well at hiding it.”
“You don’t have to, though,” she reminded him. “With me or George. No more secrets, remember?”
For some reason, when Lockwood said that, when he let them in about Jessica’s room, a part of him expected it to just… stop. No follow up questions, no check-ins, no treating him any differently from usual. The part of him that enjoyed being bluntly honest with him told him that his friends would never just leave it there, even if there was nothing left to tell.
“No more secrets,” he echoed. “I am trying, I promise.”
Lucy squeezed his hand. “I know.”
They stayed in comfortable silence for a few minutes, drinking their hot chocolate and each waiting for the other to speak first. It was still comfortable, and Lockwood knew he could probably stay like this with Lucy all day if he wanted to, but there was still more to be said. No matter how much he hated saying it, and regretted building up to it.
Rip the bandaid off, get it over and done with.
“Jack Carver’s death glow is still in the hallway and I still see it every time the sun goes down despite the fact it’s been weeks and it really should’ve started to fade at least a little by now.” Lockwood blurted out, before he had a chance to overthink it. She opened her mouth to say something, but he cut her off, wanting to be completely finished while he still had the sleep-deprived burst of honest courage to do so. “And I don’t get claustrophobic, really, ever, but when I’m standing there on that step and I’ve got him in front and her room behind me it’s as if I’ve been ghost-locked.” There. It was out in the open. Well, that part, at least. That was just what stopped him from coming downstairs once he was already awake, but she didn’t need to know everything just yet. If he turned on that tap it ran the risk of never turning off.
She squeezed his hand again, providing just enough comfort that he didn’t regret telling her in the first place. “We’ll figure it out,” she promised. “But you’re not alone.”
“I know,” he replied softly, eyes fixed on the thinking cloth.
“I mean it, Lockwood,” Lucy repeated herself, this time a little more firmer. She cupped the side of his face with one hand, forcing their eyes to meet. “You are not alone.”
“I know,” he echoed his earlier reply, holding her gaze.
The difference was, he actually meant it that time.