Chapter Text
Everyone knows that Talent fades. It’s one of the few certainties of life with the Problem. Somewhere between your late teens and your early twenties, the tap dries up. Gradually, the visitors fade from bright figures into faint wisps of light that grow ever more transparent until one day the best you get is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it flutter in your peripheral vision. The chill lingers, as does the chest-penetrating fear. You just can’t see where it’s coming from.
Or so you’ve been told, anyway.
What most people don’t know is that for a select few, talent persists. No one talks about it, so you’ve got no idea how many people it is true for, but you’re certain you’re not the only one. For a start, there was Marissa Fittes. The stories that came out after her – final – death talked about a powerful type 3 that had guided her. So she evidently hadn’t lost her talent for Listening as she’d aged. And that meant Lucy Carlyle, the famously powerful Listener with the Lockwood and Co Agency probably wasn’t losing her’s either. Actually for that matter, perhaps Anthony Lockwood himself still had his Sight… The Newspapers had begun speculating about it, but all the pictures from successfully closed cases continued to feature the two agents, long after everyone had expected them to hire new blood or close up shop for good. And then there was Quill Kipps, the former Fittes Supervisor who worked with Lockwood and Co on occasion. He was pushing thirty now and still an active operative. Had his talents simply never faded?
But anyway – that’s just speculation. What you do know is that at 23 years of age, your Sight hadn’t faded at all. Sometimes, when facing a particularly gruesome Rawbones in the small hours of the morning, you wished it would. What cruel fate had decided that this was something you wouldn’t (ever? That remained to be seen) get a reprieve from?
Your Touch continued to grow stronger. That was the most confusing part of it. Your Listening was still there, but had never been particularly good – mostly you just picked up echoes from the objects you Touched. But past the age when Talents should have faded, to find yourself increasingly sensitive to the psychic memories of objects you held in your hands, made no sense. When you could, you’d sneak down to the archives in the backrooms of the Bunchurch offices to hold the old objects that languished in silver-glass cases on forgotten shelves. You’d been doing it since you were a teenager and first joined the agency. Many were like old friends, you knew them so well. Over the past year or so, however, their echoes had grown more vivid than before. No longer the ghost of an emotion, the faint echo of a scream, they now showed you increasingly rich moments with emotions that rioted through your own chest, complete with smells and sometimes even quick snaps of Sights.
You had to test your Talents in the back office, because in the last six months they had finally pulled you from active service. To be fair, you hadn’t told anyone about your persisting abilities. You weren’t daft enough for that – Fittes might be gone, but DEPRAC almost certainly had some labs hidden somewhere where you’d be funnelled away for endless rounds of tests and analysis. You had simply fudged a lie about a very slow fade that seemed to be broadly accepted. In truth, your purportedly fading Talents were only questioned at the end of the meeting in which the agency’s chief supervisors decided your career as an agent had come to an end. You were pretty sure that your increasingly frustrated advocacy for better conditions and care for the agency’s newest and youngest recruits was actually behind your demotion – or promotion, as they tried to sell it – into the supervisor training path. They couldn’t fire you as an agent – you were too good. But as a supervisor, there was much more room for you to step out of line and lose your job.
(They were just children. You had been one too, long ago in a country village a long way out of London. You remembered how scary it had been, how many things you had seen that you knew children shouldn’t have to. You simply couldn’t stand by and watch the next generation go through it again, not when they seemed so much smaller and younger than you had ever been.)
After six months restrained within a circle of iron chains on every case, under the ever-watchful eye of a rotation of established, obedient supervisors who were simply waiting for an excuse to fire you, you’d finally snapped.
There was only supposed to be one type 2 haunting the Kennington pub that night. The team was good – some of Bunchurch’s best agents. Some of their youngest too. You’d known something was wrong from the start – you could feel the psychic energy almost crackling as you had entered the space, the children shifting nervously and glancing at each other in concern. But the lead supervisor – a stubborn old man whom you’d butted heads with many times during your agent days – sent them on in, while the two of you waited in the quiet front room. He’d even had the gall to pour himself a complimentary pint – most of which he’d spilled down his front when the screaming started.
He'd tried to hold you back but moved too slowly. You were at the door with your rapier in hand in a second, muscle memory taking over as you acted on instinct. In another, you had forced the door in against the whirling psychic winds and plunged into the fray.
In the end, it hadn’t mattered, as you tried to tell the inquest two days later. They had succumbed to ghost touch before you’d even opened the door. If you’d been allowed to act swifter, perhaps – but it was too late. All you could do in the end was fight your way back out and let DEPRAC clean up the mess in the safe light of day.
They fired you, of course. A sightless supervisor leaping into action presented a serious hindrance to agents in the midst of an operation, or so the newspapers claimed as they splashed your name across their pages in an attempt to deflect some of the glare from the Bunchurch agency itself. In barely a week, a fleeting week, you lost everything – the uniform you’d worn for the last eight years, the only job you knew how to do, the dorms that had been your home. You found yourself, on a sunny winter morning, standing on the streets of London with a small bag of clothes (your rapier concealed inside it) and nowhere to go.
Your remaining friends had seen you off with weak smiles. They’d all known it was coming, one way or another. The close friends from Bunchurch – the ones who would have stuck by you, would have been up in arms with you – had long ago left. Left the agency, left London, left this Side.
At a loss, wearied from the traumatic week, you found your feet carrying you out of habit to the archives. With a pitying glance, your favourite librarian let you in. You had been a dedicated researcher in your youth, and still regularly popped in to help out the younger agents. Muscle memory wove a path through the stacks to the quietest back corner, where the old neon lighting was slowest to blink on on the rare occasions that anyone strayed back there. You’d used to nap there, worn out from late night cases, back in the depths of the Dark Winter when every agency had been working flat out. Now an adult, you sank into a weary puddle, and curled up on the rough carpet to pass out once again.
You were rudely awoken by the old lights noisily blinking on above your head. You screwed your eyes up against the light and glared at the intruder.
George Karim peered down at you from behind his glasses. “Y/n, L/n. The Sightless Supervisor. Fancy meeting you here.”
You flinched at the nickname. “Is that what the papers are calling me these days?”
“It is.”
You sighed, pulling yourself up to standing. “It’s good to see you, George.”
“You too. It’s been a while.”
“It has – you’re working for DEPRAC now, aren’t you?”
“Part time. Still researching for Lockwood and co when they need. I’d ask how things are at Bunchurch, but I already know.”
You pulled a face.
“Guessing by the bag and the sleeping on the library floor – which, by the way, I haven’t seen you do in years. Your back won’t appreciate that these days – they’ve evicted you, haven’t they?”
“Yep.” You stretched.
George nodded, obviously pondering something. “Nowhere to go?”
You rolled your eyes. George was a good friend and had been since you were both bright eyed teenagers in uniforms who ran into each other in the library between cases. In truth, you were overwhelmingly relieved to see him. In the last few years you had lost touch, as the maverick agency he was part of skyrocketed to fame in the fallout of the Fittes dissolution. Of anyone you knew in London though, he was the least likely to judge you for the events of the last week.
“Obviously.”
George gestured in the direction of the study desks at the other end of the stacks. “Come help me out with this bit of research. I might be able to find a solution for you.”
After a morning of fetching and carrying books and papers for George (just like old times), he eventually led you out of the archives and over to the infamous Portland Row for a spot of lunch. As you travelled you told him all, your side of the story eagerly slipping from your lips as it finally found a receptive audience.
“And so here you find me.” You concluded, as the two of you turned onto Portland Row, having stopped at Arif’s for fresh donuts. “Homeless.”
“About that.” George replied. “Let me talk to Lockwood after lunch. You might be able to stay here for a while.”
The relief at being amongst friends was swiftly replaced with jittery nerves, though you did your best to quell them as you sat at Number 35’s kitchen table. In all your years of friendship with George, you had never actually been into 35 Portland Row. You had met its other inhabitants in passing, in the archives once or twice, and once when you were selected to represent Bunchurch at a Fittes gala. Enough to know who they were, and to take an interest every time they were mentioned in the papers.
Enough, as it happened, for you to have had an embarrassing teenage crush for a few years on the well-dressed agency head who now sat across from you.
Lockwood and Lucy had been preparing for that evening’s case, and came up from the basement bickering about salt bombs and magnesium flares like an old couple when you and George arrived. Holly had come up just after them and swiftly helped George lay the table while Lockwood welcomed you in with a warm smile, a handshake, and his intimidating charm.
You spilled your guts again to the four of them, trying and failing to bite back your desperation to have someone take your side. They listened sympathetically and slowly you could feel yourself calm down. Both Lucy and Holly commiserated, mentioning how in their days with bigger agencies they too had lost entire teams to negligent supervisors.
“Sounds like you would have made a good supervisor,” Holly smiled at you reassuringly.
“Maybe eventually…” You conceded. “Once upon a time I wanted to end up as one, before I hit all the agency politics.”
There was a sudden flicker of psychic energy around an old skull that Lucy had placed on the table earlier on. You caught the swirl of ectoplasm forming around it from the corner of your eye and couldn’t help reflexively turning to look at it, your mind whirring with questions. Namely: what kind of visitor was powerful enough to manifest in the afternoon sun, and what were Lockwood and Co doing with it sitting, uncontained, on their kitchen table? You felt the energy shift as the visitor made some kind of contact.
Lucy quietly chuckled to herself.
Lockwood had caught your sudden distraction and followed your line of sight. "Your Talents haven't actually faded, have they?" He said suddenly.
You met his eyes with caution. They were focused on you with a sharp, inquiring gaze.
"Uh - no. Not entirely."
"Not entirely or not at all?"
You hesitated.
"It's okay," Holly piped up. "Mine faded a couple of years ago and George’s are nearly gone, but Lockwood and Lucy are both going strong. Lucy is arguably growing stronger these days. We won't tell anyone if you don’t want them to know, will we?”
The others nodded in agreement.
"Not at all." You admitted hesitantly. "My - well I think, that is, that my Touch has possibly been growing stronger. More sensitive."
“So it was not such a thoughtless move, going in after your Bunchurch team…” Lockwood mused. “I did wonder if that might be the case.”
"You can see Skull..." Lucy observed. "Can you hear him?"
"Can you? - Wait!" Something clicked into place in your brain suddenly. "He's a type 3 - he's your type 3. Like Marissa -"
All three looked at you sharply. "Not like Marissa Fittes." Lockwood clarified quietly.
"No, I just mean - well I read the newspapers of course. I'm a researcher too. I knew there had to be something... else. Something more to the story from your end. This makes so much sense."
They were still staring at you cautiously.
"I'm not - I won't tell anyone. I swear. Who would I tell? Hell, who would believe me right now? As far as the public are concerned, I'm a talentless disgrace."
Lucy let out a relieved chuckle. "Fair enough. Can you hear him then?"
You frowned at the skull, focusing in on its energy. "Not right now."
The ectoplasm swirled into a face over the old bones, and murmured something. Lucy rolled her eyes at it, but you gasped. "Almost! It's like I'm underwater though, I can't quite make it out."
"Probably for the best, knowing him." George commented.
"Definitely for the best." Lucy replied, pulling a face at whatever the skull had actually said.
"My Listening was never as strong as my Touch though - could I try?" You motioned towards the skull.
"Why not." Lucy replied. "You wouldn't dare ghost touch one of our friends now, would you?" She glared at it. The skull replied with a lengthy comment, only whispers of which reached your ears. Lucy glared at it some more and it rolled its ectoplasm eyes, before parting the goo to expose a section of the weathered bone. "He asked you to be gentle." She relayed. "Among other things."
Tentatively you placed the tip of your fingers onto the top of the skull, the bone bumpy beneath your Touch. You felt first the general animosity of the spirit, shot through with affection for the Listener beside you, and then, flashes of a past life, too quick for you to make any sense of, until - suddenly, as if you'd been abruptly pulled out of the water that had clouded your ears, the voice became audible.
His choice remarks didn't bear repeating.
Startled, you took your hand away, letting the voice quietly fade out as the connection was broken.
"Well?" George asked, watching you closely.
"I heard him then - just for the moment that I was touching him."
"Well I never. You are powerful." George sat back with a satisfied grin on his face. “I have many questions to ask you, but first! Lockwood, Lucy, we have indeed found another agent who doesn’t appear to be ageing out of their Talents.”
You looked between them hesitantly. A smile grew on Lucy’s face as she seemed to catch onto George’s line of thinking.
“And this agent in particular just happens to be out of work at the moment. Perhaps here lies the answer to your need for an extra pair of hands, since Holly and I retired.”
Lockwood hit you with an almost blinding grin. “Excellent point, George. Miss L/n, what would you say to joining London’s smallest but most famous psychical detection agency?”
You blinked at the two of them for a moment. “I…”
“Say yes!” Lucy said, excitedly. “We do need an extra pair of hands, and we all know you were a good agent – are a good agent, sorry.”
“And, subject to the landlord’s agreement of course,” George added, “you could stay here, in Portland Row, too. At least until you found yourself a flat or something. After all, Lockwood, it’s not like you’re short on space since Lucy and I moved out.”
Lockwood’s smile had dimmed slightly, but it brightened again a moment later. “Of course! You’d be very welcome. I’m positively rattling around this place on my own these days.”
And just like that, your predicament was resolved. George returned to the archives after lunch, with a satisfied smile on his face and a refusal to hear your thanks. Lucy and Holly led you upstairs to the attic space that had once been Lucy’s room. Lucy said they’d have offered you George’s room, but he still used it sometimes, when they got back late from cases or he’d had an argument with his girlfriend (a mysterious “Flo”), and they weren’t sure it would ever be a safe space. Besides, this way, you and Lockwood had separate bathrooms. Lucy herself was living with her girlfriend Norrie in a flat a few streets away, and could use the spare room next to Lockwood’s if ever she needed.
You quickly settled into life with Lockwood and Co. They let you have your first week off to recover, before you gradually eased back in with researching and eventually joining Lockwood and Lucy on cases. For all that George and Lucy had moved out to have more privacy with their relationships, they and Holly were over every day, and the house rarely felt empty. In many ways, the set up reminded you of the good old days at Bunchurch, when you’d been surrounded by friends in your late teens, at the top of your careers as agents.
It was good to be back in the field again. You had missed it more than you knew. Lockwood and Lucy operated like a well-oiled machine, very used to working as a team. They were welcoming to you though, and appreciated the extra help your talent could offer. A few weeks in, Quill Kipps joined the three of you on a couple of cases – where you were almost disappointed to learn that his mysteriously lasting Talents were in fact a stolen pair of goggles from the Orpheus Society.
Living with your teenage crush (in his house, no less) proved less awkward than you’d expected. Sure, it was a little awkward to start with. You couldn’t really blame yourself for the initial flutters when you ran into him in his pink pyjamas, hair mussed and voice deep from sleep, first thing in the morning. Or when you watched him at his rapier training down in the basement, shirt clinging to his back with sweat. Or that one time you, very awkwardly, very embarrassingly, ran into him on his way from the shower to his room, with nothing but a towel slung low around his hips. You’d fled fast to hide your bright red cheeks then.
Gradually though, the two of you got comfortable sharing a living space. Lockwood invited you to spar with him in the basement, and you started sitting with him in the library on the rare quiet evenings when Holly scheduled time off for everyone else to go on the odd date with their significant other. You and Lockwood watched movies then, or discussed the novels strewn around the house that you had begun to work your way through. Sometimes you even traded tales of old cases and ridiculous teenage hijinks that you would never attempt now. You told him about your childhood, wistfully recalling the rolling green hills and clean air of the countryside. Very, very slowly, he told you that the house was his parents’, that the now spare room had been his sisters. Brief comments, mentioned quickly in passing.
In truth though, you hadn’t needed him to tell you that. You’d never admit it to him, because it felt like an invasion of privacy, but the house positively ached with psychic memory. If you hadn’t been sure of your growing sensitivity to Touch, every moment in the library confirmed it. Certain books almost glowed with the affection of former readers. The museum of masks and paraphernalia on the walls told stories of far-flung places. The walls themselves occasionally gave you glimpses into their past lives, when you trailed your fingertips against them late, late at night. Long dead residents, maids in bustling petticoats. A young couple’s laughter. A little boy squealing in delight as his older sister chased him up the stairs to his attic bedroom. The floorboards up there sometimes whispered of toys tucked beneath loose panels – you let them lie. A dusty piano in a corner of the living room gave you the sharpest memory of them all – an overwhelming wave of adoration as a classical piece was played by a wife for a husband she loved very, very much.
You had slammed the lid very painfully onto your fingers when the echo faded to reveal Lockwood standing in the door frame watching you with a shuttered look on his face.
“Get anything from it?” He’d asked, almost bitterly.
You had paused, unsure of how to respond. He had just stood there, so unusually still for a boy who was ever moving, watching your cheeks heat with a guilty blush. Eventually you had plumped for the truth.
“I… find that most houses, most things that had emotion attached to them give me an echo these days. I’m learning to tune it out where I can, but I still pick stuff up from them. You know, like which mug was used in Lucy’s interview – or which book scared a previous reader, before I’ve even read the blurb.”
“And the piano?” His voice was hard.
“The piano was played with a lot of love.” You replied softly.
He’d turned on his heel and left you there, feeling like you’d done something wrong. He never mentioned it again, and the next time you saw him was back to the usual bright smiles, but every so often you’d catch him watching you closely when you touched things.
As you increasingly spent time together, your old crush on Lockwood resurfaced. When you had been a teenager, it was mostly a case of blushing smiles, teasing nudges from your friends, and closely reading every article the newspapers published of his successes. They’d often teased you about getting George to introduce you – once, mortifyingly, in front of George – but you’d always refused. In time, it had faded, as you all grew up and started getting involved with your fellow agents (and the newspapers started hinting at a relationship between Lockwood and the Listener he never took his eyes off).
This time, it was different. Now you actually knew Anthony Lockwood the man. You knew how he took his tea, and when he’d take it, sometimes surprising him with a fresh cuppa mere moments before you knew he’d be popping his head in to ask if you wanted one. You knew which donuts he preferred, which novels he liked best, which cases he was proudest of, which rapiers were his favourite, and which moves he liked to show off with.
And this time, he knew you. Lockwood knew how you took your tea, and when. How you liked your toast buttered, and increasingly when to surprise you with it ready and waiting in the mornings. Which donuts were your favourites, which novels had made you cry, which cases you were most embarrassed about botching, which rapier tricks you couldn’t master no matter how hard you tried, and which music you would play loudly in your room and then hum in the kitchen later that day.
You knew how to make each other laugh, how to tease and bug each other about the little annoyances of sharing a living space when you needed to keep tensions down late at night on a case. So maybe, maybe Lucy had, once, accused you of flirting, but you’d shot that idea down very quickly. Because what you were sure Lockwood didn’t know was how your stomach swooped every time he complimented your skills as an agent. How you still felt the teenage flutters when he levelled you his winning smile, how you could feel every brush of his hand and every friendly clap on the back for minutes after it had ended, how you couldn’t pick up those damn rapier tricks because every time he tried to show you you’d get distracted just watching him.
Your role as Lockwood and Co’s newest addition was largely kept on the downlow. After your exit from Bunchurch, you had no desire to again face the music of the British Press. Lockwood didn’t need them questioning his hiring choices either. You kept to the shadows, let Lockwood deal with the cameras, and often found Lucy joining you out of the way.
Of course, that idyllic balance could ultimately never last more than a few months. You’d stepped out with Lockwood to try out new rapiers at Satchells one afternoon and the next day the gossip mags all had zoomed in photos of the two of you goofing around together. A week or so later, someone published a shot of the two of you entering 35’s front door captioned ‘Moving fast: Has Anthony Lockwood moved his new girlfriend in, just weeks after Lucy Carlyle’s confirmed departure?’
You’d been in a foul mood the next day (privately, deeply, terrified about how it might make Lockwood feel. About whether he’d still want you to stay. About how you were going to handle the heartbreak when you both inevitably had to laugh off how wrong they all were). After one too many scowls over the breakfast table, Lockwood had dragged you down to the basement (a warm hand on your wrist that conclusively paused the whirrings of your brain) to work the frustration out with a very sweaty practice session still in your pyjamas. You’d just, finally, mastered a new complicated knot and happened to be holding a lovely moment of eye contact with Lockwood, grinning joyfully at each other, when you were interrupted by a knock at the door.
Lockwood had headed up to answer it, and you followed him out of curiosity, loitering near the foot of the stairs in case it was a prospective client you would need to run up and change for.
The noise outside was too loud for just one client. Lockwood stepped out and gently pulled the door to behind him. You could hear him raise his voice above the clicking camera shutters.
"I will not be commenting on my personal life, or that of my colleagues at this time."
One particularly pushy voice rose above the hubbub. "Is it true you're now seeing the disgraced Bunchurch supervisor? It's reported that she's moved in here with you."
The clamour rose again. "How does your top Listener feel about that?"
"Did you cast Carlyle aside for what'sherface or did she break it off with you first?"
"Do you sleep with all your female employees?"
You slammed the door open, and shouldered past Lockwood to stand before the small crowd of reporters that had huddled on the Portland Row pavement. You were still in your saggy old pyjamas, drenched in sweat from the workout, your rapier still clutched threateningly in your fist.
You made direct eye contact with the diminutive man who had asked the last question and raised your middle finger.
Lockwood pulled you back inside with a strong hand around your bicep and bolted the door behind the two of you.
"Right." He sighed. "That will have helped nothing."
The next day the papers were plastered with images of the two of you, captioned with all manner of suggestive headlines. You did your best to ignore them - particularly how unflattering they made the old pj bottoms look - though you couldn't help but marvel at the depths of research some of them went to, trawling out almost decade old case reports to chart your rise as a Bunchurch star before your recent fall from grace as the Sightless Supervisor.
Lucy found you one afternoon, tucked in a corner of the library, privately pouring over the newspapers. You shoved it guiltily out of sight when she entered, but not quick enough to prevent her glimpsing the headline.
"You get used to it," she chuckled. "Learn to ignore them."
"I know." You sighed.
"Have you seen Lockwood recently?" She asked.
"Uh - no. He's been avoiding me, I think. I mean, I did kind of make this whole scandal worse there."
"It'll be fine." Lucy reassured you. "He's probably just sulking somewhere because they caught one single hair out of place." She turned to leave.
"Hey - uh, can I ask -" You blurted out quickly. "What is the history with you and Lockwood?"
Lucy smiled fondly. "Want to know if there's any truth to those rumours?"
"Yes - well. Uh... and how things are... now."
Her smile turned into a knowing one. "I see. Well, a long time ago now, we did have something of an... entanglement. Briefly. But it didn't work out - too much bickering. Too much on top of each other, with the agency and living here. It was already kind of petering out when Norrie came back."
"Came back from where?"
"She was ghostlocked, when we were teenage agents. I - we're not sure how, exactly, but she made a full recovery four years ago now. Eventually she moved down to London and we rekindled our friendship and then... our relationship."
"I'm happy for you guys."
"Yeah," she smiled. "Me too. Obviously. Now, I better go find Lockwood. That Satchell's order won't unpack itself."
Things improved once Lockwood came out of his sulk. In a couple of days, you were both back to normal, the gossip rags nonsense forgotten. Well, for the most part. George and Quill still liked to mock your raised middle finger and little glare which had, you'd admit, come off as more peeved than intimidating. But you knew they meant well by turning it into a joke - and you weren't above laughing when Holly cracked and flipped Lockwood off with a peevish little glare over the breakfast table one morning.
Something seemed to shift after that. You could only hope it was not prompted by Lucy meddling – after all, you had all but admitted to your crush on Lockwood to her. Her knowing smiles only continued, and soon spread to George and Holly too. It was getting harder and harder to hide the damned thing, when they’d all be staring at you oh-so-innocently as you turned tomato red after every off-handed compliment from your housemate.
Not that Lockwood was helping the matter. The flirty banter had turned up a notch and begun to continue into the daylight after cases. He seemed to find excuses to be around you ever more often, popping up to ask your opinion on all kinds of menial things. It was increasingly common for the others to find you engaged in mock debate mid-task – whether that was sorting the store cupboard, training with rapiers or simply mid breakfast, toast growing cold as you argued over jam versus marmalade.
He was growing gradually more touchy-feely too. He’d never been one to avoid it, but it was definitely increasing – gently shifting you to the side with a hand on your lower back as you moved around a cramped corner of the kitchen. Fixing your position in a fencing move not by simply nudging your feet into place with the toe of his plimsoll, but with warm hands on your wrist and waist, the heat of his chest bleeding through the thin cotton t-shirt on your back, his breath tickling your neck. Oh, how George had laughed when he’d blundered into that moment, the two of you springing apart and refusing to look at each other.
The next thing you knew, he was insisting on helping you into your coat when you left for a case, hands brushing over your shoulders. Fingertips brushing as he picked up your kit bag and passed it to you – Lucy muttering in the background about preferential treatment to new employees. In the dark of the old London mansions that you were clearing, he’d hover close by, ostensibly watching your back while you Felt the walls of a house, tapping into the web of psychic memory to trace it back to the Visitor’s source. Slipping his hand into yours, grounding you, providing a tether to the present when the strength of the echoes threatened to overwhelm you. To start with, he’d drop the hold when Lucy’s torch beam swung round towards you, but increasingly he’d just keep holding on. After a tough case, with a strong echo, you found he’d lace your fingers back together in the nightcab back to Portland Row, holding you to the present as you let the Visitor’s pain fade from your memory. Once, after a really rough night, he camped out on your bedroom floor, holding your hand until you eventually fell into a fitful sleep. You refused to meet anyone’s eyes in the kitchen the morning after.
Were you going to tell him? Over the months you had now been at Portland Row, Lockwood had become your best friend as well as your housemate and boss. You were reluctant to complicate that, by confessing to having the hots for him. Wouldn’t it just make things awkward? The week that he’d spent avoiding you after the newspaper scandal had been bad enough. You’d hate to think how needlessly tense life at 35 would become if he didn’t return your feelings and felt he had to put distance between you.
Oh, sure, so perhaps, in the quiet of an early morning, when soft sunlight drifted in through the curtains over the gable window and you lay cocooned in your duvet for a blissful hour of idleness before Holly arrived and you really had to get up, perhaps then you’d run through the memories of every time he’d held your hand and wonder if… Could it mean… Sometimes you’d even drift down to the kitchen for breakfast still floating on the wings of the daydream, only to inevitably come crashing down every time, as Lockwood dived into the mechanics of the next case before you’d even rubbed the sleep from your eyes. On occasion, on a quiet morning off, your dreaming would make it as far as the first bite of toast, watching Lockwood’s smile crinkle the corners of his eyes as the two of you laughed over something or other – until he turned that same smile to Holly, or to George, and you forced yourself to remember that this is just how he is with his friends.
And then came The Night. Lockwood had been in a surprisingly good mood for an idle day off, leading you in a joyously mad-cap rush around London – from goofing around with rapiers in Satchells, to chasing each other like children across Regent’s Park. You’d picked up take out pizza for dinner and decided to hunker down in the living room for a movie night in for two, sprawling yourself across a sofa while Lockwood picked the movie. Despite a proliferation of available sofas and armchairs, Lockwood had decided, with a cheeky grin, to lie himself squarely on top of you, driving the air out of your lungs. You laughed and squirmed and tried to push him off, but for all he was skinny the boy was heavy and proved impossible to shift.
At least, until you’d given up fighting, and he’d leant over to grab the last slice of pizza from the box on the coffee table. You’d seized your chance, quickly lifting your hips and unbalancing him, so that he slid sideways off you and onto his back on the carpet. In a final lunge for victory, you rolled with him and landed on top of him, your knees either side of his hips, one hand on his chest, the other reaching for the slice of pizza in his hand.
Beneath you, Lockwood lay frozen with a look of startled surprise on his face.
You grinned and leaned in to reach for the pizza slice, which he moved just out of your reach with his longer arms, smiling up at you. As you stretched further, your hips shifted against his. He shifted beneath you in response, unbalancing you so that you fell against his chest, lips brushing his cheek. You felt him suddenly tense beneath you, measured shallow breaths skimming across your ear.
Suddenly your brain caught up with you and you realised the implications of the position you were lying in. You froze too, mind running a mile a minute with what ifs and should you and could you and was this the time and would he be in favour of it if-
The front door slammed open and George barrelled into the house, pausing at the open living room door to take in the scene. You blinked at him in blank shock, before he slapped a hand over his glasses.
“My eyes! We leave you two alone for one night – one night! – and you –“
“Don’t pretend you’re an innocent, George.” Lockwood grumbled from beneath you, his voice low. You remained frozen in mortified panic.
“But in the living room of all places?!” George bustled past and up the corridor, his footsteps heading in the direction of the stairs. “Do NOT make me clean that rug up after you.”
Gingerly, studiously avoiding Lockwood’s eyes, you levered yourself up with the hand on his chest, avoiding placing any further pressure on his crotch. Once your feet were under you, you leapt up, grabbed the pizza slice from his hand and put a solid six feet of distance between you and the boy who lay blushing on the rug, squinting at the plaster rose on the ceiling.
As George thundered back down the stairs, an armful of books now clutched in his hands, Lockwood sprang to his feet and went over to the television, turning the thoroughly ignored film off. “Bye!” George yelled as he fled out the door, slamming it behind him.
You watched the tension shift across Lockwood’s shoulders as he continued to face away from you in the now silent house, discreetly adjusting his trousers.
“Um – I’m sorry I–“
“We weren’t watching that anyway.” He said. “I think I’m going to head to bed now – get some rest before tomorrow night’s case.” He turned and shot you a smile, though it was a little weaker than usual.
“Right – uh – good idea. Me too.”
“See you in the morning.” He fled the room.
The case the next night was a big one, Holly and George donning goggles like Kipps’ so that it was a full team of six who stepped into the Highgate mansion, armed to the teeth. George’s research had uncovered a vengeful wife, scorned by a power-hungry husband who had pushed her from a top floor window in the early years of the previous century. The current residents’ reports suggested a changer, and a powerful one at that.
Instead of a changer, you found a poltergeist. Despite everyone’s best intentions to keep a cool head, somehow the nightmare had quickly spiralled out of control – you could only hope, delusionally, that it was not feeding off the anxiety that had settled in the base of your stomach after the awkward moment with Lockwood the previous night, that you'd both studiously avoided bringing up.
You were rapidly wearing out, tired limbs starting to stumble as you ducked yet another vase that flew past your head. Praying for a moment of peace as Lockwood, on the other side of the room, yelled a slew of insults to distract the Visitor, you placed your bare palms to the smooth floorboards and felt for the invisible threads that usually led you to the source. Almost… almost… almost… Got it! The room’s energy centred on something tucked behind the mantle piece, the floor bringing you quiet echoes of footsteps, the warm crackle of a fire, and a swish of skirts.
“The Source!” You yelled across the scream of Other-wind that whipped across the room, stealing the breath from your lungs. “It’s behind the mantlepiece!”
It was your turn to distract the poltergeist now, as Lockwood and Lucy inched towards the mantlepiece at the centre of the room. “Hey! Hey Lady!” You called, thinking on your feet. “What was the flight like?!” You ducked and rolled as a chair flew past. “Missed me! How was the view from that window? Nice sunrise?”
Kipps had joined Lockwood and Lucy, and together they prized the mantlepiece from the wall, while Holly danced and yelled across the room, deflecting some of the attention from you. Lucy scrabbled around in the dust left behind it – closing something in her fist. “Silver net!” She yelled. “Quickly!”
The Poltergeist’s fury filled the room palpably. You hurled one last insult as George tossed Lucy the net. The fury focused on you.
It was not, in fact, as if time slowed down, like people always say it does. Time kept moving, very fast, as it does best. The words had barely left your lips before the loosened mantle piece was lifted into the air. You had barely blinked before it was hurtling towards you. You had barely sucked in a breath, barely sent the memo to your tired limbs to MOVE before the slab of marble was slamming into your torso, thrusting you backwards until you hit the wall and then everything went black with a sharp spike of pain.
When you came to, head foggy, a dull ache screaming through your body, the blurred faces of your friends were huddled round you. Someone had lifted the heavy weight of the mantle from your chest, but it still felt as if your lungs were squashed out of shape beneath it. As you blinked to clear your vision, focusing on the painful in-out of breathing, more figures rushed into view – DEPRAC medics. Someone was saying something about back injuries and concussions. Someone else was asking you something.
With a searing pain that shot through your body and down into your legs, you were lifted away from the wall and laid onto a stretcher, the medics swiftly strapping you into place. You let your eyes slide closed and kept focusing on sucking air into your aching lungs.
Hospitals, it transpired, were even worse with your now heightened sense of Touch. Almost every sterile surface held overlapping echoes of pain and hope and despondency. It was all you could do to keep your hands safe at your sides and focus on the sensations in your own body, numbed by a dose of painkillers. After what felt like endless hours of bright lights and loud machines scanning you, the doctors confirmed that you were alright. Two cracked ribs and a severely bruised back alright. The nurses helped you up, held you steady as you put one painful foot in front of the other until the stiffness eased a little and you could slowly walk out to the waiting room where your friends sat, filthy from a fight with a ghost, their faces pinched with worry.
You were eased into a cab by supportive hands, and let your head tilt back to rest against the headrest as you breathed slowly through the pain. A familiar hand, a warm palm and long fingers, laced itself with yours as the cab moved off, squeezing reassuringly.
Back at Portland Row, Holly ran you a bath and she and Lucy hovered in the bathroom with their backs discreetly turned, as you slowly lowered yourself into it. You sent them away to join the boys for the usual debrief, assuring them that you’d be okay washing the dust from your hair yourself – you were just a bit stiff, that’s all, it’s not like you’d actually broken your back.
Sitting in the warm water, you accidentally dozed off a little, drowsy with exertion and pain medication, not realising until you were awoken by a knock at the bathroom door.
"All okay in there?" Came Lockwood's voice.
"Yeah." You called back. "I - you can come in if you want. The curtain is closed."
"Your modesty preserved?" He chuckled, voice no longer muffled by the bathroom door as he stepped in.
"Well enough. I trust you." You replied.
"Are you sure about that?" He joked, the curtain twitching as he brushed his fingertips along it.
"Well you are my boss, landlord, and flatmate." You reminded him cheekily. "And my best friend. You'd sort of hope I trusted you."
Lockwood cleared his throat. "Right - you're right. Best friend, ey?"
"Oh shut it. You know you are."
You could hear the smile in his voice. "Anyway, just wanted to check you were alright in there. Hadn't, you know, fallen trying to get out the bath and knocked yourself out. Or paralysed yourself or anything. Lucy has headed off to Norrie's for the night, and Holly’s gone home - I said you'd be okay. I can help you out with anything you need, but she did say we could call her to come back if there was anything you didn't want me to help with."
“Yeah – okay.”
Lockwood hovered for a moment. “Okay – well I’ll be – uh – in my room, I guess. Shout if you need anything.”
“Will do.” You replied sleepily. “I should probably get out of this bath. I think it went cold a while ago.”
“You think?”
“Hmm. I think I fell asleep for a minute. Before you came up.”
“Definitely time to get you out of there then. Do you – will you need a hand with that?”
“Let’s see.”
You braced your arms on either side of the bathtub and began to push yourself up slowly. Unfortunately, somewhere in the falling asleep, your back had stiffened up again. Suddenly your wet palm slipped against the side, and you lost your balance. Your elbow caught your side, right in the bruising around one of your fractured ribs, and you landed hard on our backside with a splash and a yelp of pain.
In an instant, Lockwood had pulled the curtain aside. “Are you oka- FUCK!” His eyes widened as he took in your wet naked body, before spinning abruptly on his heels to face away from you. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry – I panicked.”
“Ohhh shit.” You breathed, slowly inhaling and exhaling as the pain dulled.
“I’m so sorry. Are you – are you okay?”
“I’m okay. I just slipped and elbowed myself in the bruise.” You started laughing behind him, wincing as the motion pained your ribs further. (What else could you do? It was that or cry – your inconvenient crush would have to see you naked for the first time when you were wrinkled like a prune and battered black and blue). “So much for my modesty.”
“Those are some nasty bruises.”
“You should see the other guy.”
Lockwood chuckled. You tugged the curtain closed, before loosening the plug so that the water drained away.
“I really am sorry.”
“It’s fine, Lockwood. Now, if you wouldn’t mind passing me my towel,” you asked, sticking an arm out the edge of the curtain. “This time I’ll make sure that what little remains of my modesty is preserved before you come in to help.”
With a bit of careful wriggling, you got the towel wrapped around you like a dress, tucked as securely as possible. You gently pulled the curtain back to reveal Lockwood hovering like a tall dark shadow with an apologetic grin. “Shall we?”
It took a bit of careful manoeuvring – by which we mean, of course, awkward fumbling – to get you out of the bathtub. Lockwood ended up with his hands in your armpits, yours gripping his upper arms tightly, damp hands marking his shirtsleeves, as he levered at an awkward angle to pull you far enough up that you could get your feet under you. Once you were steady, he slid his hands gently down to your hips – careful to leave the towel up – and let you lean on his shoulders for stability as you swung your legs over the edge and eventually came to stand beside him.
Goosebumps ghosted up your bare arms as you stood there, still in Lockwood’s arms, staring up into his eyes. The tension was almost palpable, for a moment, before you both sort of instinctively drifted in towards each other, meeting in a gentle kiss that slowly deepened.
As you kissed him – him! Anthony bloody Lockwood! You were finally kissing Anthony bloody Lockwood, and God, was it better than you could ever have hoped - you slid your arms further around his neck, winding one of your hands into the soft hair at the back of his head. He slid his arms around your back, gently tightening his embrace. He leaned further into you, and together you instinctively took a step backwards, his leg sliding between yours, and your back –
Your back collided with the hard edge of the sink, right on the injury site. You broke from the kiss with a gasp as the pain shot through you, mouth filling with a metallic tang.
Lockwood froze immediately, shifting back a little way. You leant into him, arms still around his neck, and buried your face into his shoulder.
“Fuck.” You breathed.
“What happened – are you okay – what did I do?” He murmured.
“My back hit the sink.” You bit out, breathing through the pain. “Oh, fuck that hurts.”
He stood solid beneath you, running his hands feather-light up and down your sides, as you blinked away the tears that had sprung to your eyes.
"I'm sorry." He whispered. "Well, I mean I'm sorry for bumping your back. I'm not sorry for kissing you. I've been meaning to for quite a while really. I was going to last night, but I chickened out after George showed up, and I've been kicking myself for it all day."
You smiled into his shoulder, before pulling back slightly to look up at him. "I'm glad you kissed me."
"Oh - good. Excellent. Really. I mean, it would have been pretty awful if you hadn't been."
You chuckled and then yawned. "I think we might have to hold off on anything further tonight though. I'm not sure I'm up to it."
"No? That's a shame." Lockwood put on a mock pout. "Not even lying there while I go down on you for hours? You wouldn't have to do anything." He grinned cheekily.
You snorted and nudged his shoulder. "Of bloody course you'd want to do that."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You're too good to be true." You kissed him briefly.
Lockwood chuckled. "Not at all. It's all for my own pleasure really. And the joy of proving my prowess."
You laughed. "Okay Maestro. I look forward to you proving yourself one night when I'm not half asleep, black and blue, and suffering from two broken ribs. For now though, it's time I went to bed."
“Fine.” Lockwood kissed you on the cheek. “I’m only teasing.”
You smiled at him affectionately.
“What would you say to staying in my bed tonight? Save you going up all those stairs.”
“I think that sounds like an excellent idea.” You yawned. “Will you run up and grab my pjs for me please? I don’t fancy sleeping in this damp towel.”
“Of course darling.” And with a peck on the forehead, Anthony Lockwood left you there and bounded up the stairs, his long legs taking them two at a time.
And well, who’s to say how quickly those sleeping arrangements became a permanent state of affairs. Who’s to say if you both slept better, after long nights hunting London’s dead, curled up in each other’s arms. Who’s to say if toast in the kitchen became toast in bed every once in a while. (Holly. Holly, who bravely dared to enter the inner sanctum to retrieve the discarded plates and had to listen to you whine about crumbs in the bed later that day.)
Who’s to say if London’s Premier Psychic Detection Agency got a few more blissful years of tackling the Problem under its belt, manned by three of the strongest - and oldest - agents Britain had ever known. And who's to say if two of them just happened to fall madly in love...