tis the damn season - Lockwood x Reader
A/N: estranged best friends to lovers trope my beloved!!! 😍 AHHH this is one of my fav fics I've written in a while. Poem below is Golden Boy by Cecil Miller, and the Spanish line is taken from a streetcar named desire by tennessee (idk how 2 spell) williams! this might be less proofread than normal + includes a few of my pre-infection hallucinations? lottt of angst, wc 5.1k!!
P.S. I think I'll be doing a part 2 to buy me presents! but not until a little later ahah and also the 12 days of fics are totally going to spill over hahah
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Lockwood stares out the kitchen window. Both inside and outside, there is a bleak stillness in the air that sinks in his bones like a plague. It's too cold and too early in the morning for anyone to be properly out and about. But the season always messed up his sleep schedule more than usual, and now that they had taken a break from their cases for the holidays, there was nothing to occupy his treacherous mind, and its return to taut requirings of Christmases past.
Slowly, the other residents of Portland Row start to stir. George grumbles about their spluttering heating system and having to plod through the snow to get the mail, and Lucy promptly falls asleep in the cup of tea she's just brewed for herself. They were all exhausted, and rightfully so, given that the holidays was prime time for people to start looking into properly clearing out ghosts to keep their homes warm and cheery.
He slips out just as George's complaints about the heater start ramping up, and his mind is so scattered that he forgets to put his coat on. It's a little more brisk than what was completely tolerable, strictly speaking, but it was only just for a minute. When he reaches the mailbox, he runs into Mr. and Mrs. L/N, old family friends who had helped him more than he deserved over the years. They made some polite conversation while he rifled through the bills and letters.
"Oh, Anthony, we wanted to invite you over to tea sometime this week. Y/N's home for the holidays."
His hand slips and an envelope slices his finger open. It was bound to happen, given his glum and careless mood, and it takes every ounce of self-restraint to suppress his cry of pain in front of them.
"Home...as in here? London?"
Ever since she had left for boarding school, there would always be some talk of her dropping by for Christmas every year. But the plans would never be fully solid, or some other pre-existing commitment would prevent her from making the trip. He was suddenly feeling oddly claustrophobic. He glanced up and down the street, as if expecting her to be hiding in some bushes.
Mrs. L/N seemed to pick up on his distraction, and her brow furrowed with concern.
"Of course London. Where's your coat, dearie? Aren't you feeling chilly?"
"...yes. Now that you mention it...perhaps it's best I head back inside."
He gave a stiff sort of wave and walked back, mind reeling. Eight years. Eight years since he last saw her. What the hell was he supposed to do if he saw her now? How was he supposed to feel?
Luckily, he doesn't get much time to panic because as soon as he walks in, he narrowly dodges a wrench being lobbed at his head. Apparently, eleven freezing days with improper heating was more than what George could bear. It's usually a rather quick fix, but maybe the comparatively more extreme frost this year had corrupted the system beyond Lockwood's capabilities, because two hours later he was still no closer to getting it fixed.
Some time later, there's a knock on the door. He yells for someone to get the door, but he's buried too deeply in the house for anyone to hear him. Grumbling, he dusts himself off and walks to the door himself, head buzzing with frustration. He's so preoccupied with what more he could possibly do to get the heating working again that he doesn't think to check the peephole first. So when he opens the door, he gets the wind knocked out of him.
"Anthony."
It was her; rosy-cheeked yet looking effortlessly warm. Her facial features had lengthened and rearranged themselves as compared to when he last saw her, but there was still something expensive to the twist of her mouth and the crinkles near her eyes.
"It's been so long."
Even her voice was rich, like honey. Now that she was standing in front of him, the stitch in his chest from the morning seemed much more familiar. It had been some seasonally grievious paste that had coated his lungs and stoppered his mouth that made him feel eerily weightless if he dwelled on it too much.
He didn't know what to do. Exchange pleasantries, or skip to the part where he slams the door in her face? Before he could decide, he hears some shuffling behind him, and almost instinctively opens the door wider.
"Y/N. These are my associates. George Karim, Lucy Carlyle...Y/N L/N."
"Right. Lockwood and Co., was it?"
The four of them glance at each other, exchanging fleeting smiles for a good half-minute, before George has the sense to usher everyone inside for a cup of tea.
The kettle's already on, and George hands out the cups of tea waring mittens, his glasses barely visible behind the scarf mummifying the lower half of his head. If she notices the cold in the house, she doesn't comment on it.
They make some polite small talk. She's pleasantly amiable and a perfectly gracious guest, and talks about her Christmas dinner plans. Lockwood is disinterested and surly and wants to talk about his fragmented sense of self. At one point, his responses start to become so clipped that he earns a poorly concealed kick from Lucy, accompanied by a stern look. Luckily, it doesn't seem as if she's noticed. She was looking at the white blanket of snow over their garden carefully, as if dismissing their presence.
"Your garden looks beautiful. I'd love to have a look around."
George and Lockwood exchanged a look. It was freezing outside, and the harsh temperatures were clearly not worth braving for the little of the flowerbeds they could see. George opened his mouth to tell her as much, in his own snide way, but he hesitated. Lockwood felt his heart sink.
The thing was, she had had a magnetic effect on most people ever since they were kids, a quality that made it difficult for any grown adult to refuse her or for any child to oppose her. It was the same reason why she was sitting in his house, drinking out of his teacups, eating his share of biscuits (George and Lucy had clearly conspired as soon as they picked up on her staying for tea). But he had been sure that if there was anyone who could pull away from this siren call of hers, it would be George. The very boy who was meaningfully looking at him, trying to express some uncommunicable panic.
"Er...Lockwood?"
And so, he ended up taking her out for a brief and awkwardly quiet stroll in their garden once she was done with her tea. They meandered through the garden path stiltedly, and every snow-dusted weed and sapling seemed to astound her. Still, she divided her attention sufficiently to continue the ocnversation.
"Homeowner and agency head at fifteen. Impressive."
"Thank you."
"I bet you're the media's darling."
He shrugs.
She turns to him, eyes generously pooling with faux concern.
"It can't have been easy."
It wasn't easy, not that she would know anything about it. He wants to be spiteful towards her, lash out at her. God knows she deserved it. But something holds him back.
"So...that was George. And Luce."
She jerked her head back in acknowledgement, but he could see the slight smile playing at her lips as she did so. He had forgotten how terribly exasperating she could be.
"What?"
She shook her head, but that only made her smile grow wider, and so she finally relented. There's a vulpine twist to her lips that Lockwood has no patience for. "Nothing. I'm sure they're lovely people, of course. But if I wanted to know who you were hanging with while I was gone, I would have asked you."
He shrugged. "I wanted to share a bit of my life now. They're just about all of it."
She hums pleasantly, stopping short in front of one of the flower beds. She bends down and picks up a freshly fallen violet, its deep indigo harsh and unrelenting against the fresh, pure snow, against the season of vacancy and death. She holds it up in front of Lockwood.
"Viola Odarata. Symbolises humility. Flores; flores para los muertos. Flores."
A part of him wants to sneer at her in painful irony. How arrogant of her to think she could waltz back into his life as she pleased.
"That what they teach you in your boarding school? Useless facts about violets?"
She shivers, even though the air is completely still with no breeze, and her lips part. Too late, he realises he's gone too far. Her smile slips a fraction, and she takes on an air that makes him feel obliged to apologise. He resists it, and for a moment he sees something flash in her eyes, but it's gone before he can place it.
"Forgive me, but you don't seem terribly happy."
"The Problem's raging worse than ever. Happy things don't come by easy these days."
"...I suppose. It wouldn't -" For the first time, Lockwood thinks she might be feeling nervous. Her humanity, manufactured or otherwise, draws him in despite himself. "It wouldn't have anything to do with me...would it?"
He takes in her carefully manicured appearance, her intentionally pieced together life made up of the dreams she worked towards and achieved. And all he had was a house that was more of a burden than a blessing on some days and this inchoate dread over a Problem whose end was nowhere in sight. But he doesn't know how to express this resentment, this jealousy.
"I'm alright if you're alright."
Sad, dispirited eyes look into each other, searching for the fulfilment they're sure the other has found. She speaks in a tight voice.
"It's okay with the both of us, then."
She suddenly reaches out, and gently holds his finger with the papercut with a firm but comforting pressure. His first instinct is to pull his hand back, but he doesn't, and as the long seconds pass, he feels increasingly vulnerable. The cut was no longer bleeding, and was even well on its way to healing over just fine, but it was irritated from where he had relentlessly picked at it.
"Looks fresh."
She traces the cut with her other hand, violet folded in her palm, with a feather-light touch. The surreality of the moment - of her standing inches from her, her breath tickling his fingertips, her warmth spreading through him - catches up to him and makes his breath hitch. It was unbearably intimate and made him feel like the exposed, raw wound he had been nursing for the eight years she had been gone. And how like her to return with pockets full of unfounded promise to stitch the tears in his skin.
And just as quickly, she lets go of his hand and steps back, and Lockwood feels as though cold air has been forced into his airways. She tucks the violet behind her ear, and drifts back inside. The tilt of her joints is so familiar that it stirs something in him. Something long gone, something he was gripping like a fist.
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When they return, Lockwood excuses himself to his room for a bit of air, ignoring how closely George is watching him. He sits on his bed and takes a deep breath. His nightstand has a few miniature picture frames on it, and in one of them the picture's been flipped around. It's a picture of him and her, taken a few months before she left. It's how he remembered her before seeing her today. Sometimes, when the urge grew too great, he would tilt the frame under his nightlight, and make out the barest outline of their figures looped together on the other side of photograph.
He didn't know what to make of her departure, all those years ago. One day, they were swinging on tyres in her parents' garden, and the next day, she wasn't at school. But as the years churned on, the string tying his heart to hers stretched and tore a slow and painful death from him, out of the cavity she left, and he never felt quite the same again. And as they continued to age, the wound became old news and scabbed over what was once raw and paralysing, but a part of him always wanted to know why she did it, to be angry with her for being so callous.
And now she was back, pulling him under by the ankles, ripping the gash open viciously.
He didn't know how exactly to deal with it, after years of thinking of her adjacently, daring only to keep her in his peripheral vision, where he was kept safe. Maybe it was all part of a larger problem; the twitch in his hand and his recurring nightmare.
He's ten years old again, at a train station he's never been to, and likely one that doesn't exist. It's hard to see just about any discerning features, except for the massive train peeking through the fog in front of him. He looks to the right, and sees her strong fingers wrapped around a railing, her standing in the door of the train. He can't be sure of much, but he's certain she's looking at him. He stretches the moment as long as it will last, because it's all downhill from there.
There's a terrible groaning sound, and the train reluctantly starts to chug along, steadily gathering speed. He walks alongside it, gradually picking up his own pace, until he's nearly sprinting. All the while, she watches him with amused eyes, secure in her place on the train. He's panting, choking on the fog, eyes streaming. But if he can just reach her scarf whipping in the wind, the train will stop, and she'll step out, cool and gleaming and impervious to the cloud of dust surrounding her and-
He wakes with a start. He knows how it ends.
She slips through his fingers every time.
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She stays for the rest of the day, and the four of them spend a cosy afternoon decorating their Christmas tree, carefully dodging the random mugs of hot chocolate littered across the room. While they were digging out the ornaments from the attic, she finds a box that he, evidently, had not tucked away deep enough.
"Remember these?" She holds up a flimsy, crumbling Santa Claus ornament made of construction paper. "We had so much fun making them."
He nods stiffly, subtly shifting the box towards a corner in the living room. It smarts his eyes to look at the hideous thing, as if its very sight was corrosive.
"Took me a while to find them, though. It must be a pain to dig them out every year."
He puts down the bauble he's hanging, and sighs. "I haven't...brought these out in a while."
Even her look of perplexity looks artificial. "Why not? Aren't there so many happy memories attached to these?" Her face falls ever so slightly. "Do memories of me not make you happy?"
Luckily, they're interrupted by Lucy placing a handful of miniature marshmallows into their hot chocolate. When she moves over to George, Lockwood wordlessly starts hanging their crafted ornaments, and she doesn't press him for an answer. When they're done, the tree looks a lot more crowded and chaotic than it normally does, similar to how Lockwood was feeling with her around. He looks at her, and isn't sure how he feels about the asymmetry of having her here.
Later, when she's about to leave, it starts snowing heavily, too heavily for her to walk home. So after a phone call with her parents, she decides to spend the night. Lockwood's in his bedroom when he hears a knock on his door. It's her, dressed in a spare set of Lucy's pajamas.
"I thought you'd be awake."
She wanted to know what he was doing, and what he was doing was wrapping some Christmas presents. Immediately, she obligingly offered to help, and she was too eager for him to outright refuse. Of course, he might have thought differently if he had known how abysmally little she knew about wrapping gifts. And so they stay up till the early hours of the morning, both of them trying equally hard to teach her the most basic of gift wrapping skills. As the night wore on, they got increasingly drunk on laughter over her heinously criminal attempts and Lockwood's limbs started to loosen up. At one point, he had given up entirely and placed his hands over hers, puppeteering the night's only decent gift wrapping while she smothered her laughter.
He doesn't remember much after that. When he next regains his consciousness, he's lying curled up next to her, with the late morning sun streaming through his windows. He watches her breathe, slow and steady, with a face so relaxed, amiable and familiar.
As her eyes start to flutter open, he panics and tries to look anywhere else, which isn't easy given how she's only inches away from him. They glance at each other, silently acknowledging their positions, and the silence hangs heavy in the air. He clears his throat awkwardly, trying to put as much space between them as he can with his arm wrapped under her. "When do you leave?"
She scrunches her forehead as she thinks. It's one of the few parts of her he instantly recognises and he gets caught off guard by a rush of affection, and a flash of an impulse to smooth out the wrinkles.
"Monday."
He pulls a face.
"We'd have the weekend together. Isn't that enough?"
They stay quiet, watching specks of dust float through the sunlight filtering through his partially drawn curtains. With how close they are to each other, they're not looking at each other's face, and it's unclear if she's asking him, or herself, or the dust they're watching. Was it enough?
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Later that evening, Lucy wants to take a walk along some of the emptier roads in the snow. She takes their trip as her cue to leave but Lucy insists she come along, so she does. The four of them had cycled as far as they could, and when they reached the too-slippery parts of the road, they had dismounted and left their bicycles in a corner. Lucy and George were wandering around a bit ahead of them, while they slowly shuffled through the snow. She had picked up some newspapers on their way there, and was looking through them as they walked, taking particular interest in the odd article on Lockwood & Co.
"You've certainly had your fair share of media coverage."
"Along with a decent helping of frenzied media sensationalism, I suppose."
"My apologies. I forgot I was talking to the Anthony J. Lockwood of Lockwood & Co. Now, is the arson bit complimentary, or would I have to pay extra?"
She was teasing him, and it was irritating. There was a reticent air about him and after some politely delicate probing, which he had been too preoccupied to entertain, she had resorted to amusing herself. Toying with him like a figurine, the way she did all those years ago.
"You wear your grief so beautifully, Lockwood. Like...like jewels between your teeth..."
She pauses, flipping through the newspapers interestedly with inky fingertips, which flickered like shadows next to the soft white snow.
"...and you have such a winning smile. Golden boy." She laughs, and the sound feels like icicles pressing into his skull. "Golden boy," she trills, "you were a bit of a child. The world was having its way with you. You tried to...er, something...golden boy!"
She smiles at him lazily, expectantly, as if anticipating some kind of applause. But Lockwood is in no mood for her childish whimsies.
"I'm fine. I don't have any grief."
She frowns exaggeratedly. "'Course you do."
"I don't."
She mumbles, turning back to her newspaper. "Fine, then. Not like I'm the one holding onto...some kind of...ache."
He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. How could anyone be this self-aware and yet completely oblivious? The strain on his self-restraint peaks and he buckles within himself.
"Why are you here, Y/N?"
She looks away from the snow. "Lucy said it'd be nice out here."
"No. I mean why are you here, in London? Here, at Portland Row?"
Her lips are pressed together, and there's something guarded in her eyes.
"I just...wanted to see how you were doing."
"Liar."
The word drops from his tongue in such an aggrieved manner with such vehemence that it makes her choke.
"How could you say something like that?"
He scoffs. "Please, let's not pretend you weren't dying to leave at the first chance. Not that you had the decency to tell me-"
"-I was ten!-"
"- having me go through the humiliating process of finding out on my own-"
"What do you want me to say, Lockwood? I'm sorry I left? I'm sorry you were alone? I'm sorry I was too selfish to give a damn about you?"
"-and you'll come back, choking on your silver spoon only to leave again and again and again until you're all alone-"
"You never wrote!"
"I didn't think you'd want me to!"
"I didn't know what I wanted!"
"Then what do you want?"
"YOU, you idiot!"
He stares at her, speechless.
"I was ten. And I was so foolish. How could I have thought of anything but you?"
With that, the last of her rosy, polished, alluring boarding-school airs fell apart. He looks at her and sees his own anger and yearning reflected back at him; anger and yearning he's hardly ready to face. Despite all their efforts to get away from the other, to move on, something between them held fast. Or perhaps it was that they were hopelessly, irrevocably intertwined.
"Of all the roads I could have travelled, you are at the end of every single one of them. Every single one of them, except the road I did travel. I'm here, Lockwood, because I thought I might have...I might have chosen wrong."
"So you think you can just stroll back now that it's convenient for you? I didn't know if I'd ever see you again, do you realise that?"
"What do you want me to do, Lockwood? You keep pushing me away. I feel like part of a past you're forever trying to run away from. So fine! I'll leave, then. I'll go back to the sorry hole I crawled out of, back to friends I don't care about, back to dreaming of the only person who's ever truly cared about me. Is that what you want?"
She doesn't wait for a response, and turns around and walks away from him.
"Y/N, come back."
She silently picks her bicycle out of the snow, dusting it off.
"You can't cycle in this."
Still ignoring his words ringing through the dead winter silence, she steadies herself and cautiously swings a leg over her bicycle. Lockwood starts to walk towards her.
"You'll fall. You'll hurt yourself. Y/N. Y/N!"
But she's already off, gliding soundlessly like a ghost through frigid air on icy roads.
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He's already regretting his words by the time he reaches 35 Portland Row. When he first walks in, the house is so deathly quiet that he's convinced she's left. But her bicycle is thrown down in the garden and he knows she's too averse to the cold to walk home in the snow.
He walks slowly, his measure footsteps echoing on the wooden floors of the house, and he eventually finds her in the living room, sitting with her back to the door, staring at the drawn curtains. The fading evening glow spilling through the edges is streaked across her face and there's a soft crunching sound. As he comes closer, he sees the bowl of ice glinting in her lap, like fractured light, with her face as blank as a canvas.
"Have you gone completely mad? You'll fall sick."
She doesn't even flinch, as if she hadn't heard him. When she speaks, there's a dreamy quality to her typically strong and clear voice.
"I didn't want to come back. This city is nothing I want. I was always going to escape some day. And yet..." she trails off with glazed eyes, as if trying to look through some distant fog. "...and yet."
"You were right." The run back had left him mildly breathless, but was also exactly what he needed to get rid of the buzz in his head, giving way to some much-needed clarity. "About the...heartache. I was just sick of it. You're miles away. I love you in your sleep. I still reach the end of road alone. But I loved you all the while and...somehow that made the pain of leaving you worth it."
"I'm restless. I'm lost. I'm selfish." She swivels her head with an unnerving smoothness, grin wide and grotesque, ice glinting between her perfect teeth. "I'm so alone, Lockwood. Just like you said."
He doesn't know what to say. He walks towards her and picks up her bowl but her fingers close around his wrist like a vice. The gleam in her eye makes him want to pull his hand back. He's too old to play her games and lose.
"That's a bad habit."
"I'm a bad habit. One you can't seem to kick even after all these years: tell me, Anthony, why is that?"
"Y/N, stop. You'll spoil your teeth."
It only makes her grind her teeth even more tauntingly. It's an awful sound. "Good. Let them fall out, one by one. It's what I deserve. Maybe I'll finally learn my lesson."
Her grip on his sleeve lessens, but she doesn't let go. She grips the bowl with her other hand even tighter, as if suddenly terrified.
"Leave me be, Anthony. Leave me...to my vices...and violets and...violence."
He reads her face. He tries to figure her out, to read her like the open book she once was to him. When he doesn't leave, she shovels more ice into her mouth, uncomfortably clacking with her teeth, and continues.
"I was racing ahead...into some glorious sunset, towards some fantastic rainbow, at the end of which was some miraculous snowdrop and a wish to soothe my nomadic soul. I didn't have time for the boy with the sad eyes two streets down from me."
"I convinced myself that you resented my escape from the Problem. I was 15 with the bitter taste of lemongrass in my mouth and a stitch in my chest when I realised I spent all those years missing you. I couldn't run away from it, not truly. So I pretend. I pretend you don't hate me and I pretend I'm not an awful person and I pretend there's a chance you'd want me as much as I want you. I came home to tell you how terribly fond I was of you. It was only at your doorstep that I realised I had run out of places to hide."
"I don't have time for love. Nor the capacity for it. But I am tired of trying to outrun it."
She closed her eyes. Her voice was barely a croak. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you I was leaving. If I could...I'd wish away the past eight years of misery." She opened her eyes. "Some nights, I can pretend they never existed. But I can't wish your happiness into existence."
Lockwood somehow finds his voice. "I thought this was the life you wanted."
"It is Christmas, once again, and my heart is lonely as an island...once again. What part of this could I possibly want?"
He lets go of the bowl of ice and covers her limp, frozen hand with his own. She speaks in a low voice, barely stirring the dust in the room.
"I'll never forgive myself."
He sits down next to her, his feather-light lips pressed to her temple. She feels drained, and exhausted, as if the spirit that had driven her for so long was finally fatigued. Her breathing was uneven and her lungs felt lopsided. But what a blessing it was to finally fall in the one place she knew her landing would be soft.
"One day. One day, I'll..."
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He pulls out a fresh violet from his coat, still damp from the morning dew.
"Call it even?"
She accepts the flower and gives him a sweet smile. He revels in this smallest of victories.
Their peaceful moment gets shattered by the deafening train horn, which unpleasantly reminds Lockwood of where they are.
She hesitates for a moment, but then extends her arm and holds his face. There's a troubled look on her face, like there's something indescribable she wished to communicate just at the tip of her tongue. But the compulsion passes, and she settles for a trembling brush of his cheekbone with her thumb.
"You're such a darling, Anthony. I don't care what any newspaper or lawsuit has to say about you. You'll always be a darling to me."
"Good, because soon enough you might just be the only one."
She grins, widely at first, but then it chips, and for once he can admit that the sight breaks his heart. She gives him a hug, and he holds her like she's one of the precious metals that adorn her jewellery.
"You'll come back, won't you?"
"Perhaps. See you another weekend."
When they break apart, she swiftly picks up her suitcase with white knuckles and marches to the carriage without looking back. The train horn blares for a final time. The doors shut, and the wheels groan to life. He searches for her face, and finds it, but the reflection of the train station lights hides her eyes. It's at this moment that a disconnected part of him realises he doesn't want to wait for another weekend. He wants her here, and he wants her now.
The train picks up speed, and Lockwood tries to match it. But he's not trying to run. He knows that won't work, it never does.
"Y/N!"
That gets the attention of most passengers, including her. This train accelerates much faster than in his dream, and he's got an awful stitch running down the side of his torso by now, but he's beyond caring at this point. When she sees that it's him yelling like a maniac, she presses her flushed face to the window, eyes wide with disbelief.
"Would you stay?"
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