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portlandrowismyhome · 3 months

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the calm before the storm

☁︎ ☁︎ ☁︎ ☁︎ in which circumstances pull two souls apart

pairing: anthony lockwood x (fem) reader

a/n: the angst queen is back. no apologies. i was craving writing another luke castellan fic, but decided it was about time i came back to the hyperfixation that began about this time last year (happy one year lockwood and co!!) so surprise!!! i'm not sorry for this, just so you know. enjoy!

warnings: canon typical violence, descriptions of murder, angst (as always)

words: 4.7K

taglist: @irisesforyoureyes @neewtmas @wellgoslowly @waitingforthesunrise @oblivious-idiot @jesslockwood @magicandmaybe @gotlostinfiction @ettadear @locklylemybeloved @aayeroace @mischiefmanaged71 @mirrorballdickinson @ikeasupremacy

☁︎ ☁︎ ☁︎ ☁︎

01. the calm

There was a certain kind of peace when it came to 35 Portland Row at night.

The way the fire flickered, casting the library in a golden-orange glow and filling it with cosy warmth. How the kitchen always smelled like whatever wonderful meal George had made earlier in the day. The sound of the crackling fire and pages brushing against each other and creaky floorboards. They all compiled together to make it feel like home.

(y/n) sat curled up on one of the library’s armchairs, nose buried in one of the aged books. A steaming cup of tea sat on the coffee table beside a pile of senseless magazines - Lockwood’s guilty pleasure. He was thumbing his way through one just at that moment, and the cover - an edited photo of Penelope Fittes and Steve Rotwell with a big, bold-lettered caption “Inside the minds of the most treasured people in Britain!” - told her everything she needed to know.

“That stuff is going to rot your brain,” she murmured, turning the page of her book. “I don’t know how you can stand reading that gossip.”

Lockwood, still looking at the magazine before him, shot her a sideways grin. “You just don’t appreciate today’s culture.”

A laugh bubbled from her lips. “I appreciate it plenty when I’m not under threat of death from ghosts. I mean, seriously. How many times can you read about what colour dress Penelope Fittes wore to a gala, or the stupid things all those snotty old rich people keep saying?”

“You have to admit, they’re a little bit funny.”

“It’s funny how stupid the things they say are.”

Lockwood rolled his eyes, dog-earing a page before closing the magazine and setting it down atop the already massive pile. His head tilted as he looked over at her, face cast in that same golden-orange hue that basked the room. He looked positively ethereal.

“I have read plenty of books, too, you know,” he said, still smiling. “I just don’t find them as interesting.”

Raising an eyebrow, (y/n) slipped her tattered bookmark between the pages of her book, balancing it on the arm of her chair. She twisted slightly so that she could look at him in the other armchair.

“Have you ever considered joining a gossip circle?” she asked. “You know, the kind where all those old women meet up in a cafe and have a little blether about their drama? You’d fit right in. Have half of them charmed within minutes.”

His smile changed, then, shifting into the exact kind she had imagined him using to get into a little gossip session. “You think so?”

She snorted, trying to ignore the flutter in her stomach. “Without a doubt. You’d have them convinced that, because Penelope wore a green dress to a gala and Steve Rotwell had a green tie, there is some kind of secret relationship between them. Secretly married, or some bosh like that.”

“Well,” Lockwood drawled, “just as well one of us has the skill of charm. If it were you doing interviews, we’d have no clients.”

She swept his magazine off the table and thwacked his arm with it. “If there was no one here to keep you alive, there’d be no business.”

He laughed then, and the sound was like music to her ears. If it was something she could bottle, she’d have a thousand vials of it collected. She could listen to him laugh all day, especially if she was the reason for such a beautiful sound.

With a playful kind of annoyance, she tossed the magazine back on the table. She might have imagined it, but Lockwood watched the movement with eagle-like attention, as if studying every move she made. Every face she pulled. The thought had her heart pounding a little faster.

“I wouldn’t be surprised by that idea, by the way.”

“What?” (y/n) tilted her head. “You being dead without me to save your ass? It’s a proven statement.”

Once more, he rolled his eyes. His smile would have buckled her knees had she been standing. “No. Penelope and Steve being secretly married. I’m going to cop that idea now. Just in case it’s true.”

“As long as I get the credit.”

“Always.”

02. before

“Another murder? Lockwood, do you ever think of broadening your horizons?”

Lockwood grinned, spreading out a few pages from different newspapers in front of him. “We seem to specialise in them. How many murdered ghosts have we successfully contained? Besides, the murderer of this one is unknown. I thought it’d be a fun challenge to see if we could figure out the perpetrator.”

“We have extremely different definitions of fun,” (y/n) grumbled, flipping open a folder full of dated documents. “Don’t you fancy something less… brutal? Someone who died of old age, maybe?”

“Boring,” he said, drawing out the vowels. “We’re Lockwood and Co! How else do we get in the papers without something like a murder?”

She watched the way his eyes seemed to gleam with a strange sort of joy and shook her head, holding back a smile. They most definitely had different definitions of fun.

“Maybe we can bake some really nice cakes,” she suggested. “Donate money to help stop homelessness? End world hunger?”

His smile then was so beautiful that it stole the breath from her lungs. “While those are wonderful suggestions - I do particularly like the thought of cakes - I think we can do much better by getting rid of some ghosts. Now! What have you found?”

They went on like that for a few more hours, passing taunts back and forth while noting down any points of interest from their research. Really, it would have been more beneficial to have George researching with them - he made sense of all the big, fancy words and mixed-up dates - but he was researching his own case with Lucy.

It was an interesting case, that much she had to give to Lockwood. A woman, named Fearne Watson, who had been killed in her home a mere four years prior, whose body was not found for another two days when her neighbour had come to drop off some food she had baked for her. Police had flooded the scene and all of the journalists from popular news sources managed to squeeze their way in, getting all the details they could wring out of anybody, including the poor neighbour. (y/n) could remember seeing a glimpse of it on the news, sitting in her mother’s living room, waiting for her father to come home from work. The body had been sealed in one of those black body bags. There was caution tape everywhere, tape that journalists and paparazzi seemed to ignore.

Her family had been interviewed, each of them grieving harder than the last. It was hard to read their heartfelt words. Her sister, who had practically raised her during their childhood while their single mother worked multiple jobs, was by far the most emotional. It was even worse seeing photos of her attendance at the funeral - her pure devastation at a private memorial being disrupted by paparazzi.

What had seemed like at least half of London’s population had ganged up on the press, after that. Some smaller companies were thrown out of business.

The biggest mystery of it all had been the murderer. Whoever had committed it had covered their tracks well: nobody had seen anyone in the home with the victim - though they had not been paying much attention, therefore it had been partially investigated - nor had they seen anybody leave. No weapon was left behind, which was no matter because, as it was later revealed, Fearne had not been killed with a weapon.

The autopsy reports had not been released to the public, but Lockwood’s charm and (y/n)’s bare-faced insistence managed to garner them the second-last piece to the puzzle.

“Hemlock poisoning,” (y/n) murmured. “What year are we in? 1623? Don’t people usually use, what, paracetamol nowadays?”

Lockwood’s eyes flitted over the document, trying to absorb as much information as possible. If DEPRAC found out they had weaselled their way into getting their hands on it, there would be trouble. They had a very limited amount of time with it.

“Would’ve been a painful death, I imagine,” he said. “It’s a paralytic - says here she died from suffocation. Her respiratory system was paralysed after her muscles seized, also paralysed.”

She shuddered, taking the sheet of paper when he offered it to her. It wasn’t long before she had to pass it back, insanely disturbed.

“You sure know how to pick a belter of a case,” she mumbled. “Next time, take George with you.”

He only smiled, more reassuring than anything else, and reached over, squeezing her hand. Sparks coursed through her veins at the touch, and she looked up at him, melting at the way he looked at her.

“We’ll be okay,” he promised. “We have each other.”

A smile curved her lips, and she squeezed his hand back. “Always.”

03. the storm

The chains were heavy in her hands, cold enough that the skin of her fingers and palms were beginning to hurt. The house itself was not cold quite yet, but iron had that effect.

Lockwood stared down at his thermometer before nodding. (y/n), gratefully, began laying down the chains in a circle, closing the ends in on each other. Lockwood set a lantern down in the centre but didn’t turn it on just yet.

“Eight degrees,” he said. “You ready?”

She pursed her lips, nodding.

“No sympathising with visitors this time,” he added, and while there was a smile curling his lips, she could feel the seriousness in his statement. She did have a history of it.

The house’s living room was large enough to fit two three-seater sofas, as well as a dining table tucked under the back window with six chairs. The walls were a dingy shade of beige. A large patterned rug, red as blood, covered a good portion of the dark wood floor. With a thumping heart, she knelt down and lifted up a small corner of the rug.

She took a deep breath, willing her heart to slow its beating. Nothing good would come from being in a panic. The slight tremor in her hands ceased. She was a well-versed agent, this was nothing! She had helped solve the mystery of Combe Carey Hall. She had solved dozens upon dozens of cases. One more murder was nothing.

But, as she pressed her hand flat against part of the floor, stained slightly darker than the rest, it became clear that she was wrong.

Time seemed to swell around her, spinning and spinning until she was crouched in a brighter version of the house. A version without the big rug and the dining table beneath the window. The walls were a beautiful shade of duck-egg blue. Photos hung in simple white frames, plants were dotted around the room in pots shaped like cats and hedgehogs and dinosaurs.

Music played softly, a song (y/n) recognised as one her mother used to listen to while she still lived at home. Someone was humming along.

A woman swept into view, one she recognised from the newspapers that did not do her beauty justice.

Fearne Watson’s auburn hair was swept over her shoulder in loose waves, glowing like fire in the sunlight. She had blue eyes that were ever-smiling, and her freckled cheeks were rosy. She was no older than twenty-five.

Another voice could be heard, feminine and soft. She was singing along to the song while Fearne mimicked the instruments. (y/n)’s parents had often done the same.

The second woman came into view, and (y/n) couldn’t help but smile. Her sister, Dahlia, brushed over, gently taking Fearne’s hands in hers. They spun for a few moments, dancing along to the song. When it ended, they laughed and laughed, sipping from delicate teacups.

“Mm! What kind of tea is this?” Fearne asked, smiling. “Tastes very floral. It’s not jasmine, is it?”

Dahlia smiled, too, watching her sister with soft eyes. “Something like that.”

A terrible feeling began to settle in (y/n)’s bones. The thoughts building in the back of her mind began to come to fruition, and as she watched, she could feel her blood running cold. There was a terrible, nauseous lump in her throat. The police had thought nobody had been home with Fearne.

Fearne’s hand brushed her throat lightly. There was a faint sheen on her brow. “Did you add parsley to this? It’s got a bit of a weird taste.”

Her sister merely shook her head. She had not drank any of her tea.

“Dal, this - this doesn’t taste right.”

Dahlia tilted her head just so slightly. She did not seem concerned. “Oh?”

It was then that it began. The drawn-out death.

Fearne’s skin took on a pale tint, coated in a layer of sweat. The teacup dropped from her hand, smashing on the hardwood floor. Dahlia swept it up, disposing of it in the bin beside the sofa. She watched her sister closely, bright eyes narrowed as Fearne’s limbs took on a rigid look. She slumped on the sofa, panic flaring in her eyes.

She was struggling to speak, lips coated in her own saliva. She managed one word. “Why?”

Dahlia did not respond to her question. “Hemlock tastes very similar to parsley,” she murmured, standing as her sister began shaking, trying to suck in as much air as she could. “It was a shame things ended like this.”

The question, Why? hung in the air, unanswered. But the glaring look in Dahlia’s eyes revealed truer feelings than she had expressed in interviews. She resented her sister. Wholly and irrevocably. Why exactly she hated her was left a mystery hidden by a cruel smile.

(y/n) was torn from the vision as Fearne’s face began to turn purple, her lungs failing. She was saved from the horror of watching her die.

Lockwood was crouched in front of her when the present world began to melt back around her, his copper-and-caramel eyes taking the place of the sofa Fearne’s body had slumped upon.

His hands were on her face, warm and calloused. “You okay?” he asked gently. “Need any water?”

She shook her head, goosebumps rising across the skin of her arms. “It was her sister.”

“What?” Lockwood frowned, hands slipping from her cheeks to rest on the skin between her shoulders and neck. His touch made her shiver. “The newspapers -”

“They got it wrong,” she said. There was a bitter taste in her mouth. “She - she put hemlock in their tea. She murdered her own sister. She lied to the journalists. I can’t even begin to understand -”

Her voice fell flat. In some space in the back of her mind, she was vaguely aware of Lockwood speaking, trying to draw her attention back to him, but all she could focus on were the whispers. The glow.

A few feet behind Lockwood, there was a faint shimmer in the air, akin to how heat shimmered above pavements in summer. But this was all wrong. This was the dead end of winter. This was inside a house, where that kind of heat didn’t appear anywhere but the oven. This shimmer was glowing.

At first, it was no more than that - a shimmer - but the features soon developed. Long auburn hair. Freckled cheeks. Down-turned eyes and a wide nose bridge.

“Fearne…”

Lockwood’s hands were on her face again, trying to get her to look at him. “What? (y/n), talk to me.”

Dahlia, said the apparition with such spite that (y/n) could taste it. Bitter and pungent and poisonous. Dahlia.

She sounded out the name as if speaking to a child and teaching them syllables. Her very voice, strained of air and yet still, somehow, melodic, had her frozen on the spot.

“Fearne,” she uttered again. She could not move.

Perhaps had she not felt such sympathy for their visitor's circumstance, she would not have found herself ghost-locked. Perhaps she would have been standing already, rapier in one hand and a salt bomb in the other, prepared to hold her off whilst Lockwood found her source. Or, no, really it would be the other way around - Lockwood would never let her fight a ghost on her own, his pride and needless urge to protect were a killer. So maybe she would have been searching for that source by now. Maybe she would have found it already.

But it felt as though her joints had locked up, preventing her from moving at all. Her eyes could focus only on the shape of Fearne Watson’s ghost and not Lockwood, who she would much rather have been looking at.

He seemed to realise then what was happening, standing as he spun around to face the ghost. His rapier was drawn in mere seconds, angled towards her purple, glowing face. Her teeth were bared in some gruesome excuse of a smile that creased her tear-stained cheeks.

“(y/n).” His voice was steely as he looked ahead at the ghost, hiding any of the fear she wasn’t entirely sure he ever felt so as to not empower the ghost. “I need you to find the source. Snap out of it.”

She couldn’t, not when Fearne’s voice whispered in her ears so painfully, so full of betrayal. Her sister’s name over and over and over again, tear-filled and sickening. All (y/n) wanted to do was wrap her arms around Fearne and promise her that things would be okay, that she would take her story back to the news with the revelation of her killer. Even if it was just her word against the world’s, supported by no evidence but her Talent, she would do it.

Then, Lockwood threw a salt bomb at Fearne’s face, dissolving her spectral form for a moment.

He turned back to (y/n), eyes uncharacteristically wild. “(y/n), go!”

And she did. She was on her feet again, heart thumping in her chest as Lockwood turned to follow the moving glow of Fearne Watson, slashing at her with his rapier whenever she came too close.

(y/n) grappled for anything that could be a source, feeling them in her hands for any signs. Ice cold. Traces of memories that she would be able to see or hear. Most were fruitless, just ghastly-looking vases and pretentious photo frames. What on earth would be the source if somebody else was living here now?

A thought came to the forefront of her mind, driving her back to the blood-red rug. She folded the corner over itself again and again until she reached somewhere near the middle, cringing at the wailing noises that came from the visitor. Salt exploded in the air, tangling in her hair and melting on her lips. With the miasma she had misunderstood as fear and sympathy, it was a horrible taste.

The dark floor was stained darker in one spot, splotchy and strangely shaped, exactly where the teacup had fallen in the vision. Fearne howled when (y/n)’s fingers brushed it.

“Hurry!” Lockwood called, twisting his rapier in ways far too complicated for (y/n) to ever attempt. “I know what you’re thinking!”

And he likely did. She was unsure as to why Lockwood expected any different from her - to not feel even the slightest bit bad for these ghosts. Some had died so brutally, so heartbreakingly, that sometimes she doubted if he truly had a heart, despite the way she so often saw him looking at her.

This poor woman had been killed by her sister for nothing more than existing. She had died horribly, unable to move or breathe as her sister watched her struggle, ignoring the hemlock tea stain on the floor beneath her feet. She had remained at the site of her murder for years, with no escape from the memories of her death.

How could she not feel bad? How could she not wish for something more for ghosts like Fearne, more than a fight and another violent end, surrounded by the flames of the Fittes Furnaces?

The wailing disappeared for a moment, and all she could hear was Lockwood panting behind her. And the whispers. The whispers from the floorboard.

“Have you found the source?” he asked, his voice cool. She wasn’t sure when the last time he had used that tone on her was.

His answer was a resounding yes.

Fearne’s glowing apparition appeared in front of (y/n)’s face, her haunting smile and glassy eyes like a hand around her heart.

Dahlia, she murmured. A tear slipped down her purple cheek as one of her hands slowly reached upwards, towards (y/n)’s cheek. Her other hand neared the site of the source, from which she had just appeared. Dahlia.

(y/n) didn’t notice how cold her hand felt until the chill was gone, replaced by the weight of a silver net. All noise felt as though it had been sucked out of the room, replaced by a heavy silence.

Then came the angry breathing Lockwood so often resorted to when he could not bear to speak to George or Lucy when they had particularly annoyed him. But never had he done it because of (y/n). Never.

She turned her head, slipping her hand out from beneath the net, and met Lockwood’s gaze. His brows were drawn close over his shadowed eyes, lips curved downwards as his shoulders rose and fell with each deep, steadying breath he tried to take.

“We get rid of ghosts,” he said, voice tight. “We aren’t paid to sympathise with them.”

(y/n) stood slowly. “They deserve more than this.”

“They are ghosts.” His words were clipped now. “They deserve nothing.”

“She didn’t deserve to die.”

“And neither do we!”

He had raised his voice just so slightly, but, even still, it took her by shock. He slipped his rapier into his belt, pocketing his salt bombs, and stared angrily at her in a way he never had before.

“I let you off the first time something like this happened,” he said, “because you were new. I wanted to see how you worked, see how you processed these things. The second time, well, that was different - the ghost had no intention of doing anything but sitting sadly in a corner. The fifth time? Well, I suppose that, along with every other time you’ve pulled this, was because of my feelings for you. But you’ve put both of us at risk today, again. I won’t have it.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. “What? So you want me to go around with no feelings whatsoever and just get rid of all of these ghosts?”

He threw his arms into the air, exasperated. “Yes! That’s what I pay you to do!”

“Well, I won’t do it.” (y/n) bit the inside of her cheek. “Without the emotion, I wouldn’t be able to find the sources the way I do. I’m not going to be some emotionless paramount of an agent like you. And if you don’t want me to work that way, then I won’t. I'd rather leave than do that.”

“Then go.”

The words hung in the air, and (y/n) found herself immediately regretting hers. But Lockwood's certainty in his, they had her dead-set. If he was so blasé about her threat of leaving Lockwood and Co after all they had been through, all she had felt for him, then she would go.

She didn’t want to work in any way but hers. She had perfected her technique, used it on every case to support her findings. Sure, she sympathised with many of the ghosts; how could she not, when many were late children or murdered women or family members taken too soon? Telling her not to work that way, to not use the pain felt by the victims to help her bring them peace, was like trying to cut a piece out of her body. She’d kick and scream and stop it at any cost.

With a breath that constricted her chest, she clenched her fists. Pain flared up through her right hand and, when she looked down, she had to blink a few times to make sure she wasn’t making up the blue tinge her skin had taken on.

Lockwood seemed to notice it at that very moment, eyes widening as he stepped forward. His voice softened as he said, “(y/n), let me see -”

Taking a step back, she clutched her hand to her chest. “No.”

She said it with more force than she has ever used with him. It shocked her almost as much as it did him.

With her good hand shaking, she turned and strode out of the living room into the kitchen, where their kits were stashed.

DEPRAC’s main goal was to protect and provide for the agents that fought off visitors across the whole of Britain, and they had recently managed to get legislation approved for agents to carry adrenaline shots with them to cases. Far too many agents, most of them being barely teenagers, had died waiting for ambulances to provide the shots after being ghost-touched, especially when working in remote areas. DEPRAC wanted to reduce fatalities as much as possible.

So she reached into Lockwood’s bag - legislation had only been approved with the compromise that supervisors or business owners carried adrenaline shots with them, rather than allowing other agents to have possession of them - and pulled out the box containing the shot.

Lockwood was at her side in a second, reaching over to help her out, seeing her struggle with only one hand, but she turned away from him. She hoped he hadn’t seen the tears clouding her eyes before she had moved.

“(y/n),” he murmured.

“Don’t,” she said. “Just don’t.”

And, so, she stabbed the needle into her arm, administering the adrenaline despite the rules surrounding even that part of the legislation. She did not want to feel his hands on her skin. Not anymore.

☁︎ ☁︎ ☁︎ ☁︎

(y/n) sat curled up on her chair, newspaper laid out before her.

Her last case with Lockwood and Co had made it into the news, page eight, much to Lockwood’s likely chagrin. That was a guess, though. She supposed she wouldn’t know anymore.

Light flooded in through her window, illuminating the walls of her childhood home. She had not wanted to return, but what choice had she had? Getting a flat in London was almost impossible.

Her parents had taken her back with open arms, happy to have their little girl back, but they fell into old habits quickly. It seemed that the years she had spent living in 35 Portland Row had left them to store some passive aggressive comments ready for her return. Everything she did elicited some kind of comment.

She flicked through the newspaper, filling in crosswords and drawing devil horns on the heads of the Fittes agents that had made it into the paper.

Page eight, though she hated it, held her attention. After the effects of ghost-touch began to fade away, Lockwood had called the police and DEPRAC regarding the case, informing both of their findings. Though no evidence had been found to prove their claim, paragons of each big agency with the talent of Touch were brought in the DEPRAC van. Every single one confirmed her story.

The police disappeared shortly after, alerting higher ups and figuring out a strategy. Dahlia Watson still lived in London.

The floorboard was pried from the house, wrapped tightly in a silver net and taken by a DEPRAC officer en route to the Fittes Furnaces. She didn't miss the way Lockwood looked over at her at the announcement of the source's destination.

Journalists appeared shortly after, shouting their questions and writing down every move (y/n) and Lockwood made in their frustrating notepads as if their silence was condemnation. DEPRAC officers managed to shoo them off, but not before they snapped pictures of the two walking out of the house.

Lockwood looked as he always did, with that charming smile that, despite (y/n)’s anger, had a horrible flutter arising in her stomach, His long jacket blew back just so in the breeze, and his hair brushed his forehead softly. (y/n), on the other hand, looked far sterner than she had ever seen herself, her hand still a faint shade of blue, her eyes wan. Anybody who had seen their pictures in the news before that point likely knew that that was the end of their business together at Lockwood and Co. They were stood about two feet apart.

She should have left it there, left her remorse and fury mixing terribly in her chest, but she didn’t.

Her eyes caught onto the final sentence, and she felt rather sick. “I give full credit of the discovery to my partner, (y/n) (l/n), (pictured left). This case, and Fearne Watson's murder, would not have been solved without her. Always.”

Former partner, she thought with a lump in her throat. And, well, always did not seem so true anymore.

She tore the page from the paper, ignoring the bewildered look on her mother’s face. With bleary eyes, she crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into the fire.

Perhaps always was only for fairytales.

#KAJSJSJJSJSJD SPEECHLESS #PLS PLS WE NEED A RUINION SCENE 😭😭😭😭

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