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It was honestly getting a little creepy which, coming from him, was saying something. He was the ghost tied to his old skull in a jar, after all. But here that fucker was, coming up to Lucy’s room night after night after night. He’d lost track of how many nights at this point, not that he was counting. It was like clockwork, as dependable now as the ghost across the street schlepping his wife (he assumed it was his wife) rolled into that very large rug down Portland Row.
Maybe it would have been one thing if Lockwood did something other than just stand there on the steps watching Lucy sleep. Well, no, it still would have been creepy. While he’d never ask her, he could not wrap his figurative head around what Lucy—his Lucy—saw in Lockwood. He couldn’t deny that Lockwood was the one she wanted, he wasn’t blind. But she couldn’t see how the darkness shrouded him, couldn’t see his essence the way he could. Lucy deserved to be wrapped in the light, deserved to be alive. He was certain being with Lockwood would kill her. And even though he’d never say so, that simply wouldn’t do.
The boy loved her too—he would never tell her that either, it was a short but immutable list—that had always been plain. He had known it when he watched Lockwood carry her up the stairs, out of the basement, the first time she heard him. He chuckled to himself at the memory.
“You know I can’t actually hear you,” Lockwood hissed at him. Oh shit, the boy had come all the way up the stairs. This was new.
Lucy was stirring, another nightmare. They had always been frequent, part and parcel of dealing with the dead. But the past few weeks, the same nightmare had been playing itself on a loop, running well-worn grooves. It hung on her like an albatross around her neck. That much he could see. She let out a small scream. Oh good, she was awake.
“INTRUDER!!!”
Ahh fuck, she hadn’t heard him. Her Listening as she came out of sleep could be hit or miss. Sometimes it was sharper than ever, she had told him once. But he knew sometimes waking up brought her fully into the land of the living, unattuned to his world, to him. He envied her that. He envied the boy at her bedside, tenderly stroking her brow, even more.
“Yeah, yeah, loverboy’s here.” He shifted the pitch of his voice an octave higher. “Ooh Lockwood, I’m so scared. Come comfort me!”
“Oh, come off it.” Great, now she heard him.
On the growing list of things he would never tell Lucy Carlyle: covering the jar didn’t actually cover him, per se. He was surprised that she hadn’t put two and two together, really. Well, he wasn’t that surprised, he couldn’t stand George but if it had been him with the Listening Talent, he surely would have figured it out by now. Out on cases, Lucy always carried him around inside a backpack, but still relied on him to see things the others didn’t catch. Visitors and sources, sure, but other things that should have been plain as day on their side too. Just because she shoved him in a closet, didn’t necessarily mean he couldn’t see her or that he was whisked away to the Other Side. It just meant she couldn’t see him.
Or maybe she did know but didn’t care. There was an exciting thought.
For one, doors on the Other Side, if they existed at all, were at the very least ajar. It’s how he knew about Jessica’s room long before Lucy and George did, not that Lucy had bothered to ask (she never seemed to ask the right questions). And it wasn’t so much that he had access to all of the living world when she threw a sweater over him, it was that he always—from the moment she first heard him—had access to her. At the time it had taken him by surprise too, her faint life-glow appearing in the murky otherworld. As the months passed, it only grew stronger, and he found himself clinging to it like a life raft.
So, even when she would shove him in the dresser when she was sick of him in their shared Tooting flat, he could still plainly see her writhing on her pillow, hand between her thighs, smell the arousal soaking her fingers so intense he could almost taste it, hear her delicious kittenish moans—he really had thought it obvious the valve went only one way, but he wasn’t going to say anything.
Unless she wanted him to hear.
It had only gotten worse since she picked him back up (he refused to use the word rescue) at the Rotwell Institute. Lucy was now dripping with the Other Side, and it made her almost blinding to look at. When she covered the jar before, her essence had been soft and smudgy sapphire light—still hers, certainly, he’d know it anywhere—but now there was the same firmness, the dimension he saw in the dead of night. It was lovely, strong, intoxicating cobalt fire, a sun he’d happily stare into forever. If he had believed in a god, would she have known how alive Lucy Carlyle made this poor wretched skull feel?
Lockwood was covered in it too. The boy had changed the most of all in the months away from Portland Row. George and Munro, if nothing else, were steady constants. Kipps, the little shit, had become only more repulsive, although he had to admit he couldn’t tell if that was because he saw Lucy softening toward the young man. But he noticed that Lockwood’s essence, while still dull and matte, was brighter and significantly more indigo in hue than before. This irritated him deeply.
Yet another thing he could never tell Lucy.
He actually wished, in this moment, that the sweater did indeed blind him, that the valve went both ways. Sitting on her window ledge, he watched helplessly as they stood on either side of him. He could almost feel them grazing his skin, feel their electricity passing through him as if he was the conduit. Lucy looked through him at Lockwood, face tender and open and light. He could pretend it was for him. He could almost feel the flutter of a pulse, a rush of blood to his cock. Almost.
Then the knife twisted and he watched Lockwood as he climbed into her bed, pulled her head to his chest. He pitifully imagined the weight of Lucy on him instead, a heavy pang where his heart would have been. Fuck.
He wasn’t sure exactly how much time had passed before Lucy remembered him. It wasn’t unusual. If anything, this was his main gripe when she covered him—out of sight, out of mind. He wondered briefly if he’d still want her if she couldn’t talk to him. But that was a stupid question. She was who she was because she could. Her specialness was tied to him. He didn’t care about her looks and it certainly wasn’t her mind. Lucy was singular simply because she was Lucy. And what they had, that was spectacularly rare too, he reassured himself. He imagined if he had a body he would have flushed at the thought. That was the thing with these fickle feelings. Without a body, they had nowhere to go.
He gazed at Lucy, sleeping in her bed. It wasn’t creepy when he watched her sleep, of course. He was watching over her, and she knew he was there. She had gone to bed early that evening, a rare night off for her, and they had (as usual) argued. He had asked about the night before, he couldn’t help himself, the image of cobalt and indigo tangling together burned in his mind. Then Lockwood had left abruptly in the morning (no doubt to take care of the impressive morning wood that he saw the outline of) and Lucy was left frustrated and alone.
He loved when she was frustrated and forgot he was there.
Her fingers slowly teased the waistband of her shorts, as if she was toying with the idea of playing with herself. Black nails flirted underneath her shirt, caressing the underside of her breast.
“Come on girl, what are you waiting for?” he grumbled.
He didn’t remember her switching the valve but he sometimes swore she could hear him anyway. Flipping onto her stomach, Lucy shoved her hand down her knickers and began to rub slow strokes through her folds. Observing her arse in the air, he couldn’t help but smirk. It was a view that, while he couldn’t appreciate it properly, was one that at least two members of Lockwood & Co. would die for. He had caught every single one of them staring at one point or another, except George. Even Flo had clocked that undeniable Carlyle arse. He also knew from experience that she would take her time here. Well, he had all the time in the world.
While he admired her shape, he had to wait for his favorite part: when she finally lost her patience and ran her fingers furiously back and forth across her clit, even occasionally lightly slapping her dripping cunt. The sound was disgusting, exquisite. Back arching and legs twitching, she would bite down on her fist or her pillow, desperately hoping to suppress the whining and—if he was lucky and she was also playing with a nipple—mewling from her throat. And if he was very, very lucky, that was all he would hear. Lockwood’s name would not pass her lips as she hit her climax.
Of course, in his fantasy of the memory, he could wipe the end clean. Instead she would say his name—his real name—that was on the tip of his tongue but could never bring himself to say. He wanted her, it was true, but she could never want him. He was just an old, dead, half-rotten skull to her. He would never tell her his name, he thought bitterly.
She hadn’t come back. He knew he was being ridiculous, as he felt the panic rise. She had left him alone before. She had left him alone frequently, in fact. But since their return to Portland Row, she had hardly let him out of her sight. It was stupid, really, so stupid. She would come back for him. She would come back for him. She would come back for him.
The first rays of sunlight had already cracked as a sleepy Lucy struggled up the stairs without even so much as a hello. Her hair was disheveled, but she was still in the same pajamas she wore the night before.
“You said you were just getting tea,” he sneered.
“I did get tea, but then I ran into Lockwood and we—“
“Oh, you ran into Lockwood did you? That tells me all I need to know.” He couldn’t decide how much he wanted to know.
“And what would that be exactly?” Her voice was cool and nonchalant, but she crossed her arms and he saw the flush blooming on her chest.
“Did he tell you that he’s snuck up here every night since we’ve been back? It’s a little obsessive, Lucy,” he snapped.
The redness spread to her cheeks. “Not that it’s any of your business, Skull,” she bit down on the last syllable and he felt a twinge of pleasure at seeing her riled up. “He’s been having the same nightmares too. And I’m the only one he can talk to about it.”
“Yes, well, he doesn’t have me does he?”
She scoffed. “You don’t understand, though. Not really.”
That stung. I understand better than anyone, Lucy. He held the words back. He knew she knew it was true. She was the one who didn’t understand, not really, not yet anyway. She would, one day, but his patience was wearing thin.
She had stuck him in the armoire again. Through the door, he was still angled perfectly at the staircase, perfectly at her bed. He saw everything that happened when Lockwood climbed her staircase yet again, but this time the boy had the gall to come all the way up without hesitation. Lockwood strode confidently across the room, crawling easily into her bed as if it were his.
How dare he.
Lucy was still awake, the skull knew. He had watched her fall asleep so many times that he knew the cadence of her breath as she passed into slumber, could hear the slowing of her heart as if it was his own. He hoped she would throw Lockwood out, even though he knew better. She would stay with him forever.
Two heartbeats drumming fast, asynchronous at first before gradually finding time with one another, until all he heard were the quick and steady beats roaring over any thought, any feeling he could conjure up to cover the sound. He desperately wished he could cover his ears but it wouldn’t have mattered. Yes, he could at the very least tear his eyes away, grant Lucy some privacy, but he couldn’t help himself. Not as he watched her rolling her hips against Lockwood, gazed in horror as she was the one to rip her own shirt off, exposing her milky skin and pebbled nipples already hard in the light of the ghost lamp.
“You’re so beautiful, Luce,” Lockwood’s voice was full of awe.
She’s so much more than that, boy, the skull thought darkly. You have no idea. It was pathetic, the way Lockwood begged for her.
“Don’t fucking stop,” she panted. He wished he could die again. Send him to the furnaces.
“Please, Lucy, put me out of my bloody misery.” The valve was off and he was out of sight and out of mind. He wasn’t sure who hated more, himself for wanting her or Lucy for making him watch. But he directed it all to the body on top of her.
He wanted to tear Lockwood's tongue from his throat as it flicked at her pulse, traced down her body, tasted her fully. The scent of him mixed with her was overwhelming, unbearable. He wanted to tear him apart limb from limb, snap his fingers from his hand. He should have left them on the Other Side. He frequently wanted to murder Lockwood, but never more than when Lucy cried out in the kind of pleasure-pain that she had never quite achieved on her own.
There was so much he could do, if only he were out of the silver-glass. One day she would know his power. One day.