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lewkwoodnco · 6 months

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Hii I wanted to request Anthony Lockwood×fem!reader with the song "How you get the girl." With them being friends and her being there when he opened the agency. All of them are on a case, and she almost gets ghost touched, so the drive home is very intense, then Lockwood gets mad at her for being reckless, she doesn't want to argue with him so she just goes to sleep crying, the next week Lockwood avoids her, and he sees a nightmare about her dying, so he pushes her even further away. She thinks that he is in love with Lucy because he is avoiding her and spending more time with Lucy. So she leaves the agency, and Anthony doesn't stop her because he thinks he is doing the right thing for her. Lucy and George miss the reader because they're very good friends, so they persuade Lockwood to tell the reader how he feels and bring her back, but Lockwood doesn't listen because he thinks it's for the better. Meanwhile, the reader gets very depressed because she misses them. After months of missing them, she can't do it anymore and tries to drown herself, but Lucy and George find her, so she gets angry at them and leaves. Lucy and George tell everything to Lockwood, who can't do it anymore. So he goes to the reader's house to confess and get her back.

How You Get the Girl - Lockwood x Reader

A/N: wooooo I’ve taken a long break from angst and this fic scratched all my itches hheheheh and in honour of 1989 TV!!! TW brief suicidal mentions but I try not to go into much detail, and goodnight god I need to sleeeeep wc: 4.8k

The four of them were in a cemetery, tasked to tackle three confirmed Lurkers. They were grateful it wasn't more, what with only half of them having decent Sight, but she was starting to feel bored, prodding the pebbles in the soil like some makeshift game, penned inside her iron chains near the gate. Lucy was also inside a different set of chains, but hers was inside the cemetery, where all the action was, and where she could somewhat help to look for the Sources. She had been more than ready to be the one standing nearer to the gate, but she was better at scaling walls so it was only logical to have her be the one inside in case...in case something went wrong with the gate.

Still, if George's yelling was any indication, they'd just found the second source, so it wouldn't be much longer now. They'd find the last source, pack up, and leave this dimly lit place which made her stomach churn.

"Where's the last one? I don't -" Lucy's scream tore into the night sky, cutting Lockwood off. She nearly fell over her rapier as she stumbled to her feet, hands growing clammy as she squinted through the cemetery's fog. She had never heard Lucy scream, let alone one filled with so much terror. Her mouth felt like rubber as she listened for something, anything, but was deafened by her heart pounding in her ears. Nothing. It was eerily quiet, as if none of them were there. She called out to her friends. Still nothing. She tried not to think about the last time Lockwood had been this quiet on a case. Turns out, he wasn't quite as chatty when bleeding out from a gunshot wound. Something similar must have happened now. His knees were probably buckling under himself right now, exhaling his last breath, as she stayed behind her chains like a coward. She heard a forlorn whisper - her own, even though she didn't register herself speaking.

"Lockwood. Lockwood?"

He was dead. She didn't know why, or how, but in that moment she knew for a fact that he was dead, or dying, and no one could bear to tell her. Sod the chains.

She tentatively stepped out of the circle, swallowing as her nausea increased tenfold. The crunch of the gravel beneath her boots seemed too loud for a night as quiet as this. The silence emanating solidified with every step she took, until the absence began to feel like something tangible. Her thoughts were running ahead of her, taunting her, preparing her for the worst sight imaginable. George with his head smashed upon? Lucy with her throat slashed? Lockwood, impaled on his own rapier?

She felt a prickling at the back of her neck, the kind that comes when a Visitor is too close. She lashed behind herself clumsily, rapier suddenly as bulky and unfamiliar as it was years back. She’d been in far more life-threatening situations, and yet now was the time she chose to have all her skills fly out of the window.

She felt a harsh jerk at her left elbow, and for the second time that night, she had an unpleasant swooping sensation of uncertainty twist her stomach. Fire spluttered inches from her face and she flinched, bumping into Lockwood, whose fingers had slipped from the crook of her elbow to her wrist. He looked around wildly, pulling his rapier back defensively, before she heard an unpleasant screech as her ears popped. Panic seeped out of her as she readjusted to the real world, becoming increasingly aware of his grip on her pulse. His hair was messed up and the side of his face glittered with soot, but he seemed too busy struggling with something himself to speak. He looked just as disconcerted as she felt, but the longer he observed her with trepidation in his eyes, she felt that it had more to do with her than the Lurkers.

“They...found the source?” She asked breathlessly, anything to break the silence.

“...yes.” He bit out, and she was thrown off by the venom in his voice. There was something different about him, something surlier. George gave a shout from behind and Lockwood snapped out of it, letting go of her wrist and moving away. By the time her wits had sufficiently returned, he was already finishing up some paperwork and George and Lucy had just finished loading their supplies into the cab. She tried to catch Lockwood's eye as he walked towards them, but he seemed to be aggressively avoiding her gaze. The crushing feeling was back. The cab ride was no less easy.

“Were you ghost-locked?” Lucy had picked up that something was off and she had the foresight to sit up front with the driver, while George was stuck between them. Lockwood, being Lockwood, wasn't about to wait until they reached home to start on her.

“No.” Couldn’t even see the bloody thing, she wanted to add, but she felt it wouldn’t help her case.

“Drawn out by the visitor?”

“No.” She felt the hot prick of shameful tears behind her eyes as she cradled her forehead. What had gotten into her? She had been embarrassingly paralysed for no good reason, rapier slack in her hand like an amateur trainee who couldn’t tell one end from the other.

“You of all people should know to stay within the chains. You know how little you can see. This isn’t your first Lurker - “

“I heard noises, and some screaming, and then it was dead quiet. I thought something terrible had happened.”

"What screaming?" It was harder for Lucy to follow the conversation from the front, but she still tried earnestly.

Her response died at her lips as she caught George's equally confused glance. The realisation dawned on her unpleasantly. Of course no one knew what she was talking about. There was no screaming. She should have known better, she did know better: Lurkers were notorious for causing visual and auditory hallucinations. Lockwood didn't wait for an answer, and pressed on heatedly.

“Even if she had screamed, your first instinct is to abandon your only form of protection? You’re not a newbie, L/N. So why I am I having to spell this out for you?”

“Spell what out for me?” It was a little more vicious than what the rest were accustomed to seeing, especially since very little of Lockwood riled her up this much after working with him for so long. But he hadn’t referred to her by her surname for years, and it stung.

“You could have died! You nearly did die. Never, have I ever seen a disregard for personal safety so deplorable. Really, what were you thinking?”

She rests her head against the cold window, the rattling a welcome relief to her pounding head, her exhaustion finally catching up to her, her words like loose marbles on her tongue. “I…I don’t know. I wasn’t- I was just…I wasn’t thinking.”

“Clearly.”

As far as misunderstandings went, theirs never went this far. Lockwood was an open book to her, and where he was stubborn she was even-tempered enough to knock some sense into him before things escalated this far. But this was new territory. She had never seen him this angry before and certainly never towards her, and she was too weak to shoulder his anger bravely. She could see the irritation behind the tension in his shoulders as he stabbed his rapier into their rapier stand near the front door, and felt her heart fold within itself even more. He jerked towards her like there was something he wanted to stay. A million words and feelings raced across his face. She opened her mouth, willing her fatigued mind to say something to patch the rift.

“I’m sorry.” She held her breath. “I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

Any other day, he would have sighed, maybe held off for a second or two, before pulling her into a half hug or ruffling her hair, and dragging her to the kitchen. Because where Lockwood was smooth and charismatic, she was clunky with words and sometimes she couldn’t find the right ones. But with Lockwood, she didn’t need to. He would take one look in her eyes and pluck the thought out with devastating grace. It was her and Lockwood, Lockwood and her, forever scampering to each other’s rooms across the hallway to tell the other about their latest inane thought, until George yelled at them to quit it.

But today was not any other day.

“If you pull a stunt like this again…I don’t know if I could trust you enough to stay safe on cases.”

Her voice was an ugly croak. “…what?”

“Y/N…I cannot, in good conscience, entertain or enable you in this-this suicidal-“

“Lockwood, it was an accident. You know that, right?”

“That’s besides the-“

“You can’t possibly think I did this on purpose!”

“I don’t know.”

His eyes dropped, and she felt tears stinging her eyes again. “You...don’t...know.” She echoed him distantly, turning over each syllable on her tongue carefully, voice as hollow as his. “You don’t know…what? You don’t know…me?”

Flashes of the life they built together ran through her mind. Patiently dusting the frames that cluttered the walls. Broaching the idea of starting an agency. Standing hours in line at DEPRAC to register said agency. Going to Arif’s for the first time. Weeks of singed hair and smoky air as they relentlessly shortlisted the most cost-effective suppliers for their kits. Getting over her first breakup and watching him laugh as she swore off dating forever. Cycling indoors on a rainy afternoon just for the hell of it, while George nagged at them incessantly. Buying a cake the day their paperwork was approved and it being smeared on DEPRAC’s certificate within a minute of it being cut. Getting yelled at by Barnes for the first time. Getting injured for the first time and having him excessively fuss over the cut. Arguing about their noses while waiting for their cab in the cold after a case (he insists they’re the same, and she disagrees, partly because she isn’t sure if she could handle knowing that). Framing their first (less than complimentary) news article. Him putting the kettle on in the mornings so that it’s just the right temperature by the time she comes down to the kitchen.

Somewhere along the line, she became acutely aware that the glow she felt watching him nibble at toast in bright spirits after a long case wasn’t completely normal, but then she forgot, because it didn’t matter at the time. But now it felt like it should.

He swallowed with a resolute set to his jaw that told her he wasn’t going to change his mind anytime soon. She felt a tremor run through her hand, a sudden urge to reach out and clench the lapels of his coat, to hold on to the misty silhouette of a friend who was quickly dissolving into thin air.

And then he was gone, and she was alone, and the rift deepened and gaped its visceral jaws in front of her, threatening to swallow her whole. She numbly got dressed for bed, forgetting about the slice on her forearm until she dragged it across her sheets. It smarted, but there was a comfort in the irritation and rawness.

That night, she dreamt of bicycles rolling along on hardwood floors, the shadows the library fire cast in the grooves of Lockwood's face, and rough walls she couldn't scale. She didn't know when she started to cry.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"So we all slept like shit. Good to know."

George walked into an uncharacteristically silent kitchen. Lucy was glumly stirring her tea, Lockwood favoured the newspaper over breakfast that morning, and she had a plate of buttered toast in front of her that she kept forgetting about. "At least the two of you had the chains for, er, most of it."

"Please. It was just as bad inside the chains. I kept hearing my teammates die over, and over, and..." She covered Lucy's hand with one of her own, gently removing her spoon.

Breakfast was a sorry affair, and the rest of the week didn't fare much better either, and things reached a breaking point on Sunday. Lockwood shut himself up in the library to get their files and invoices straightened out. There we go, another first: first morning they didn't speak a word to each other. Lucy was busy with rapier practice and George went off to the Archives, so she decided to head out for some fresh air. She came home around lunchtime. George wasn't back yet, but she couldn't hear the jets going off in the basement. She crept upstairs, her stomach twisting at the sight in Lockwood's room.

He was seated on his bed, concerningly pale, talking to Lucy in a low voice. The scene looked so intimate she felt like an intruder just watching them. She tapped on his door, and their heads jumped apart.

"Everything okay?" She tried to keep her tone light, but Lucy's grave face and Lockwood still pointedly looking away didn't help. Lucy gave him a not-so-subtle kick and he grimaced. Her face fell.

"Sorry, I...didn't mean to intrude."

"No, no, it was nothing. We were just talking about yesterday's case. Right, Lockwood?"

"I'll just go -"

"Luce, mind helping me pack the chains?" He held out a duffel bag. The duffel bag he always gave her, not Lucy, to pack the chains. To her credit, Lucy didn't seem much happier than her either, and she snatches the bag from him in a huff. As Lucy walks away, she wonders what it must be like to be loved by Anthony Lockwood. He stands up and starts to shift around his room, fiddling with odds and ends; but curiously, he hasn't asked her to leave.

"I can't - " Her words failed her, but she gritted her teeth and forced them out anyway, the hard edge in her voice giving way to a weak whisper. "I can't stand this. You can't keep freezing me out."

"I don't know what you're talking about. What I do know is that we have a job at 135 Manilla Street and if you don't feel up for it..."

She didn't finish his sentence. She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction. She wasn't going to play into his emotionally manipulative hands like putty. Lucy awkwardly walked out of the room.

"...maybe you shouldn't come."

For the first time in nearly 18 hours, he finally looked at her, but nothing could have prepared her for the contempt he held.

"Don't be ridiculous." "Of course I'm coming."

"Actually, I was just discussing this with Lu-" A heavy boot chucked from the attic narrowly missed Lockwood's head. "I came to the decision, after talking with Luce, that maybe it's best you don't come tonight. I don't want a repeat of yesterday."

"Well, I'm sorry you feel that way, because I'm coming. This is my job." Lockwood didn't seem to appreciate that in the same way she did. She was distantly aware of George calling out into the house, and Lockwood slammed the stack of books he was gathering onto his desk in response. Anger seemed to be the only emotion he could express after last night.

"Why can't you just listen for once? Why must you always be so...so difficult?"

"I'm not some possession for you to do with as you please! You yell at me, ignore me, scorn me, now lock me up just because you've decided you don't want to look at me?"

"Enough." There was a warning hidden in the tone of his voice as he started to close his door, but she wasn't done. Some fragmented fracture of Lockwood still cared about her, cared about his awful behaviour, and by God was she going to shake that out of him.

"What do I care? Keeping secrets behind locked doors is all you're good at anyway."

He froze just as the door was a fraction of an inch away from closing, a deadly quiet settling over the house. Even the rustling in the kitchen stopped.

“Look, I didn’t want to have to this.” Oh, he’s most definitely seeing red now. “But I am your employer, Miss L/N, and it is for me to decide which cases you do or do not go for.”

"So...this is just what we're going to do for the next...forever? I'll never go on a case again just because you have some weird problem with it? I'll just -" She let out a harsh bark of laughter, suddenly manic with panic. "I'll just leave then, shall I? Get out of your hair, for good?"

"I didn't say that."

“Don’t. Don’t. Don’t do this, Lockwood.” Her breath was coming in embarrassingly agitated now. Was the air thinning? Her head was spinning like she might pass out. She pushed against the door with ore force than she needed, meeting surprisingly little resistance. He was standing woodenly, eyes unseeing, and yet she felt that was the most honest he had been since the previous night. She looks at him, and for the first time, she wonders what he’s thinking about.

"Fine. Be like that, then." She wants to reach out, beg him to want her to stay, but instead she pulls herself away. She opens drawers and cabinets and pours clothes and misery into her worn suitcase. Lucy stands hopelessly in the doorway and George is whispering something furious to Lockwood, who just watches her stonily. A part of her feels stupid, as stupid as the night before, like she had lost some race in taking this long to realise she was hoping, praying, waiting for nothing. As she leaves, George searches her face and pats her shoulder awkwardly. When she reaches the front door, a movement in the shadows makes her jump.

"He's just being an arse. You know that. Just wait a few days. Please.”

Lucy. Sweet Lucy. Sweet, well-meaning Lucy who was better than the lot of them. She was going to miss her the most. She told her as much, but Lucy didn’t seem amused.

“You don't have to leave." She pulled Lucy into a hug, keeping her bitterness barely at bay.

"Oh, Luce. What else can I do?"

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She lives in a cold, cramped flat at the edge of civilisation, away from anyone's eyes. Away from Lockwood's cold, dead eyes. Some days she reads the paper, and every time she tries to force herself to read it as Lockwood would. She stays in the bed for the first week, but her savings are only so little, and eventually she starts working again. Too frail to set out as an independent agent, she signs on part-time with Fittes. She doesn't bother to get to know her teammates. Kipps is unexpectedly kind to her in ways he would rather die than acknowledge. She doesn't stick around long enough to get checked up by their medics after cases.

She returns to her dimly lit cavern and clumsily bandages her cut alone with none of his attention to detail. She drags her palm weakly across her eyes and tries to remember her friends' faces. Did Lucy's bob end at her chin, or her clavicles? How big were the lenses of George's glasses? Lockwood is a mist that colours her new life. Turns out, life is a lot more depressing without George's propensity for intellectual name-calling and Lucy's aggressively positive spirit. Sometimes she catches herself taking her tea the way Lockwood does, and she wonders where Lockwood ends and where she begins.

She goes to sleep wishing she had never met him, and wakes up with a million things to tell him. She sees the occasional silhouette wandering the street as she draws her curtains and lets her heart pretend it's him. She fumbles with her love for him, not knowing where, or how, to put it down. Day in and day out, her yearning threatens to consume her entirely.

One night, after a case at a bridge over the Thames, she runs into George and Lucy, and it's the most alive she's ever felt since she left. They want to hear about her but she brushes it off immediately: she wants to hear everything and anything about 35 Portland Row and its inhabitants.

"He's bloody awful lately. He's too quiet, and he keeps staring out of windows like he's waiting for something, even at night. George had to knock him out with cough syrup to stop him from coming tonight; he's wasting away. Of course, George occasionally forces some food down his throat and wrestles him into his bed every once in a while, but..." Lucy worries her bottom lip and she feels her stomach sink. "I don't know how much longer this can last."

"I keep telling him to reach out to you -"

"Reach out to me? Do you know where I live?"

George exchanges a look with Lucy. "Well, not exactly, but it took Lockwood all but half a day to find out. Not that he'll tell us. Coherent speech is...it's becoming a bit of a struggle for him. Either way, I have no idea what's keeping him from apologising when he's clearly so cut up about it."

After they leave, she replays the conversation in her head while waiting to be dismissed, trying to extract as much meaning as she could from their words. She thinks about the dark apartment waiting for her. An empty flat. An empty life. Before she realises, she's neck deep in the Thames, a step away from walking off the sea bed. Freedom from this pain, from these shackles which bound her to earthly woes, was deliciously close. She closes her eyes and takes the final step, water rushing in to dull her hyperactive senses.

But the peace didn't last long. Suddenly, she felt hands hauling her out of her cool sanctuary, and desperate panting coupled with water splashing. The water in her lungs hurt and she felt like a sack of potatoes. After much painful gagging and coughing, she gathered her wits. Lucy was apprehensively leaning over her, and she could hear George agitatedly pacing and muttering behind them.

"I thought you looked weird. Your eyes were too bright."

"...dead man walking. I'm gonna kill him. I'm gonna rip his throat out..."

"Come home with us, Y/N. Just for tonight. Please."

She looks at Lucy, suddenly furious at her for interfering. What did she know? This wasn't some small tiff where she and Lockwood could just hug and make up. She was better off without them. She dodges Lucy's concern and outstretched hand, shakily rising to her feet.

"If it was as simple as coming home, believe me - I would have returned a long time ago."

"Y/N..."

"I don't need you looking after me! I'm fine alone. Just go home, Lucy." Shame was beginning to fester inside of her. "Just go home."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hell is beating at her windows when she wakes up. The rain comes down hard and fast in sheets, and for the first time, she feels grateful to have this roof, however old, over her head. She curls up at her window with a large cup of coffee, watching the heavens rage.

Suddenly, her head jerks towards the front door. She listens carefully for a moment, but only hears the wind howling through some hidden draft. And yet, her feet are walking her towards the door. She feels it in her bones the way she hasn't felt it since that fateful night months back. Something new is waiting for her.

She opens the door to a drenched man with his fist poised, ready to knock. It takes her a few blinks to reconcile the image of the man in front of her with the Lockwood she now only hazily remembered. They hadn't been exaggerating; he really did look awful. His skin was dull and stretched grotesquely over his bones, and his eyes look positively bruised. He was aggressively shivering in the rain, no umbrella in sight. She instinctively stepped back and he gratefully entered, rubbing his hands together for some warmth.

"Are you insane? What are you doing here?"

"I know what happened last night."

She subconsciously withdrew within herself. "George told you?"

"Lucy, actually. George and I haven't been on the best of terms lately, but, as of now, he's stopped speaking to me entirely."

"Ah." A small part of her flickered sympathetically. She remembered how much George meant to Lockwood, and vice versa, but the memory felt so unused, as if it were from a different life.

If he notices how dismal her flat is, he doesn't let on. In fact, he only seems interested in looking at her, drinking her in like a man starved. She allows it, but only for a while, and only because it's too big of a relief to have him standing here, larger than life, right in front of her. Starving, yes; sleep-deprived, yes; but very much alive.

"Come now, Y/N. Don't look at me like that."

"It's been a very long six months. I'll look at you however I want."

He sighs and shifts her chair closer to her and, as if inspired by some sudden bout of insanity, takes her hand, but doesn't seem to know exactly what to do with it.

"Lucy and George have been yelling at me to tell you the truth for ages now, but...I was too afraid. I was a coward. But after my earful from George last night...I realised you were just as scared as I was. Probably even more, all alone. And I'm trying to find it in me to be brave enough for the both of us." She listens cautiously, too burnt to fully believe.

He laces his fingers into her own, and brings it up to his face tenderly. "Remember how it used to be? Me and you, you and me. Just the two of us against the rest of the world." He fiddles with his pocket, and she hears a crinkling of brittle newspaper. It's their first picture in the papers. George, with significantly fewer wrinkles, is standing off to one side. Lockwood is trying and failing to look professional, which probably has to do with the way she's thrown her arms around his neck and is pressing a half-kiss to his cheekbone. She couldn't help it; she was just so proud of him. That's the photo to gets her to smile for the first time in months.

His own smile wobbles as he watches her, then slides off entirely, leaving behind an Anthony Lockwood that looks much older than his years.

"I don't know what I was thinking that day. I had a really bad string of nightmares that week where...where your lips would be blue and your pulse long gone by the time I reached. It was such a close shave, I can't help but think..." She wants to reach out and smooth the crease in his brow. "What if I were a second late?"

"But you weren't. Isn't that all that matters?"

A glimmer of a smile skimmed his face. "Yeah, well, Lucy told me as much."

"Smart girl."

"But I didn't listen. I tried - god, I tried - but I couldn't. I thought you would be safer without me. So when you started saying you'd leave, this awful seed was planted in my head, and I was angry, but also madly in love with you, and I didn't know how to say any of it."

A tear falls on their joined hands. "That evening really messed me up, Lockwood. It screwed with my head big time."

"I know." There was a rush in his voice that mirrored the same kind of rush that had flitted through her body for the past six months. "And I don't expect you to ever forgive me. I'll spend the rest of my life fixing the damage I've done. But...but...if somewhere down the road...you find it in your big heart to forgive me and my sins...I might just love you. No more secrets or locked doors; I'm done with them. Y/N L/N, I'm ready to love you wildly and freely."

First time she didn't absolutely hate him saying her last name.

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