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George put his head against the cloudy hospital viewing window. His glasses clicked against it and dug into his face, but he didn’t move. He couldn’t. He’d been trying to convince himself to move for the better part of an hour. To leave, to get on another plane and keep trying to forget the life waiting for him in London.
He’d only been gone six months. A dig in Guatemala promised amazing finds and more information about ancient understandings of the Visitor phenomenon. With his Talent stumbling across its bleak ending and his best mates starting their brand new life together, it seemed the time. To leave, to make something grander of himself than a bookworm crawling amongst the frayed opinions of other people. It was time to make opinions of his own.
God, he sounded like Lockwood.
They tried to convince him to stay. Lockwood tried to bribe him by offering to convert the library into George’s personal study to work on his book. They’d solved enough fantastical cases to fill an encyclopedia, Lockwood argued. George didn’t need to go halfway across the world to find a thing worth saying. He was right, in a way. The science wasn’t the only perk of Guatemala. Lucy tried to scare him with stories about all the bugs and diseases and greenery he would be faced with, and he admitted he wasn’t looking forward to it.
London was his home, and their doe eyes (Lockwood) and their wrestling pins (Lucy) were almost enough to trap him in the ever-widening quagmire of their affection. But they were all getting older, and George, at least, was getting wiser. He’d lived a year in that house after they were married. A year watching them build a life after the collapse of the agencies and the solving of the Problem. A year pretending he couldn’t hear them across the landing at night.
He’d spent many more years yearning for something he’d never get from them. He wasn’t going to spend any more.
So he left.
He endured the flora and the new foods, and he learned how to drink bottled water. He filled that hollow space with an obscene amount of books and on occasion, Leonor, the head of research for the dig who was so different from Lockwood or Lucy.
He sent his congratulations when not three weeks after his departure, the announcement came. He’d hardly begun his work, couldn’t afford to fly back so soon, so it was a phone call where he made sure Lucy was happy with it. She would say she was because Lockwood was over the moon, but he called when he knew Lockwood would be stopping around Arif’s.
You sure you’re happy? George had asked, and he heard her tearful laugh.
I thought I wouldn’t be, honestly. But I am, Georgie. I’m so happy.
He sent more formal felicitations on the back of a postcard.
He just hadn’t ever imagined something like this would happen. He lived with them for a year, and he’d walked in on them often enough to know there was absolutely nothing wrong with their sex life. They loved each other deeply, passionately, and carnally to the tune of possibly several times a day. If it was a honeymoon phase, they were certainly squeezing the most out of it. So the odds that all it took was that one time, that one mistake—
Astronomical.
But there she was.
Pink hat not quite covering her mop of curly hair, black like the Guatemalan beaches. Tiny, so fucking tiny, fingers twitching against her mouth as she slept. Her skin, not the pale English complexion, but the barest, lightest brown.
A blank space for her first name and for the last: Lockwood.
…
They were supposed to be out celebrating their anniversary. He made the mistake of telling them his decision that afternoon; he was going. The dig would start in three months, and he’d leave in two to start the preliminary in-country research.
They pouted and cajoled and coerced until he agreed to have a drink with them about it.
They had another.
Another.
Someone brought up the Bickerstaff case. Brought up Joplin. They joked about it now like nomads hunched around a fire joked about the dark. Lucy wouldn’t stop making cougar comments as she flipped through their photo albums on the floor. Albums she alone was largely responsible for. She said she was looking for one in particular, but she’d been looking for an hour, tossing their grinning faces all over the carpet. Lockwood was squished next to him on the sofa, long arm just as gangly as when they were young cinched over George’s shoulders. He kept George tight against him, and George didn’t realize how tight because of the whiskey slackening his fingers, putting that damnable smile on his face.
It wasn’t like that with Joplin, George insisted with a blush high on his cheeks. There may have been a couple deep sleep dreams that involved the impression of her, but in the moment, it was just nice to be seen.
Lucy looked at him. She wouldn’t stop looking at him.
I suppose that’s your type, though? Nerds, Lucy had said, rising on unsteady legs.
George had avoided questions like that in the past. His sexuality, his preferences—all kept deep within layer after layer of snark, deflection, and plain dishonesty. How could he describe a sexuality that molded itself to them, grew in their garden, under their sun? He never thought much about romance before Anthony Lockwood blustered into his life, but when it started, it was a seed planted, tended, and pruned right here at 35.
No, George answered truthfully. His life would have been easier if his type was anything but them.
Lucy swayed forward, aiming for her husband, but her legs betrayed her. She ended up in George’s lap, and she asked the question.
So what is your type, then?
He could smell the wine on her breath. Could see her strong heartbeat jumping in her neck. Lockwood turned, putting his chest against George’s shoulder, nosing into his hair. Lockwood’s teeth found the shell of his ear when Lucy dragged her hands up George’s arms. Her eyes examined him like she had a diagram, lines drawn and labeled—zygomatic process, lacrimal bone, undying affection.
He didn’t remember who kissed him first. Just that it was hazy, and he knew it was wrong, and he still didn’t stop.
…
There were footsteps behind him, different from the soft squeak of the hospital staff as they passed. George still had his nose pressed to the glass.
“George,” a devastatingly familiar voice croaked.
“Lockwood,” George said, reading it on the bassinet’s placard as it shaped out in his mouth. He unstuck his forehead from the window, and it burned a little when the blood rushed back in. He turned.
Lockwood looked like shit. Lockwood looked scared, an expression George had rarely seen even when they bet their lives on a bluff every night. His mouth was set with a grim neutrality, not a smile or a frown but the brutal impersonality of something in between. His nice suit was rumpled like he’d slept in it, but the bags under his eyes contradicted the notion he’d gotten any rest in a while. George wondered if he looked the same. He came straight from the airport.
George didn’t know what to say. In the dim lights of the evening maternity ward, his best mate standing two meters away. His baby with his best mate’s wife two meters the other direction. Was he supposed to apologize?
“We didn’t know this would happen,” Lockwood said. His thumb rubbed at his family ring. “You know that, right?”
“Yeah,” George said, and the word paved flat in front of him. He adjusted his glasses even though they slipped less than his other ones. He wondered what Lockwood thought of them.
“Do you—?” Lockwood’s hand flopped out, but he pulled it back as if George had an impenetrable aura around him. “Do you want to hold her?”
It was the last thing George expected Lockwood to say.
It was the only thing he wanted in the world.
Lockwood alerted a nurse, and he took George to a room nearby. He knew his way around. George wondered how many times he’d already done this, or if he hadn’t done it at all. Lockwood waited at the door, back turned, arms tight across his stomach for the nurse to wheel in the see-through hospital bassinet. George took the opportunity to wash up in the sink in the corner. He took off his jacket and his jumper, trying to find a layer that wasn’t corrupted by airport funk. He washed his hands, scrubbing under his nails, rubbing the soap up his wrists, his arms. A newborn’s immune system was only as good as their mother’s.
Christ, what was he doing here? He’d just flown in from overseas, and despite how healthy he felt, he could be carrying all kinds of diseases and bacteria and filth. Besides, nobody in their right mind would let him near a baby. Lockwood was clearly addled from sleep deprivation, and nobody would really call him in his right mind anyways. George knew the literature and the charts, but none of his siblings had ever trusted him long enough to settle a niece into his arms. He was too awkward, too stiff, not enough of that human stuff inside that made cradling a newborn instinctual.
He was about to call it off. He was about to walk out the door and buy the first available ticket to anywhere. Run far and run fast. That was always his role in their dynamic anyways. He left the heroics up to them.
Then the nurse came in with the bassinet.
“She’s awake,” the nurse said with a quiet glee befitting her profession.
“Thanks, Sharon,” Lockwood said, and she patted his arm as she left, shutting the door. Cutting off his escape.
George swallowed thickly when Lockwood bent, pushing his hands around the little squirming bundle. He lifted her like it was natural to him, like it was right, and George could see that it was. Lockwood was a good liar and excellent at burying the emotions that sprung to his face, but there was nothing shrouded about the love there. George couldn’t be surprised. Lockwood could love anything of Lucy’s.
“I didn’t realize they come with little hats,” George said with a nervous flick of his fingers. Someone had knitted that delicate pink puff for his—for Lucy’s daughter. For the child that now carried the Lockwood name.
Lockwood huffed out a laugh like his humor was a dusty, unused thing, and he approached slowly.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t tell you before you got here,” Lockwood said. “I was panicked when I called you during the labor, and then you were on a plane… We told your mum to let us know if you went by the house.”
“She’s at Portland Row?” George asked. He was thinking about the angles, about how if Lockwood handed her just so, George would tilt to take her thusly. He still noticed the small, warm smile that quirked Lockwood’s mouth.
“She’s been there the past week while Luce was on bedrest. Probably the only reason Lucy hasn’t gone insane,” Lockwood said. “She complains you don’t call enough.”
“Is that all you told her?” George’s gaze sliced up to Lockwood’s.
How the fuck was he supposed to explain this to his family?
“We haven’t—We wanted to tell you first, of course,” Lockwood said, and he shifted the baby in his arms. “Here. Take her.”
George did.
Lockwood passed her over, entirely comfortable with the action, and George cradled her along his arm, supporting her head in the crook of his elbow. No need to mess with a classic.
“I know how,” George said, Lockwood lingering close, and Lockwood flashed his palms.
“I know.” He didn’t move.
The slope of Lockwood’s shoulders relaxed, and his eyes tracked back to the baby, bundled up in hospital whites. George wondered if that was the nurses or if he was seeing Lucy’s handiwork.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Lockwood said quietly.
“Yeah.”
Because it was true. As his gaze traced her puckering mouth and the soft curve of her nose, George filed away a new definition to beauty. Sunrises and great works of art and Lucy, mid-laugh at one of Lockwood’s dirty jokes. And now her. This tiny, helpless creature cooing in his arms.
“You know why they’re so small? It’s their brains. Any larger, and the skull couldn’t pass through the vaginal canal,” George said, carefully rocking her, and Lockwood hummed.
“If you turn the lights down…” Lockwood strode over to the lightswitch, dimming it to its lowest setting. When he returned, he curled tighter around George, gazing over his shoulder.
Her lips smacked, and she made a high, grunting noise somewhere behind her nose. Her head swiveled slowly back and forth like a bat trying to echolocate. Her face scrunched and relaxed. George maybe forgot how to breathe when one dark eye slit open, casting about in the low light, regarding the world with a potent distrust. George exhaled, black locks dancing against her forehead.
She was just like her father.
The thought caught in his throat, and before he realized it, he was saying, “This doesn’t have to change anything. She’s yours, Lockwood.”
“George—”
“I mean it,” George said, even as he stepped away from Lockwood’s hovering. Even as he shifted her higher on his chest. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. That night was a fluke. A lapse in judgment. One less drink, and you’re holding your own child right now.”
George didn’t know where he was going to put the burgeoning, feathered thing in his chest, but he would find somewhere. Each time he thought he was going to burst, each time they did some little thing, and he gained a new splinter of love—he found somewhere to shove it out of sight. A box to put it in. A moat to dig around it. He thought he could do it again. Grind the aching tenderness at his fingertips into dust then press that dust into diamonds.
Even so, his shoulders drooped, spine curving to make himself a shell around her.
“George, I would never ask you to do that,” Lockwood breathed, taking a measured step forward. “We should be asking you what you want.”
“Well, don’t.” George squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, and then he turned to Lockwood fully. “Take her back.”
“No,” Lockwood said, jaw set hard.
“Take the fucking baby, Lockwood,” George snapped, and he felt all his jetlag catch up to him at once.
“Do you know the first thing I felt when I saw her? When I realized?” Lockwood said, voice edging into that manic energy George remembered well. “I was relieved.”
“What?” The word popped out of his mouth before he could contain it.
“Yeah. I was relieved.” Lockwood had him cornered, George’s back hitting the wall as he tried to revert Lockwood’s advance. “I thought to myself: He can’t leave us now.”
So Lockwood was angry, just not for the reason George expected. A certain amount of irritation would be understandable towards the man who impregnated your wife, but no, Lockwood was still hung up about the research trip. Somehow, that was so very Lockwood.
“I told you I was coming back,” George muttered, preferring to rehash this argument than to dive into the worlds of meaning behind Lockwood’s tired eyes.
“You don’t get it,” Lockwood said, edging closer, Lockwood’s suit jacket brushing where the swaddle spilled over George’s arm. “After that night, after you disappeared in the morning… We weren’t ever getting you back, Georgie.”
One of Lockwood’s hands came to cradle George’s face like he was the fragile one here. If he hadn’t been holding the universe’s most delicate individual, George might have agreed with that idea. Lockwood’s words spun around in his brain, flipping and folding but no matter how he bent them, they still made no sense. Not with the careful way Lockwood was touching him. Not with the anguish scrawled across his face.
“I can’t do it, Lockwood,” George said, turning his head to speak into the quietness of the room.
There was a world where he went back with them. Where they chalked everything up to a wild night, and he stayed in his room across the landing. He wrote a book about what they’d seen on the Other Side and maybe a few papers about Guatemala. He raised this painfully real child in the warm embrace of 35 Portland Row with them, beside them, behind them. He never left them, never moved on.
“Are we that disgusting? Do you hate us that much for taking advantage of you?” Lockwood asked, edging into hysterics. His grip got tighter, pulling a few hairs at George’s nape, making him rear back. The baby between them croaked out an upset noise at the turn in tone, and Lockwood sealed his lips, breathing hard through his nose.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about—” George tried to say as evenly as possible, but another familiar voice slipped into the tension.
“George.”
Lucy’s silhouette was soft in the doorway. She gained weight with the pregnancy, her face a bit rounder and her body full with new curves underneath her hospital robe. Her eyes were sleep-deprivation wild, and she lingered in the doorway like a hack and slash killer, arms resting against the frame. George added it to his dictionary—beautiful, subsection Lucy.
She was still waddling a little from the birth, but that didn’t stop her from lurching forward, hands twisting in front of her.
“Take her, Anthony. Take her, take her,” Lucy demanded. George and Lockwood hurried to pass the baby back.
George didn’t know what to do about this. She was already crying by the time she crossed the room and buried her face in his shoulder. Some things hadn’t changed. Like the way she squeezed him around the middle, her strength nearly squishing the breath out of him. Like the way she snotted on his t-shirt without remorse.
“I would blame the hormones, but actually, it’s just really good to see you, Georgie,” Lucy said, somewhat muffled into his chest. She dragged her face back and forth, wiping all the fluids leaking from her face onto his shirt.
George supposed he’d have to get used to that kind of thing. All the fluids.
“Good to see you too,” George mumbled half-heartedly.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s been so hard without you.”
George swallowed and glanced at Lockwood who was gently bouncing the baby, watching them intently. Wrapping his arms around Lucy for a proper hug, George said, “I missed you.”
Lockwood leaned over to put his forehead against George’s, and George shuddered at the contact. The three of them, tangled again. The four of them now, he supposed.
“We did it all wrong,” Lucy sighed.
“You were supposed to stay,” Lockwood said. “You were supposed to fall in love with us and stay.”
What?
“What?” George hissed, jerking back, but he had nowhere to run, pinned against the wall like this. Lucy’s hands came to frame his face, immobilizing him further. Her wedding ring was warm against his skin.
“We—We never knew how you felt about sex and relationships. In the whole time we’ve known you, we never saw you…” Lucy’s cheeks were wet, her brows pulled tightly together.
It was true, George supposed. He’d kept his infrequent rendezvous to himself, due to a heady mix of shame and disinterest. He always came out of them reminded that whoever he’d chosen to pass the time wasn’t Lockwood or Lucy. George’s breath started coming quicker, and he could feel a full scale panic unraveling in his lungs.
“We were already losing you,” Lockwood continued. “Every day, you drifted a little more, and we saw it. When you told us you were leaving, we thought we had nothing left to lose.”
“I don't understand,” George wheezed.
It was a mistake. Fueled by cheap alcohol and too much shared trauma.
The baby squeaked in Lockwood’s arms, charming, birdlike noises that diverted their attentions for a moment. George breathed in the dry hospital air, comforted even now by the familiar scents of Lucy and Lockwood surrounding him. George felt something twist in his chest as he watched the small bundle of her feet wriggle while she kicked. How could anything that made her be a mistake?
“We’re sorry,” Lucy said, moving down to ball her fists in the back of his shirt. “You didn’t want this. Didn’t want us. You wanted to see the world and write amazing things, but we’ve made it complicated.”
“Stop apologizing, Christ,” George said, fisting his hands in the back of her robe in turn. Her arms kept him from flying apart. “What do you mean I didn’t want you?”
“You—” Lockwood glanced at Lucy, the first true flicker of uncertainty passing over his face. “You left. Not just the dig, but that morning. You practically lived at the Archives until you flew out.”
“You two are married!” George spat. Her body was warm and soft against him, and it hurt.
“Yes, and we both love you,” Lucy replied.
George’s head made a dull thunking noise as it impacted against the wall. He winced, having leaned back quicker than expected, but the pain smoothed over. What they were saying didn’t make any sense. He was the one that loved them. They were the ones building a life together. They didn’t need him hanging awkwardly around like a clogged up gargoyle, not pretty or useful.
Lucy poked her nose against his clavicle, sniffing heavily, and Lockwood shifted the baby onto his shoulder.
“Why didn’t you name her?” George asked thickly. Every possible emotion was filling him up to the brim, pressing behind his eyeballs, making them wet.
“We couldn’t do it without you,” said Lockwood.
“She’s yours as much as she is ours,” said Lucy.
George was crying. It didn’t happen often. He was in fact known for his trademark stoicism, but he hadn’t slept in over twenty six hours, and the two idiots he loved were telling him they loved him back, and his daughter was blowing a spit bubble. Lucy barked out a laugh, and her tears flowed freely again.
“I don’t know how to love anyone else,” George said, shaking his head against the wall. “It’s always been you two. Always.”
“George,” Lockwood breathed, and then Lucy was kissing him.
Lucy was kissing him.
George wasn’t proud of the whimper he let into her mouth, but she swallowed it with a groan. George had poorly shaped memories of her tongue, her teeth, but this blew them all away. If he died then, he would only have one regret and that would be—when Lucy pulled away, Lockwood was there, pressing fierce kisses to his jaw, up to his lips. A rightness settled over the world that had never been there before. It was thin, almost as delicate as the grunting baby drooling on Lockwood’s shoulder, but George knew it would hold. It would endure.
“Boy, my mum’s in for a surprise,” George said when they finally broke apart, and Lucy giggled.
“She already loves me more than her own son,” she teased, poking a finger into George’s chest.
“Isn’t that the truth,” he groused, and then it was Lockwood’s turn.
In true dramatic fashion, a single tear traced its way down his handsome face, curving around the smile on his lips. He turned to press a kiss into Lucy’s hair.
“We did it,” Lockwood whispered there. “We did it, Luce. We got him.”
George wanted to roll his eyes, but he just held onto her tighter, bringing one hand to clutch at Lockwood’s jacket. He didn’t know if he could let go, really.
“We had some help,” Lucy said, patting the baby on the back.
She let out the loudest grunt yet and squirmed mightily against Lockwood’s shoulder. The end of the grunt skewed up into something high, something plaintive, and Lockwood stepped back, angling himself to open their little circle.
“I know. I know,” Lucy said, reaching for the upset bundle.
“She’s hungry,” Lockwood explained.
George watched with no small amount of awe as Lucy took the baby over to a large padded chair in the corner. Even in the dim light, Lucy shined with her love.
“This is really happening, isn’t it?” George asked, the same question he’d been asking since he saw that placard on the hospital bassinet. Lockwood slipped behind him, leaning both of them into the wall. He always loved to hold Lucy like this, and even though they were of a height, Lockwood could still hook his chin over George’s shoulder.
“If we’re dreaming,” Lockwood said, and he pressed a kiss to George’s neck. “Let’s wake up together.”
…
George kept his room at 35 Portland Row. They turned it into an office.