Chapter Text
0
September 25 th , 1928
Richard
A strange whirr fills the air, like a spring uncoiling. His mind enters a tunnel, black walls on either side rushing past him. On the other side of the room, the open window with the parrot on its sill shows as a vertical rectangle of light.
The box sails through the air in an almost graceful curve. The bird takes flight with an indignant screech. In a blinding aureole of fire, the window expands - and then ceases to exist altogether.
The sky turns dark.
1
September 25 th , 1928
Thomas
"Kettle's just boiled," Bibi informs Thomas by way of good morning as he walks into the large and airy kitchen at the back of the house in Hancock Park. The windows are open to let in what breeze there is before the day turns hot, and there's jaunty music playing on the wireless as usual. Guy being a coffee drinker, it's taken his cook a while to wrap her head around the concept of tea - proper tea, no, not cold with ice and sugar and lemon juice, just the plain tea, with a splash of milk. But she's keen on showing Thomas she's remembered his quaint little request. He still has to make it himself, mind, if he doesn't want it steeping until the tannins annihilate his taste buds with their bitterness. But she's trying to make him feel at home. They all do.
While Thomas busies himself with the kettle and the pot and Bibi gets the rest of breakfast ready, the clock strikes eight and the broadcast switches from music to the international news. British papers are always weeks old and cost an arm and a leg here, but the local ones are full of names and places Thomas has never heard of and problems he didn't know existed. The tinny voice of the announcer that comes into the house over the airwaves is a tenuous enough thread, less substantial than the finest silk, but Thomas makes a point of not missing the programme if he can help it. He's always liked to keep himself up to date on current affairs, hasn't he, so why should it suddenly be any different?
Political upheaval in Mexico… more deaths from the hurricane that's sweeping across the Caribbean… Bibi's pan clatters on the stove, and Thomas nearly misses the first words of the next item.
"… and great consternation, as it transpires that Buckingham Palace, the principal royal residence of the King of Britain, was rocked by a substantial explosion at around ten o'clock local time this morning."
Thomas freezes.
"The blast is reported to have taken place in the wing of the palace containing the King's private living quarters, and appears to have caused considerable damage to this part of the celebrated historic building. A spokesman for the Royal Household has confirmed, however, that His Majesty escaped the incident shaken but unscathed, and the only casualty to be deplored was one of the King's personal servants who happened to be in the room at the - "
"Madre di Dio," Bibi mutters. "Hand me that plate, please, Thomas?"
She looks up when there's no reaction, and her friendly round face is a shapeless blur in front of Thomas' eyes. The voice of the announcer in his ears has descended into incomprehensible jabbering as well, and only clears itself up in time to conclude that someone has -
"… tasked Scotland Yard with investigating the cause of this unprecedented incident."
"Blimey," says Guy's voice, and Thomas whirls around to see him standing in the kitchen doorway, tying the sash of his dressing gown, a wry grin on his face. "Poor old King George." He walks over to where Thomas stands at the counter, thunderstruck, and puts his hand on his shoulder. "You all right, love? You look like you've seen a ghost. Wouldn't've thought you much of a royalist, but then - " The hand on Thomas' shoulder moves, and the backs of Guy's fingers brush gently against Thomas' cold cheek. " - please never cease to surprise me."
He smiles and walks away without waiting for a response. Thomas' skin where Guy touched it burns as if licked by a tongue of fire.
2
April 8 th , 1928
Richard
The funeral of the Duchess of Argyll is a solemn and stately affair, as befits a Royal Highness and a ruling monarch's aunt. Accordingly, Richard has been up and about since five o'clock to get everything ready. By the time the sombre liturgy is over and he puts the heavy black cloak around the King's shoulders just outside Westminster Abbey for the long carriage ride to Windsor, he's been on his feet without a pause for seven hours.
Miller is already out there, of course, waiting to take over when the dignitaries arrive for the actual interment. So once the cortege has departed and the spectators start to disperse, Richard is at a loose end for once. He relaxes his stance as soon as he decently can and then walks away from the hustle and bustle, across the river, and soon disappears into the maze of little streets behind Waterloo station.
It's a bit early in the day for this, but pubs have chairs, right, for small cogs to rest their weary limbs on for a moment before they go back and take their place in the big wheel again. Salvatore, the balding landlord, known as Toto to his regulars, nods to Richard when he comes in and starts drawing his half-pint while Richard hangs his coat and hat on a hook by the door. There's no need for words.
The place is nearly empty, just two elderly men with a game of backgammon at a corner table. They go by Harry and Brian, and might as well have been here since the building was erected.
Richard takes his drink to the padded bench by the fire, and he's only just made himself at home there when the door opens again and another man enters. This one is a familiar face, too - Pavel, a former sailor in the Russian merchant navy who is said to have slung his hook when his ship docked in England and he saw his chance to escape from Bolshevik rule. But Richard has never seen him leave here with a man under fifty, so he's surprised to feel the fellow's eyes on him while he, too, receives his drink from Toto and pays. And sure enough, here he comes ambling over.
His opening words are as predictable as they ever are when two men who are on their own approach each other in this place. "Mind if I sit down?"
Richard shrugs. "It's a free country."
The irony is lost on the poor refugee. "Thank the Lord it is, friend," he smiles, rolling his 'r's.
Richard didn't exactly come here today to make conversation, but Pavel's youthful face, freckled under the short-cropped, very fair hair, seems made for laughter, and Richard could do with a bit of cheering up.
"Drowning your grief?" Pavel asks when he's settled, nodding at Richard's ale. "You an admirer of the good Duchess?"
It takes Richard a moment to find the explanation for that remark, but then he realises that taking off his coat has revealed the mourning armband that he, along with the rest of the Royal Household, donned as a matter of course as soon as the death of the old lady was announced. Not a very smart move, that - his clothes mark him as someone's valet, of course, but it's not wise for anyone even in here to make themselves too identifiable or too easy to find, in case of trouble.
"Nah, not me," he tries to dismiss the issue. "But the gent I work for is."
"Ah. Needs must, eh?"
"Needs must."
They chink glasses.
"Grand show, though," Pavel comments a little wistfully, maybe thinking of the old way of life in his homeland that is gone. "I love a bit of pomp."
Richard takes a sip of his ale and hopes for a quick change of subject. His own mind is blank with fatigue.
"Why're you alone?" Pavel obliges him a moment later. "What happened to your beau?"
Well, that's a change of subject all right, but this new one is hardly more welcome than the first. The last time Richard and Thomas were in here together must have been six, no, seven weeks ago. Richard wonders whether to be flattered or disquieted that Thomas seems to have made such an impression on the other patrons. "You've got a good memory. The answer is 'nothing'. He's a busy man, is all." And Richard is not keen on being reminded of that fact, either. It's all Lady Grantham's fault, actually, who felt too under the weather to travel to London for the royal funeral. So there was a change of plan at the last moment, just His Lordship to his club with his valet after all, and no need for the butler to come down to London with them when they weren't opening up the house anyway. Richard feels he has a right to be grumpy.
"Sorry," the Russian says, raising his hands defensively, palms outward. "I don't mean to pry. I'll just go and mind my own business. Good luck to you, friend." And with that, he picks up his nearly empty glass, carries it back to the bar and leaves Richard to stew in gloomy thoughts of what might have been. There'll be a next chance, of course there will, but it's getting harder and harder to wait for it.
3
September 25 th , 1928
Thomas
Breakfast is difficult. Guy is in a good mood, so he takes his time, looking through his mail while he eats and commenting on every piece without even raising his head to see if Thomas is listening. It saves Thomas from having to put on a smile, or explaining why he can hardly swallow a bite.
He shouldn't care. He shouldn't care.
"Oh look," Guy says, removing a thick sheaf of papers from a large envelope. "This is Bernard's latest project I told you about. Nice to get the details. I'd been wondering if he'd forgotten me."
People do that, don't they. And blessed are they who know how. Maybe Richard no longer gives Thomas a fleeting thought. Thomas sending him the watch fob with the crescent moon back without a word can't have left him in any doubt where they stood.
Gave. Maybe Richard no longer gave Thomas a fleeting thought.
God.
It can't have been him who was caught up in that disaster. Why would he be? There's always a whole host of attendants milling about the King's private apartments, four valets on a rota alone, brushers, footmen, the maids who do the cleaning… plenty of people who might be described as "personal servants" by a foreign news agency that doesn't know the first thing about Royal Household hierarchy.
"… so d'you want to come?" Guy asks, and Thomas has no idea where or why.
"Sorry, where?"
"Dinner with Bernard, if he's available," Guy repeats.
"Sure, why not," Thomas agrees, and adds a smile for good measure after all. He couldn't have said where he found it.
4
May 12 th , 1928
Richard
The London Season is upon them before they know it. Thomas arrives twenty-four hours ahead of the Crawleys with the rest of the vanguard, Mrs Hughes as housekeeper and the Parkers as footman and cook respectively, to warm Grantham House for the family. That night, Richard stands outside Toto's pub in Waterloo champing at the bit until Thomas finally turns the corner at a quarter to eleven. They sit side by side at the bar for an hour and talk, their knees touching in the dim shadows below the counter. When they leave, Pavel the Russian sailor tears his attention away from the grey-haired gentleman in his company to give Richard a good-natured grin and a thumbs-up.
5
September 25 th , 1928
Thomas
Bernard is not available, so Thomas and Guy end up staying in.
Thomas makes a point of burying himself in work in the upstairs office for most of the evening. Guy keeps a host of mementoes from his earlier projects, photographs and leaflets and scripts and newspaper and magazine cuttings, but it's a right shambles, all thrown pell-mell into boxes and folders with no rhyme or reason to it. Thomas has taken it upon himself to put everything in order, as a proper archive. It's nice to have this window into Guy's past, into both his successes – many - and his failures - very few, but he's honest about them. Sometimes Thomas wishes he could provide the same for Guy, hand him a chaotic hotchpotch of snippets and fragments labelled "Thomas Barrow" and tell him to figure out the man behind it.
His thoughts are going in fruitless circles while he sorts and labels and catalogues another man's existence, and it's not long after ten when he decides to call it a day.
Guy sits propped up in bed reading when Thomas comes in, bathed in the soft glow from the lamp on the bedside table. But when he looks up from the script in his hands, his face is like a thundercloud.
"Listen to this," he grouses. "'Doña Almina is torn, both attracted to the dashing pirate captain and repulsed by his lawless and licentious life. Meanwhile back at the citadel, Don Fernando, the lady's fatherly friend and advisor, hurries to arm a ship to rescue his ward from the arms of her captor.' Do they really think that's me?"
"What, lawless and licentious?" Thomas asks, faintly amused by the man's genuine indignation, while he pulls out and unbuttons his shirt.
He expects Guy's expression to melt right into gentle fondness, the way it almost always does when he sets eyes on Thomas in private like this. This time, however, the frown doesn't disappear. "No, silly," Guy corrects him. "That's the thing. They don't want me as the dashing pirate. They want me as the fatherly friend." He puts the script aside and holds out his hand. His dark eyes are wide in the dim light. "Is that it? Has the time come? Is that really all I'll be now, a fatherly friend?"
Thomas takes the offered hand. "Not to me," he says, and is proud at how naturally it comes out already.
Shirt awry and braces dangling, Thomas lets himself be pulled onto the bed. He's always been better at providing comfort to others than asking it for himself.
6
May 12 th , 1928
Richard
Grantham Houses is dark and quiet when they get there, feel their way down the steep steps to the souterrain door and sneak into the red-tiled basement passage. Thomas locks the door behind them and waves Richard wordlessly into the butler's pantry, then closes that door behind them as well and shoots the bolt home. It's a very solid contraption, designed to keep the silver safe rather than to cover for the butler's escapades, of course, but Richard's blood tingles at how deliberate this all is. His eyes are on Thomas' hands, one gloved and one ungloved, working away with practised moves at making the house he's in charge of secure. Richard feels a shiver of anticipation as he imagines what Thomas will be taking charge of next, and what his fingers will be busy with then.
Fingers, lips, tongue, everything, everywhere. Maybe Richard's standards are low and he's easily impressed, what with the long dry spells between their rare moments of privacy. But tonight, all the longing and all the solitary dreams of the past weeks and months come flowing together, swelling the ever-present undercurrent of desire to a mountain stream thundering downhill after the snow melts. There's nowhere else he wants to be but naked on this lumpy old leather sofa in the butler's pantry of Grantham House, one leg hooked across the back and the other hanging down and Thomas kneeling in between to show Richard the only purpose of his existence that really matters, and he can't wait, he can't wait -
"Look at you," Thomas chuckles, his low voice humming with pleasure as his fingers pursue a path downwards from the hollow of Richard's throat. "You're allowed to breathe, you know, or this'll be over far too soon." He pauses at the height of Richard's breastbone and gives it a bit of a rub, slow circles, and Richard closes his eyes and lets his bare shoulders sink a little deeper into the upholstery, crumpling the sheet from the housekeeper's store that Thomas nicked to put over it, orderly man that he is.
"I love you, Thomas Barrow," he murmurs when the fingers resume their southbound journey. "Whatever happens, don't you dare doubt it."
The only answer is Thomas' lips coming down on Richard's own, and then there's a shower of shooting stars racing across the sky, and Richard gets a glimpse of eternity.
7
September 26 th , 1928
Thomas
Around 3 a. m., in what the seafarers of old used to call the graveyard watch, the finality of it all hits Thomas with brutal force.
Like the genie from the bottle that can't be contained once the stopper is removed, the images come crowding into his sleepless mind. Richard striding through the back passages of Downton Abbey, chattering twenty to the dozen… Richard in a dark street in York, smiling at Thomas from under the brim of his hat… Richard at the breakfast table in the servants' hall, smirking over their shared secret like the cat that got the cream … Richard in the pantry, putting his heart into Thomas' hand, till we meet again… Richard in every line of every letter they wrote after that… Richard on station platforms… Richard undressed, eyes closed and lips parted, shuddering in glorious shared ecstasy.
Over, yes, by their own choice.
But gone? That smile, that smile, gone, forever, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and who knows how much there was even left to bury if the blast blew holes right through the masonry?
Thomas scrambles to get out of the bed without waking Guy, and manages to reach the toilet bowl in the bathroom only just in time.