Chapter Text
For your information, and since you had the audacity to imply otherwise, if not ask directly, Henry Higgins, esteemed professor of phonetics and author of the bestselling “Higgins’ Universal Alphabet”, was doing perfectly fine, thank you very much.
Honestly, he thought, just the mere implication that he wouldn’t be doing fine was so preposterous that it would make him laugh if it weren’t so hopelessly idiotic. He was the one who had decided to attend this party in the first place, wasn’t he? Why on earth would he have made the decision in the first place if he didn’t want to go? More importantly, why would he have specifically chosen to invite Colonel Pickering if he thought in a million years that the latter’s being there would cause any kind of inconvenience for him?
…Not that Pickering had anything to do with this, mind you. He’d only thrown that name out as a basic example. The fact that a Mr. Brewster Budgeon was in attendance this evening, and that Pick was currently sharing a rather friendly dance with him, had absolutely no correlation whatsoever with Henry’s own current position, standing alone by the wall and drinking his seventh complementary champagne glass of the night. The fact that he’d even noticed them in the first place was purely happenstance, and a natural occurrence if one had a view of the whole ballroom like he did from his position.
And besides, even if Pickering, heaven forbid, did have ulterior motives for what looked to be a rather close dance with an old school chum, why the devil was it Henry’s business? He had far more interesting things to think about than pathetic schoolboy gossip about who was trying to get into who’s trousers; he was a man of poetry, of romanticism, of language and life. If anything, he was frustrated at Pickering for his evident prioritisation of passing human fancies like sexual pleasure over the much deeper forms of pleasure that the two of them had explored via their mutual studies back at Wimpole Street.
…Or just Pickering’s studies alone, for that matter. There was hardly anything that bound him to Henry, or Henry to him, beyond the fact that, if he were to be brutally honest and obscenely frank, his own phonetical abilities did surpass Pickering’s own. He’d never quite caught up to him when it came to the pronunciation of vowel sounds, so if Pickering did want to leave their wonderful platonic scholarly arrangement for the sake of some frenzied homosexual love affair, well, he would be the one who was ultimately losing the most. Henry could survive on his own, after all– he didn’t need Pickering the way Pickering needed him. He had his own soul, his own spark of divine fire, and if the flame was too bright for Pickering to handle, well, he may–
“Are you done yet?” Eliza groaned.
Henry blinked; then, his eyebrows furrowed.
“Excuse me?”
“This is the fifth time you’ve pulled me away from Freddy to talk my ear off about how unbothered you apparently are!” she exclaimed. “Just go talk to him, for goodness’ sake!”
At that, he scoffed.
“Talk?!” he exclaimed. “Why on earth would we need to talk, Eliza? Clearly, he’s already made a decision about who he’d rather be spending time with tonight. I will not beg him to hang around me like some Piccadilly whore; I don’t need him, as I said, and if anyone will be crawling to anyone tonight, it shall be him back to me.”
Eliza looked dead behind the eyes.
“Well, maybe he doesn’t want to spend time with you because you’re getting drunk off your ass, hugging the walls and staring daggers at his friend, all because you won’t admit you’re j—“
“For the last time, I am NOT jealous!!!” Henry said, in the tone of a man who was doing an absolutely terrible job at hiding a jealousy so potent that it was practically visible in the air around him.
Eliza raised an eyebrow.
He gripped his glass tightly, then let out a sigh.
“Go on, then,” he nearly spat. “Return to that pathetic little do-nothing dandy of yours. Do precisely as Pickering is doing and waste your life with indulgence— see how you like it in the end. I’ll be perfectly fine standing here all alone, basking in the knowledge that neither of you will ever do as well without me than you would with my hel—”
…He frowned.
Eliza had moved away already. Mid-conversation. Lord, he and Pick really ought to teach the woman some manners.
…Him alone, perhaps. Mrs. Pearce, maybe? Pick had always been the manners chap, but he was not irreplaceable. Henry’s own manners were perfectly fine, after all, even if people did get rather too hung up on such things at times for his own liking.
At the very least, he thought, eyes wandering across the floor, he had enough manners not to be holding another man the way a man would hold a woman at a public ball, even if the man in question was his old school chum. If Henry had had any old school chums of his own, he would certainly be dancing with them right now, if only to see how Pick liked it when his own flagrant disregard for social convention was thrown back in his face.
Would he despise that? Henry would. He’d hoped Pick would, too, but perhaps Pick had gotten used to different kinds of intimacy in the trenches and in India in general. Henry wasn’t quite sure about the deeper customs back there, so perhaps this sort of thing was perfectly natural? Regardless, it did turn his stomach.
Without really thinking, he gave a pathetic little scurry over, gripping Eliza’s shoulder as she tried to walk away.
“Eliza,” he said, gaze not moving from Pick, an odd touch of vulnerability in his voice.
“What is it now?”
He swallowed.
“Am I… homophobic?”
Eliza turned to look him dead in the eye.
She held his gaze for all of ten seconds; then, she gave him a light slap on the cheek and went on her way.
Henry sighed.
Women for you, he supposed. She just couldn’t understand.
His gaze flickered back to Pick again.
Jealous was the wrong word. If anything, he was too protective, and too practical— only in the most natural of ways, of course. Pick was his partner in academia; he lived in Henry’s house, ate Henry’s food, read Henry’s books, slept in Henry’s room. His logical brain and linguistic knowledge didn’t exist to be shared by anyone— only Eliza, perhaps, in the rarest of occasions, but certainly nothing beyond that.
The idea that some stranger could take him just like that made his blood boil.
He looked to Eliza, desperate to make some snide remark about how “Brewster Budgeon” sounded like the name of a children’s book character, and how the nickname “Boozie” told Henry well enough about his own vulgar hedonistic mentality without him even having spoken to the man beyond the exchange of a few pleasantries.
But she and Freddy were rapidly moving to the middle of the dancefloor, as though trying to disappear into the crowd; and with a sigh, he accepted that such sentiments would have to stay an inside thought.
Instead, his gaze landed on Pick, who seemed to finally be finishing up his dance, thank the Lord on high.
He gritted his teeth. What a heartless, wicked man, to take Henry’s kindness, their years of companionship, and throw it back in his face. How cruel and idiotic it was, to act as though he were replaceable! If Henry weren’t so tipsy and miserable right now, why, he’d have a right mind to—
…He stopped.
From across the room, Pick was staring back at him.
Henry blinked awkwardly, not quite sure how to respond.
Pick’s mouth formed a small “o” shape.
Then, his lips curved up in a natural smile, and he held his hand up.
“Higgins!” he called out. “Over here, old chap!”
If Henry had any blood vessels left in his cold-hearted body to pop, they would have done so in that moment. The audacity to invite him over now, as though he were an afterthought— as though he was trying to take pity on his lonely soul!!! Henry didn’t need him, he decided, and any sane man in his position would turn on his tail immediately in the face of such absolute betrayal.
…So, naturally, Henry walked over to him.
As soon as he arrived, Pick pulled him into a friendly side-hug.
“This is Professor Henry Higgins,” he said to the man across from him. “Boozie, Higgins— Higgins, Boozie.”
“Boozie,” Henry said dryly as he held out his hand, as if to call the odd name into question.
But Boozie gave a small smirk as he clasped it tightly.
“Just a little inside joke,” he said— and Pick, the absolute devil, had the gall to laugh at that, as though both of them knew something Henry didn’t. “Nice to meet you.”
He gave a light nod of understanding. He needed to kill this man.
Some more pleasantries were exchanged, ones that Henry hardly cared for, and an odd tension fell in the air between them. Pick, in an attempt to foster more pleasant relations between his two close friends, broke it, pushing Henry forward a little.
“Higgins is a phonetician,” he said. “We’ve been cohabiting for work-related purposes. His work is very fascinating— he’s written several books on the subject, and...”
Yes, Henry thought, the corners of his lips turning up imperceptibly as Pick continued speaking, layer it on. Let this Boozie know how much better he was than him.
For a moment, an odd kind of self-awareness crept into his consciousness; the idea that Henry, perhaps, shouldn’t be feeling so possessive over a mere friend; the feeling that perhaps he was being a bit unreasonable in his desires, provided that his claim of not having a jealous bone in his body hadn’t been a lie.
He beat it back with a metaphorical broomstick.
“That’s incredible,” Budgeon said, giving a smile. “Why, I’m afraid I’m far less interesting.”
No doubt, Henry thought. (Yes, alright, it was cruel, but hardly undeserved.)
“I work at the home office. Civil Servant.”
He smiled, then looked up at Pick.
“I was invited here due to some personal connections, but… well, I do hope I’m not too far down on the social ladder to be associating with you both!”
Pick gave a hearty laugh.
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” he said, good-naturedly. “It hardly matters to me— unless Higgins has a problem with it?”
Henry linked his arm with Pick’s in a very regular, friendly, not-tight-nor-betraying-any-inner-personal-bitterness-at-all way before speaking.
“Not much,” he said, lips in a tight smile. “But you’d best be careful.”
It was said as a joke, but the venom behind his words could hardly be disguised.
Budgeon just chuckled at that, relaxed expression set on his face.
“Well, I fear we’ve gone far past the realm of ‘careful’ over the years,” he said, looking to Pick.
And Pick…laughed.
Not a polite pseudo-laugh, like he gave when he wanted to step out of an awkward conversation, or a simple chuckle like one would give to a dark-humoured joke. It wasn’t even one of those playful laughs that he’d give to Eliza when she said something truly ludicrous (which she was wont to do, in Henry’s own opinion).
This was a full belly-laugh. A laugh of genuine, wholehearted enjoyment— the kind that only Henry could hear, that had been reserved for their private conversations and in-jokes. A laugh that meant history.
He swallowed tight. He couldn’t take it anymore.
“Pick,” he said curtly, blood boiling with rage and an indescribable feeling of loss, “a word.”
And before Pick could even say goodbye, Henry tugged him sharply through the crowds and as far away from Budgeon as he could manage.