Based on the CS. Again, I like to write Baxley that's an imprecise mix of angst and crack.
It was the third week in a row that they had spent their day off together in York trailing around pubs, when she accepted his offer of a drink in the last bar they visited. The cold weather was beginning to set in and it had been a long day. In one of the less savoury establishments where they had made enquires, Phyllis had been the subject of some particularly lewd remarks, made by some particularly inebriated customers, and Joseph had been quietly and gallantly seething ever since he had begun to shout a response and she had tugged him back out of the pub before he got himself a punch on the nose.
She looked at him a little doubtfully at first.
"We're doing this to help Mr Bates," she explained, when he gave her a questioning look, "It feels wrong for me to use it as a chance to enjoy myself, particularly as I got them into trouble with the inspector."
"One drink's hardly an excessive indulgence," he pointed out, "Besides, you need something to keep the cold out."
"You might not be wrong about that," she replied, giving the growing darkness of the street as wary glance, "Alright, then, just one can't hurt."
He paid for both of their drinks. He insisted.
The next week, when the last enquiry they intended to make yielded nothing, he simply asked the landlord for two small sherries, without consulting her first.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
It was already dark by now, and their search seemed to be growing evermore difficult. Of course, it would have been nothing short of miraculous if they'd found the right place the first time they'd looked, or even the second, but now their hope was starting to dwindle a little. One look at his face explained more than his words could have done.
"Alright, then," she agreed, perching herself on the barstool beside him and taking off her coat, "Good idea."
"We will find it, won't we?" she asked him as the landlord brought them their second drinks.
"What?" he asked her. He was unmistakably tired, and he had been off in his own world a little, "Yes, of course we will. The pub will still be there, it's just a question of us finding it. Just a matter of time."
She smiled at him, taking a hearty drink- she was past sipping by this point.
"I've told you before, haven't I? About your strength?"
That got the corners of his mouth twitching upwards a little.
"Making you strong?" he asked.
She smiled gently at him. He took a drink himself.
"We'll find it," he told her, "Of course we'll find it."
"I think it would break my heart," she told him quietly, "If we couldn't find something that would help them."
"If we can't find anything," he told her gently, "We're going to have a hard time explaining to Mr Carson, if he asks, why we've been spending so much time in bars."
She smiled for a moment, and then became serious again.
"I know what sort of places prisons are," she murmured softly, so only he could hear her, "I have to do something to help them."
His eyes combed her face as her head stood, as if in repose. She was looking at his chest. He wondered if the drink was making her melancholy.
"One day," she told him quietly, "I will talk to you about it. I'll tell you about it. Just not now."
Extending his hand gently, he rested his fingers on her hand, which rested in turn half-curled into a fist on her knee.
"Only if you want to," he told her, "Only tell me what you can. Whatever you can manage will be enough for me. Tell me nothing, and I'll still try as best I can to help you to forget."
His worries that they were becoming melancholy were well dispelled by the time they had had each had their fourth drink and made their way out of the public house. It was very dark now, and their grasp of the way to the train station made tenuous by the drink.
They certainly were not melancholy, though. She was giggling like he'd never seen her before.
"You're hat's on lopsided," she told him, stretching up to rectify it, making it worse, laughing at herself again, "Has anyone ever said that you're a fantastic drunk?"
He snorted with laughter.
"The same could be said of you," he replied.
She made a mock bow, she was now in the middle of the street. He laughed again, heartily.
"Come back!" he exclaimed, seeing a car's headlamps further along the street, reaching out for her hand and tugging her back towards him, "Don't get run over!"
She laughed again; in the sudden moment of him tugging on her arm, she had managed to knock her own hat down over her eyes and prevented herself from being able to see anything. He smiled, raising his hands and adjusting the brim for her.
"Thank you," she told him, slipping her hand naturally back into his, "I'm rather a disgrace to the name of lady's maid, tonight."
"Stuff and nonsense," he told her.
They walked along together, holding hands. Miss Baxter and I are holding hands! he thought wildly.
"Are you sure we're going the right way?" she asked him.
"Not really," he confessed.
He heard her laugh again.
"Do you even care?" she asked him.
"No," he admittedly freely, "Not when I'm with you."
…
They managed to find their way home though. Their co-operation afforded them a certain sense of stability that the drink had taken away. Such was their mutual dependance that, by the time they reached Downton, they did not manage to make it into separate beds.
She woke up early, as usual, her head on his bare chest, his arms encircling her. Her head was a little fuzzy and it took her a few moments to contextualise the unusual circumstances. With the realisation, their came a smile to her lips. She leaned up a little, planting a single kiss on his lips. He stirred in his sleep.
By the time his confusion abated, she was leaning up on the pillow beside him, the bedsheet drawn up over her breasts.
"We managed to find our way home then?" he asked, a little timidly.
Her hand reached out, stroking his cheek with her thumb.
"It would seem that way," she agreed.
He turned his head a little into her palm, planting a kiss inside her hand.
"Thank you for the best night of my life, Joseph," she told him softly, "And I'm not just talking about the drinks you bought me."
He smiled, and she smiled back at him. They would both have to be up soon, but for long long moments they just lay there together, watching each other in this new light.
"I'm in love with you, Phyllis," he told her. Again, she leaned forwards, planting a single kiss on his lips, before resting her head back on his chest.
"That's good to hear," she told him, "I'm in love with you too."
End.
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