There's always an aftermath to the afterparty, even if the the afterparty is only ever attended by her most intimate inner circle. In this case the occasion was a birthday party, and an eightieth birthday party at that, and Penelope had been honored beyond measure when Scott had asked if she would be willing to provide a venue. Of course the answer could only have been yes, only she'd gone quite a bit further than might have been expected and provided the entire party. It's been a grand, beautiful, glorious day, a fitting tribute to the extraordinary matriarch of an extraordinary family.

But it's over now. The guests have all been shuttled home, and the aforementioned afterparty has wound down. The guest of honor retired at a respectable eleven-thirty in the evening, leaving her grandsons to unwind, to relax and enjoy one of the only nights of the year during which their services cannot possibly be called upon. The Tracys are her houseguests, and will be staying the night, and the morning thereafter will stay for breakfast, and then they'll more than likely be scattered back to all corners of the world, back at the beck and call of global catastrophe in potentia.

For Penelope's part, she's been happy to watch the boys spend their downtime and to personally ensure that nothing intrudes upon it, especially now that night's fallen, and the world outside the manor has grown dark and quiet. She'd left Scott and John at a corner of the bar, undone jackets and discarded cufflinks, with a generously gifted bottle of her father's brandy between them. Kayo and Virgil had found their way into Parker's company, and a deck of cards had found its way to the top of a table, and if gambling is considered poor form in polite company, well, the caliber of jokes being told around said table already preclude the politesse of the assembled company. Alan, she'd last seen in Sherbet's custody, Sherbet being the sort of creature with an acutely tuned ability to insinuate himself into the company of whoever is most liable to slip him snacks from the buffet table.

And Gordon—

Gordon comes and finds her, and that's impressive, because Penelope takes a considerable amount of finding, especially considering the way she's tucked herself away in an alcove beneath one of the manor's myriad staircases, and left the evening to dwindle down without her. It's not that she's avoiding the boys or that she's uninterested in their company, it's just that an eightieth birthday party takes a great deal of planning, and she feels she deserves a few private moments to bask unabashedly in the success of it all.

She's slipped out of her shoes, a beastly pair of Louboutins, and her stockings have garnered a run or two, not that it matters beneath the long skirt of her gown. Out of habit she hides these demurely, crosses her legs at the knee and presses her calves together, as though runs in her stockings are a shameful secret. It's the part of the evening where she rather likes to have some secrets, anyway. She feels rather like a secret herself, all hidden away and triumphant as she is.

But Gordon finds her anyway, reclining on a divan tucked beneath a curving oaken staircase, with half a bottle of champagne on the floor beside her, and a glass half-emptied in her hand. He wanders into the back hallway that leads into the manor's east wing from the ballroom, with a glass of his own in hand, though his is empty. She wonders how long he's been carrying it around, why he doesn't just set it down someplace. It doesn't really matter. He smiles when he notices her and she gives a little wave in response, but he doesn't say anything at first. Instead he paces a slow lap of the room, a small, transitional hall that mainly exists to connect one half of the house to the other, to give anyone who's found their way upstairs somewhere to find their way back downstairs again . The walls are wood paneled and there's unironically a suit of armor in the corner, and this gets a curious examination from a pair of bright, bright brown eyes, before Penelope clears her throat to get Gordon's attention.

"Are you lost?" she asks, lightly teasing. "I do hope you aren't lost, Gordon. It would be so terribly embarrassing for a member of your profession."

"No," Gordon answers, and his voice matches the lightness of hers, as he wanders over to the divan she's taken possession of and hangs idly nearby, still with his wineglass in hand. He's lost his shoes at some point in the course of the evening too, and wears brightly patterned socks beneath a pair of dark blue slacks and a dark shirt. This is lined at the cuffs and collar with a subtle floral pattern that manages to remain on the right side of tasteful, with its sleeves rolled up past his the elbows. He's retained possession of a black silk tie, but this is undone, loose around his open collar. "Oh, no, nah. It's not that big a house, Penelope. C'mon. Give a guy a little credit."

Penelope just smiles and draws her knees up, sits up a little straighter to clear the space at the end of the divan, every inch the good hostess. "You've the wrong sort of glass for champagne," she points out, but reaches for the bottle anyway. She gestures at the wine glass in his hand and he holds it out obligingly. "Was that the Bordeaux? It was a rather good year, if memory serves."

"It sure was a glass of wine," Gordon agrees, sitting down and affecting a parody of seriousness as he comments, "It was okay. Uh, I mean, oaky. Izzat a word? Probably. Nice finish. Hints of, uh, cherry koolaid. Lighter fluid. Nutmeg on the back end. Possibly a little bit wasted on me, but then, possibly I'm a little bit wasted, so I guess possibly not?" He shakes his head a little, and seems sheepish as he shrugs, "Dunno. I'm not, um, not really a wine person."

Penelope pauses with the champagne bottle halfway tilted towards his glass, "Is that a no?" she inquires, as a good hostess should, but also proceeds to inform him, "Champagne doesn't count, you know. It's mostly bubbles. It's barely wine, really. It's just grape juice that got excited. And I can't finish this by myself."

He holds his glass out to meet her halfway and grins a bright-eyed grin, with a shake of his head. "I'm never gonna say no to you pouring me a drink, Penny. Penelope. Thanks."

"You're very welcome, darling," she answers blithely, as pale gold bubbles and froths into entirely the wrong sort of glass, not that it especially matters, for someone who picks up notes of cherry koolaid in a '45 Bordeaux. Her wrist twists reflexively as she finishes pouring, a trick that catches the drops at the lip of the bottle, so none of it can fall to the floor. Primly, with the exaggerated care of someone who is perhaps also more than just a little tipsy, Penelope adjusts the skirt of her evening gown to sit a little more evenly across her knees. Her dress is an airy mauve confection of lace and tulle, and her crossed ankles peek out from beneath the hem as she draws up her knees to sit comfortably. With her other hand, she lifts her half-full glass and offers a toast, "To your grandmother."

Gordon laughs softly at that, but matches her gesture and drinks when she does, a long swallow that drains the glass. "Cheers. But I wouldn't even be, like, half as drunk as I am right now if people would've just quit toasting the woman. Happy birthday, Grandma! Here's a massive hangover."

"She'd switched to sparkling water about halfway through the evening, if I recall."

"Yeah, well, she's a smart lady."

"Mm." Penelope lowers her voice, almost conspiratorially, as she confesses, "I haven't been a terribly smart lady, myself."

"No?"

"No." Penelope giggles, which is as sure an indication as any that she's in a similar state, but relaxed and happy about the fact, unconcerned with whatever the next morning's consequences will be. She swallows the last of the light from the bottom of her glass and sets it aside. She congratulates herself rather shamelessly as she says, "It was quite a good party though, I think. I do hope she enjoyed herself. I hope all of you did."

"Well." Gordon finds somewhere to deposit his own glass, and holds up a hand to count off an itemized list, finger by finger. "Lessee. She threw back a double Scotch with Scooter in honour of the occasion. Managed to get Johnny on the dance floor, which only happens about once every eighty years, so props to her there, too. Her cake probably weighed more than Virgil does, and I think she and Alan probably ate a whole tier of it. And she got to bed before midnight, which is really the only thing she ever gives us hell about anymore anyway—if we keep her up too late past her bedtime. Yeah, Penelope, I'd say you did good."

She'd become abnormally preoccupied with his hands as he'd gone through the countdown, and so she notices that he's come up short by one finger out of five. She frowns at this and pushes herself up to kneel on the divan, facing him and peering at his hands as she leans over. She does some quick arithmetic as she backtracks through the roster. "But you, though? You didn't say, about you. Did you have a nice time?"

Closer to him now, she can properly appreciate just how quickly his smile flashes up, how genuine it is. "Oh, sure. Yeah, 'course. Of course I did. I always have a nice time when you're around."

It might be the quality of the evening or the quality of the company, but Penelope already has a glow of pride about her, and she's in the mood to luxuriate in other people's high esteem. Gordon, conveniently, probably holds her in higher esteem than most anyone else present tonight, and almost always meets her demands as far as sheer earnest flattery is considered. All it takes is the slightest encouragement. "You're really far too kind to me, Gordon," she demurs, lowering her eyes in a demonstration of utterly false modesty.

He shrugs, and his smile softens slightly. "It's a hobby."

"Of course, tonight seems like one of those very rare nights when you can say something like that and I can actually believe you."

"Hmm?"

Penelope shrugs in turn, her bare shoulders shifting beneath a wrap of shimmering soft lace, in a way she doesn't even realize might be diverting. "Well, really, the sort of scenarios which put you in my company rarely ever seem the type to qualify as a 'nice time', Gordon."

"Oh." But he doesn't seem discouraged, just thoughtful. He rests his hands against the back edge of the divan, leans back slightly, considering this. "Mm. Well, but I still always have a nice time anyhow."

He's so matter-of-fact about it, so entirely sincere—Penelope can't help her laughter, and the warm glow in her chest feels as much like affection as it does like amusement. "My parties are nicer than my ill-advised escapades through the depths of South American murder tombs. Falling space hotels."

"Drowned cities," he volunteers.

"Drowned kingdoms," she counters. "And we were both nearly drowned on both occasions. Really, Gordon, I can't in good conscience allow you to classify these sorts of encounters as 'nice times'. It makes me shudder to think what standard you're comparing them to. My parties are much nicer. Come to more of my parties."

"Your parties are pretty nice," he concedes, and then pauses for a moment, grows contemplative before he says, "Thank you, though. Really. For this—for all of it. For her. Grandma. We always want—god, I mean—every single one of us would pull the sky down, if she asked, if it'd make her happy, but it's just—pulling together a night like this? A night like she deserves? The five of us couldn't have managed something like this. I've seen Scotty decide that the quickest way between A and B is to jetpack his ass right up the side of a burning high-rise—but if you ask him to try and pick out canapes, suddenly the whole world hangs on whether we have shrimp toast or beluga caviar. And John's worse, if you can believe it, but in a whole other way. I swear, there's not a sentimental bone in his goddamn body. He's been banned from planning birthday parties, after the year Kayo's cake just said 'CAKE' on top. So it's just—I mean, we mean well, but…" He shrugs and sighs, "Can't save the day every time, I guess."

It's remarkably endearing, all that sincerity bubbling up and bubbling over, his voice running away from him as he rambles. He's got her trying to remember just when, and if she's ever actually seen him drunk before. Bordeaux and whatever else chased by champagne and it becomes apparent that he's chattery, earnest and wholehearted when he drinks, though she doesn't imagine he's really properly drunk, just yet. An impish impulse has her considering the glass or so of champagne still lingering in the bottom of the bottle, but she leaves it alone for the moment.

Instead Penelope sits up and puts a hand on his arm to reassure him, pats his wrist gently as she says, "I think you've all got ample license to defer the duty of party planning to a professional."

Gordon grins at her again. "Or a talented amateur, at least."

"A professional," she corrects firmly, with a toss of her hair over her shoulder. Time and warmth have softened her carefully curled and coiffed hair into a tumble of champagne blonde curls, and she absently pulls a loose lock of hair back from where it falls across her throat. "Don't insult me, darling."

"A professional, then" he agrees solemnly, but then doubles back, shaking his head. "Only no, though, 'cuz we could've got a professional. We could've got someone who would've done it for money and not—not just because of why you did it. Because you know about us and you know about her and you know how much she matters—how important it was, that tonight was…was nice. More than nice. You know." Her hand hasn't left his wrist, and now the his other hand closes over hers, squeezes gently. "Just—thank you, Penelope. Really. It was a beautiful night."

This is the sort of sincerity that makes her attempt at fishing for compliments seem shallow and rather vain, facing up against such honesty from someone who keeps his heart pinned so handily upon his sleeve. "You're very welcome," she says, and means it. "I was happy to do it, and I'll happily do it again."

"Yeah?" There's the faintest hint of challenge in his tone and he gives her a speculative look as he shifts on the divan, turns towards her. The warmth of his hand leaves hers, and a part of her notices. "Do me next?"

Penelope arches an eyebrow and asks, "Are you next?"

He nods. "February. Allie's not 'til March."

Mentally she's already attempting to discern just what exactly her calendar holds in February, going through the roster of galas and charity events and dinners and whatever else crops up in the in-between, and she queries, "February—?"

"Fourteenth."

And isn't that just entirely typical. She must have known that already, for how easily that particular fact clicks into place. "Oh well, naturally. I did know that about you, I'm sure. Your birthday. Valentine's day." Penelope smiles and doesn't know quite why it's true, but says it anyway, "It suits you."

He chuckles and shakes his head. "Everybody says that."

"Do they?"

"Yeah. Except…funny thing; no one ever says why."

Now that he's asking, tacitly, Penelope frowns to herself, wondering why exactly it is so particularly apt. To give herself a few moments to think, she reaches down for the champagne bottle, still sitting innocuously on the hardwood floor, and picks it up. She forgets herself and takes a sip straight from the bottle before she remembers her manners and offers it to her guest.

This makes him laugh, but then, it's not as though that's difficult to do. "Oh man, just when I thought this party couldn't get any better. Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward chugs six hundred dollar champagne, straight from the bottle." His hands come up again, forefingers and thumbs flicking nimbly into a rectangle, framing her face like a camera lens. "What would the tabloids say?"

"Probably just exactly that." Penelope knocks the bottle against his knuckles. He takes it, and then takes a long drink, especially for someone who claims not to care for wine. He hands it back to her nearly empty. "There's a reason it's a private party, darling."

Again with that sunshiney smile. "Aww, see! You're a smart lady after all. Figure out what the deal is with me and Valentine's Day, smart lady?"

Penelope hasn't, and she shrugs, takes a delicate sip of her wine, though he's polished off nearly all of it. "It's an enduring mystery," she defers, but pats his hand consolingly, as she says again, "It just suits you. It makes a great deal of sense. But yes, your birthday. Well, if you're asking me, of course, I'd be delighted to plan something." She pauses and needs to think for a moment, because a question she should know the answer to seems to be coming up against a blind spot in her memory. She at least has the excuse of champagne and a long day behind her, though she still feels slightly embarrassed to need to ask, "How old are you now?"

"Twenty-four."

The little gasp that escapes her is one of genuine surprise, though it might have been slightly more affected than genuine, if there hadn't been quite so much champagne. "You're not twenty-four!"

It must sound like such a scandalous accusation, because Gordon starts a little where he sits beside her, taken slightly aback. "Twenty-five, in less than a month," he corrects, as though he's still at the age where the technicality is important. "Is, um…is that gonna be a problem?"

The embarrassment is beginning to be indistinguishable for the warmth already colouring her cheeks, and she shrugs her shoulders again, still blissfully unaware of what this particular motion does to her companion. "No, don't be silly. It's only that I can't ever seem to imagine you as any older than twenty. Twenty-one, perhaps. However old you were when we met, however long ago that was."

This doesn't make him laugh, and instead there's a sort of wry twist of his expression, and a sardonic, "Oh, thanks."

"Oh, don't," she chides, and presses her elbow lightly into his ribs. At some point, without realizing she's done so, she's sat herself up and migrated to the edge of the divan beside him. "Twenty-five though. I only mean that it's been such a long time."

"Yeah. Long time."

But even as he says it, something about his voice has changed, something that makes her take notice. Some of the laughter's gone out of it, some of the warmth has faded. He suddenly seems distant, almost melancholy, and Penelope finds herself given pause, watching him for a moment.

And abruptly it's strange that in her head he's still newly twenty-one, the second youngest sibling of five, all loud and brash and with the raw edges of his adolescence not yet rubbed off of him, perpetually smirking and without the first idea of how to talk to a Lady. At twenty-three she'd been worldly, by comparison, with her years of finishing school and her Cambridge education and her ongoing training in the early echelons of spycraft. But she's twenty-seven now. And he'll be twenty-five in less than a month. And ny that metric, those two years between them seem to matter a great deal less than they had, then.

Because he's settled, somehow, grown up and grown into himself, and she knows him now for one of the best people she'll ever meet, an extraordinary member of an extraordinary family, but still remarkable in his own right, on his own merits. In the passage of all those years she neglects to him credit for, he's become a pilot and an aquanaut, a paramedic and a first-responder; a foundational member of one of the most prestigious rescue agencies in the world, and a worthy fifth of the legacy to one of the world's greatest fortunes. And none of this takes into account his heart and his spirit and his sincerity, and who he is as a person, entirely separate from what he does for a living. Without meaning to, it's possible that she's given offense, by reducing Gordon to someone unchanged from who he was when she first knew him.

But before she can tactfully find a way to reformat the whole idea—before she can make some diplomatic remark about youthful energy or some other nonsense like that—Gordon clears his throat and changes the subject, veers sharply away from the topic at hand. "So," he says, bright and bluff and like he's twenty-one years old again. "So, like—Thunderbirds, right?"

Penelope blinks at him, but manages to keep hold of the thread of the conversation, and rolls with it. "Oh, yes, I'm passing familiar. Wonderfully clever machines. Very deft pilots."

He grins again, and that air of melancholy seems to pass like a cloud. "Best in the world. D'you mind if I talk about Thunderbirds for a minute? I'm trying to get down to an idea, here, and there's just—well, lemme see if I can explain it." He pauses, shifts on the divan to sit with his body turned towards her, in response "Bear, um, bear with me for a minute, I gotta get…kinda technical, I guess. About this whole idea."

"Oh, please do," Penelope purrs, continuing to keep the secret of just how much she enjoys hearing technically minded people talk about technical things. She rearranges herself to recline against the back of the chaise again, her legs still drawn up beneath her long skirt. She clasps her hands around her knees, attentive.

Gordon grows more animated with her agreement, starting to talk with his hands as he comes to grips with his chosen topic. "Right. Right, 'cuz uh—so, okay. Thunderbirds. So, we do—like, we do post-flights? Y'know? Post-dives, I guess, for me. Although one time we dropped '4 in a super-collider and I think technically that qualified as requiring a post-flight. Post-checks. Anyway. After every landing back at base, whether we flew five hours or five minutes, we do the same checklist, because that's just—you just do that. You check through that same list of things every time, because they're the things that might've been affected one way or the other, by your standard launch and your average flight. Right? Uh, you with me so far?"

Penelope's answering nod is blandly tolerant. "Yes, I follow."

He's instantly embarrassed, and rubs at the back of his neck as he nods. "Right. 'course you do. It's not actually that complicated. So, uh, anyway. Those are like, just everyday things. They're basically the same every time, nothing's usually ever really wrong, it's just the sorta stuff that you wanna be aware of, and to catch early, just in case anything needs attention. But there's not usually much that's surprising about a post-flight check. We do them a lot. Usually nothing's changed in a major way, mostly everything stays within acceptable tolerances."

"Well, I should hope so," Penelope murmurs, arch and subtle as she applies a deliberate double-meaning. "It's really such an important quality, for a Thunderbird, to be dependable."

The way he looks at her, then, with just a little more sharpness than there might have been otherwise, behind his bright eyed gaze—perhaps she wasn't quite as subtle as she'd thought. "Right," he says again, for the fifth time, not that he's counting, though she is, and it makes her smile. "Right. So, uh. But there's—we also do weekly, monthly, yearly type checks. And those, uh…are just…more, m-more thorough, I guess. Looking at the macro rather than the micro. Stress testing major systems and going way deeper into telemetry and just—looking for the big changes. The stuff you don't notice in the short term because it changed so slowly. Gradual wear and tear. Scott says it about 'One, sometimes, that her jets get some age on 'em—about a thousand flight hours—and it takes about that long before he can start to tell, 'cuz he can only really feel the difference when he's got a fresh set. And I was just—I guess I was just thinking…"

It's unfortunate, about the technical aspect of technical talk, that it does seem to act in concert with the champagne and the lateness of the hour, and the softness of the light in this very cozy and quiet back hallway. The manor's grown so still since the end of the party, that it seems almost as though they might be the only two people still here. And Penelope doesn't mean to yawn, she really doesn't, because she's been enjoying the change of topic—but she yawns anyway. Not because she's bored, but because quite a lot of champagne has crept up rather suddenly, and it's been a very long day.

And Gordon just freezes, like she's caught him out in the act of something, that her perfectly innocent yawn is some sort of indictment. "Oh—shit, sorry," he says, hastily, before she can apologize in her own right—and then he's off again, speaking just a little bit too quickly again, embarrassed and making excuses for himself, "Sorry, Penelope. God, I've gotta sound like an absolute idiot. Post-flight checks. Christ, what kinda moron—never mind. I just—no, just, never mind. Sorry. Sorry, I should—I should get back…"

"No," she protests immediately, sitting up and reaching out to catch his wrist as he starts to stand, starts to look for an exit. He's blushing now, and for all that she's been reminded that he's nearly twenty-five years old, right now he reminds her very much of the nearly twenty-one year old he'd been when they'd met, such a long time ago. "No, I was listening. You seemed like you were coming up to the point, please, do excuse me for interrupting. It's just been such a long day and I've had rather a lot of wine. I didn't mean to be rude."

"You weren't. You're tired and I'm being an idiot, and—"

"Gordon," she interrupts firmly, and gives his wrist a sharp, imperious tug, indicating her insistence that he sit back down. "We were having a lovely chat. Please, none of this nonsense. Sit."

He sits, but he's rigid and tense as he does so, and he looks around a little helplessly for the emptied bottle of champagne, picks it up from where Penelope had left it on the floor when he finds it. He closes one eye and squints down the bottleneck into the empty vessel, then sighs and turns it over in his hands, reads the label and whistles softly to himself. "…well, that is just a substantially higher ABV then I would've figured on. Jeez. I thought I was maybe going easy, seeing as how it's only champagne."

She chuckles. "Oh, darling, heavens no. That's a fairly dire misapprehension about champagne."

Gordon's thumbs rub lightly over the gold embossed text on the label as he continues to turn the bottle beneath his fingers, still staring at the label. "Ol' Dom Perignon must really know what he's doing."

"It's the bubbles," Penelope informs him sagely. "But, please. You were saying?"

"Was I saying?" He pauses, and then a little hesitantly, "…what was I saying?"

And she has the opportunity now to demonstrate that she was listening, that she'd been paying attention to the content of the conversation instead of the sound of his voice. He has quite a nice voice, actually, all light and warm and earnest. And she absolutely had been listening, though it does take a moment of concentration to summon up the memory of what she'd heard him say. "About Thunderbirds. And keeping them in working order. Weeks and months and years. Micro and macro. Changes over time."

"Oh. Yeah."

"What about it? You did seem to be leading up to something."

"Yeah. I was."

But he doesn't continue.

Maybe it's down to the pleasantness of the conversation that she's gotten a little complacent, that she hasn't fully appreciated the shift in his tone, in his overall manner. Trepidation has crept over him and his sentences have gotten shorter, almost terse. And now he's grown still and reluctant beside her, and she feels him tense just slightly when she puts her hand on his arm. "Gordon? Are you okay?" she asks softly, trying not to sound as though he's starting to worry her, even if it's true.

It strikes her once again that she's never really seen him drunk, and maybe he hadn't wanted to be. Maybe he knows his limits and there'd been a tipping point he'd meant to avoid, a line between merriment and melancholy. Maybe she's made a mistake, been inconsiderate somehow, and missed the point of what he'd been trying to tell her, talking through his technicalities. Maybe that extended metaphor about the care and maintenance of Thunderbirds had been his way of trying to tell her that he's starting to suffer from some wear and tear of his own, starting to break down in the macro way, as opposed to the micro. As he continues not to say anything, she bites her lip and starts, "I didn't mean…"

"I'm not twenty-one anymore."

And Penelope's absolutely listening now, to what he says and the way he says it, because he's saying it in a voice she's never heard before, a voice that's interrupted her in more ways than one. His voice cuts through that warm, bubbly haze and gets every aspect of her attention.

Gordon's not looking at her as he continues, still staring at the label on the bottle in his hands, "And maybe it makes me a hypocrite to ask this, but I guess you've just got me wondering—is that really how you think of me? And is it always gonna be? Am I still twenty-one, and you get to be twenty-seven, and I just don't ever get the chance to catch up? What needs to change about how I am, to get me outta that box?"

There are a great many things to say about this line of thought, all sorts of flaws of logic to point out. That anything about him needs to change, first and foremost. To say nothing of the entirely the false assumption that this actually is still how she thinks of him, and not just something she's said carelessly. She'd only said it, halfway joking, as a means of diverting attention from the way she so easily sees that clear, perfect assocation between him and Valentine's day.

But instead of telling him any of these very important things, Penelope frowns, just a little, and asks, "Why would that make you a hypocrite?"

He still refuses to look at her, and continues to stare stubbornly at the empty bottle in his hands—but in the long moments that pass as he tries to formulate an answer, there's nothing stopping her from looking at him.

He's cleaned up for the evening, and he cleans up well; sitting beside her, he's handsome in profile. There's not a single member of his family who isn't, really, that five out of five brothers could've been blessed with equal chances at their father's rugged good looks or their mother's fine, delicate features. Gordon favours his father, with the squareness of his jaw and the shape of his cheekbones, but his eyes are emphatically his mother's, warm like honey and amber beneath a fringe of golden lashes.

But he's grown so serious, there's no hint of his usual smile. And seriousness on Gordon is so rare that it looks a lot like sadness, and something stirs dangerously in the depths of her heart, that she could hate it so much to see him look so sad. He certainly sounds sad as he finally comes up with an answer.

"Because maybe—maybe I'm the one who was supposed to change the way I think about you. Maybe this was something I was supposed to grow out of, but I just didn't, because I didn't want to. Maybe you don't think I've changed, and maybe it's not fair that all I can think is about how you've always stayed the same. But I think I've pretty much always felt this way about you, even if I can't tell how you feel about me."

There's a beat of silence, and her heart almost breaks at the sound of his voice when he says, "Even if maybe you were always gonna outgrow me."

If ever in future anyone were to ask Penelope about the moment she'd fallen in love with him, it wouldn't be this moment that she pointed to. Her answer will have the benefit of hindsight, and she'll point to an array of moments that could've fallen anywhere along the continuum of their long acquaintance. Moments when she'd fallen in love with the touch of his hands or the light in his eyes; the way he smiles and the way he makes a hobby of being kind to her. With each and every one of those hundreds of tiny changes; the work of moments that she's watched happen slowly, over the course of time. This isn't the moment she falls in love with him.

But this is the moment when she realizes just how long he's been in love with her.

It's a strange thing to know, especially as wholly and completely as she suddenly seems to know it. Sitting beside him beneath a staircase, after a day like today, a day so different from the days they usually spend together—realizing that it's not the silly, childish crush she's always assumed it was. And it seems like such an enormous, obvious truth, yet it's hard to know how to react. Penelope doesn't feel frozen exactly, so much as she feels some essential part of her has stilled, and grown suddenly calm and tranquil, in the presence of something very important.

He'll remember what she does next for the rest of his life, and so it's very important that she does it slowly and carefully, with absolutely no ambiguity about her intent. Gordon's hands are still anxiously occupied by the champagne bottle he's been toying with, and Penelope reaches over to take it from him, sets it gently on the floor between their feet. One of her knees presses against his as she shifts to sit closer, takes his hand in hers, and threads her fingers between the spaces between his.

And, well. She's probably had just enough champagne for this to be a viable course of action.

She finds she quite likes the way that, even sitting, she needs to turn her face upwards to press her lips against his jaw.

That gets Gordon's attention, finally gets him to turn towards her—and to find her right there, ready and waiting and certain, somehow, that this is the moment for it. Between honest questions and lowered inhibitions, and the warmth and the silence and the closeness between them, if it's going to happen, Penelope thinks it really ought to happen now.

And then it does.

Her initial gesture was just the offer of her permission, the promise of her curiosity. Granted both these things, Gordon turns towards her, and his free hand, the one she isn't holding, comes up to cradle her face. The side of his thumb ghosts gently across her cheekbone as he leans in to kiss her properly.

It would be dishonest to pretend that she hasn't at least imagined it. At least in concept, if not necessarily in the specifics of execution. Just as a thought experiment. Just because he's always been so transparent about how much he likes her, if not necessarily that he might just be in love with her. Just because she's actually well-aware that he's nearly twenty-five, and he's handsome and charming and funny and sweet, and always has been. Just because sometimes she thinks that she hasn't kissed nearly as many people as she might've liked to, in her life, and even most of these have been in the privacy of her imagination.

What she'd never imagined was how tender it would be, how gentle and perfect, just that one tentative, careful first kiss. Because he stops, with a catch of breath, and pulls back to look at her. And when he meets her eyes, Gordon seems surprised, almost astonished, to find that she's smiling at him, as though this wasn't ever the way he had imagined this would go.

Penelope wonders if he can smell wine on her breath the same way she smells it on his, because his hand hasn't left her face, he hasn't let her get that far. She pulls her fingers free from his and reaches up to grab a handful of his collar, a fistful of flowers in thrilling proximity to his throat. Her hand twists and her grip tightens, and she pulls him back to kiss him again; this time in the manner of a professional educating a talented amateur.

And his fingers twine gently into her hair at the nape of her neck and his other hand finds the small of her back—and amateur is probably entirely the wrong word, actually. To call him an amateur is to give him entirely too little credit, in this particular arena, because within seconds he has her gasping, surprised and thrilled and more than a little impressed, if she's honest. He kisses her with the same wholehearted sincerity with which he does everything, and it's all just a little bit more than she'd imagined, in the best possible way. The hand that had drawn him in needs to push him back away, the ridge of his collarbone beneath the palm of her hand as she pulls back to get her breath. Penelope lets her fingers drift downward, and then presses her hand against the beat of his heart, as though it's the next thing she means to possess. She lifts her other hand to touch her fingertips lightly against his lips, and is immeasurably pleased that he has the good sense to kiss each one.

She's not sure if it's a mistake to break the silence that's fallen between them, full of soft breathing and the warm, inviting depth of his eyes, but Penelope's voice escapes her, hesitant and uncharacteristically shy, as she fashions a wish into a question, "…yes?"

Gordon smiles, just before he kisses her again, just once and just gently, and murmurs his answer, "Yeah. God, yeah. Yes. Finally."

"Good," she breathes, and melts against him once more.

In some distant corner of the manor, audible by some trick of acoustics, a clock chimes the first hour after midnight. Neither of them pay it any particular attention.