I whined that I 'need' to see at least one Chelsie on screen kiss before the end of the show, one similar to A/R's Oath kiss, Bugs suggested staircase kissing. So... This was supposed to be a short quick fic. Somehow, I got carried away. Lots of rambling. Hee. Sorry, not sorry.

He thought the room would appear larger without furniture. Instead, the walls were closing in on him. Walls bare but for a series of holes where pictures had once hung, an empty row of coat hooks, and lamps glowing dimly, in desperate need of new bulbs.

He wandered aimlessly around the room, once, twice, three times, stepping over the thick rope of cord coiling from the plug in the wall to the telephone which sat on the floor, forlorn without the desk it had once sat upon.

"Does it still work?"

He swung around at the familiar voice.

"I don't know," he replied, vague.

Her face was also familiar. Her clothes were wrong though. Mrs Hughes always wore black, a corset under her dress, high collars. This woman, Elsie, preferred light blue, shorter hems; a floral print scarf concealing the dress's low neckline was the only hint of her former propriety.

Her outfit was a metaphor for his new life. He liked it very much, but it was different, looser, frivolous. He believed he was still headed for the same destination as before, but he travelled along a rockier path.

"I didn't hear you come in," he said, disconcerted. He was usually so attuned to her approach. Even without the rattle of her keys, he knew the pattern and cadence of her tread, her fresh feminine scent that always filled his senses before he saw her.

"You were lost in your thoughts, I imagine," she said, as usual excusing his behaviour. She really was rather pretty when she smiled wistfully like that, he acknowledged silently.

"How many times have we stood right here," he wondered.

He could barely remember the previous housekeepers entering his pantry. They must have, surely.

"Arguing?" she softly teased, reaching out, brushing the back of her hand along his arm.

He snorted, a gruff sound that did little to mask his emotional upheaval only she could witness. Tradesmen and other servants were milling around the house. He'd be the laughing stock of Yorkshire within days if it was revealed he was crying over an empty house.

He caught her hand that had started to fidget with his coat sleeve, led her to the window. The view showed off the back entrance, the gravel driveway, the precise pattern of brown bricks of the next building, the timber storage boxes dotted around the yard, looking like coffins yet to be lowered into the ground.

"The outside has come in," he murmured, knowing she'd understand.

The view had been boarded up until yesterday. He spun around, searching the room, wondering where the boards had been placed. But like everything he had used as protection from the outside world, they'd disappeared.

"Imagine me trying to get the butler to concentrate on his work if he'd been able to stare out at this all day."

As she spoke, he returned his gaze to her face. How well he appreciated her clear blue eyes, the freckles she'd acquired in her youth, that dimple he always wanted to coax into being on her right cheek. "I much rathered the view I had," he said, completely sincere.

Her eyes widened ever so slightly when she caught his meaning. Her face pinkened faintly, her hand, still captured in his, fluttered.

He cleared his throat, looked away from the promise in her expression, back out at the drab view he'd been denied in case he'd become distracted. The irony did not escape him.

"Have you got everything then?"

She pointed to the small crate, belongings that neither belonged to him nor anyone else. They were priceless as well as worthless. An inkwell and fountain pen, a clock, a basket that sat on his desk filled with bibs and bobs, the warthog tusk paperweight Lord Grantham had obtained during the Boer War.

"Yes, I think so, Mrs Carson." He glanced over his shoulder for the last time. They'd paint the room a different colour, he supposed. Something cheery to combat that dreary view.

With one final nod, he scooped up the crate and followed her from the pantry into the hallway, where he had to dodge several dungaree clad workers.

By her sitting room door sat a small pile of mementos she too must have rescued from this latest, and last, purge. She hadn't needed to gather them into a crate. Not because she had less than he to begin with, but because over the last few months she had already brought many items to the cottage. She'd not suffered from his lack of foresight.

She'd accused him of being bullheaded, stubborn, stuck in the past. He'd clung onto hope when there was none.

"It's a sad day though," he noted as he placed her things into the crate alongside his. "Knowing we won't be coming back to the house tomorrow."

"It's just that though, Mr Carson. A house," she elaborated when he rose one eyebrow questioningly. "What made it a home was the people who lived here. You're not losing them. For some reason, only known to them and us, we are, like you said so many years ago, family."

For the past few years she'd told him over and over the staff was their family. Mrs Patmore was her sister. Daisy, her niece.

Yet it seemed the Crawleys still wanted him, and their ex-housekeeper, in their life as much as he wanted to remain part of theirs. Phone calls and letters and visits were not nearly as strained as one would have imagined, considering the difference in status.

She claimed it was Tom of course. Her bridge. Her son, he reckoned, in this family they agreed to love for both their sakes.

"You're right. As usual."

But he was still Carson with the Crawleys or Mr Carson with the former staff, no matter how informal the setting. His christian name was saved for only one person these days. Saved for his dearest family member. Elsie, his wife.

Abruptly, he surprised himself by wanting to kiss her right there and then.

Instead, solemn, he said: "And I have the most important family closer."

"That you have, Mr Carson," she replied quietly, just as serious.

Yes, when he'd stopped hanging onto hope, he'd clung onto her instead. And she'd let him. She'd held him tight in return. He leaned down, perhaps he could sneak a quick peck.

"Oh good, Mrs Carson you're here." They both jumped at Lady Edith's voice.

As they turned, young Marigold skipped by her mother and promptly climbed straight up into his arms, ensuring he abandoned the crate awkwardly to accommodate her squirming ever-growing weight.

"You're getting too big for this young lady," he scolded when he finally balanced her comfortably on his hip, her arms looping around his neck, her cheeky smile in return proving his sternness was not as substantial as it once was.

"Get away with you, Mr Carson. She's still a wee bairn, light as a feather."

"Mrs Carson, bite your tongue! Miss Marigold is very grown up, a young lady. I hope you don't make me my back ache, Miss Marigold."

The child giggled hysterically at his silly prattle.

"I was wondering if you could help me upstairs for ten minutes before you leave, Mrs Carson," Lady Edith was continuing.

"Of course," his wife replied, but her gaze was on him.

She always accused him of being soft with the children when no one was around to see. Her gaze caught his and she raised one eyebrow. He raised one of his in return. She would give him stick later, but he would remind her privately that she was the whole reason for his disappearing constraint.

The head tradesman arrived then, and after introductions, they spent the next few minutes discussing renovations and plans for the future as well as days of yore. Marigold remained in his arms, occasionally experimentally touching his nose, his eyebrows, his chin which was rough even though he'd shaved that morning. But all his awareness was centred upon Elsie. She'd had to move when more men trampled down the hallway at one stage, and had manoeuvred to lean her small frame against his other hip, her weight as slight as Marigold's.

Not that he would ever accuse Elsie of being a light weight in any other way. He smiled with pride when, with a few well chosen words, she even found the chance to put the foreman in his place.

Eventually their problems were sorted, and the tradesman trotted off to join his fellow workers. The jolting sound of a hammer cracking on timber from the kitchen was then enough to send them all cowering away. Marigold wriggled and whined at the jarring noise. He could not blame the child. The hammer was banging the nail into the coffin, the suffocating reality of what was to become of his Downton.

Finally lowering Marigold, he took the opportunity to stow his crate out of the way. As he did so, he realised the noise had also scattered the remaining servants who had been lingering below stairs. The hallway was jammed with staff who'd recently been let go. Some he nodded to, some he and Elsie had greeted earlier.

Memories crashed into and around him, a daydream of footmen and maids coming and going in every direction. Today they were without direction. He suppressed the urge to correct the situation.

"Just like the old days."

He chuckled at Elsie's whispered comment. How did she always know exactly what he was thinking, he wondered.

"Do you want to come with us? Upstairs?"

"No, no." He put on a brave face. "I might just wait out near the back entrance, sit in the sun of the garden, until you've finished with Lady Edith."

"Are you sure now? Will you be alright out there by yourself?"

"By myself?"

Earlier they'd seen splattered paint pots, lengths of timber, and all manner of builders' paraphernalia being set up on the far side of the gravel courtyard. He was most likely going to have to jostle for a solitary position.

He glanced around, the comings and goings in the hallway were also making a mockery of her query. He hadn't seen this many people downstairs all at once in years.

When he left, he wouldn't bother to shake hands or pat backs with the staff just yet. There was a planned get together for those still in the area at the pub the Molesleys had bought.

"She will insist on offering us all free drinks at the do," Elsie had suggested when they'd learnt of the affair.

"And he'll present us with a bill at the end of the night," he'd joked in return.

He didn't begrudge the couple happiness though. He thought, as he watched Elsie following Lady Edith up the stairs now, wedded bliss might just be catching.

"You're both rather superfluous to requirements like the rest of us now, Mr Carson."

He stiffened. Barrow, of course. Benefit of the doubt, turned his life around, finally seen the light, everyone kept saying. He didn't believe leopards truly changed their spots.

"At least you won't be lonely with your memories of grander days. Lucky neither you nor Mrs Hughes had any other prospects."

Barrow's gloating taunts were meant to get at him, he knew, but bringing Elsie into it incited his anger instantly.

"Wait! Stop!"

All three ladies on the stairs froze at his hurried command.

Frowning when she saw Barrow, Elsie descended a half a dozen or so steps. With him at the base of the stairs still and she a few steps up, they were almost level, seeing eye to eye just like he preferred. Almost but not exactly. She was a little higher, and had to look down at him the smallest amount, rather than her usual, having to crane her neck to catch his eye.

Apt, he thought. He'd spent years thinking he was on a higher rung than she. Something else he had discovered he'd always been wrong about.

"Whatever's the matter?"

"Nothing," he admitted, forgetting about Barrow's accusation for the moment. "Everything's perfect."

"What's perfect?" she asked slowly, wary.

"You. Standing there. On the stairs like that. How many times someone has come along with a query and made you pause on the stairs just so. You'd look over your shoulder, or turn completely like this, poised to solve whatever problem there might be."

How many times had he thought about kissing her back then? So numerous he couldn't begin to count.

"Sentimental old fool," she whispered now.

And she was right, again. His sentiment for this house and this lifestyle had almost consumed him, but she had stood by his side throughout it all.

It wasn't this job, or this house, that had saved him, ensured he found respect in himself. Yes, it was the Granthams, but mostly it was Elsie. She had been the one making the path transversable. And it she who would continue to smooth the way for him. Wherever that rocky path was going to lead him, she'd be bumping along it with him.

She kept telling him their life was now different, with different commitments. Maybe he could show her he was listening.

"Carson?"

He ignored Lady Edith.

"Mr Carson?"

Behind him now, not Barrow, but someone else. He ignored them too.

Elsie looked down at him still, expectedly, awaiting his next move, also ignoring everyone else.

She started when he reached up and cradled her face. She was so tiny, he could almost span her waist with his hands, he often would need to seek her out in their bed at night, would need to press her diminutiveness against his bulk should she shiver.

She shivered now. Egotistically he hoped it was from the way he was staring at her lips. Lips he knew intimately even though each kiss he stole from her still shocked him with its newness.

"Mr Carson?"

This time the plea came from Elsie. A plea to let her go with Lady Edith, or to kiss her, but to definitely end this agony of anticipation. More irony. She'd waited over twenty years, and now she trembled from a meagre twenty seconds.

He drew her face nearer, her eyes wide when she realised he was following through with his intention, before they fluttered obediently closed. Her skin smelt of honey and milk, heightening his senses before their lips touched. Their eventual contact was at first only that, a mere touch of his lips to hers, contact the most important thing, technique not yet necessary.

Then, his body jolted alert at her skin's soft appeal and he kissed her deeper. She immediately responded, opening her mouth, allowing him to slide his tongue into her warmth, to taste every piece of her.

This wasn't the first time he'd kissed her like this, but it was certainly the first time he'd kissed her like this outside their bedroom.

They parted when she gasped, for air, to register astonishment, to stare at him beseechingly. "Charles," she rasped. His name became a question, a plea, and an endearment. She released the piece of waistcoat her fingers had curled to grip, patting it flat. "Whatever are you doing? What will everyone think?"

What was he trying to prove? He'd forgotten really. He did know they weren't the aging dinosaurs everyone thought. And that they would be easily be able to amuse themselves without the house. And that today truly marked the first day of his new life.

In kissing her he was finally, fully, putting his old life to one side, to rest. This new life was different, looser, frivolous. But he liked it, he liked it very much. He had no reason to hide from the world anymore.

His thumb rubbed over that hip which she'd pressed against his side not so long ago. He thought about how he rubbed his thumb across it in the darkness of their bedroom, bent over her to kiss the exact place where the bone jutted out, or cupped it when wordlessly encouraging her as she rose above him.

"Whatever are you thinking?"

As he accepted over and over, she always knew what he was thinking and as such her eyes darkened, mentally answering her own question, visualising the same images in her mind, he hoped.

He leaned forwards, kissed her sharp cheekbones, cooling their heat.

"Kiss again!"

The order came from young Marigold.

"Mr Carson…"

"Mrs Carson, are you deliberately trying to put me off by using such formality?"

"I-"

She swayed and that was permission enough for him to close the gap between them and kiss her once more.

Her lips were swollen and moist from their first encounter. He kissed her softly but thoroughly, offering a sweet soothing balm, like the first time he'd kissed her, when he'd explored every crease and crevice, not neglecting any part of her mouth.

Despite his infinite gentleness, this time her nails bit into his shoulders, wildly, making him think that without the thickness of his clothing, blood would have been drawn.

Just as desperately, one of his hands pressed into her hair, tangling the neat bun she has styled her hair into, a public display of convention he was dismantling this time. His other hand stroked her side, in perfect harmony his tongue. He slid from that seductive hip up to her underarm, skimming her breast, and back again, his touch caressing every tempting curve.

He pulled back, a small amount, licked her ragged bottom lip, then made love to the corner of her mouth, her chin, her jaw line. She lifted her head away, not to get away, but offering him her neck and he complied by placing a series of kisses down the elegant pale skin.

In his mind their immodest and uncalled for lovemaking went on and on. In reality it probably was not more than a minute, but eventually, reluctantly, they stopped. He released her, his hands fell away, but itched to drag her back against him once more.

He'd started this to show off, to advertise his love, to let others have a glimpse of his world. Now he only wanted her, for only Elsie to be in his world, their own world, alone.

But not everything had changed, this was not the time or the place for them to indulge further.

"The first kiss was to prove something," he admitted.

"I guessed that," she said, scolding with her tongue but indulging with her eyes nevertheless. Yes, he would have been fretful but for the look, her intense gaze, holding his, equally craving and loving.

"But that last kiss was for us," he murmured.

"Well…" She didn't finish her statement, unable to speak, her breathing shallow and frenzied.

"Get away with you?" he suggested.

Her swollen lips twitched in amusement before she turned, clinging tightly onto the bannister as she stamped up the stairs, Marigold's twitter of amusement and excitement preceding her.

He only turned when she was out of sight. Behind him, slack mouthed and wide eyed, was a captive audience, Barrow and a crowd of at least six servants and three or four tradesmen.

He was going to pay for that last kiss, yet he had no regrets.

"Gentlemen, ladies," he addressed them, bowing politely before retrieving his crate and striding to the back entrance, head held high like the perfect butler.

Outside, in the new world, the warm summer sunshine warming his weary bones, he found a spare bench. He decided he'd just sit, and think frivolous thoughts of his new life, and loosely plan whether he should beg her forgiveness or continue with that last kiss.

The End