A/N: Getting back into the swing of things makes me write things I haven't done much before - like Charles POV (talking about a challenge...). I hope it's enjoyable to read. Don't hesitate to review, I LOVE reviews!
1.
When the night comes and she is in bed (her blankets pulled up to her chin and her legs pulled up to her chest) she worries. Slivers of thoughts about Thomas so bitter and lonely now Sarah O'Brien has left. About the Dowager who is getting frailer day by day, how it seems to affect Lady Mary most. She worries about the empty nursery in the Bates's cottage.
Mostly she worries about him.
She sees how his step is getting that bit slower, she hears how his bones creak late at night when they go over the books one more time. How he peers at the numbers. They both need glasses, just to read - they tell themselves. When they sit together in church and he keeps up the book of hymns, she has to lean against his arm to see the words.
This past winter they held onto each other, close, tight, as they navigated through the snow and frozen puddles. She rubbed his shoulders when they got back, her bare hands on his forearms to get warm, to drive the bitterness from his muscles before he had to go up to serve the family.
The family. The only one he's ever known.
The words had struck her harder than a slap. She had thought that by now they could call each other that, that they together were a family, a broken one, one that dealt with wayward children, with upset and self denial. To think he felt closer to them upstairs had stung. The words seemed to have had little hands that grabbed onto her heart and squeezed and she had almost lost the ability to breath when she had finally come to the sanctity of her lonely room.
She worries about him because the world they were raised in, are used to, is changing fast. Her girls want to wear colour on their lips and cheeks and she lets them in the weekends, because fighting it is futile. She knows she needs to pick her battles. Tries to help him navigate through his (a footman wanting to court the baker's daughter or pretty dairymaids that stand waiting for them outside on sunny spring evenings after dinner, hallboys saving up for bicycles and cinema tickets).
He dozes off at night, his glass of port wine lowering into his lap and she has been fast enough, has always caught it, but she is getting older too. She fears her next birthday, his. She no longer knows what to buy him - contemplates those reading glasses for a moment, lets out a stifled chuckle. This next birthday will mark as the one most men stop working, but she knows he won't.
The nights she was in this same bed, awake the whole night, thinking how maybe they could be together one day, that maybe he worried about her on the other side of the wall and that instead of worrying they could comfort each other. Nights she laid awake, fantasizing how his embrace might feel warm and how he would smell - she knows, it's his shaving cream, his soap, pommade - how perhaps he might even have taken her to his bed, maybe would have worshipped her with his body.
2.
When he wakes, he worries. About the wine delivery that should be coming in the afternoon, but was late the last two times. About Alfred who he is trying to teach all he knows, but is found more in the kitchens than polishing the silver. He worries about his Lordship feeling left out - he sees it, hears it, nothing much gets past him.
He worries about her the most.
He can hear her shuffling through her room in the middle of the night, it wakes him as surely as it would if she were right next to him in his bed. He pushes thoughts of her being so close away, pushes away the memory of the soft skin of her hand on his arm. He doesn't want to think about these things, but he can't stop and it makes him irritable, unstable.
He is worried because sometimes she gets distracted and doesn't hear the bell, doesn't hear when someone addresses her. He is certain it's not because she is losing her hearing - she can hear a mouse tripling through the store cupboard, hears the gossip in the smallest of whispers between her maids.
He is worried because she has gotten too attached to her charges, that she is softer now. She goes out with Thomas when he smokes his cigarettes so he has someone to talk to now Miss O'Brien has left. Has Anna in her parlour for long half hours. She even speaks with Lady Mary on occasion without coming back filled with bitterness.
He sees that she misses Miss O'Brien, he had never really noticed it before, but the pair shared a love of dark humor, of a bit of gossip, had a dislike for incompetence - though she always hid it better than Miss O'Brien.
The winter was harsh on the pair of them, they had held onto each other on the short trips they had made - church, the village for errands on half days. Having her on his arm had felt good. Comfortable. He had wanted to hold her for a long time after they would come in again, had wanted to help her out of more than her coat and he knew he could never share these desirous thoughts with her.
He is worried because his birthday is coming up and Lady Mary and Mr Branson will ask him to take up retirement. He has been thinking about it for almost a year now. He feels he doesn't have much of a choice. He knows they can't truly afford him, or anyone in his place. He has enough put by, he has been promised a cottage on the grounds when he was first promoted to his current position. He doesn't have to stay on.
Life is changing. Service is changing and he doesn't want to fight anymore, even though he knows full well she fights half his battles for him. He is tired. His bones creak, his muscles protest. But he doesn't want to leave her. Doesn't want to think of a life without her close to him. Doesn't want to be in bed without knowing she is in a comparable one, not two feet away.