A/N: So... Granthamgal pointed out to me yesterday a tumblr post by cora-the-countess. It basically said that Robert ships Mary and Tony and wondered if he wrote fanfic. This is the answer. Also, this is a total crack!fic, and if nothing else clued you into it, the fact that Cora is rather calm (relatively speaking) about Robert's behavior should.
By the way - it also is somewhat of a continuation or at least spin off from Granthamgal's story 'One Too Many.' If you've never read it, you really should. It's all kinds of hilarious.
Grantham House, London, 1924
The hour was late.
Robert sat back from the paper and stared at the lines he'd written at the top of the page. He shook his head and muttered to himself, running his other hand through his already wild hair. "No, no, no – it's all wrong," he grumbled, scratching three solid lines through the words.
Pausing to think, he picked up the half a brownie sat on a dessert plate on the desk beside the paper, biting into it as he closed his eyes in bliss. A low hum escaped his throat as he chewed slowly, savoring the rich chocolate. Although he'd admit that when he'd wandered down into the kitchens a while ago it had been to seek out some of his favorite butterscotch biscuits, this brownie was certainly hitting the right spot – and hitting several other spots he hadn't counted on.
Cora had gone to sleep soon after their late night shenanigans, curled up on her side, her hair spread back on the pillow behind her. Kissing her cheek, Robert pulled the bedclothes up over them both and tried to emulate her. Yet his eyes kept popping open, resting on her beloved visage, thanking heaven that she had called him out on his irrational jealousy and forced him to face up to his own idiocy.
After a half hour, he realized he wasn't going to be sleeping anytime soon, and he didn't want to wake Cora to help tire him in the best way he could think of. Grinning all the same, remembering their evening, he pressed another soft kiss to her forehead. She remained peacefully still, and he backed carefully out of bed so as not to disturb her.
The hallway glowed with the soft light of the few lamps they always left on in the darkened house – largely in case one of the children woke and wandered into the hall to find a parent or grandparent. Sybbie particularly had taken to early hour visits to her father's room when she had nightmares, and she was very good at escaping the notice of her nanny. Robert suspected that Edith regularly went to the childrens' room to check on Marigold in the middle of the night as well.
Shaking his head a little with a low chuckle as he passed the suite of rooms for the grandchildren, he descended the stairs to the kitchens, getting the idea in his head that butterscotch biscuits would be a good treat to go with the book he meant to fetch from the library.
When he got there, Robert stood stock still in the doorway, blinking at the figure sitting at the table, cigarette smoke curling in the dim light.
"Denker?" He took one more step into the kitchen, peering at her curiously.
Instead of standing when he came in, Denker leaned back in the chair and took a long drag on the cigarette, exhaling his name with the smoke. "Lord Grantham." Then she nodded, smiling widely.
Robert simply kept standing there, bewildered at the behavior of his mother's maid. "I – that is er, uh – what are you doing here at this late hour?"
Denker shrugged, leaning forward to tap ashes in the receptacle. "I might ask the same of you, my lord. As this is the servants' part of the house," she pointed out.
Becoming annoyed at her impertinence, Robert drew himself up to his full height, his chest puffing out. "I go where I like when I like, Denker. I needed something down here."
The lady's maid's eyebrows raised a bit. "Something I could help with, my lord?"
"I –" Her offer of help after her insolence threw him off. "I – well, I wanted to see if Mrs. Patmore had any more butterscotch biscuits." Robert knew he sounded indignant – and possibly like he had lied to cover up some other more devious purpose.
Not that he cared what Denker thought.
Lifting her shoulders in another shrug, the woman stared at him. "I believe that new footman ate the last of them with his tea tonight, Lord Grantham."
Robert's face fell, showing true disappointment. "Oh." He stepped a little closer to her, thinking that her eyes looked strange, but unable to put his finger on the cause. "Well, I'll leave you to your nocturnal, er, activity."
As he turned to go, her voice reached him. "If you wanted a late night sweet, my lord, I have some brownies here I picked up at a bakery earlier today. They're delicious and might make up for the lack of your biscuits."
His interest piqued, Robert turned on his heel and looked down at the plate she indicated, piled with several brownies. He hadn't noticed them before, but they did look delicious – rich with chocolate. "You wouldn't mind?"
"No, my lord, certainly not. They're a special recipe, and they're quite good. I've had several myself." At this she let out a mischievous chuckle that made Robert's brow furrow slightly with curiosity.
"Well, if you don't mind, then I'll have some."
Denker smirked and rose, collecting a clean dessert plate and placing three of the brownies on it. "Enjoy, Lord Grantham. I assure you that you've never had anything like them."
"Thank you, Denker. I'll take them up to my library." He smiled a little, still baffled by her behavior, then left for the library.
Once there, he poured a small glass of scotch, retrieved his book, and sat on one of the sofas with the small plate on his knee. Taking a bite of the top brownie, his eyebrows lifted in approval as he nodded. The brownie had just enough rich chocolate to make it delectable without making it nauseatingly sweet. After scarfing down the first brownie, he licked his fingers, sipped at his scotch, and picked up the second brownie. This one he ate slower, relishing it.
As he finished this one, Robert realized that he felt rather funny. He paused a minute, tilting his head and staring into space, trying to work out the feeling. Eventually he shrugged, took a long drink of scotch and pinched off half the last brownie. His face scrunched up as he brought it to his lips, then waved it around. "I just don't know why they can't be happy," he said aloud. "Tony would be a good son-in-law. Mary deserves to be happy too." He sighed, taking another bite. Chewing thoughtfully, he started grinning, nodding vehemently to no one. "Right. That's what I'll do. I'll write the story I want to happen."
His head felt a bit fuzzy, and he put down the scotch, bringing the plate to his desk and sitting on his chair. There was a buoyancy to his motions as he pulled out several sheets of blank paper – only taking two minutes to find them in the debris littering the surface and pigeon holes – and took up his favorite pen, poising it over the page.
The hour was late.
The words having been scratched out and the last of the brownie eaten, Robert sat licking his fingertips contemplatively. In a flash of what seemed to him brilliancy, he smiled and began writing frantically, wanting to get down every word of what entered his head.
Robert really had no idea how much time had passed when he heard the door to the library open. He didn't look up from his writing, shaking his head at the page, willing the intruder to leave him.
Stepping gingerly around all the crumpled pieces of paper strewn over the library carpet, Cora drew her dressing gown closer to her and tossed her hastily plaited hair over her shoulder. She came up beside her husband, gently touching the back of his neck. He simply kept shaking his head, writing.
"Darling, I woke and you weren't there. How long have you been down here?"
"Can't talk – have to write the ending…." Robert muttered out of the side of his mouth at her.
"But, Robert –"
"I have to write the ending," he insisted in a slightly louder tone.
Cora sighed inaudibly, her fingers tracing circles into the back of his neck, wondering what had gotten into him. "It's late, darling. You should come back to bed."
"No, no, I can't." He raised his head, and Cora could see the near manic gleam in them.
"Robert, what on earth…" She trailed off as he took her hand, starting to grin.
"I know – you can read what I have so far. You're going to love this, Cora. Oh my." Nodding vehemently, he twitched out the finished pages from beneath the ones he still meant to fill. "Read – read!" He thrust them at her, a radiantly pleased look on his face.
Taking them – not seeing what else to do – Cora silently wondered at her husband's sudden urge to write. As she sat down, starting to scan down the first page of Robert's nearly indecipherable scribblings, she wondered even more, her eyes wide.
"Um, Robert?" She perused over the second page, placing one hand over her mouth to stifle the rising giggles.
"Not yet… not yet…" he murmured out, his pen still scratching furiously across the page.
Cora kept reading, becoming increasingly amused at the story her husband had written, while at the same time concerned about what was going on in his head.
At about the same time that Cora came to the last page he'd handed her, Robert embedded a final scratch into the page while crying out a triumphant, "Done!" He turned in his chair, his eyes shining. "Now they can live happy ever after!"
Blinking at him, Cora bit her lip to contain her laughter. "May I read the rest?"
When he stood, she noticed his unsteadiness, her mirth dampened by the realization. Walking over to where she sat curled in the center of the sofa, her dressing gown modestly covering her legs and feet, Robert flourished the pages at her. He sank down into the corner of the sofa next to her, hugging one of the throw pillows to his chest.
A puzzled expression on her face, uncertain whether to be more amused or worried, Cora added the last pages to the stack on her lap. Putting a gentle hand on his thigh, she said softly, "Robert, are you sure you don't want to go up to bed?"
"Oh no, no, no," he breathed, closing his eyes and resting back. "Will you read the whole thing aloud to me? I know it's a bit long, but I want to hear it."
Cora glanced back down at the pages, at all the strikethroughs and all the blank spaces where his writing had started winding over the page, none of the lines straight and therefore taking up more room than they would have otherwise. She turned her head to take in all the balled up paper on the floor. He may have written quite a lot, but with all the discarded material the story wasn't really all that long.
But it was rather diverting, even if it was at the same time strange.
She nodded. "Of course I will, darling. You just rest while I read."
A smile crossed his face at the sound of rustling paper as she shuffled the pages to find the beginning again.
Getting more comfortable, Cora grinned at the hand that strayed to rub her knee, suppressing a chuckle as she shook her head and began to read.
"The ship was noisy and loud and there was water pouring down because of the rain in the middle of the night. Tony and Mary clutched each other in the dark of their cabin, frightened and scared and wondering if the ship would sink.
"But Robert, hearing the boat crack, went out of his own room, leaving the lovely, beautiful, also scared Cora, behind tucked up in bed. He found the crack, but wasn't sure what to do. So he ran around in the rain. Ran around the ship several times, only falling on his arse once."
Robert shifted in on the sofa, his eyes still closed, apparently blissfully unaware of the shaking in her voice as she tried not to let it betray her mirth at the story. He slumped down to her shoulder and put his head there, squeezing her knee. "Go on. That hurt, by the way. I slipped. It was slippery because of the storm."
"Yes, darling, I understand." She bit down on her tongue, putting yet another page of the stack aside as she turned her face to press a kiss to his silver hair. She took up from where she'd left off:
"…only falling on his arse once. The rain makes everything slippery, you know. Even on ships. And the storm was loud and his hip was hurting but he did figure it out. He ran to Marny's room – " Cora paused. "Marny?"
"Much quicker than writing Mary and Tony over and over." He shrugged and snuggled against her, pulling his legs up too, his arms still wrapped around the pillow.
This time she let her chuckle be heard. "Clever, darling," she whispered before reading on, noting the widening of his grin at this bit of praise.
"…ran to Marny's room and knocked and knocked until they answered. But I wasn't death knocking at the door. No, no. I pulled them out of the room and dragged them to the crack.
"At the very same exact moment, Charles Blake appeared. I yelled at him to go, but he couldn't hear over the storm, trying to get between Marny. I yanked him aside and threw him in a room and I locked the door all safe and sound and him trapped. I walked back to them and pushed their heads together more, so they would kiss over the crack in the ship.
"Mary asked me why and I told her true love's kiss – true love's kiss. TRUE LOVE'S KISS!" Cora choked back laughter at the sight of the large letters sprawling across the bottom of the page, not having read that part before. Turning to the last page, she continued reading.
"They kissed and I smiled and there was a glow from the crack and it was fixed. The storm ended and there was a rainbow, even in the dark, over the full moon, and the ship sailed us all home. HAPPY EVER AFTER – except maybe Charles Blake who didn't really like me after that. But Marny had a happy ending, and there were new grandbabies to keep Donk happy too. The end."
A trailing line came from the period, underlining the last two words. Cora put the page down and looked at Robert's happy face nestled against her shoulder.
"It's a good story, Cora. I fixed the ship."
Cora brushed her fingers through his hair. "Well, actually, 'Marny' did that."
His voice had turned into a soft whisper, and she could tell he was falling asleep. "Wouldn't have if I hadn't fallen down and gotten back up and had them kiss." Robert shifted a little, getting more comfortable against his wife. "I fixed the ship."
Chuckling to herself, Cora touched his cheek, whispering close to his ear. "Maybe you can do the same with Molseley and Baxter, darling. I'd like to win my bet about them."
This time Robert chuckled, sounding slightly more awake. "No, they will take a while. I know I conceded there's something there when you pointed it out, and I want Molesley to finally find some sort of happiness, poor chap, but he's not exactly the type to jump at a chance."
"Well, I think they're moving along just fine, and I think I'll win my bet for when he asks her."
He nuzzled his face into the sleeve of her dressing gown, a sigh turning into a yawn. "As long as Marny is together and happy."
Cora chortled, murmuring under her breath, "I'd bet against you on that one."
"Hmmm?" Robert queried.
"I said we should go up to bed, darling. You're falling asleep."
Screwing up his eyes, he shook his head a little. "Comfortable. Don't move. You need brownies too," he said in a sleepy voice.
"Brownies? What are you talking about, Robert?"
"Brownies… downstairs… very luscious…." He trailed off, giving another sigh.
Cora caressed his face, a soft smile on her own. "I think I remember one other time you were like this." She chuckled, thinking about it. "And I'm not sharing any brownies if they're like those butterscotch biscuits."
Robert grinned. "Mmmm… butterscotch biscuits…" he hummed out.
"Come on, Robert. Bedtime." She helped him get up, extracting the pillow from his arms, then let him lean against her up the stairs and down the hall.
At Mary's door she paused. Lips twitching, Cora pushed the pages under her daughter's door, thinking that it would amuse her, that she could always do with a laugh.
Robert, almost passed out from three of Denker's special brownies, was none the wiser.