This was written for the ever-lovely ThisThatAndTheOther in exchange for a $10 donation to help efforts in the Philippines. You can learn more about it here: tagged/downton-charity-drive (Note: donations have now ended.)

The title is, as always, based off Coldplay's "We Never Change."

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The pub Thomas starts working at after his father chases him out of town is called The Rooster. He sees the irony in that. It takes two whole years for him to stop waking up in the middle of the night, hands twitching as they tweak the gears of some phantom clock.

He likes his customers well enough – likes the man who brings by the delivery of alcohol in big wooden crates. He's handsome and bearded and much too old for Thomas, but Thomas still gives him his best smile and leans over his shoulder to sign the papers.

He's the main bartender by the time he's been at the pub for two years. He's good at schmoozing and chatting up the regulars while he fills up their glasses with whiskey. This is it, the dream job: do it all out in the open where everyone's too drunk to remember the curl of your lip as you lean close and whisper a half-baked suggestion. Thomas likes to think that it's easy for him to blend into the crowd if need be.

A lot of their nighttime clientele comes from the factory down the road. There's one guy, Berkins, who has a wedding band on his finger but who strokes the veins of Thomas' hand while he refills his glass. Thomas wants a lot more than Berkins, anyway, but he supposes that's just as well. Berkins has got a friend named Saxon who's more than willing to fill up the in between.

There's also this skinny chap named Phillip Baxter. Thomas has never seen anyone quite like him; he's very small and sort of slender and he's got a face quite like that of a woman. Thomas thinks if he grows his hair out of a little bit, maybe does it up just a touch, he could pass for one. You couldn't tell under those baggy clothes, anyway. He might be a girl for all Thomas knows.

"Why don't you ever chat me up like you do them?" Phillip asks him one night. He's sitting in his usual spot at the bar, cheap scotch in his hand. His fingers are still pierced and bloody from working all day. It's late, much later than the factory boys usually stay, and he's one of the few left.

Thomas wipes down a glass with a cloth and sizes him up.

"You ain't like the rest of 'em," Thomas says. He means to be cryptic, because there are a lot of things strange about Phillip. The way he holds himself. The lack of ring on his hand. The way he flits around the subject of women so carefully. He's like Thomas, but he's also – not. He's not like Thomas at all.

"You ain't like the rest of 'em, neither." Phillip smiles and Thomas turns away. "Hey, didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"You want another drink?" Thomas asks instead.

Phillip doesn't say anything for a long time; then he taps the bottom of his glass against the countertop and says, "Whiskey would be lovely, thank you."

Thomas pours himself a glass, too. There are three other men in the pub and two of them are asleep; the other is scribbling furiously atop a stack of papers in the corner and doesn't seem to be aware that there are other people even in the room.

Phillip eyes the bottle as Thomas pours it, then raises his drink. "To being different," he says, voice pitched lower.

Thomas looks up at him for a moment from between his lashes as he swishes the alcohol around in his cup. After a moment, though, he returns the gesture. "Ain't all it's cracked up to be."

xxx

Thomas doesn't think that he and Phillip are friends, per say, but they have some sort of tentative relationship that Thomas doesn't really like to think about. He's not going to sleep with Phillip, he has no desire to – but there's something strange about him that Thomas wants to undercover. He wants to pick at the edges until everything unravels and it's only him and the truth.

A year and a half later, they're sitting on a park bench near the water, passing a bottle of alcohol back and forth between them. They're at a relatively quiet part of the shoreline, all the cries of seagulls and children fading out into the background. Thomas thinks this may be the reason Phillip stretches his wrists about and clears his throat.

"Can I talk to you about something?" he says, and Thomas freezes inside.

"Sure," he responds, thumbing the label on the bottle, even though his heart starts pounding out no, no, no, no. Phillip is his only real friend and he's not about to lose that because the man has a stupid crush.

Phillip doesn't say anything for a while, just coughs some more and twiddles his thumbs. Finally: "I think I'm going to skip town."

Thomas leans back against the bench and looks over at him, eyebrow raised. "Oh?"

"I'm sure you've noticed I'm… not right."

"Who's to say what's right and what's not?" Thomas mumbles into the glass mouth of the bottle.

"Thomas," Phillip says, then starts to laugh. "You know how the other men call me Phyllis because they think I'm too girlish to work at the factory?"

"Oh, Lord, if you're going to leave because of those bastards–"

"No. No, I'm not. I want – I want to become her. Become Phyllis."

Thomas stares at him for a long time. He doesn't know what to say.

"You know I can't grow a beard to save anyone's life," Phillip laughs nervously, rubbing at his chin. His eyes are starting to become red-rimmed and he won't look directly at Thomas. "I could grow out my hair a little bit, start wearing some skirts – voilà. Phyllis Baxter."

"You're mad," Thomas says wondrously. "What are you going to do if you get sick?"

"Simple," he says. "I won't."

"Papers?"

Phillip waves his hand dismissively.

Thomas shakes his head. "You're barking, Phillip, honestly. Barking mad."

"I've never felt right in my own body," Phillip says desperately. "I've always felt like my hands are too big and my shoulders are too wide and I – I know I don't look like the other men. But I don't want to, Thomas. I've never wanted to. I want to wear extravagant hats and dine out in gloves and wear dresses. Is that wrong? Is it any different than you wanting to be with men?"

"How in God's name did you even come up with this idea?" Thomas says. "Fuckin' bonkers."

He ends up being the one who orders three skirts for "my bird, Phyllis," ends up wading in twisted up pantyhose and stockings on a quest for ones without a run. Ends up piercing Phillip's ears while he cries and bleeds and swears. It's a fucking mess. It's a fucking off-the-top mess.

Phillip leaves in mid-November with a promise to write once he's settled elsewhere.

Phyllis sends a letter in June. There's a picture inside – a girl with long brown hair twisted up into a bun, skirts full and chest flat. She's smiling. Underneath it all, Thomas sees his old friend.

xxx

Things change. Thomas changes. He's not the person Phyllis remembers him as; nor is she the same to him. Things change.

xxx

"I've finally find myself a nice lady," Molesley comments one night. He's smiling, fingers untangling a web of thread Baxter had given to him after dinner. Thomas coughs out a laugh and takes a deep drag on his cigarette, eyes drifting up to avoid their gazes.

"Something funny, Mr. Barrow?" Bates asks, mouth turned down at the edges. Thomas blows out the smoke in rings and watches them rise to the ceiling and dissipate.

"Not at all," he says. He can see Phyllis down the hall, talking and laughing with Anna. Her chest is swollen with carefully packed cotton and she looks more like Phyllis than she ever did Phillip.

"So what've you got from her?" Molesley asks. "What's all this 'report' rubbish?"

Thomas lets his mouth unfurl into a slow smirk. He takes another pull on his cigarette to draw out the moment. "Oh, she owes me a whole lot, Mr. Molesley. I don't suspect you want to be taking up with the likes of her."

"Nor she with you," he spits back. He pushes out his chair and rises abruptly, fingers still lost in the white thread. "Now if you'll excuse me, Mr. Bates, I must be returning this to the lovely Ms. Baxter."

He nearly trips over his feet on the way out and Thomas gets up as well. He stubs his cigarette out on the tabletop.

"This will all blow up in your face eventually," Bates says. He taps tunelessly against the curve of his cane. "You'll be made a fool again, Mr. Barrow."

"Oh, don't you worry, Mr. Bates. If her secret ever comes out… well, the only fool here will be poor Mr. Molesley."