DISCLAIMER: Lix and Randall and The Hour are not mine, no matter how much I would like them to be.

9 — Part One

It was perhaps the activity lowest on anyone's agenda during the weeks following The Incident, but the memo they had all received that morning blared the words with such awful finality that all were resigned to it:

You are cordially invited to the BBC Annual Chairman's Executive Dinner

Lix twisted the paper between her fingers and regarded it with an air of mild revulsion; her eyes narrowed as if peering at the print would cause it to disappear. It didn't. Sighing, she screwed the paper into a ball and made to toss it in the bin.

"You wouldn't dare deprive us of your presence this evening, Lix?"

Randall appeared in the doorway and proceeded to pick up the ball of paper from the floor where she had missed, unfurling it and examining its content with a familiar sense of disinclination.

An evening to mark the BBC's continued dedicated service to Britain through first-rate national broadcast.

"Oh Christ, it's going to be—"

"Yes—look what it says at the bottom."

Randall scanned his eyes along the edge of the page and duly grimaced. "Special guest: Sir Harold Gillett, Lord Mayor of London…" He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm not particularly in the mood for this."

"No, neither am I."

Randall smirked and refolded the invitation neatly, handing it to Lix with an apologetic smile, "You'll need this to get in."

A non-committal sound issued from the back of Lix's throat and she rolled her eyes. "Fine." She motioned for him to sit. "Just promise not to wander off with the pollies leaving m—us to fend for ourselves."

Randall raised his eyebrows and moved to perch on the edge of Lix's desk next to her chair. "There was a time when you would've enjoyed the opportunity to fend for yourself."

"The journalists were attractive and my age, Randall," she said defensively. "And now we've got all the exec's to deal with; it's like a bloody show-and-tell but with cognac and Bugatti's."

Randall laughed and began to fiddle with a collection of pens lying haphazard next to him on the desk. "The wives are always a laugh…"

"Oh, don't get me started—"

"If it were between the cognac and the Bugatti's or their wives, who would you rather—?"

Lix threw her head in her hands in a show of derisive distress and let out an exasperated laugh. "I'd have to choose the one closest to the bar."

"The bar—an oasis amidst the desert of dry conversation." Randall chuckled and at once they were both laughing.

"The lone lily pad in a pond of political and social slime."

"A rocky outcrop above the moors of bleak narrow-mindedness and clouded ignorance."

Lix snorted and playfully swatted his arm. "That was a good one."

Randall caught her eye and exchanged a smile; for a moment they sat in silence, both quietly pleased for the other's presence.

The sound of muffled voices drifted in from the corridor and at once both were painfully reminded of the lives they must live. Clearing his throat, Randall patted the edge of the desk and moved slowly to his feet, nodding in Lix's direction. As he reached the door he paused and glanced back towards her, suddenly unsure.

"Do you want a lift tonight? I'll be around."

His tone was casual but could not disguise his anxiously flitting eyes.

"You're not going home beforehand?"

"I shouldn't think so."

Lix tapped the falling ash from the end of her cigarette into an ashtray and nodded to herself. "Well neither am I. So that would be—" Nice? Lovely? She cleared her throat."—Convenient." Glancing up at him, she smiled. "Thank you."

Not two hours later Lix found herself at Randall's door. He had not appeared since they had spoken in her office and she now sidled into the room without bothering to knock—they would be late if they didn't leave soon.

"Randall."

He was reclining on the chaise longue in the corner of the room, his hands clasped over his chest and a gentle hum emanating softly from his throat. He opened one eye as he heard her speak and smiled. Beckoning her across the room, he closed his eyes again and continued to hum quietly.

Lix moved to sit on the corner of his desk closest to the chaise and lit a cigarette. Exhaling slowly, she regarded him through the thin haze of tobacco smoke—seemingly tranquil yet, despite his apparent repose, so retaining that familiar enigmatic energy. His hum was low and oddly soft, the tune familiar in its casual, crooning lilt.

"Bing Crosby." Lix raised an eyebrow and allowed a breath of smoke to billow softly over her lips. "Have you been watching films, Randall?"

He chuckled, his eyes still closed, and began to quietly sing the words.

You're all dressed up to go dreaming
Now don't tell me I'm wrong
And what a night to go dreaming
Mind if I tag along

Lix extended a leg to kick the side of his chaise, but a smile trembling at the corners of her lips betrayed her. "Daft man," she laughed quietly.

"Don't you want to hear the rest?"

"Absolutely not."

He grinned and straightened in his chair, adjusting his spectacles as he moved to stand beside her. "That's a shame," he spoke softly, "I was just getting to the good bit."

"Right."

"You know what comes next?" His tone was suddenly serious.

"Yes, Randall—every bloody soldier with a heartache would practically bellow it from the rooftops—"

He nodded. "Good."

Suddenly aware of their proximity, Randall made to move away politely but the touch of Lix's fingers at his wrist commanded him to stop. She moved her hand to cup his jaw and their eyes suddenly locked.

"It's about the moonlight," she murmured, her thumb gently tracing the contours of his cheek. Moonlight becomes you, it goes with your hair. She raised and eyebrow and laughed softly. "Silly."

Randall felt himself suddenly tensely aware of his senses and the sound of his breathing became almost deafening in his ears. He opened his mouth to speak but hesitated as the heat of her shuddered breath caressed and warmed the skin of his neck.

Lix cleared her throat and blinked hurriedly, breaking their heated gaze. "And you absolutely must shave before we leave, Randall, or no one will believe you drive a Bentley," she spoke quickly, stroking the roughness of his jaw before reaching again for her cigarette. She tapped the ash from its tip and smiled sadly into the ashtray, avoiding his gaze.

Nodding absentmindedly, Randall ran his palm along his jawbone; the skin where her hand had touched felt strangely warm. He coughed. "Ah—yes. Won't be a moment." He moved quickly then, reaching into a drawer where he had stashed a razor and retreating swiftly to the men's in the outer corridor.

Lix sighed heavily and sank into the chair behind Randall's desk. Drawing deeply on her cigarette, she leant her head back against the chair and squeezed her eyes shut. She felt her blood rush into her ears and sat still for a moment, wincing as the deep boom of her heartbeat reverberated like a struck bell about her quivering skull.

"Christ."

She pressed her fingers to her temples and proceeded to massage them slowly.

What in God's name are you doing?

She winced again. The sardonic internal dialogue was unwelcome at the best of times; its tone of disparagement had a habit of ripping at the fringes of her mind, sniping at any passing thought or decision like a rabid dog tethered by the throat to a stone.

What are you doing? Do you want him?

"Christ," Lix muttered again.

Or do you just want to sleep with him? Get it over with?

She squirmed in her chair, flinching away at each cruel bite as if it had physically stung her.

But they feel the same to you now, don't they. Having a man in any sense of the word is an act reduced to thrashing about on the floor of your office for about twenty minutes—

"Oh God…"

—and waking in the early hours of the morning feeling sweaty, decrepit and worthless. You've tried to love them—some, at least—but falling in love now is like literally falling on a bed of sharp rocks; you stagger away from men as if they were the ones to bruise and batter you. But it's wasn't them. That bloody war and the child and the fucking great mess afterwards—you can't for the life of you let the whole bloody thing go. You let it prey on your mind like a bleeding vulture hovering over a wounded buck, waiting for it to die so the beast can plunge for a meal. And Randall—Randall is the past. The past bloody personified. So here he is—this man whose mere existence has destroyed the possibility of love for you—and you think you want him? Want him back?

Lix groaned and swept her fingers beneath her eyes. Blinking, she surveyed his desk—the neatly piled books under a tray of colour-coded files; the pens laid out like tiny soldiers in salute; papers folded into perfect squares; his mechanically accurate cursive swept across pages and pages of a ratings' report that lay open perpendicular with the edge of the desk. In a bizarre paradox, this faultless military order emanated a kind of frantic chaos as if it's rigorous perfection were merely means to further expose the panicked anxiety of which it so sought to hide.

Despite herself, Lix smiled.

"It's all here," she mused quietly, cautiously nudging a pile of books with the tips of her fingers. "So strange…"

So strange, indeed, that she should find solace in the one man whose appearance in her life had become the source of all her later grief. Or rather, it wasn't strange at all—the order, the obsessive precision, all a practical manifestation of a haunting sentiment she knew only too well—he was the one man who knew and shared her every worldly sorrow.

Lix sniffed and stubbed out the remains of her cigarette into the ashtray on his desk. She felt, in a fleeting moment of poeticism, a sense of calm in the finality of extinguishing the cigarette, as if in doing so she too pressed into the pile of ash all further doubt that her love for Randall Brown was anything but spectacularly good.

Randall gazed into the mirror and examined the creases about his eyes with an air of weary acceptance. He was aware that he had become the definition of gaunt and hollow in recent years—his skin had become brittle as paper and sunk into the jowls of his cheeks; the colour in his eyes had drained to a blank grey, swallowed by dark smudges betraying his bitter and listless torpor. These are the less admirable tokens of war.

Swallowing, Randall brought the razor to his cheek and swiftly grazed it over his skin, leaving a smooth-skinned stripe in the shaving cream. He moved to repeat the stroke but a movement out the corner of his eye caused him to hesitate.

"This is the men's," he spoke slowly, a smile hinting at his lips.

Lix shrugged and slipped inside the doorway so that she stood beside him at the mirror.

"I've seen and smelt much worse."

She shot him a teasing smile and produced a lipstick from her handbag, proceeding to apply it using his mirror.

He gazed at her momentarily, struck by both her boldness and beauty. She always seemed to spring from nowhere and instantly brighten the mood of the room—that was how she made him feel. He shook his head, smiling softly, and returned his attention to the mirror and the blade to his cheek.

Lix focused her eyes on the line of her lip and attempted resolutely to avert her gaze from Randall's vest-clad chest and bare arms—naturally, he had removed his shirt to shave. It was foolish, really, for a grown man's arms to induce such a reaction in her and at once she was reminded of her teenage self, embarrassed at the sight of a young man in his shirt drenched through from the rain. The thought made her smirk.

"What?" Randall noted the shadow of amusement tweaking the corners of her eyes as she leaned over the washbasin.

"Oh." She met his eyes in the mirror. "Nothing." Randall's eyebrows twitched and she broke into a laugh. "Seriously, Randall."

He sighed and smiled teasingly at her. "You're distracting me, Lix."

"Am I? Why's that?" She bit her lip, equally as teasing in return.

"Oh, nothing."

Lix snorted and shook her head. "Unbearable man."

Randall raised his eyebrows and continued to shave, scraping the razor cautiously over his jawline and down his neck. The movement caused Lix to hold her breath, her gaze suddenly enraptured by the throb of his jugular beneath the skin of his throat and the slow blade grazing over the soft pulse. All men become vulnerable, she thought, with a thick blade pressed to their necks straining towards a mirror. Inadvertently, she reached out a hand to the nape of his neck and ran her thumb along his smoothed jawline. The sensation of his skin against hers made her shiver.

"I'm not done yet," Randall said quietly. He turned his head slightly towards her and forced her to meet his gaze, his eyes questioning.

Lix nodded absently and gently removed the razor from is grasp. "I'll do the rest."

It was not a request. This understood, Randall swallowed and nodded slowly. She directed him to a chair and proceeded to scrape the rest of the shaving cream from his lower cheeks and neck, gently titling his head towards the light as she so required and allowing her fingers to barely whisper against his skin. Her expression as she did this was one of dedicated concentration—she bit her lip and her brow furrowed slightly with every stroke of the blade. Randall gazed into her eyes and was met out of nowhere with the sudden realisation that this was intended as a message: she was in every way dedicating herself to him.

Lix finished the final stroke of the blade and silently placed it beside the basin. Wordlessly, she then took his face in her hands and stroked her thumbs across his cheeks, a final caress.

"You're presentable now," she smiled quietly.

Randall opened his mouth to speak but she had dropped her hands from his cheeks, taken a step back. He nodded and stood slowly, his mind suddenly a daze. Without speaking he reached for his shirt and began to button it, and all the while she watched him; his hands shook, fumbling with the cufflinks and the buttons fastening at his throat became suffocating. She noticed—reached for his tie and knotted it around his neck with practiced deftness. They stood so close then and their bodies ached, but the mind slipped into the ease of resistance; Lix tightened the Windsor knot against his collar and for once her heady breath at his neck could not immobilise him to respond. Randall closed his eyes, felt her presence heating his entire flesh, and gently clasped his fingers about her wrists still smoothing his collar. Her hands were instantly limp in his, the shock of the touch mutually electrifying. Opening his eyes he was met with her heated gaze and expression oddly close to fright. He smiled, clutched her hands to his chest and leant forward so his lips met her cheek in the smallest and softest of kisses.

"Thank you," he whispered.

She nodded.

He squeezed her hands gently. "But now we really must go."

Lix felt her heart wrench pathetically as their hands fell apart. But he had the message, she knew that at least. He understood. She could only smile and let him lead her to his car, safe in the knowledge that he knew their past was forgiven.

To be continued…

A/N: Not very much left of this fic but I ask that you all read the updated author's note from the preceding chapter for information regarding its future. And once again THANK YOU to every reader, reviewer and all the lovely people who are saying nice things about this—if it weren't for you this fic would have ended at chapter two.