Chapter 2 – Steady On
A/N: Thanks, readers, for being here for this moody little fic of mine. It might ramble along (as might I) but it will get where we all want it to, in the end.
~CeeCee
She had taken his hand.
She had teased him and cajoled him towards the surf, and then she'd closed her small, warm fingers around his larger ones.
And…and…was it odd that he'd not thought very much of it at the time? That there had been, must've been, other times and places and instances where the secret scripts carved in the lines of each of their palms had been pressed against each other? Telling their own ancient histories to the other?
Had there not been? And – he was certain of this, he was – there had been, in their long acquaintance, a time or two, which is why he thought nothing (well, very little) of her doing so in the first place.
And yet.
And yet.
He sat up, his eyes already adjusted to the bluish nighttime light pouring in from the London streets beyond his window. Why was he thinking about it now? When he desperately needed sleep to claim him, before the madness of packing up the city house to head back to Downton?
He swayed a little, rubbed his eyes. Propped himself against the headboard. He could still smell the salt, feel the sand squeezing through his bare toes.
He thought of the sight of her own shoeless feet next to his own, tendrils of sand swirling over the tender, underexposed skin.
"You can always hold my hand, if you need to feel steady."
She had been teasing, kind, but teasing him, as she nearly always did, and had, over the past two decades.
Why did this feel different, then? Why did he truly need steadying, at three bloody o'clock in the morning?
He wasn't sure what had changed, and it seemed less likely to be clarified the more he thought about it. But every time he thought of Elsie Hughes, standing beside him, her well-known countenance grinning up at him under her straw summer hat, her dark hair unraveling, a bit, from the pins mooring it to her head, he kept thinking of Alice.
"No, nonsense," he muttered out loud, startling himself. "Not Alice." Not Alice, then. But that feeling. Yes, yes, that feeling, of rounding the corner and seeing her backstage, or hearing the sound of her voice, in harmony with her sister's, as they charmed and sang their way into the audience's hearts.
Lovesick.
There were fifty long, winding and full years between the boy who'd loved a pretty vaudeville singer and the restless, wakeful man talking to an empty room full of moonlight.
But he was beginning to wonder how much of a difference there was between the two of them. Oh, many and varied, for sure, and he'd have listed them grandly and with conviction before this night.
Because he'd rediscovered something he thought was long gone, a piece of his heart he thought he'd given, without recompense, to a girl more than half a lifetime ago.
It turned out, it had still been with him the whole time, buried, like their toes had been in the sand at Brighton beach.
But now what? Sand had been brushed off, feet dried, stockings and socks slide over bare toes. What of this rediscovered feeling?
He looked up at the moon, just showing her face in the window.
"Steady on," he whispered. He wasn't sure the moon agreed.