Pairing: eventual poly black butler x black reader
Warnings: slice of life, period typical London, two men on a street corner having feelings about it
G/n: she didn’t do anything special. she was just there. sometimes that’s enough.
A month and a half into wherever you were and you had developed a problem.
Not a survival problem — those you’d mostly handled. You had clothes now, real ones, a small but functional wardrobe that Mrs. Hargrove had helped you put together with the particular efficiency of a woman who knew exactly which secondhand shops had quality stock and which ones were trying to move things that had no business being sold to anyone. You had a dark green dress you liked, a navy one that fit properly across the shoulders, two blouses and a skirt that mixed and matched well enough. You had a better room at Mrs. Calloway’s, slightly larger, with a window that faced the street instead of the alley wall.
You had income. You had routine. You had Gerald, who had extended his tolerance to a full five minutes on good days and occasionally deigned to sleep near your feet in the evenings if you were doing inventory in the back room and he decided the floor near the crate was a reasonable location for a nap.
By all practical measures you had figured out how to exist here.
The problem was that existing here was boring.
Not the work — the work was fine. Not the people — London had no shortage of those and people watching from behind the shop counter had kept you entertained for a solid three weeks before you’d catalogued enough recurring characters that even that had started to feel like a rerun.
The problem was the evenings.
Back home the evenings had been full. Your phone. Whatever show you were currently rotating through. Music playing from somewhere while you did something else, the comfortable background noise of a life that had a lot of inputs. Texting people. Existing in the passive ambient warmth of being reachable and reaching out.
Here the evenings were a candle and whatever book you’d managed to acquire and the sounds of Mrs. Calloway’s boarding house settling around you like a very quiet complaint.
You’d tried the books. You’d genuinely tried. The problem was that Victorian literature required a particular patience you were struggling to locate inside yourself when your brain was already restless. You’d started three different novels in the past two weeks and abandoned all of them somewhere in the first fifty pages when the prose got too dense and your attention started sliding off the page like water off glass.
Your brain wanted stimulation. Specific, immediate, varied stimulation. And wherever you were was not equipped to provide it.
It started manifesting at work, which was unfortunate.
The people watching had been the first symptom. You’d always been good at reading people but now you were doing it compulsively, tracking the regulars on the street outside the window with the focused investment of someone following a serialized story. The woman who walked her dog past the shop every morning at precisely quarter past nine — where was she always going, her posture changed depending on the direction. The old man who sat on the step of the building across the way between eleven and noon — what was he thinking about, he had a specific expression, it wasn’t sad exactly but it was heavy with something.
Mrs. Hargrove had caught you pressed against the window on a Tuesday morning tracking the progress of an argument between two vendors across the street with the intensity of someone watching a championship match.
You’d straightened up immediately and found something to do with your hands.
Mrs. Hargrove had said nothing. But she’d looked.
The humming started the following week. You didn’t notice you were doing it at first — it was just something your brain did when it needed to fill space, had always done it, background noise you generated for yourself when there wasn’t enough coming from elsewhere. Little fragments of things. Parts of songs that lived in your chest.
You were reorganizing the fabric bolts one afternoon, deep in the mindless physical task of it, when you realized you’d been humming for probably twenty minutes straight.
Billie Jean. Fully. From the beginning.
Mrs. Hargrove was standing in the doorway.
“Don’t be.” She tilted her head slightly. “What is that?”
“Just — something from back home.” You smoothed the edge of a bolt of linen. “Old habit.”
Mrs. Hargrove considered this with the particular expression she had when she was taking in more than she was showing. “It’s pleasant,” she said finally, which was possibly the most generous thing she’d said to you since you’d been hired, and went back to the till.
You stood with the fabric bolt in your hands and felt something warm move through your chest.
It was a slow morning the following Thursday when you finally asked.
You’d been thinking about it for weeks — turning the question over, looking for a natural way in that didn’t sound like what it was, which was I genuinely do not know what year it is and it is becoming a problem.
Mrs. Hargrove was going over the week’s receipts at the counter. You were dusting the shelves, working your way along methodically, and when you reached the end of the row you stopped and kept your voice completely casual.
Mrs. Hargrove looked up from her receipts. Looked at you with an expression that was somewhere between confused and assessing. “I beg your pardon?”
“The year.” You kept your hands moving, straightening a bolt of fabric that didn’t need straightening. “I’ve been so turned around since I relocated I can’t keep track of anything lately.”
A pause. Mrs. Hargrove looked at you for one long moment with those sharp eyes and you kept your face completely pleasantly blank and waited.
“1889,” she said slowly. “It is 1889.”
“Right.” You nodded like that was a perfectly satisfying confirmation of something you’d almost remembered. “Thank you.”
You moved to the next shelf.
Mrs. Hargrove watched you for another moment and then went back to her receipts without comment, which was the best possible outcome.
Inside, behind the pleasant blank face, something sat down heavily and put its head in its hands.
1889, you thought. I am in 1889.
You dusted the next shelf. And the one after that. You kept your breathing even and your hands steady and you did not think about how far from home you were in any direction that mattered.
Gerald emerged from the back room, walked across the floor, and sat on your feet.
He looked up at you with his usual expression of comprehensive judgment.
You reached down and scratched behind his ears and he allowed it and that was — enough. For right now that was enough.
They came down the street on a grey morning — two men, walking together with the particular quality of people who were technically side by side but not entirely comfortable about it.
You were on the front step with the broom. Working through the task with the methodical focus you’d developed for everything lately. Head down. Hands busy. The street doing its usual morning thing around you.
They slowed as they reached the front of the shop.
The taller one was in front by half a step — spine straight, glasses catching the morning light, moving with the clipped efficiency of someone who had a schedule and took it seriously. The other one walked with his hands in his coat pockets, brown hair catching the breeze, something about his posture that suggested he was capable of taking up considerably more space than he was currently choosing to.
You glanced up after a moment — not because you felt watched exactly, but because you had good instincts about presences and something about theirs was just slightly different from the usual foot traffic. Settled differently. Took up space in a way you couldn’t quite articulate.
The tall one was looking at you with the precise measured attention of someone who had asked themselves a question and was waiting for the answer to surface. Not rude. Not warm. Just — attentive, in a way that was more thorough than the situation probably called for.
The other one was just looking at you. No particular agenda in it. Brown eyes, calm, the kind of calm that didn’t feel performed.
“Morning,” you said pleasantly, because you’d been raised right, and went back to sweeping.
“Good morning,” the tall one said. His diction was extremely precise. Like every word had been measured before release.
You swept the debris toward the gutter. Straightened up. Moved to the other side of the step.
“You work here?” The brown haired one. Still that same easy register, like he was asking because he was mildly curious and not because anything depended on the answer.
“Yes.” You glanced at him briefly. He had a nice face. Not remarkable, just — pleasant. Like a face that wasn’t trying to do anything. “Few weeks now.”
He nodded like that was a perfectly complete answer.
The street moved around all three of you — carts and pedestrians and the distant sound of a vendor calling something — and nobody said anything for a moment. You had the step to finish. They had wherever they were going. Nobody was making demands.
It was a very quiet moment.
You noticed, in the distracted way you noticed things while your hands were busy, that neither of them was talking. Not the uncomfortable silence of people who had run out of things to say. Just — quiet. Like they’d both exhaled at the same time without planning to and found they didn’t immediately need to inhale.
The brown haired one’s shoulders had dropped slightly. You weren’t sure he’d noticed.
The tall one’s jaw was slightly less set than it had been thirty seconds ago. You definitely hadn’t been paying close enough attention to clock that, and yet.
You swept the last of the debris into the gutter and straightened up properly, tucking a loose curl back with one hand.
“Have a good morning,” you said, easy and genuine, the way you said it to everyone.
The brown haired one blinked. Like the words had reached him from slightly further away than expected. “You as well,” he said, and something in it was almost — soft. Not romantic, not weighted. Just genuinely meant in a way that surprised even him a little, you thought.
The tall one said nothing. But he inclined his head — the smallest deliberate motion — before he turned and resumed walking.
The brown haired one fell into step beside him.
You watched them go for exactly one second — something about the way they moved together, the push and pull of two people with a long history of existing in each other’s orbit — and then you picked up your broom and went back inside.
Gerald was sitting on the counter. You moved him. He went without protest, which was notable.
Half a block down, two figures walked in silence for longer than was strictly normal.
The taller one spoke first. “You’re not saying anything.”
“I know,” said the other.
A pause. “Are you unwell.”
“No.” Hands still in coat pockets. Brown hair lying flat and ordinary against his collar. “Just thinking.”
A quiet moment. The street carried them forward. “She had a nice energy,” he said finally. Like he was admitting something small and true rather than announcing it. “That’s all.”
The taller one’s jaw tightened — habit, reflex — and then did something unusual. It loosened again.
He thought about the way you’d said good morning like it was a complete sentence. The way you’d kept working without performing indifference, because there was nothing to perform. You hadn’t needed anything from them. You’d just been there, steady and present, like something planted rather than something passing through.
The other one glanced at him sideways. Said nothing.
“We have a schedule,” the taller one said, after a moment.
“I know,” said the other.
They kept walking. Neither of them mentioned that they had slowed down considerably more than the street required.
Some things didn’t need to be said.
Back on the front step, you had gone inside and come back out to finish a corner you’d missed. Gerald had followed you to the door and stopped there, sitting in the threshold in his usual supervisory capacity.
You swept the corner. Straightened up. Looked down the street in the direction the two men had gone, for no particular reason.
Already gone. Just the usual morning crowd.
You shrugged internally and went back inside.
The button drawer was sticking again.
G/n: she said good morning and two people who have seen centuries of endings just. exhaled. she didn’t even notice. the button drawer needed fixing. reblogs keep this alive — drop something in my inbox to join the taglist 🖤
All rights reserved © MY-ANIME-GARDEN 2026| do not repost, copy, translate, or alter my work
