𝐒𝐎𝐅𝐓 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐒 : 💃 (thomas loves dancing. pls dance with him 🥺)
— @butlerbarrow
there's no reason for emmanuel to venture into the house this late in the evening. there is his room and that is that. a gardener has no business being on the loose when the gentlry are having fun. so he lingers outside at least, taking in the scent of the dew as it descends, the last remnants of the sun's warmth seeping out of the earth, the very first star poking through the clouds. the man-made music that vanes past the windows and out of the ballroom, where it can humble itself in a duet with the cicadas. he fancies the thought and squats down so he may better hear the melodies intertwine, which is about the position thomas finds him in when he gets out for his cigarette. he might not have seen him at first, or perhaps he did. the angel suspects the other might be warming up to him after all.
"do you dance?" emmanuel asks him, then and there, and it's just another light-hearted peck on the other's shell. a knock. a meet-me-outside. his eyes reflect the flickering light of the inside when he looks up at him, and he smiles like he could just about imagine it. it all seems so simple with him. and in many ways, it is. though that night, they do part their ways, the angel lingers on the thought. the way well-guarded mannerisms transform into joy — for what else is dance but pure joy pouring out of a human being that moves because it can move just so, because it is alive, and because it is surrounded by others who are the same.
he thinks about that, even months later when they find themselves in town together and something familiar just about slips into existence. music intertwining with the song of cicadas. muted beyond blinded windows, and the mass of bodies surrounding it, worshipping it by the act of movement alone. some slow, some fast, the angel allows his eyes to flutter shut, feeling their dance in the way the music distorts, feeling their love of dancing all the more in the act itself than in their voices and laughter.
without knowing it, they would both follow to the source, though each drawn by a slightly different sensation. when they would slip in, the door would not protest, but open seamlessly, and close behind them without a sound that the music couldn't drown. the people in here were vibrant, a little moreso than the strained dancers of downton. these were free. perhaps not always, perhaps not reliably, but all the more so, here and now. and so would they. for just the evening. another knock. another crack in the shell. the gardener's hand finding thomas's.
