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A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE | JOFFREY O'BRIEN X READER

When Joffrey O'Brien proposes a marriage of convenience on the south bank of the Thames, two glasses of wine past sensible, it is because the alternative is their parents arranging something worse. You says yes for exactly the same reason. Because it's practical. Logical. Simple. It is, of course, none of those things. A story told in snapshots: a bench under a London plane tree, a ring catching candlelight at a pub table, a corridor at Kit's estate, a ballroom in spring, and finally a wedding night that outs everything that neither of them had the courage to say before.

Dearest Joffrey,

I have been thinking as of lately– and before you make one of your terrible jokes, I shall stop you right there. I think plenty in my day to day life, thank you very much. Anyway, as I was saying, I have been thinking about your… preposition, lets put it at that. I shall let you know I have indeed an answer to your question, do meet me please by the east exit at noon sharp. I believe we have urgent matters to discuss.

Yours dearly,

Y/N

The moment Joffrey had received that note, thanks to Peter whom so kindly passed it on to him, has not been able to think about anything else but that. Your words are written in your usual calligraphy, legible (thanks the heavens), precise and somewhere rushed, as if you were trying to mark down all of your thoughts before you could forget.

Truth is, Joffrey should– theoretically, be scared. He had foolishly asked you to marry him, not less than two nights ago. He was drunk and yes, but that does not remove his words, his actions. He had, he is, scared. Not for a rejection, or so he likes to say and think, but because he used a specific term to describe his offer: a marriage of convenience.

Convenience yes, because everything seems to rush right beneath his feet as of lately. Dorothy moving, soon enough, back to the countryside to be wed to her long term fiancee. Shin departing for Italy, and lord knows when he shall be back. Peter moving to Kings College dorms to continue his education. Kit and Lily that, despite not being together yet,will surely get together soon enough. So where does that leave him? Where does that leave you?

Terrifying questions, really, for a Tuesday.

His parents, for as lovely they are, they have been pressing him since before the third year at St Thomas even began; You must marry well Joffrey ! You are an O’Brien, and you need a proper lady by your side. The concept, the idea, of him remaining unwed was out of the picture. Not with a younger sister still not on the marriage market, and certainly not with an older sister who refuses to conform, on the brink of being disowned by their parents. So no, Joffrey did not own the freedom to do as he pleased, unlike what Peter believed. Or anyone else too, for that matter.

Hence where you came in. You, dearest, sweetest you. Perhaps it helped, being such close friends since a young age, after all you both come from respectable aristocratic families, after all. Still, that night (two nights ago) at the pub is when he, arguably, did something very stupid as brave. He still remembers the way the wine tasted in his mouth that night, he had opted for wine rather than beer, which should have been his first warning that something was about to go amiss. Still, he kept drinking, and laughing with the others, with you. He kept stealing pieces of bread and cheese off your plate and you would pretend to be mad, but he could see past your idle offended look. And then came the talk. Dorothy talks about graduation, how soon their lives will change drastically– no more late runs at the pub all together, no more morning crisis behind St Thomas east wing corridor before an exam. Because there will be no exam, no time to go to the pub. Dorothy had already decided to have, at least, four children. The thought is jarring, it made him shrink in his chair. He is not sure why, exactly.

Sure, he has had a tiny crush on Dorothy when they were in their first year, respectively, but that seems so far long ago. The feeling in his chest was not jealousy, but rather a deep bone settling anxiety. Something that suddenly made him stop stealing cheese off your plate and keep pouring wine into his glass in the hopes that it would cease, calm. But it did not.

Why was everyone moving on so quickly? Why was everyone so ready to… become an adult? And sure, you can argue they are adults already, twenty two and twenty three years old are no children. But his point stands. They are so young, so full of time and freedom and he cannot comprehend why this group of talented, bright individuals wants to move on so quickly… to rush to do something that can be done now as it can be done in their thirties, for how uncommon it might be, it was still possible. Maybe. He isn’t sure at this point, all he remembered was the throbbing of his forehead because of the wine and mix of voices around the pub.

Then you, who gently nudged him and brought him outside for fresh air. It was supposed to be a smoke break, as you said, turns out you two ended up on the south bank of the river Thames.

“The others will worry if we do not get back soon,” his voice came out too slurred, too quiet for his usual self.

“They won’t. I told Peter that I was bringing you home, and while yes I have yet to bring you to your townhouse, I wanted to talk to you. Or rather, I felt like you need to talk, at least that’s what it looked like,” your words were spoken so casual, as if you hadn’t just disrupted his whole pretense

“Sometimes I cannot stand you. You are far too perceptive,”

“Am I?” Your words came out with a soft laugh, “Well, perhaps I am. Or maybe you’re just too easy to read, dearest Joffrey ,”

“Rude!” He said with an unidentified squeal.

There was a moment of silence, filled by the moving of the water and the quiet chatter of the passing by people.

“You are right, however. Something is weighing me, I suppose you could say as such,”

Your eyes grew curious at his words, he could see that, but you also had the decency not to pry until he spoke again.

“I suppose I am merely exhausted by… all of this. Life. rushing to marry, the expectations upon my shoulders. I am simply too exhausted. What if I do not wish to marry? What if I to… go to Paris? And do art all day and eat parisian cousine? What then? Shall I be banished because I dared to oppose the contingency of marriage?” The scoff at the end of his words came out loud enough that a few passersby turned to stare briefly before continuing with their own walk.

He paused for a second long. "That was perhaps more dramatic than intended."

“I understand. I do, really. I feel the exact same way. To be honest father has been on my case for quite some time, wanting me to find a suitable lord,” your sigh was as tired as his words.

“I understand your exhaustion. It’s not fair. And lately it seems everything everyone is talking about is… this. Moving on, children, marriage. But what about art? We have been studying for so long it seems… rather foolish, is it not? To waste your talent, everything we have done just because we are expected to be wed by now,”

“EXACTLY” a few passersby gave them another look, not that they cared.

“You know, we should… we should do something. If your father has been oppressing you with such frivolous matters, and mine aren’t any better then perhaps we could join forces. A marriage of convenience, no? We coul– we could play our part in society, while being free behind closed doors to do as pleased. Wouldn’t that be good?”

Wouldn’t that be good?”

Well, he wasn’t quite sure of that anymore. The more time passes, and the more he waits by the east exit for you, the more he feels like he is going crazy. His brain keeps repeating that night two nights ago. The way you answered him, but he could not remember exactly what was said after. The guilt he felt the following day, the silence that has been clogging to him like a ghost for the past 48 hours.

“Joffrey ? Lost in your world again, are we?” your voice, teasing, light, snaps him out of his trance.

“Sorry, I was just– never mind. You’re late,” He straightened his jacket, as though posture alone could communicate that he had absolutely not been standing here unraveling quietly for the past twenty minutes.

“I know, forgive me. Had to help Lily with a last minute emergency, but yes, I am here now,” a soft sigh left your lips as the two of you sat down on that wooden bench, right under that London plane tree.

It’s nothing new, a routine shared countless times by now, for the past three years he has known you. You wish to gossip? Here you are, the bench is located hidden enough by students and faculty members alike that no one will disturb you. You both want to skip class and simply enjoy some free time? The bench is right there. In a sense, this worn out wooden bench has assisted you both throughout multiple stages of your lives. The first argument and the first resolution to so argument. Gossiping so much to the point of losing track of time. Hiding from the others to have some time alone.

And now here we are again. This time the air feels thicker, and is not just because of the pollen in the air, and the gust of wind that keeps raising debris and dust in the air every so often. Is a sense of uneasiness that clings to him as if it was second skin, because you can say anything. Literally anything and in a matter of seconds your relationship might be destroyed because he dared to be foolish enough.

But his train of thoughts was interrupted once more by you.

“Stop overthinking, it’s annoying. I can hear your panic, even if internal. I would like to let you know, to put an end to your misery, that I am in,”

That was not what he had expected. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Tried again.

“You–”

“Yes, I mean it. I agree with your proposal. Though, it must be said, you have a point. Everyone is moving on, that does not mean we have to move on too, but, as aristocrats we really have no choice do we? It’s either this or our parents will arrange something for us. I came to the conclusion that since you and I run in the same circles, our parents are familiar already and they will not disagree with our decision. Of course, they won’t know why we have finally decided to be civil about such matters, but that’s alright, I suppose,” a brief pause before you started again.

“I came to the realisation that if I ought to get married I wish to be married to someone that will make me laugh. To someone who will be like– me, I suppose. Artistic, a bit loud even– and you're plenty loud let’s be honest here, Joffrey . I want someone I can trust, and I care for you as you care for me. While I am not sure if romantic love will ever nourish between us, I know I shall care for you like a wife will care for her own husband. Real, tangible, present, warm and caring. Because you are my best friend, and there’s nothing better than to marry someone like you.”

Nothing has truly rendered Joffrey speechless before, besides the birth of his younger sister and their first argument. This, your words, have just been added to the list. He could, realistically, say so much. Tease you for how sweet you’re being. Be sentimental too. But nothing feels quite right as the need to hug you and thus, he does. In the little hidden corner you two have carved three years ago, on that bench, he decides that for once perhaps, he has not been mistaken. That he has made the right choice, said the right thing. He hugs you so tightly that you can feel him shake in your arms almost.

“While the fact I made you speechless is a fact of great gloating for me, I would like to hear your voice, please. I hate when you go silent,” your words are no more than a soft whisper shared on his shoulder, your head turned just enough to meet his warm amber like eyes.

He pulls back first, as he always does with things that threaten to make him feel too much, and looks at you with eyes that he hopes convey something of what is lodged behind his sternum. Something between gratitude and the terrifying, bone-deep relief of being known.

"You are absolutely insufferable," he says at last, voice rougher than he intends. "Do you know that?"

"I've been told," you answer, and the smile you give him is small and warm and achingly familiar. “By you in fact, several times if I recall correctly,”

A beat passes after your joke. Then two. A gust of wind sends a scattering of plane tree seeds spiraling between you, and somewhere beyond the hedge a group of students are laughing too loudly at something.

"We should tell our parents soon," you say, practical as ever, pulling gently back into the present. "Before they attempt to arrange something dreadful for either of us. My father has been corresponding with a Lord from Somerset and I really cannot bear the thought of Somerset."

"Absolutely not Somerset," Joffrey agrees with great feeling, as though Somerset has personally wronged him. Perhaps it has.

"So we are in agreement." You extend your hand between you, not quite a handshake, not quite anything else, simply an offering. He looks at it for a moment.

He has asked a great many foolish things of a great many people in his life and been turned away for most of them. He had expected the same here, prepared himself for it on some level, told himself it would not hurt because it was only ever a practical proposition.

He had been lying, of course. He is rather good at that, particularly to himself. He takes your hand.

"Agreement," he says, and means approximately twenty other things alongside it.

You squeeze his fingers once and let go. Then you stand, brushing down your skirt with the brisk efficiency you always bring to moments that have gone soft enough to embarrass you.

"Right. Shall we reunite with the others before they convince themselves we've both drowned in the Thames?"

"They have probably already written the memorial." Joffrey says, rising.

"Knowing Peter especially, he's made it quite moving."

"And included a poem."

You laugh at his joke, the unguarded kind that he has always liked best and together you leave the bench to its usual quiet, stepping back out into the afternoon like nothing monumental has just occurred. As if two long time friends have not just made the most impractical and perhaps, at the same time, the most sensible decision of their lives.

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The private upstairs room at The Hound and Hare smells, as it always does, of woodsmoke and whatever the kitchen has decided to overcook that evening. It is not a glamorous establishment by any stretch, but it is theirs, in the same way the bench is theirs, in the way all small things become precious through sheer repetition.

Joffrey had extended the invitation the way he extends every invitation, which is to say loudly, with no warning, and with the kind of infectious certainty that makes declining feel vaguely criminal.

"The usual place, the usual time, do not be late or I shall take it personally" had been his exact words to Peter that morning, delivered with a clap on the shoulder that nearly sent him into the corridor wall. Peter had not asked why. No one ever asks why with Joffrey, because with Joffrey there is never a reason beyond the fact that he wanted everyone together and had decided tonight was a fine enough evening for it. So here they all are.

Dorothy, rosy cheeked and already halfway through her first glass, seated beside Lily and Shin who are listening to her with their usual patient attention. Peter, who arrived precisely on time because Peter always arrives precisely on time and considers it a personal virtue. Kit, in the corner with his drink, not quite participating but present, which for Kit counts as enthusiasm.

And you, beside Joffrey, as you tend to be.

Nothing about the evening has felt different yet. That is, Joffrey thinks, rather the point. He had wanted this to feel easy. He had been terrified, actually, in the days since you had both spoken to your respective parents, that everything would shift. That people would look at you differently, or at him, or that some invisible current between you and your friends would change and not for the better. But it hasn't. Lily is still pretending not to like Kit. Peter is still talking about a book no one has read. Kit is still watching everything with those quiet unreadable eyes.

It is, in every visible way, a perfectly ordinary evening. Which is of course when you set your left hand on the table. You reach for your glass and your hand simply rests there, and the ring catches the candlelight in a way that is honestly a little unfair, and Dorothy stops speaking mid sentence. The silence lasts approximately two seconds, counted personally by him.

"Is that—" Dorothy starts.

"Yes," you say, calm as anything.

What follows can only be described as a very respectable explosion. Dorothy makes a sound that is not quite a word and reaches across the table to seize your hand for a closer look, pulling you half out of your seat in the process and not apologising for it in the slightest. Shin blinks, twice, then looks at Joffrey with an expression of genuine and unguarded surprise, which on Shin reads as practically theatrical. Peter drops his fork. Lily’s jaw almost touches the table.

"You are engaged," Peter says, with the careful tone of a man who is checking he has understood correctly.

"We are engaged," Joffrey confirms, leaning back in his chair with the ease of a man who has absolutely been rehearsing exactly this posture for three days.

"To each other," Peter adds.

"Typically that is how it works, yes."

Peter looks at you. Looks at Joffrey. Looks back at you, as though waiting for one of you to inform him this is a joke, and when neither of you does, something in his face settles into a warm, slowly spreading smile.

"Well," he says. "I will be honest, I did not think someone quite like her would end up with someone quite like you."

"Thank you, Peter," Joffrey says.

"That was a compliment to her."

"I know."

The table laughs, yourself included, and Joffrey laughs too because that is what you do, that is the expected response and he is very good at expected responses. He has made an art form of them.

But the laughter fades from him a little sooner than it should.

He is not sure what it is, precisely. Peter had meant nothing by it, that much is obvious. It was a joke, and not even a cruel one, just the careless teasing of a friend who loves you both and is happy and perhaps not thinking carefully about his words. Joffrey knows that. He does. And yet…

He watches you across the table, leaning in to show Dorothy and Lily the ring properly now, your head bent close to theirs, saying something in a low voice that makes Dorothy laugh. There is a brightness about you in this moment. Something easy and open that he has always known was there but is noticing, right now, at a slightly inconvenient angle.

Someone quite like her.

He turns the phrase over once or twice. He is not offended, he decides. That is not what this is. He is simply, perhaps, for the first time looking at you not as the person beside him on the bench, the person who received his note and sent one back, the person who said yes in that pragmatic and unexpectedly warm way of yours. He is looking at you the way a stranger might. The way Peter must have meant it, without knowing he was giving Joffrey something to think about.

You catch his eye across the table and raise an eyebrow, the silent version of are you alright, which he has learned to translate over three years.

He raises his glass. You smile and look away.

Kit, from his corner, says nothing. But Joffrey, who has known Kit long enough to read the small things, notices that his gaze has moved from its usual distant middle point and settled, briefly, on you and Joffrey both. There is something in it, not quite readable, before he brings his drink to his lips and looks away.

It is a fine evening. It is, in fact, one of the better ones Joffrey can remember in recent history.

He files away the thing Peter said and the feeling that came with it somewhere behind his sternum, in the same unhelpful drawer where he keeps everything else he is not yet ready to look at directly.

There is time, he thinks. There is plenty of time.

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#Snapshot 1

In fact, there had been no time, unlike what he had previously thought.

The days following the pub had moved with an urgency that felt almost personal, as if the universe had decided that Joffrey O'Brien had been allowed to sit still for quite long enough and had taken it upon itself to correct that. There were letters to write, parents to visit, a wedding ring to select, a great deal of nodding and smiling in drawing rooms that smelled of dried flowers and old money. His mother had cried, which startled him. His father had shaken his hand for longer than was strictly necessary. Your father, from what you had reported to him afterwards, had simply said it was about time, which the two of you had laughed about on the steps of your family home after, shoulders knocking together in the cold.

And now, somehow, it is Thursday, and they are all on a train towards Kit’s estate. An estate that announces itself the way all truly old money announces itself, which is to say without any effort at all. The car that collects them from the station is long and dark and driven by a man who does not speak but navigates the lanes with the quiet authority of someone who has done this thousands of times before. Dorothy presses her face to the glass like she is twelve years old and does not care who sees it. Peter makes a soft sound of appreciation and then pretends he did not. Shin watches the passing countryside with the particular attentiveness he brings to everything, as though he is already deciding how he would sculpt it.

But Joffrey watches you. Not for any specific reason. You are simply there, beside him, your hands folded in your lap, your eyes on the window. The ring, his grandmother’s one, catches the afternoon light every so often, a brief flash of it that he has started to notice the way you notice a sound you cannot quite place. You are not doing anything remarkable. You are just sitting there. He looks away.

Drunnheim Hall is, in a word, enormous. In several more words, it is the kind of place that makes you aware of your own height in a way that is difficult to explain. The ceilings are very tall. The art is very good, which makes sense considering everything, and Joffrey watches you and Dorothy and Shin slow involuntarily in the entrance hall to look up at an oil painting that spans most of the east wall, and something about the three of you standing there, necks tilted back, completely arrested, makes him feel briefly and warmly fond in a way he does not examine.

The tour is long and pleasant and Kit moves through it with the ease of a man who has genuinely never considered that other people might find this amount of space unusual. He points out things of interest in the same tone one might use to indicate a moderately good sandwich. Peter asks questions. Lily is mostly silently stunned. Dorothy makes declarations. Shin is in his own world. Joffrey mostly stays toward the back of the group, hands in his pockets, and tries not to calculate the square footage.

Dinner is a large and formal affair in a dining room that seats twelve with room to spare. Kit's father is at the head of the table, silver haired and pleasant in the careful way of men who have spent decades being pleasant professionally. His older brother says very little but listens a great deal, which means Joffrey cannot decide if he likes him or not. He does, however, look rather handsome, as per all Church’s men. The conversation moves easily enough, carried largely by Dorothy, who has never in her life met a silence she felt should be left alone. At some point she mentions the engagement, which prompts Kit's father to look down the table at Joffrey and you with an expression of polite interest, and offer his congratulations in a tone that suggests he means them, and everyone moves on.

Everyone except Kit, who says nothing, as he has said nothing on this subject since that night at the pub. Joffrey notices, of course he does, and then tells himself he is not noticing, and then notices again.

It is after dinner, when the group has split and scattered into the evening ease of people who have been well fed and are no longer required to be interesting on command, that it happens. Dorothy and Lily have found the music room. Peter and Shin have gone outside to look at something in the gardens. You are somewhere deeper in the house with Kit's brother, who had apparently expressed an interest in your written work, and Kit himself had slipped away so quietly that Joffrey only realizes it after the fact.

He finds him, or is found by him, in the long corridor that runs along the back of the house. Kit is standing in front of a painting, a small one, almost modest by the standards of everything else in this building. He does not turn when Joffrey comes to stand beside him.

They look at it together for a moment. Joffrey does not actually know what he is looking at, but he has enough experience of Kit to understand that silence is just how Kit begins things.

"She cares for you," Kit says, finally, still looking at the painting.

Joffrey blinks. "Yes, well. That tends to help, in a marriage,"

"I am not being funny."

"I know." A pause. "I care for her too."

Kit turns to look at him then, and it is the particular quality of Kit's attention that has always made Joffrey slightly uncomfortable, the feeling of being looked at rather than simply seen. As if he is something being studied, a composition being assessed for balance. Joffrey resists the urge to straighten his jacket.

"I only mean to say," Kit says, returning to the painting, "that it is not nothing. What the two of you have. I have watched the two of you for three years. Some people look at each other the entire evening without ever actually seeing each other." A brief, characteristic pause. "You do not do that."

Joffrey opens his mouth, closes it, and tries a different approach. "Are you giving me a compliment, Kit? I want to be sure I mark the occasion correctly."

"I am making an observation."

"Right. Yes." He looks at the painting too. It is a woman in a garden, nothing extraordinary, though the light on her hands is very good. "It's a marriage of convenience, you know. Practically speaking."

Kit says nothing.

"I mean, our parents were going to arrange something eventually, and we get along well enough, and it made sense to—"

"Joffrey."

"Yes?"

"I did not ask."

Joffrey stops. The corridor is very quiet around them and somewhere in the house someone is playing a scale on a piano, slow and searching, like they are looking for something they have not yet found.

"No," he says, after a moment. "You didn't, did you."

Kit nods once, in the manner of someone who considers the matter settled, and Joffrey has the strange and not entirely comfortable feeling of having said something true entirely by accident.

He thinks about it for the rest of the evening. When you find him in the drawing room an hour later and sit beside him in that easy, habitual way of yours, laughing at something Shin has just said, he thinks about it again. He does not know what to do with it exactly. He puts it in the drawer, behind his sternum, next to the thing Peter said.

The drawer is getting, however, rather full.

#Snapshot 2

A month, approximately, is how long it takes for two aristocratic families to agree on a date, a venue, a guest list, a menu, a floral arrangement, and approximately forty other details that Joffrey had not previously known required this level of negotiation. He had been consulted on very few of them. You had been consulted on slightly more, which you had mentioned to him once, in passing, with the particular expression of someone who is coping.

He had said he was sorry. You had said there was nothing to be sorry about, it was fine. Then you had looked at the fabric swatches his mother had sent over and said, quietly, that ivory and gold was a deeply unimaginative choice for a spring ball, and he had laughed until his sides hurt, standing in the corridor of your family home with the swatches spread across the side table between you, and it had been, genuinely, one of the better moments of the past month. There have been good moments. That surprised him, a little, though he is not sure why it should have.

The announcement ball is held at your family's home, which is large and well lit and filled by nine o'clock with more people than Joffrey can comfortably track. His parents are here, luminous with satisfaction. Your father moves through the room with the quiet pride of a man who considers the matter well resolved. His older sister is somewhere near the back, arrived despite everything, which had made his mother's smile go slightly fixed at the corners. His younger sister is beside him for most of the early evening, until she finds someone her own age to speak to and disappears gratefully into the crowd.

Their friends are here too. Dorothy in deep blue, Lily beside her. Shin and Peter arrived together, slightly late, carriage issues apparently. And Peter is already looking slightly overwhelmed by the scale of the thing. Kit is here, which Joffrey had not been entirely certain of until he spotted him near the far wall, a glass in hand, occupying his corner of the room with the same self contained ease with which he occupies every space. And you are here, of course.

Which is not a remarkable observation on its face, given that this is, in fact, your house, and the party is, in fact, for you both. And yet

Joffrey sees you before you see him, across the entrance hall, speaking with someone's mother with the precise social grace that he has always slightly envied in you. Your dress is not ivory and gold. It is something darker, richer, and you have done something different with your hair and he cannot decide if it is different or simply that he is looking at it differently, which is a distinction that he pushes firmly to one side.

You look up, find him across the room, and something in your expression eases. Just slightly. The way it does when you have been doing something that requires effort and something familiar has come into view. He knows that look. He has been on the receiving end of it in lecture halls and pub corners and long dinners at other people's houses, and it has never once done anything to him in particular.

He crosses the room.

"You look—" he starts.

"Do not say something terrible."

"I was going to say you look well."

"That is what people say when they cannot think of anything else."

"Then perhaps stop fishing and let a man be inadequate in peace," he says, and you smile at that, which does its own small quiet damage, but never mind.

The evening has a structure, as these evenings always do. There is a receiving line, during which Joffrey shakes more hands than he can count and receives more congratulations than he knows what to do with. You stand beside him through all of it, close enough that your arm occasionally presses against his, and you say the right things to the right people with a warmth that seems entirely unperformed. He watches you charm a retired general into genuine laughter. He watches you remember the name of someone's wife who he has met four times and cannot place. He watches you, in short, rather more than is strictly necessary for a man in a receiving line, and tells himself it is simply because it is easier to watch you than to watch the door.

Then there is the dancing.

The first dance is theirs, which he had known, obviously he had known, and yet the knowing of it and the reality of it are two different things entirely. The room arranges itself around them with the particular attention of a crowd that has been given something to look at and intends to look at it thoroughly. His hand finds the small of your back. Your hand finds his shoulder. You are closer than the bench, closer than the pub, closer than the corridor at Kit's estate. You smell of something floral that he cannot name.

"You are counting," you say, quietly enough that only he can hear.

"I am not counting."

"You are absolutely counting. I can tell by your face."

"My face looks exactly as it always does."

"It does not, actually," you say, and there is something gentle in it that makes it worse, somehow. "You do a specific thing with your jaw when you are concentrating. You have done it since the first year."

He does not know what to do with the fact that you have been watching his jaw since the first year, so he does not do anything with it. He leads, you follow, and the music is very good and the room is very bright, and somewhere in the crowd he can see Dorothy watching with an expression he cannot entirely read. Peter is saying something to Shin. Kit is not watching the dance, or at least he does not appear to be, which with Kit means very little.

"Is this strange?" you ask, after a moment.

"Is what strange?"

"This. All of it. Them watching us. Having to be..." you pause, selecting the word carefully, "present, in this particular way."

He considers the question honestly, which is not something he does often in ballrooms.

"It was," he says. "Earlier. When we were in the receiving line. It felt a bit like a performance." Another pause, and he is not sure why he keeps going, only that he does. "It feels less like that now."

You look at him. Not the quick glance of a social check, but actually look at him, and you are close enough that he can see the precise moment you decide not to say whatever your first response was going to be.

"Yes," you say instead, simply. "I know what you mean."

The song ends. The crowd shifts and breathes and someone starts clapping and the moment, which had been building to something he cannot name, dissolves back into the general noise of the evening. He steps back. You step back. Everything reassembles itself correctly.

Later, he will stand with Peter near the drinks table and half listen to a story about the reading rooms at Kings College, and he will watch you across the ballroom, dancing now with someone else, and Peter will say something that requires a response and he will give one, automatically, because he is good at that.

And behind his sternum, the drawer will shift.

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#Snapshot 3

There had been, in the months between the ball and this evening, a graduation. A leaving of St Thomas that felt quieter than any of them had imagined it would, as if the building itself had decided not to make a fuss. Dorothy had cried, which surprised no one. Peter had given a small speech to the group outside the east wing corridor, the one where they used to hide before exams, which had surprised everyone including Peter. Kit had stood slightly apart and said it had been tolerable, which from Kit was practically a declaration of love.

And then, as these things do, everything moved.

Dorothy married in April, a quiet ceremony in the countryside surrounded by flowers that she had selected herself and argued for extensively. Her husband seemed kind. She had looked happy, the real kind, and Joffrey had watched her from across the church and felt nothing complicated at all, which told him something he had been slowly learning about himself for several months.

Shin sent a letter from Florence and a wedding gift that arrived two weeks before the ceremony, wrapped in paper that smelled faintly of oil paint and something Mediterranean. The letter was warm and long and very Shin, and you had read it aloud to him over breakfast one morning in the new house, your feet tucked under you on the drawing room sofa, and laughed at the part where he described his landlady, and Joffrey had thought, sitting across from you with his coffee going cold in his hand, that he could do this. That this specific thing, this quiet ordinary moment, was something he could do indefinitely without complaint.

Kit and Lily had stopped pretending somewhere around May, with no announcement, no explanation, simply a shift in how they stood near each other that everyone noticed and no one mentioned because mentioning things to Kit rarely produced useful results.

And now it is June, and Joffrey O'Brien is married.

He is married and he is standing in the corridor outside the drawing room of his family's estate, which has been transformed for the evening into something even larger and brighter than its usual self, full of flowers and candlelight and the sound of people who are very happy on his behalf. He can hear his mother laughing somewhere in the middle of it. He can hear Dorothy's voice, carrying as it always does. He had been in there, and then he had stepped out for a moment, just a moment, to get some air, and somehow the moment had extended itself into something longer and he has been standing here for a while now.

He is fine. He is absolutely fine, he would like to state clearly, to no one in particular.

"You are hiding," says Peter, appearing from the direction of the stairs with two glasses and the expression of a man who has been looking for someone.

"I am not hiding. I stepped out."

"You stepped out twenty minutes ago. Your mother has asked after you twice." Peter offers him one of the glasses and Joffrey takes it, because the alternative is having nothing to do with his hands. "What are you doing out here?"

"Thinking."

"About?"

Joffrey looks at him. Peter looks back, patient, unhurried, in the way he always is when he has decided to wait something out.

"I don't know," Joffrey says, which is a lie. Then, because Peter has known him since they were eighteen and the lie lands with an almost audible thud between them, he tries again. "I think I have made a terrible mistake."

Peter's expression does not change. "In what sense."

"In the sense that I have just married my best friend under the pretense that it was a practical arrangement and I am standing in a corridor at my own wedding reception because I cannot go back into that room and look at her without—" he stops. Picks up the thread again from a slightly different angle. "It was supposed to be simple, Peter. That was the entire point of it. It was supposed to be the simple option."

"Was it ever simple?"

"It was supposed to be."

Peter is quiet for a moment, turning his glass slowly. Outside, somewhere beyond the window at the end of the corridor, the evening is doing something beautiful with the last of its light, but Joffrey is not looking at it.

"Do you remember," Peter says, "what I said at the pub. The night you announced it."

"That you didn't think someone like her would end up with someone like me."

"And you laughed." Peter looks at him steadily. "But not for as long as everyone else did."

Joffrey says nothing.

"I have watched the two of you for three years," Peter continues, and there is no smugness in it, which is almost worse, "and I have thought many things about the two of you in that time. But the one thing I have never thought, not once, not even when you told us it was a marriage of convenience and expected us to believe you, is that you were indifferent to her." A pause. "I don't think you have ever been indifferent to her. I think you asked her specifically because you were not."

The corridor is very quiet.

"That is an incredibly inconvenient thing to say to me right now," Joffrey says, at last.

"Yes," Peter agrees. "I imagine it is."

"I wouldn't even know how to—" he exhales, short and frustrated. "She agreed to this because it made sense. Because we are friends and we trust each other and our parents were going to arrange something worse. She did not agree to this because she—" the word sits behind his teeth and he does not say it. "I cannot go back in there and have her see it on my face. She is far too perceptive and she will see it immediately and then everything we have built will become strange and I will have ruined the only friendship that has ever actually—"

"Joffrey."

He stops.

From the doorway of the drawing room, quiet as anything, you are standing there.

He has no idea how long you have been there. Long enough, he thinks, from the look on your face. Long enough to hear most of it, or enough of it, and you are watching him with an expression he has never seen on you before, which is remarkable given how fluent he has become in your expressions over three years. It is not quite surprise. It is something more like recognition. The look of someone hearing out loud a thing they had been carrying privately for a very long time.

Peter looks at Joffrey. Looks at you. Sets down his glass with the quiet efficiency of a man removing himself from a situation.

"I'll let your guests know you've been located," he says, to no one in particular, and disappears back toward the reception with the dignified haste of someone who has done what he came to do.

The corridor closes around the two of you and Joffrey considers, briefly, several things he could say. He could make a joke. He is very good at making jokes, has made an art form of it, has deployed it his entire life as a reliable method of not having to be serious about anything that frightened him. He could pretend you did not hear, and you would let him, because you are kind and you know him and you would give him the exit if he reached for it.

He does not reach for it.

"How much of that did you hear," he says, which is not quite a question.

"Enough," you say, which is not quite an answer. You step into the corridor properly and the door swings shut behind you and now it is just the two of you and the candlelight and the distant sound of the reception carrying on without its hosts. "I came to find you because Kit told me you had gone missing and Lily told Kit who told me, and your mother was beginning to look pointed about it."

"Right."

"And then I heard you talking and I should have made myself known sooner but—" you pause, and he watches you do the thing you do when you are choosing words carefully, the slight press of your lips. "I could not stop listening. I'm sorry. That was not fair of me."

"It's alright."

"It is not, actually." You look at him, straight on, in the way you always have, the way that has never allowed him to be anything less than honest with you whether he wanted to be or not. "Joffrey. I need you to finish the sentence."

He blinks. "What sentence?"

"The one you stopped. You said she did not agree to this because she—" you hold the space where the word goes, open and patient and terrifyingly kind.

He looks at you. At your face, which he knows better than almost any other face in the world by now. At the ring on your hand. At the fact that you are standing here in the corridor of his family home on the evening of your wedding, having come to find him, having stood in that doorway and listened and not left.

"Because she loves me," he says, finally, plainly, like a man setting something heavy down.

The corridor is quiet.

"That was very stupid of you," you say softly. "To assume."

Something in his chest, which has been waiting, shifts.

"You don’t have t—"

"I agreed to this," you say, and your voice is even but your hands are not quite still, and he notices because he notices everything about you, has been noticing everything about you apparently for longer than he has been honest with himself about, "because it made sense, yes. And because I trusted you, yes. And because I thought if I was going to spend my life beside someone it should at least be someone who makes me laugh." You stop. "But I also agreed because the thought of you marrying someone else made me want to put my head through a wall, and I had been too sensible about it for too long to admit that."

Joffrey stares at you.

"I have been in love with you," you continue, with the air of someone finishing a proof they have been working out for a very long time, "since approximately the second year. I did not say anything because you never said anything. And then you asked me to marry you in a way that very specifically did not include that, and I thought, well, perhaps this is still better than nothing. So."

"So," he repeats.

"So there it is."

He crosses the corridor in two steps and when he takes your face in his hands you do not move away and your eyes do not close and you look at each other for a moment that lasts longer than moments usually do, in the way of things that have been a long time coming.

"I have ruined," he says quietly, close enough now that it is almost absurd, "a perfectly good marriage of convenience."

"You really have," you agree, and you are almost smiling and so is he.

"Then what shall we do now," he says, and it is not quite a question.

You look at him for a moment, with that particular expression of yours that he has spent three years learning to read and has only just now understood he has been reading wrong. Not fondness. Not the warmth of a very good friendship. Something older than that, something that has been sitting quietly beneath everything else, patient as anything, waiting.

"You ought to kiss me," you say.

And he does. It is not the kind of kiss that appears in the novels Dorothy used to read aloud, at the back of the lecture hall, to make everyone laugh. It is quieter than that, and slower, and considerably more honest. His hands are still on your face and yours have found the lapels of his jacket and the corridor is still dim and the reception is still carrying on without you both, But none of that matters in the slightest.

When you pull back it is only barely, just enough to breathe, foreheads nearly touching.

"We have wasted," he says, a little unsteadily, "an extraordinary amount of time."

"We have," you agree. "Though I would argue the last few minutes have been a reasonable start at addressing that."

He laughs, the real one, the unguarded one, and feels you smile against his cheek.

There is a beat of quiet between you, warm and unhurried, the first one in recent memory that does not have something unspoken living in the middle of it.

Then you lean back just enough to look at him properly, and something in your expression shifts into something softer and more deliberate, and you say, quite simply, "I believe the guests can survive the remainder of the evening without us. Besides we have a… new firm mattress to test,"

Joffrey looks at you. At his wife. At the woman who has known the specific thing his jaw does when he is concentrating since the first year and did not think to mention it until a ballroom in spring.

"I believe you may be right," he says.

You take his hand. He follows, and that’s good enough.

#peter anthony

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