Chapter Text
“I think the butler might be a tad too much.”
Thomas frowns as he holds the neatly pressed uniform against his pale chest.
“I would feel overdressed, I think. Especially in a different household.”
Francis hums. It is still morning, and there is no need for Thomas to make his final decision before much later anyway, but right now he is fresh from the shower and assessing how he is feeling, the radio is playing the third rock ballad in a row, and the comforting smell of coffee and toast is still lingering in the flat, so now is as good a time as any to be figuring out an outfit for later.
“How about business casual?” he suggests, proud of himself for the terminology. Thomas himself uses it with a wince, and maybe that is why it is a little easier for Francis to remember, and to pull it out at the right moment with the kind of quiet amusement that he has heard Edward refer to as “Dad humour”. That had been one good spanking.
“I’m not sure.”
Thomas stows the butler suit away again and continues browsing.
At a certain point, it had made no sense anymore to be dragging outfits and gear from his place to Francis’ and back, and when he moved into the same building some months ago, well, the label printer had already been purchased and a neat little J. stuck above the rack and drawer.
“The maid, then? - attention, passing through.”
Francis gently moves him aside, palm on his lower back as he squeezes into the corner to reach the rope rack. It’s not very big, his flat.
“No, I don’t think.”
Thomas’ rifling comes to a halt just about when Francis is about to squeeze past again, coils of deep blue rope cradled in the crook of his arm.
“Garters,” Thomas says decisively. “Garters and a rope harness.”
He turns towards Francis, holding up a pair of black stockings.
“If you would.”
“Course I would," Francis hums. “Colour?”
“Green," deadpans Thomas, and grins when Francis gives the expected sigh once the joke processes.
"I do like that navy," Thomas adds more helpfully, nodding towards the bundles he is holding. Francis nods his agreement.
“Shoes?” he calls over his shoulder as he makes for the sofa where he has been vaguely collecting what they’ll need or maybe need, so Thomas can sort through it later at his own prickly organisatory will.
“How are the floors there?”
“You’ve been, Thomas.”
“I thought they’d refurbished?”
Right, they have indeed. Francis has not been at Fitzjames’ place himself since then. One of the reasons, actually, that they are going today. Well, a minor one.
“Do you think I can go barefoot?”
“If it’s not too much?”
“I think it might ground me.”
“We can take a backup pair, if anything.”
For now, though, Thomas slips into a shirt and one of his well-fitting pairs of jeans that look expensive but that he probably dug up for half price in some obscure second-hand shop, if Francis knows him at all. While Francis studies his packing list, Tom busies himself with unloading the dishwasher, humming along to Aerosmith as he does.
“Thomas?”
“Yes?”
“Why did I put anal hook on there?”
Thomas is drying his hands as he walks over to peer onto the paper with him.
“With a question mark?”
“I think it was because Edward said -”
“Oh, right. Right.”
They are in the middle of discussing why exactly the radio station appears to be obsessed with Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing specifically on this fine Saturday morning when the doorbell rings.
Edward is, of course, ludicrously early, and in spite of it he looks his usual mix of stressed and slightly haunted as he stumbles into the flat, a huge gym bag slung over his shoulder and a jacket much too warm for golden fall weather dangling precariously from where it is tied around his hips. He is a bit ruffled, and Thomas forgoes their customary little kiss-kiss greeting to steer him straight towards the sofa while Francis puts on the kettle. There’s always a cooldown period for Edward when he arrives. Once he has a mug in his hand, he sighs contently and lets his head fall back against the backrest.
“Traffic’s insane,” he tells Francis after a long sip that should have burned his tongue, or maybe it did and that was simply exactly what he needed.
“I think stopping halfway was the best call.”
They were going to make the full drive in one go, initially. But traffic is indeed unbearable on Saturdays, and if you are going to be stuck in traffic, they decided, not only would it be better not to do so in full gear, but they also ought to plan for a pit stop. So the plan is to stop at around the halfway point for some rest, and then once they arrive Fitzjames will be providing them with a room and time to change. It is not as immersive as getting out of the car and arriving in full swing, but it is certainly safer, and safety in this case takes priority.
“I'll drive," Francis tells Edward. "Do you want the hook packed in your bag or mine?"
🌹
“Mistress?”
John Bridgens sticks his head into the office, and James hums without looking up from her reading. It is morning, still: she is not expecting Crozier and his little entourage until later today.
“The doctor’s here, Mistress.”
Right. She reaches for her glass, holds it up without looking, and waits until John is beside her and fills it with sparkling water from a pitcher with clinking decorative stones, lemon slices and mint. He pours excellently, the smooth stream an auditive caress in the silence of the room.
“Send him in.”
She watches over the rim of her glass as he bows and disappears, closing the door behind him with utmost care. She closes the book on her lap and places it on the coffee table. Slowly, she takes her feet off her footrest and places them back into the velvety slippers waiting beside it.
A gentle gesture of her manicured hand sends the man at her feet up into a sitting position, kneeling next to the settee with his head lowered politely when the visitor enters.
“Good morning, Mistress.”
“Mister Goodsir! Good morning to you.”
The man gives her a sweet smile, crow’s feet deepening with it. He is wearing his usual, a Victorian-inspired vest and shirt, his brown leather bag clutched in front of him. He looks like a man fallen out of his century, does Goodsir, so dedicated to this fashion that he keeps his beard in old-timey muttonchops even though it has brought him some ridicule and the necessity for a beard net in the lab at his day job as a twenty-first century kind of scholar. It suits him. James appreciates a man dedicated to his theme.
“Thank you for coming," she hums, and gestures towards the tray of refreshments laid out on the coffee table. “Would you like some tea? A biscuit?”
He nods in that friendly sheepish way of his and carefully settles into the armchair opposite to her while John, taking his cue from where he was waiting at the door, sets about pouring him a cup.
“I am expecting guests today," James explains once he has his hands wrapped around the cup. “So I need my darlings to be in top shape, doctor.”
He listens closely as she lists off the programme: Henry needs a trim, Graham a haircut, and his hole waxed for his comfort.
“And the fingernails, doctor. Be sure to have a good look at them. They’re both negligent.”
He glances, briefly, at Graham where he is waiting next to the settee, head still lowered so as to not meet the eyes of a guest without permission, and seems to be stowing the information away.
“But, if you’ll excuse my forgetfulness - how are you doing, doctor?”
It is not like they did not have a call just yesterday to talk over this very meeting, but she still asks, and he hums in appreciation. This is a different context - with different tales to tell, in part.
“Quite well, quite well.” He fiddles with his sleeve, a little self-conscious: her domme presence does that to him, more than her usual self, and she used to feel unsure of whether that was okay until he told her that is simply what happens to him in the presence of what he referred to, with a humorous tone but after careful consideration, as ‘a strong feminine energy a man of my century is unused to’.
“I have made…arrangements with a young man willing to avail himself of the opportunity for a first trial with the apparatus I’ve mentioned.”
James makes a delighted little ah sound in the back of her throat. She remembers him lovingly mentioning his enterprise of constructing something akin to a fucking machine - not using the term itself - ‘as period appropriate as possible’.
“That sounds wonderful, doctor,” she purrs, simply because she likes to see the redness rise to his cheeks and knows she is allowed to make it so.
“I am ever so curious about your inventions. I might lend you one of my lads sometime, to test those mysterious implements for you.”
That causes him to shuffle a little in his seat, visibly charmed. She does like to flatter as much as she likes to needle, at times, and he just takes it so beautifully well. All the more fun then, to set down her glass and straighten up, throw her satin robe closed over this morning's lingerie. “Well, I do not want to keep you from your work, doctor. And I am, unfortunately, on a schedule today.”
He hurries to stand when she does, still clinging to his cup. Small things, James knows: the insecurity of whether he ought to leave it now, or carry it across the room with him without knowing when to drink. She absolves him, this time. “John, if you would take the doctor’s cup for him, accompany him to the facilities, and fetch Henry for him. I will be up in my dressing room.”
Goodsir looks a little unmoored, a little disarrayed, and she leaves him behind in this state - wanting more - but of what, he can never quite tell.
⚓
“Do we have everything?”
It’s rhetorical, really, because of course they do. Thomas double-checks the list anyway, then sticks it under Edward’s nose for proof, which placates the man who has been running back and forth for the last twenty minutes checking and double checking whether he has his keys, his phone, his charger, chewing gum for motion sickness, both socks, his head. Now that Thomas is unzipping the gym bag and showing him all the items safely stowed in the trunk of Francis’ old Peugeot, plus the towel and toothbrush they added since Edward had forgotten to bring his own, he exhales deeply. “Sorry about that,” he murmurs, which earns him a friendly whack on his arm from both sides. “Go take a leak, and then get in the car," Francis grovels good-naturedly. Edward hurries off with a grateful little nod.
Francis would be lying if he said he were not at least a little nervous himself. He is glad when Thomas self-assuredly instals himself in the passenger seat and starts fiddling with the cursed GPS that Francis never has any patience for, until after he gets lost, at which point he typically has even less patience to spare altogether.
Once Edward has climbed into the backseat, clad in his second favourite oversized black hoodie and sweatpants (the other pair being in the gym bag in the trunk), they are off to the sound of yet another 80s ballad.
🌹
She comes downstairs in her day dress, drops by the bathroom, and finds the good doctor elbow-deep in a foaming concoction in a tin bucket she suspects to be perfectly period accurate to whichever part of history he is currently fondest of (the 1840s, chances are). Henry is sitting in the raised tub like an overgrown Newfoundland with a sedate, if slightly confused expression as Harry turns back to him to knead the soft-scented sheep's milk soap - he makes those himself, now - into his skin, nimble fingers rubbing into fat and muscle. He is labouring, almost, his sleeves rolled up, and soon he will have to shrug out of his little waistcoat if the way his curls are starting to stick to the nape of his neck is anything to go by. His hand reaches under Henry's arm to wash his pits, slides back and forth with a wet sound, slippery with suds, a soft squelch when he shoves it back to rub the musk out of the thicket.
She grins to herself at the obscene little noise it creates.
Henry does not usually get the full bath treatment from him, but seems perfectly content with it, letting the man work on him even as he pulls one of his large hands from the water, secures his wrist with his elbow, and starts scrubbing his nails with a coarse brush. He does like the good doctor. When he blinks into her direction, she blows him a little kiss.
“You'll be next,” she tells Graham fondly when she returns to the office.
“Do you need your balls waxed? Sit up, show me.”
⚓
Traffic is, indeed, hell. After thirty minutes of sluggish stop-and-go, Francis switches channels and they listen to a few minutes of some overly non-confrontational talk show, but eventually they flee the shameless self-advertisement of some up-and-coming diet book author back into the reassuring embrace of Aerosmith.
“I’ve never actually seen that movie,” Edward mentions, and then he falls asleep for the next hour and a half.
By the time he wakes, they have arrived at their planned pit stop, a gas station at about halfway point. The sliding doors of the battered Peugeot are open, and Francis is stood leaning against it sipping from a coke bottle (he doesn’t like coke that much, but road trips mean sugary caffeine to him, have done since the days of crowded back seats on the way to nan’s). Thomas is munching on a questionably priced panini - Francis knows him well enough not to let him see the receipt and simply push the paper bag into his hands - and Edward, once he has oriented himself, gratefully accepts the paper cup of tea and the chocolate croissant waiting for him on the hood of the van. He shuffles on his feet as he mouths at the too-thick chocolate coat on the pastry.
“You alright, Edward?” Thomas asks him once the prosciutto and cheese have been safely deposited in his belly, devoured as if he could have been contested on his ownership.
“Oh, yes. Just a little nervous?”
He doesn’t look apologetic about it, which Francis notes with a twinge of pride.
“Excited, really,” Edward hums, a smile tugging at his crumb-covered lips. “It’s been a while since we’ve been over.”
He takes another bite, chews contemplatively, swallows. “I want to make you proud, sir,” he tells Francis, straightening up a little from his habitual slump with that sweet little sullen smile, and Francis simply has to put his arm around him and squeeze him briefly. " Good boy ,” he mutters against Edward’s temple.
🌹
She wouldn’t need to be there, really - but oh, it is entertaining. Goodsir is well familiar with her lads, and they with him. Perhaps she joins them to soothe herself, because in her private thoughts, James is willing to admit that she is a little excited about today’s plans herself. So she has comfortably arranged herself on one of the precious designer chairs, upholstered in wonderful soft whites to keep John on his toes in keeping them nice and spotless. She has had a darling little tea set brought to her, and she is enjoying a strong Darjeeling from a sweet little cup with pink roses painted delicately along the curve of the porcelain. In front of her, her Henry is being sweet as a lamb as Goodsir trims the gorgeous nest of curls above his heavy prick with a pair of curved, razor-sharp scissors and utmost precision.
She wants him well-groomed for today, but not bare, never bare; it would be a downright crime to take all those beautiful salt-and-pepper curls away unless he explicitly wished for it.
“Oh, you will be so very handsome today, my sweet,” she coos at him as he yields to the gentlest push from the smaller man and willingly turns for him. “Always handsome for me, my Henry.”
It’s her way of petting him when he is out of reach; letting her soft timbre brush over him from further away. Henry is a big, powerful creature, but he reacts to touch and word with the sensitivity of an animal of prey. He snuffles into the doctor’s apron where it lays discarded on the floor, but stays motionless otherwise until Goodsir commands him to “bare” and he reaches back and pushes his fingers into the meat of his arse to spread his cheeks wide for him without hesitation. “Good, good,” mumbles Goodsir, reaching for a smaller pair of scissors.
⚓
“I think I prefer the Dad Rock after all,” Edward complains after twenty minutes of having settled on a small station that in hindsight appears a little too keen on obscure Dutch synthpop. They tune back into Rock Radio to Whitesnake and the fourth Bon Jovi of the trip, and Francis finds himself humming along despite himself, now that they are finally out of the worst of the traffic. Fitzjames used to have her studio in the thrumming centre of the city, but the need for more space, more discretion, and the crucial absence of drunk party goers in the area led to a move into the suburbs a few years ago. Francis had been as jealous of the new, quieter arrangement at the time as Fitzjames had been bummed out by it, but now, he is simply happy to come visit, preferring his small home studio to the more labour-intensive setup after all. Not that he doesn’t enjoy it.
He uses a small break in the music brought on by the weather report to take stock.
“Any questions we haven’t answered yet, lads?”
Thomas hums contemplatively. “I think I’m good.”
“Oh, one thing -” Edward sits up a little from where he was melting into the seat. “I, well - I don’t know whether I’ll have the attention span to notice gesture commands if you give them to me first, and not Tom.”
“I’ll call your name, then?”
In the rearview mirror, Edward nods.
“That, or some kind of noise should work. I’ll be trying.”
“Alright.”
There is a beat of silence in which they pass a particularly ugly camper van with an unfathomable number of bicycles strapped to the rack.
“That overhang can’t be legal anymore,” Edward notes.
“Is it marked?”
Edward twists to peer out the back window.
“Can’t see,” he reports.
“You’ll have to take the next exit,” Thomas interjects, looking at the GPS. Francis sorts them into the left lane.
“By the way - I just want to say it again -”
“That turn there,” Thomas supplies, and they follow the road off of the motorway.
“I just wanted to mention two things,” Francis continues, back to following snail-paced family cars, “first, as we said, John - you know, John Bridgens - will be in the room, at the very least during all the more intense parts. We're a lot of people - so he's keeping an eye on everyone, too. He'll be by the door.”
“Okay,” Thomas and Edward echo in near unison.
“And - Fitzjames. I mean, James and I," Francis says haltingly - he is picking a moment to overtake a sedan complete with stick figure family stickers. "...so, we might not use a condom if it comes to it. IF it comes to it.”
Even though half the conversation remains unsaid, Thomas’ little whistle is not averted.
“Mean to say - you needn’t worry about it. If it happens,” Francis finishes, and he tries to give Edward a stern look in the rearview mirror for snickering, but he cannot quite help his own smile.
🌹
“Still now, Graham,” she orders. There’s a frown on her boy’s face, competing with the smile tugging at his lips, but he tries, pressing his hips down onto the cool polished wood.
He winces anyway when Goodsir rips off the wax strip in one motion, then presses his palm to the smarting spot in a soothing gesture.
“ Still ,” James chides.
It’s not fair, of course, not when Graham is having the light dusting of hair torn from the sensitive skin right around his hole, from his sack and perineum. But he is smiling so brightly every time his eyes open after squinting shut in discomfort. He is glowing under the pain.
“Do I need to cane you, dear?” she threatens softly, and he shakes his head, then yelps when Goodsir smooths the next scoop of too-hot wax along his arsehole.
“What was that?”
Graham opens his mouth, but his timing feels poor, or Goodsir’s timing is just right - he bites back a shout as the strip is tugged at once, but doesn’t come off.
James tuts at him.
“I shall have you cut a lovely hazel switch,” she decides, and she watches the surprise on his face turn first into shock then bliss when the wax is torn off with brutal precision,
“to hold for me while we have our guests over.”