Wish You Were Sober

1- Sunday Morning

Theo was... complicit. He often found he had his own way of doing things, very obviously and very loudly, but technically correct. Tasked to find a wife. Ok, sure, he'd do exactly that. So long as she doesn't know he is a duke. He was often told only the poor marry for love. He was unsure what the point of marriage was at all. It seemed like an awful lot of money and an awfully long time. Most recently, it just seemed like a commitment.

Theo's entire life was prestigious. Money, castles, horses, Ladies. Ladies with a capital L, because they were of Lordship. Of course none of those piqued his interest. His objects of desire were often more fascinating, more — unfamiliar.

An American miss was the last person Theo decided to fall hopelessly in love with. I say hopelessly because it had simply been too long. Twenty-eight years old with women queueing up and down the palace just to get a look at him, and still unmarried? Ridiculous.

So it was Nan.

I'm sure that if you're here, you'll know how that worked out. Less how it worked out, and more how it didn't. Theo seemed to struggle getting past the proposal.

Nan's departure caused not only outrage amongst members of high society, but scandal. She'd left him for none other than Guy Thwarte. He supposed only poor people did marry for love. An American girl leaving a duke for his bankrupt best friend was more than exciting enough to be the subject of every dinner party in the region. Theo was never in attendance, but he heard stories upon stories.

Cooped up in the castle, there weren't many things for Theo to do. He ended up helping the servants cook and clean, learning things his mother never thought important to teach him. He'd always been particularly fond of the staff at the castle — their level of dedication to his family's luxury lifestyle was frankly impressive, if not entirely pointless. The pay was good, he figured, so he'd allow them to continue re-folding his entire wardrobe, though not without intense questioning and extensive conversation about the most mundane things humanly possible.

There were two staff members who seemed undaunted by his unusual advances since the day they begun working. The first was wardrobe specialist and general cleaner Shirley. She was the same age as Theo, older only by seven months, had tight ginger curls always hap-hazardly pinned up by her face, and a peculiar fascination with the fashion industry. "Girl With A Dream" would likely be what most others would call her. Just some girl who got lucky. But Theo knew she had an eye for the stuff. This woman would legitimately lay out the entire contents of his room on his bed and play dress up with him, then put everything away neatly without hesitation. She had no concerns that her opinions weren't as good as she thought. As far as she was aware, she was the queen of late-18th-century fashion and no one was going to stop her from graciously accepting the lavish garments Theo brought to her.

The second was a man, once again the same age as them. He cooked, he cleaned, and he spent the majority of his days washing dishes and preparing tea. Darby. Darby, whose last name Theo should've probably asked about by now to give him a proper introduction. Darby was tall enough, but shorter than Theo, and he wore whatever Shirley decided. He was quiet, and he was deliberate -- detail-oriented.

Darby was unusual to Theo. Completely open to anything, though seemingly closed off, and somehow friendly and passively rude at the same time. Theo hadn't felt so drawn in by a pair of people since he first saw Guy in his childhood, playing with his mother in the garden. But this was different. Then, it was all Guy for a reason, reason being his mother was simply too old to play with school children all day. She was thankful to get clingy little Guy out of her hands. This? Well, Shirley and Darby were practically inseparable since the day they met, and Theo blended with them somehow seamlessly. Rarely out of place despite the huge class difference, religious oppositions, everything from the sky to the bottom of the sea was utterly different about them. The common ground was nothing but a fragile desire to interact.

Darby sat at the opposite end of the long dining table, leaning on his hand, making dark curls fall further into the frame of his face. They were having breakfast without the breakfast. Theo had assured all the cooks he wasn't hungry just yet, and Darby elected to skip his tea-making duties for the morning. It wasn't as if the dowager duchess had any plans to speak to or even look at her sweet son today. Most of their morning had been spent in lengthy, comfortable, understanding silence.

Theo spoke, staring at the paintings covering the walls of the room clearly not meant to be a dining room, "How far do you think the ocean goes?"

"All the way, I suppose," Darby yawned, "'Till you reach land."

"No, I meant down. We sail over it, never into it."

"Isn't any reason to do that, is there? Lest you want to get snatched by the Kraken, in which case, be my guest."

Theo laughed, "I think that after a certain point, once it's too deep to swim, it just drops off. Goes all the way through."

"You have a bizarre brain."

"But it makes sense, doesn't it?" He was beginning to get worked up, as he so often did about such little things, "Because of all of the reports of sea monsters all around the world. That Chinese news translator? They have the Kraken. Scotland have the Lochness, but so do France. Makes much more sense for them to swim through than around."

"Sure, but people are all around too. Maybe there's just lots of them. Maybe there's none at all, and we just made them up."

"Why would we do that?"

Darby smiled, finally leaning back on his chair, suddenly engaged, "Rich people make up all sorts of things to entertain themselves."

"You have a point," Theo accepted, "But why rich people?"

"Because we can't write, which means the best thing we can do to spread information like that is to shout, which means we don't get far at all."

"I could teach you to write."

"You shouldn't."

"What do you think is in the sky?"

Theo had a way of switching topics as rapidly as his mind moved, always seeking for more, and Darby had an effortless way of combatting this: doing the exact same thing. You wouldn't think two individuals like this, young, with only one of them raised in education, would spend their mornings, evenings and afternoons conversing about such topics. But, like every other thing about this pair, they would surprise you. Philosophy was Theo's favourite, and Darby's least favourite. Darby preferred the subtle art of not caring about anything, and the idea of people watching. They settled on a middle-ground. Science, but not backed up by any real science.

"Nothing. Nothing at all."

"Well there has to be something," Theo debuted, "Everyone says there has to be something."

Darby sputtered trying to get him to be quiet and let him finish his sentence, throwing a hand up, "Sure, alright, something. But the rest of it is all nothing."

"What on God's green earth do you mean by that?"

"The space around it! It's not water like the oceans or air like the skies, it's just nothing. And God's green earth is actually more of a dusty turquoise."

"Air is nothing."

"Do they teach you anything relevant as a child? Air is made of things. You know, if you blow on your hand, you can feel it," Darby chuckled as he watched Theo automatically demonstrate and look rather impressed by himself, "It's probably how you smell, too."

"How did you get so smart?"

"I don't know, I make most of it up by looking at what there is to already know. There's so much you can deduce without needing to read a full text on it."

Theo just stared. He stared, and he stared with wide, open, intent eyes. Now, he was the one leaning on his hand. Finished with the conversation but still not satisfied with the amount of talking done, the two filled the silence with more meaningless questions. Things like what's the dog's real name, what's your last name, and to what extent do you believe in God (which was a strange question for Theo to be asking, but one he would ask nonetheless).

Darby was an old soul, and Theo wished to somehow navigate a new part of the world every day. He was curious. That's what made it so easy for him to draw you into his world.