Always Remember Us This Way

Lovers in the night
Poets trying to write
We don't know how to rhyme
But, damn, we try
But all I really know
You're where I wanna go
You found the light in me that I couldn't find
~A Star is Born

Tom's breathing was ragged against Sybil's mouth, deliciously warm like their flushed faces and wandering fingers that burned with want.

She pulled him closer to her once more, fingers toying with the shiny buttons of his livery. Not to open them or anything, but just to simply revel in their closeness.

Enthusiastically, his lips went straight to hers, drawn in by a magnetic pull stronger than almost anything he had ever felt before.

She had expected their mouths to come together hard and eager, mirroring the passion they both felt within. Instead, the kiss she felt was tantalising, teasing, as though he were drawing her gently out of her shell with every tentative brush of his lips.

He tasted of desire and wine and Christmas.

The smell, the taste, the low sensuous sound of his moan, every sensation was giving her goosebumps, something that no other man had ever done before.

She felt things in the pit of her stomach, new-born and curling and powerful emotions that raged wildly deep inside her and made her feel warm and dizzy all over.

Emotions she would only expect from the heroine of some Austen or Bronte novel...

They shouldn't be doing this, not now and definitely not here!

The sliver of yellow light from underneath the linen cupboard door cast just enough of a glow across the pair of them that she could make out his swollen lips and navy eyes, dark and wild like the Irish Sea on a stormy day.

Even dilated by passion, a certain earnestness remained in their swirling depths and posed to her an unspoken question...the same question that he had first asked almost a year earlier when dropping her off in York.

Not a day has gone by since then where she hasn't thought of him, and of the proposal he knew she would consider.

And consider she most certainly had...even though her heart had made up it's mind as soon as he had asked...perhaps even before then.

There was no choice, Lady Sybil Crawley could, and had during her season, meet every eligible bachelor in England, educated and charming young men whom her father would happily accept, but none of them could ever compare to her Tom Branson.

So stubborn and passionate and open-minded and wonderful. He was the most complete person she had ever met.

"Are you sure this is alright?", Tom asked, not yet ready to let go of his love's waist, totally afraid that this may perhaps be the one and only chance he had to hold her in his arms.

His left ear still tingled from where her lips had fleetingly brushed against his lobe upstairs.

It was the night of the servants ball and neither of them had wanted to be there. What a bizarre thing it was to be celebrating amidst England's troubles on the battlefield in France and Ireland's troubles on the streets of Dublin.

Nearing the end of the single painfully short dance they had shared upstairs ( both under the very nose and without the knowledge of the entire Crawley family), Sybil had asked Tom to wait a few moments and then follow her downstairs.

And follow her he would...to the ends of the earth if she would allow it.

Lady Sybil Crawley knew very well that many an unmarried young lady had lost her good name over far less than what she and Tom were now doing.

Not to mention how certain they both were that her father, Lord Grantham, would dismiss him on the spot had the Earl even the slightest inkling of the whereabouts of the lips and hands of the young Irish chauffeur.

But with her beau's arms around her waist and hers on his chest, the young aristocrat felt more alive and exhilarated than she ever had in her whole two decades of life thus far...

...surely this couldn't be wrong, not when it felt so right.

Sybil felt Tom's heart pound in his chest, thumping so hard she could feel it from where she was pressed right up against him.

His Heart.

The heart that he had once promised her in exchange for her own, the same heart that had kept him by her side and away from prison and war in the tumultuous times they lived in.

Tom smiled softly, interlacing his fingers with hers upon his chest and against the slightly rough cotton of his shirt. "It's yours, love. You know that, don't you?" .

His heart thrummed beneath her fingers.

"Just promise me you won't break the poor thing, darlin' "

"Tom, I-", Sybil started but stopped when he drew her nearer once again. He had that look in his eyes, the one that inspired in her every emotion that her brain told her it was dangerous and illogical for either of them to feel.

She and Tom were worlds apart, weren't they?

Would there ever come a day where she could call Tom Branson her own? and, in turn, truly let herself become his.

She wanted there to be.

In that moment Sybil Crawley set the near certaincy of her family's prejudice aside.

She made up her own mind, answering for herself and for the bright eyed Irish man standing opposite her in the dark.

There was no going back, she didn't want there to be.

"I promise to safeguard and protect your heart, Tom", she whispered quietly, honestly. The weight of her words feeling almost like a marriage vow, just as his promise to dedicate his life to her happiness did that day outside the training hospital in York.

"Just promise me that you will look after mine?"

Tom looked down at her wide eyed and disbelieving with nothing but awe and amazement for the women before him shining in his eyes.

If there was a man who enjoyed debate, who enjoyed converstation, who was a true beneficiary of the Irish gift of the gab, it was him...but for the first time since she had met him, Tom Branson seemed completely lost for words.

"Does that mean-?"

Sybil smiled and nodded, cheekily standing up on her tiptoes to reach for her darling once more. "I assure you, that is exactly what I mean..."

This is my first Downton fic so please be nice, I'm getting back into my Downton mood for the new movie in September and decided there was no better way to then by writing a little fic for my favourite Downton ship. I know it doesn't fit exactly into canon but I hope you enjoyed my efforts nonetheless. Hope you are having a really lovely day wherever you are!

Pearlydewdrop xx