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kenzieam · 6 years

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It’s Time - The Final Chapter (Bucky X OC)

Rating: M (language, smut, angst)

Genre: Drama/Angst

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Potential Triggers, please read with caution

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Will Lev go back to Seattle? If she does, will Bucky give her another chance to come back to him? Or has she completely broken him this time?

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“Barton?” My boss’ voice is sharp, to the point. “I need you back in Seattle now.”

“What?!”

“I need you. Leary is back early and wants to bump up his meeting.”

“What time is it there?” It’s seven am here, what the hell time is it on the west coast?

“Four-the-fuck-AM! He’s been on the horn for an hour now! I think he’s back on the coke. He’s parked his yacht and is flying back today and you know he only wants you on the project!”

I sigh. Richard “Call me Dick” Leary is my firm’s most MVP client and a constant pain in my ass. He is forever throwing his seemingly endless money at new projects and needing plans drawn up. A year and a half ago I worked on one of his designs and he decided I was the only one at the firm who knew ‘what the fuck they’re doing’ as he so eloquently put it, and demands I lead each and every one of his new ventures. He’s old Southern money turned new millennium and I actually don’t mind working with him, most of the time. He knows he’s the piggy bank portion of the deal, and is usually respectful of my plans, but occasionally the old Antebellum charm breaks free and it’s like Foghorn Leghorn for awhile until he settles back down. He’s got my boss buffaloed so hard that the man who doesn’t rise from his king-size bed for anything less than Armageddon before 6 am is currently fielding calls at four-the-fuck-AM and scrambling to comply. It would be funny if it didn’t so royally fuck up my plans.

“I can’t.”

“Oh no you don’t. You do not say no to this guy.”

What he means is, he can’t say no to this guy. “Tony, I’m just getting things figured-”

“I know and I’m sorry.” I’m temporarily staggered. Tony Stark never says he’s sorry, not even that time he threw open the conference room door and smashed Thor in the face, breaking his nose with a spectacular crack. “But I need you here. This is his last hurrah before he retires, he says, and he wants to go big-”

“The plans are done, he wasn’t supposed to be back for a month-”

“I know! But he’s back! And if he walks we are done! Remember the Thanos Group?”

I do. The Thanos Group was an elite firm that used to work for The Dick. They pissed him off one too many times and he buried them, they lost every big client and had to file for Chapter 11. Moral of the story, keep Big Dick happy.

“I’ve booked you a 9 am flight out, I need you here TODAY!”

Shit. If I say no, I can kiss my career goodbye. Maybe Bucky needs an assistant to hold nails for him. But, if I do this last dance.....

Maybe I can have my cake and eat it too.

I just hope Bucky will understand.

“Okay. I’ll be there.”

“Fuck Barton. I owe you.”

“Yes, you do.” I hang up and dial the local taxi service for a ride then crawl reluctantly out of bed, start to dress and gather my things. I wince as I hear the front door open and close, the sounds of bags rustling. Then Bucky appears in the doorway, his wide, happy smile dissolving before my eyes as he sees me getting ready to leave. The sudden, surprised sorrow in his eyes kills me.

“Where are you going?” His voice is hushed, as if he can’t draw the breath to speak louder.

“I have to fly back to Seattle. My boss called.”

“What? What do you mean you have to fly back?” The confusion and dawning fear in his eyes cuts me to the quick.

He thinks I’m leaving him again.

“This client of mine is back early and demanding a meeting. I’d tell them to get lost but then I’d lose my job.” I glance at my phone and wince. I’m not even going to have time to say goodbye to Clint and Nat, I’ll barely have time to grab my suitcase and lock up my new house.

“Levi, stay.” His voice is breaking and I can’t look at him or I’ll lose it too.

“Bucky, I can’t. I’m sorry. I’m going to miss my flight.” I move to step past him, knowing in my bones that I’m fucking this up all over again, but can’t stop.

Bucky steps in my way, his fingers grip my shoulders, quivering slightly and I look up into his eyes, wishing instantly that I hadn’t.

Tears stand out in his gentle blue eyes and the fear and hurt on his face is something I never want to see again. Regardless of what I say right now, he’s trapped five years ago.

“You’re running away again.” He chokes out.

Tears run hot down my cheeks. I’m not, but it sure the hell looks like it, doesn’t it? A horn honking outside interrupts my response and I’m torn.

I have to go, it’s necessary and I hope it will pay off in the end.

I lean forward and press a kiss to Bucky’s trembling lips, feel him press desperately back; feel his broken moan against my mouth as I pull away.

“I’ll call you. I’ll be back, I promise.”

I glance back as I leave, and the sight of Bucky standing there, broken-hearted, cheeks wet with tears will haunt me for years.

I make the flight, barely and fall into my seat. Tony at least sprung for business class, and no one sits beside me which will be convenient when I start to cry. I can’t get the look on Bucky’s face out of my mind, and it’s driving me crazy.

He thinks I’ve left him again, dressed it up prettier this time, but turned around and left all the same. My mind flashes back to last night and I shudder as memories overwhelm me.

Still breathing heavily, Bucky lifts me, surprising me with his power and carries me through into his bedroom. Laying me on the bed he crawls over me, hovering for a moment and gazing at me in wonder. Despite the fact that I’m naked beneath him, and he’s wearing little more than his jeans pushed down his thighs, he still can’t seem to wrap his head around me being here.

Pushing his jeans the rest of the way off he stretches over me again, settling between my legs and propping himself up on his forearms. He continues to gaze at me, eyes roaming languidly across my face, as if he’s memorizing me anew.

“I love you, baby. So much.” He murmurs tenderly, trailing his finger along my jaw-line.

“I love you too.” The words don’t seem adequate for the depth of feelings I have for him and I reach up to trace along his jaw as well, smile when he closes his eyes and leans into my touch, biting his bottom lip.

With a groan, he lines up and drives slowly inside me, dropping his head back, the muscles in his arms shaking. When he’s fully seated his head falls forward again and he buries his head in the crook of my neck as he starts to thrust, spine arching sharply and I run my hands along the straining muscles of his back with a purr.

He murmurs into my throat with each thrust, words of love and worship that flare through my blood and nestle in my heart. This is exactly where I belong, where we belong.

My orgasm washes over me almost lazily, and Bucky guides me through it, watching me with something akin to awe as he keeps on driving into me, curling his fingers into my hair and whispering sweet words to me. As my shaking fades he continues to make love to me, slowing his movements when he’s close, prolonging his own pleasure to bring me again and again to the edge, watching me tumble off into sweet bliss with a tender smile on his face, belying his strain as he holds his own body back, determined to show me just how much I mean to him before allowing his own shuddering release.

I cup his jaw, relish the ragged moan he gives me; sweat stands on his brow, his body shuddering as he drops his head to mine, captures my lips in a passionate, soul-capturing kiss and I press back with everything I have, pour everything into my lips and his wrecked groan rips through me.

As I feel my body ready to explode one more time, I pull away from Bucky’s kiss enough to moan. “Baby, come with me.... please, Bucky.”

His eyes meet mine for a heartbeat, wide and full of too many emotions to name. His hand moves from my hair to my throat, gripping lightly, giving him an anchor as he finally gives in to his ecstasy and, as my own body ignites in one final, all-consuming climax, he lets go with a roar, face twisting in sweet pain, muscles rock-hard and trembling. His final erratic thrusts end as he drives against me one last time, throbbing and spilling inside me, filling me completely and seeping back out to coat our joined bodies.

Finally he collapses on me, panting, body shaking with residual aftershocks. He sounds wrecked, breath rasping in his throat, but his body is languid and relaxed, cat-like in it’s grace. He’s still inside me when he kisses me again, still gasping for breath when he speaks.

“I love you Levi, with all my goddamn heart, I’ll never-”

“Would you like something to drink?”

I startle guiltily as the flight attendant chirps beside me. I’ve missed the takeoff, we’re already at cruising altitude and I swallow hard, fighting to push down the emotions currently threatening to overwhelm me. Bucky gave over his soul to me last night.

And this morning I got up and left him.

“Vodka.” I gasp, “rocks.”

***************************************************************************************************************************************************** I stagger out of the company car. I usually take the subway or an Uber home, but tonight I was so fucking exhausted I called down for a car; if Tony has a problem with that he can go fornicate with himself. It’s been a week since I left and I’ve been working my ass off to get this last project done so I can go home.

Home.

The old neighborhood, where Mrs. Proctor shuffles to the corner store and back home once a day, ready to brain any young whippersnapper fool enough to step on her lawn; where I can look out my old bedroom window and see the spot on the old tree that grows against the house where Bucky slipped that one time trying to sneak in at night and tore a strip of bark off to keep from falling to the ground; where I just have to step out the front door and saunter for thirty seconds to visit my brother, his wife and my niece; where every corner of the neighborhood holds a memory, welcome phantoms of my childhood.

My loft is already sold, fully furnished, for an embarrassing profit. And today I secured my career.

The only dark spot has been Bucky.

He hasn’t been answering my texts or phone calls.

I called Clint in a panic that first day, and while he was still pissed at me for hightailing it for Seattle without ‘even a proper good-bye’, he nonetheless gave into my begging and drove down to check on him. He reported back that Bucky was alive, but not okay. That all he was doing was sitting in his Adirondack chair on his covered deck with Meat in his lap and, while he’d talk to Clint, he wasn’t volunteering to initiate any conversations.

I’d broken him all over again.

I’d been frantic all week, sneaking moments to furtively dial his number, wait with a held breath for him to pick up, for his gentle ‘Levi’ to echo across the line to me, and settle the churning in my gut.

My texts were unanswered too, so I pestered Steve, Sam and Clint instead, receiving second-hand reports about Bucky, but no real words from the man himself. They were cautious; frustrated and angry with me for going again, leaving behind a broken man for them to try and pick up and piece together again, and while they’d relay my messages, they weren’t willing to get into the middle of it again.

Regardless, I was pushing ahead with my plans. I’d crawl across broken glass to show Bucky how repentant I was, and could only hope that he was willing to listen to me one final time.

I’m fumbling for my keys, squinting in the fading twilight when I hear a familiar voice.

“Levi.”

My heart nearly cracks apart and tears spring instantly to my eyes. My portfolio falls to the ground and my hands start shaking. And then he’s there, beside me, his scent enveloping me, his warm hand on mine to steady it’s trembling. Reaching down with the other, he picks my portfolio up and holds it out to me. I raise my head and meet his eyes.

He looks broken, pale and thin, but I recognize resolve in his gaze.

It’s growing dark out here, and cold. I have a million things I want to say, but I don’t want to do it out on the street. I pray that Bucky is willing to come a little further for me.

“Come in?”

He nods, a mingled shake of weariness and relief and I turn back to the door, manage to find the right key. Bucky’s appearance has renewed me and, while it’s a shaky, precarious burst of energy, I’m using it.

We’re silent in the elevator and as we walk down the hallway. Unlocking the door I step inside my loft and Bucky follows me. Slung over his shoulder is a duffel bag that he sets down with a thump. I shut and lock the door behind us, wait nervously for him to speak first.

“You’re moving?” He sounds surprised.

I drop my things on the table and reach out hesitantly for his hand, exhaling in relief when he lets me take it.

“Sit down.” I beckon him into the living room and he sits stiffly on the couch, still gazing around suspiciously. Although I’ve sold the loft furnished (and they can keep all that modern Hipster shit) I’ve been packing up the momentos and personal items; there hasn’t been much.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

He shakes his head and I cautiously sit beside him. I’m not sure what’s going to happen. Bucky hasn’t spoken directly to me in a week, is he here to make trouble, has he snapped? Decided to visit back upon me a taste of the misery I always seem to leave him in?

“Bucky, I-”

“Baby, come home-”

We speak at the same time, fall back into awkward silence. Slowly he reaches out and takes my hand, pulls it to his mouth and presses a kiss to my knuckles, I can feel his lips trembling against my skin.

“I didn’t fight hard enough last time,” he begins, his voice cracking. “I let you leave and I let myself chicken out every time I came out here to see you. I’m not doing that again...... Please Baby, come home with me.” His eyes lift to mine as he whispers the last and it completely erodes the remaining strength I have.

He pulls me into his lap and lets me ugly-cry against his shoulder until I can only hiccup miserably.

Smoothing my hair back from my face he gently cups my cheek and lifts my head so he can look into my eyes. His cheeks are wet too, eyes red-rimmed and I capture his mouth with mine, the rush of relief nearly stealing my breath when he kisses me back.

“I am.” I choke out.

“What?” Surprise flashes through his eyes and if I wasn’t so goddamn overwrought right now, so bone-deep exhausted and worn out, I might be able to muster a teasing laugh.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“I don’t-”

“I didn’t want to just text you this, I wanted to talk to you directly but you stopped answering my calls.” I grin ruefully at him. “Being on the receiving end of that sucks, by the way. I’m sorry I did that to you.”

Tentative hope is blooming in his gaze, his eyes boring into mine. “What are you saying?” He breathes.

“I’m moving home. I’ve sold this place.” I gesture to the boxes.

“Baby?” Bucky gasps, eyes widening as it starts to come together for him.

“That’s why I left,” my heart aches to say this. “I needed the leverage. If I did this last job for my boss and did it well, I’d have the chance to get out of the firm with a recommendation, rather than a black mark. The client is happy, which means Tony is happy, and I negotiated a release of my work contract. One of my co-workers, Thor, left last year to join his brother Loki in Manhattan and they started their own architectural firm. I start at Odinson International next month.”

I look down now, too shamed to meet his eyes. My intentions were good, but I still left him without an explanation, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions. “I’m sorry for leaving you like that. I wasn’t running, but I understand how it would look like it. If you don’t-”

I don’t get to finish the sentence, because Bucky is crushing his mouth to mine in a mind-blowing kiss, stealing my breath. He’s frantic against me and I’m just as crazy back, finally released from the tension and pain of the last week, the unknown and ghosts of the past. We’re clawing at each other’s clothes and then he’s inside me, driving deep and hard and I’m careening wildly into screaming bliss as he follows, groaning long and low in release as I cradle him to me, feel my soul give over to this man; my forever, my life.

For someone who designs and loves architecture, I hate decorating them.

The bedroom is finally done, repainted a gentle dove-grey. It’s the last room to be painted and I’m so fucking glad it’s over. The last number of weeks have been a whirlwind. Bucky stayed in Seattle with me for another week while I took care of loose ends, finishing up at work and shipping my boxes across the country so Bucky and I could fly over later. He played tourist, sending me selfies of him at various scenic points of the city, making me laugh as I wrapped up my career at Stark Enterprises.

He and Grimshaw became fast friends, despite the black cat’s usual scorn of strangers and more than once I’d come back late to find the both of them crashed out on the couch trying to wait up for me, Grimshaw sprawled across Bucky’s broad chest, gently rising and falling with his breaths.

Said black cat was not impressed with flying across the country however, and gave me the cold shoulder for a few days after we landed, saving his purrs and rubs for Bucky.

Traitor.

Bucky’s place sold quickly, surprising him and we moved in together last week. Meat and Grim have an uneasy truce, with Meat under the understanding that if he bays like a hellhound, he can expect a decisive swat across the face from one pissed-off cat.

The entire family was thrilled to hear I was moving back, their anger disappearing as my plan was laid bare and the barbecue in Clint’s backyard when we finally flew home for good was twice as big as last time, and I spent the entire time in Bucky’s lap, snuggled close to him.

We’ve updated Mom’s old house, combining my things and Bucky’s together and I love the eclectic mix. My loft in Seattle was cold and impersonal, modern Hipster, but this is home. My commute into Manhattan will be easy, my new bosses polar opposites of Tony’s high-strung snobbery, and I’ve already worked out my part-time schedule, ensuring I only need to brave the streets of the Big Apple once or twice a week, the rest of my work can be done in my Dad’s old office, repainted and sporting a brand-new drafting table.

Bucky and I have been inseparable, making love each night to exhaustion, drifting asleep tangled together, foreheads touching, breath mingling and waking up still touching, still wrapped around each other, no matter how much we’ve shifted during the night.

Sam and Wanda’s baby is due any day now, and the entire family is on stand-by. Lou babbled something that sounded suspiciously like ’Lev’ the other day and I’m so goddamn happy I think I need to pinch myself sometimes and wake from this blissful dream.

Meat’s baying tells me that Bucky’s home and is cut short with a yelp as Grim slaps him silent again. I smile and cross my arms, taking in the new wall color, knowing Bucky will find me as soon as he walks into the house.

Our house.

I’m not disappointed, and strong arms soon band around me from behind, his stubble tickling my throat as he presses kisses to my neck, making me giggle and squirm in his grip. He chuckles and holds me tighter.

“Hey baby,” he purrs, nuzzling behind my ear.

“Hey,” I murmur back, relaxing into his touch.

“You’re done.”

“Yeah, like it?”

“I’ll sleep in a cardboard box baby, as long as I'm with you.”

“Flirt,” I tease, turning in his arms and he captures my mouth, stealing my breath with a head-spinning kiss. Every kiss, every caress, every touch is like this, Bucky making good on his word to spend the rest of his life showing me how much he loves me, how much he needs me. And I give it right back, I wasted five years in anger and hurt, I’m not wasting another second.

I can’t stop my smile, not anymore and reach into my pocket for the item I’ve been holding onto all day. It’s been in my hand since this morning, but Bucky had already left for the work-site and, again, this wasn’t something to say over a text.

He’s still kissing me, still pouring all his love into his touch, making my head swim and now it’s my turn to blow his mind. I nudge his chest and he pulls away just enough to look in my eyes, frowning in confusion at my shit-eating grin before looking down at my hand, resting against his chest.

A pregnancy test, the + sign clearly visible.

His eyes fly back up to mine as he physically jerks.

“Levi?” His voice breaks, eyes filling with tears. “For real?”

I can only nod through my tears as Bucky throws back his head and howls, a visceral roar of pure, unadulterated joy and triumph. Then he’s kissing me again, and I’ve never felt so happy before as I do in this moment.

“Congratulations, daddy.” I murmur as Bucky bursts into tears, burying his head in my neck, crushing me to him.

It’s all he’s ever wanted, all we’ve ever wanted since we first laid eyes on each other, so many years ago.

It’s Time.

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#bucky barnes #bucky barnes fanfiction #au bucky barnes #bucky and nika #bucky and lev

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salmagundimagazine · 7 years

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DOWNTON ABBEY: ANGLOPHILIA IS EMBARRASSING by Katherine Fusco

from Salmagundi, Summer 2017 [The TV Issue]

A little past the show’s midway point, I began having the same conversation with all my friends about Downton Abbey.

“Are you still watching it?”

“Ugh. No, we got stuck in the rape plot.”

Finishing the show’s final seasons required a committed fortitude.

Sitting next to my husband on the couch, I reached for some popcorn.

“Are we still in the rape plot?”

“Mmm, I think it’s a murder plot now,” he corrected me.

The good maid Anna’s rape and its half-lives ended the show’s appeal for many.

It’s not that we’re so opposed to watching brutality on a weeknight. I’ve eaten many a taco salad while watching the women of Game of Thrones bent over the furniture; I’ve seen men shivved while coaxing the baby to nurse; and once, we watched a body dissolved in a bathtub while drinking boxed wine.

We watchers of quality television, we can stomach a rape.

And yet, Anna’s rape and the show’s many returns to the event throughout the later seasons elicit something ugly: “Why can’t they drop that?” “I’m so sick of the rape plot.”

The most justifiable version of our aversion to the rape is that we see the creators of Downton, along with the producers of the other, more violent television we consume, treating rape as a mere plot device.

And yet, I suspect it’s something else. My hunch is that Anna’s rape by a rakish footman felt like a betrayal to American viewers who had grown accustomed to the show’s other pleasures. Sometimes despite ourselves.

Ten or twenty years ago, I would not have watched Downton Abbey. I would have distanced myself from those who did.

On a recent visit to a grad school friend, I caught a flicker of that old feeling. She’d gotten herself on a mailing list that must have been taken from PBS or NPR donors, or the multitude of New Yorker subscribers, with issues perilously towered between toilet and sink. Maybe the targets were literature teachers like us.

The catalog sold Far Side “School for the Gifted” sweatshirts alongside mugs with the phrase “She who must be obeyed” lettering their shiny bellies. The kind of tchotchkes you might buy for your AB/Fab-watching mother for Christmas when you are a teenager and you don’t care to know anything very specific about your parents’ wants and desires. Have a Starry Nights umbrella; have a magnet of The David in a Hawaiian shirt.

My friend and I, too old, responsible, and inclined to acid reflux to drink and smoke as we did in school, lie on her living room floor, eating takeout, sipping beer, and playing a game wherein we have to pick one item from each of the catalogue’s embarrassing pages that we would be willing to own. Not surprisingly, amidst products both smugly literate and earnestly aspirational, a large Downton Abbey spread features a large cornucopia of goods we agree are the worst: lace-edged nightgowns, plated mirrors and hairbrushes, imitation jewelry, and DVD box sets detailing life in manor houses. “These are so horrible,” we whisper, “they aren’t even funny.”

The consumer of these Downton baubles, the glittering imitation brooches—she is everything I tried not to be as a young woman. When you are a girl and a bookworm, choices can feel limited.

Indeed, I still feel the limited possibilities for female identification whenever I watch a television show on which more than one woman appears. On the one hand, shows that pass the Bechdel test by presenting women with interests — as opposed to the singular “hot girl” amongst the boys — seem admirable, but I still feel the pressure of the typological when presented with a range of women: Are you a Carrie or a Samantha, a Marnie or a Shoshanna, a Lady Mary or, God forbid, a Lady Edith?

As a bookish girl, seeking others like me—readers of a serious sort—I was dismayed by the stereotype that came into focus: She loved kittens, wore dowdy pastels, ran to the mousy, would never be cool, never seem sexy or edgy. She was the girl who thought it would be fun to go to high tea. In my mind, there was one source and one icon to blame for the image of the female reader that so haunted me: England, and Jane Austen’s England in particular.

I became a student of American literature; like my country, I was too young and without enough of a sense of history to have paid much attention to either the cool or the ugly roughness that both had deep roots in England, or the pervasive and embarrassing middle-classness that was part of being an American. Instead, England remained to me the dreamland of girls who would never date.

My problem with England was a part of the sexually-anxious narcissism that accompanied my teens and twenties, so desperate was I to roll with the boys, to drink with the boys, and, once a literature major, to read with the boys: whether Palahniuk’s Fight Club, which was inspiring theme nights at the alternative frat—all whisky, Marlboro reds, and sloppy, scrambling boxing—, the strange macho sexuality of Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, or David Foster Wallace’s threatening challenge to all my would-be novelist friends. I remember people whispering intensely about Burroughs. Recently, novelist Claire Vaye Watkins has written about pandering to male writers through the tough, heartless, and heartbreaking prose of her short story collection. I see this period of my reading similarly, going shot-for-shot with the boys. But I wanted to be cool. American, edgy and cool.

This American cool continues, I think, in our recent prestige television, which offers bad boys you want to root for, the likes of Tony Soprano, Don Draper, and Walter White.

I still sometimes visit with American bad boys; I write about and teach the cruel works of Nathanael West, Fitzgerald’s more cynical friend. But as I’ve aged, I find that I have less patience for them. They can be a fling, but not my constant companions. Especially when the little things of my life seem hard and the big things of the world seem even harder, I want to return again to the coziness that was my youthful idea of England. And maybe this is true of the millions of other Americans who turned off HBO and tuned in to public television; after trying so hard to be crass and edgy, perhaps we do want to be that kind of girl after all.

What is it that we Americans want from the English? We want them to be vaguely like us, but better: we see them as politer and fancier, but we also like to think we’re more democratic, not so snotty. We also want not to have to know too much about the differences. Tea and knights, yes. Elaborate details about entailment, no, as the differences between the PBS and BBC explanations of the family’s wealth indicate.

We Americans see England as fundamentally belonging to the past, and thus soft and rosy. When my husband’s friend from London visited us in Nashville, the debutants were no match for him, so taken were they by his accent. The cost for him came in the form of bewildering conversations about jousting and whether “y’all have gyms there” and the terrible imitations into which the women slipped when the bourbon was flowing.

My sister’s English accent is also bad, somewhere between Foghorn Leghorn and Eliza Doolittle. It is also identical to the accent she tried when I moved to Nashville. I remember an early phone call home during which she filled me in on the day’s business. She’d been out shopping: “I went to Target; wait, do you have Target there?” Her view of the South is not unlike the debutant’s view of England, a place distant spatially and perhaps temporally as well. My current students in Mountain West feel similarly; they explain to me that they could never go to the South because they are Mexican. Meanwhile, my Anglo students refer to the rapidly gentrifying Hispanic neighborhood in town as “sketchy,” “the ghetto.”

My sister’s bad accent isn’t unique. We all have them. In a theater class at my arts magnet high school we memorized a little poem to practice the two relevant English accents: high-class and Cockney. A room of fifteen-year-olds, we chanted together, “If to hoot and to toot a Hottentot tot were taught by a Hottentot tutor, should the tutor get hot if the Hottentot tot should hoot and toot at the tutor?”

Not high-class, working-class, or English, we middle-class white American children—progeny of good liberal parents committed to public school education, if not neighborhood schools—happily swallowed our “Hs” and gulped out the bit of nonsense, so far from our knowing as to be scrubbed clean of racism’s taint. With our sense of Englishness as accent, and feelings of Africa and Europe as far in time and space, the little rhyme seemed to have nothing to do with our sense of racism as a real and pressing American problem.

The vagueness of Anglophilia is, I think, at least part of why the series’ second half felt like such a betrayal. Belonging too much to the world of problems Americans consider “the real,” the rape of Anna left a bitter taste that lingered, curdling our feelings about the series.

With the exception of that troublesome rape, Downton has offered the coziness that is the American idea of Englishness, the one I once rejected but now seek. As a new mother, I gaze longingly at the teas in the library during which the nanny parades by babies in sailor suits and then sweeps them neatly away, leaving their parents to drink and chat. My Anglophilia, you see, is not just about class as well as cozyness—the upper-class comfort and self-assuredness towards which we in the American middle class doggedly strain.

My embarrassment at retaining an idiot Anglophilia is somewhat assuaged by the knowledge that my American ancestors have been similarly foolish and aspirational in their views. In her book Anglophilia: Deference, Devotion, and Antebellum America, scholar Eliza Tamarkin reminds us that even way back when, in what my students would call the olden days, “Anglophilia [was] about paying respects to the symbolic value of England.” Among the more bizarre aspects of antebellum Anglophilia was the abolitionist argument that the English had done away with slavery because it didn’t fit with their overwhelming politeness. Owning people simply wasn’t seemly.

Politeness and impropriety are similarly behavioral big tents in Downton, covering all manner of progressive and regressive attitudes. Rapes, murders, blackmailing, and defections aside, on Downton, breaking with good manners is the clearest marker that a character is a baddie.

In the fifth season alone impoliteness covers, among other social failings, class snobbery (the aristocratic Merton boys), a genocidal rising power (Herr Hitler and his brown shirts, who will be revealed as the killers of Edith’s Michael, described in the show as beer hall unruliness), strident socialism (Miss Bunting), being a grouchy sad sack (Princess Kuragin), abuse of servants (Lord Sinderby), and anti-Semitism (Lady Flintshire, the Mertons again—naughty boys, those). Interestingly, the Dowager’s old flame Prince Kuragin also appears guilty of anti-Semitism and proximity to the genocidal murder of the pogroms when he bursts out at cousin Rose’s Jewish love interest, “you’re no Russian;” however, the show doesn’t present the outburst as something to hold against the man, perhaps because the transgression occurs in a soup kitchen, rather than a drawing room or library.

To be a hero, then, is to make others feel comfortable, to ease their embarrassment and smooth the way. A phrase I’ve learned to love from the show, “shall we go through?,” often comes from the wonderful Cora, the American matriarch committed to living lightly and lovingly, for whom guiding family and guests politely from potentially awkward conversation to pleasantly formal dining and drinking appears a life’s work.

“Shall we go through?” The show goes through with amazing rapidity, throwing forward plot twist after plot twist, the bulk of which are resolved neatly by banishing a rude interloper from the great house, or easing over unpleasantness, as when Cousin Rose pretends that her father-in-law’s mistress is an old friend, thus explaining away the uninvited guest. When the housekeeper Mrs. Hughes confesses to Mr. Carson that she has no money to retire with him because she’s been paying for her mentally disabled sister’s institutionalization, she worries, “Oh no, now I’ve embarrassed you.”

Coming from a nation with only loosely codified manners—which we occasionally boast of and are only occasionally shamed by—I find myself fascinated by a world in which all errors, all crises, all sins might be so beautifully papered over. Or, to put it otherwise, I long for a world in which I’ve been taught to behave beautifully and this beautiful behavior means that I am good.

This, too, as our own new rich fill TV screens: whether real housewives, basketball WAGs, or Kardashians, the idea of England as cozy past when people were polite stands as contrast. As does Kate Middleton, whose big shiny teeth and big shiny hair and tiny formal hats and tiny, tidy pregnancies make her a simulacrum of a princess. So too, The Great British Baking Show, which introduced Americans to a world of reality television in which no one declares “I’m not here to make friends” and the pastries are inscrutable. “Pudding,” “biscuit,” and “pie” take on strange new meanings.

The Anglophile’s imaginary England is a kind of mirror world. Like a grandfather—a relative in whom we see resemblance, but who clearly hails from another time. We feel affectionate toward him and maybe a little superior. Watching Downton, it’s lovely to see a plot in which the patriarch gets drunk, and rather than starting a brawl or bedding a scullery maid, he begins an awkward toast—a potential embarrassment that quick-witted chauffeur-turned-son-in-law Tom covers over by leading the household in rounds of “for he’s a jolly good fellow.” And the “good” characters’ foibles are so soft that it’s easy to feel a little wiser than those Granthams while also envying their outdated lifestyle.

A different program might show the wealthier classes’ predation upon the poor, but the violence within Downton Abbey remains reassuringly within class. And though we all hate the rape plot, what a relief that the storyline remains snugly downstairs. It allows the show’s commitment to the idea of noblesse oblige to remain an inviting temptation, leading to imaginings of how lovely we might behave if only we had a bit of nobility to be obliging with. Like Lady Sybil taking the red-haired maid under her wing. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a maid? Of course, one must not imagine being the maid.

With so much expansive politeness and correctness forming our idea of the English—“Keep Calm and Carry On!”—it’s surprising to hear missives from the real Britain, the one that exists in the now with us. The interviews during the Brexit vote give a nasty shock, as even good old England takes its place in a Europe increasingly Islamophobic and nativist. Grandfather has done worse than slip up and use the out of date “colored”—he’s said something truly awful and not cozy at all.

This is not how we like to think of our grandfathers. It’s not why we Americans turn our faces to gaze across the Atlantic. Instead, we wish to see the slightly fusty but well-meaning and well-mannered behavior of the Dowager Countess and Lord Grantham. Though they miss the old days (the first season features the Dowager cringing away from electric light), they are adaptable. Lord Grantham admits the nature of warfare has changed and nods to the feelings of his cook Mrs. Patmore, making a special monument off the beaten track for her nephew who was executed for defecting during the war.

I recently watched a bit of Manor House, a reality show in which modern people are cast as members of a grand Edwardian home. Some become the Lords and Ladies of the house; the tall and good-looking young man becomes First Footman, and the unlucky become scullery maids. The effects of a rigid upstairs-downstairs class system set in with breathtaking speed. After the initial meeting between the family and the staff, one of the maids confesses to the camera that though she knows her master and mistress are just normal twenty-first century people like herself, she hates them. In contrast, the mistress relates how lovely it is to be cared for; “it’s almost like I’ve slipped into childhood again,” she coos.

Such animosity between staff and family receives little screen time on Downton. Generally, class resentment is nothing but a misunderstanding, as when kitchen maid Daisy, who has been educated just to the point of dissatisfaction, misinterprets the characteristically vague kindness of Lady Grantham and tries to force a position for her tenant farmer father-in-law on the estate.

Instead, class hostility appears in the mouths of malefactors such as ladies’ maid O’Brien, a villain marked by truly terrible hair, or the blackmailing hotel maid who threatens Lady Mary and Lord Grantham with the prediction that her kind are coming up in the world. These instances of class outrage both come from maids and are directed at the eldest daughter Lady Mary for her sexual peccadillos, whether the ill-fated night with the exotic Mr. Pamook of the weak heart or her trial marriage hotel weekend with Tony Gillingham. Meantime, the matter of hygiene in manor houses’ downstairs extend to moral uprightness, to which the series nods, occasionally emphasizing the separate men’s and women’s quarters, but not to the near-prurient degree with which the sexual activity of maids would have been scrutinized, with the housekeeper examining their sanitary belts for evidence that the staff was staying chaste and not getting in the family way.

What comfort, then, in Downton’s somewhat relaxed morality. “We’re all becoming so modern!,” is a constant refrain. Lord Grantham, bless his ulcerous Lordship—what won’t he accept under the name of being a good host? He oversees one daughter’s marriage to a chauffeur, one daughter’s love child entering the household, and one daughter’s blackmail for her sexual intrepidness---not to mention his gay footman and multiply–murder-accused valet Mr. Bates. Downton is what Americans want from their betters, it’s what we see in the photographs of celebrities shopping at Trader Joes, playing on the beach with their children—Stars! They’re Just Like Us!! They are better looking, go on better vacations, and rich, but they use detergent!!! With Downton, we peek in on the nobility and see they make mistakes! Like us!

And I must admit, the more tired I am; the more panicked I feel as I forget to put sunscreen on the baby or to provide the daycare enough steamed finger foods diced into ¼ inch pieces; the more I long for time to work rather than time to spend with my husband and child; or the more I wish to spend time at home and quit my job, filled as it is with student emails and meetings; the more, stupidly and against what I know, I hunger for Downton.

The light touch of the series which makes it all come out right in the end—the deaths, the war, the murders, and yes, even the rape—it’s a warm blanket that feels wholesome even when that niggling voice reminds me of its near offensive flimsiness. It’s best not to think too seriously about the show. One is bound to have an unpleasant realization, like learning that eating bran muffins is just having unfrosted cupcakes for breakfast.

I recently heard the women of Another Round explain that only white people enjoy the “what past decade would you have rather lived in?” hypothetical. I get what they’re saying—and this is also Downton’s frivolous genius. Polite, like the Abbey’s denizens, the show doesn’t remind us of the footmen’s and maids’ more unpleasant tasks—the emptying of chamber pots, the pulling threads of hair from brushes to build elaborate false pieces—or that a hallboy gets his name because he has no room, and in fact sleeps in the hall. We don’t miss this granular detail because it’s not Daisy or Mrs. Patmore, or even good Anna, with whom the show means us to feel a likeness. We who play the game of transporting ourselves backwards through time don’t make that journey to light the morning fires for the big house or to do other people’s dishes. No, as we traverse the decades, running them backward, it’s the three lovely sisters we imagine as our kin and precursors.

Now I am mistress of my own house. (Lord Grantham, I too have a sweet old dog and I am sorry about Isis.) And I am, though I am loathe to write the phrase, its debunking as much a cliché now as its invocation, “having it all.” And my response to middle class life, motherhood, work, homeownership, marriage, is a low level panic I feel running up my spine, a fit on the verge of spilling out that is my constant companion, babyish and humiliating: But who is going to take care of meee?

And so, like many others of the American middle class, I fantasize about Downton. Together, America and I are over being cool and uncomfortable. We want to be cozy and rich. We want to turn on our TVs, gaze upon all that polished brass, and not think too hard about who is doing the polishing.

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