"the tea is drying out your lips, your grace," you comment, catching his eye when he looks up from a pile of paperwork.
"so?"
"don't you get annoyed by the feeling?"
"oh i don't mind, i can just drink more tea to balance it out," wriothesley chuckles, reaching for his cup and taking a sip.
you sigh playfully, shaking your head. "that's rather counterintuitive." you walk up to him, reaching for something in your pocket and out comes a tin of what he presumes is lip balm. he watches you curiously, unable to predict what you are trying to do.
smoothly twisting the cap open, you stop right before his chair and gather a bit of the ointment on your ring finger. then you gently smear it over his parted lips.
the duke should back off, retract from your touch but he is paralysed to his seat with shock, heart skipping a few beats at the sensation. you both know that he is more than capable of putting lip balm on himself and he should be embarrassed by your gesture, but he doesn't have it in himself to defend his honour. the last thing he can do is tear his stare away from your face and your gaze that is concentrated solely on his lips.
(he likes your attention, he realises. wants to bathe in it.)
the moment lasts forever yet ends too soon and you're out of his space in the blink of an eye. wriothesley wonders if he imagined your proximity and your tenderness, but the stinging of your touch and the racing of his heart proves otherwise.
"there. now your lips are no longer chapped." you wipe the balm off with a handkerchief. "you know, since you're such an avid tea drinker, you really should invest in some lip balm, walking around with chapped-"
he doesn't listen to the rest of your sentence, occupied with calculating how much more tea he needs to drink for you to do that again.
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okay more on jackson’s senior center based off this post:
- it started as just miss shirley and her best friend darla wanting to live together and asking maria if she could maybe find a house for them to settle in together instead of living apart
- before this, mama shirley and darla would have to walk five houses each way to see each other for afternoon tea, which just won’t do. mama shirley is 92 and darla is 90 now, and both of them are too old to be have to walking that much everyday, mama shirley tells maria. she quickly and vehemently agrees
- maria has the idea of fixing a house up for jackson’s senior citizens to live in if they’d like to. it takes a lot of unnecessary convincing to get the council to dedicate one of jackson’s best houses to a maximum of five people, but maria gets it done. they pick one of the few houses that are placed in the farther back part of jackson, near the farm and the daycare center, so that it can be far-reaching from the entrance of jackson
- the first people to movie in are shirley and darla, who share a room on the second floor (thanks to tommy replacing the stairs in the house with a reliable ramp with a wall-attached handlebar)
- gary moves in not long after he breaks his left hip while herding the goats. he likes that the house is designed to be wheel-chair access and far away from most people in town. he also likes it because he can be close to darla, who he has feelings for, but nobody knows about that except for tommy and joel
- mr. wilson moves in on maria’s insistence that he’ll get hurt if he continues to live alone and try to do everything himself. his name is harold, but he insists that anyone younger than him calls him mr. wilson on account of maintaining a respectful distance. he’s a grumpy, gruff old asshole that reminds joel more of bill than bill himself, but he’s also known to do anything and everything maria tells him with only a small amount of grumbling. somehow, she convinces him to move in after he accidentally sets his kitchen on fire trying to make himself a pocketknife (which?????? maria still doesn’t have an answer for????? why harold was trying to do that????)
- last but not least is sandra dee, jackson’s oldest and most enigmatic member. nobody really knows where she came from or what her story is: she’s the only one of jackson’s seniors that managed to get to town on her own, arriving to town at 94 about a year after its founding with nothing but a backpack and three handguns. she clamed to be sandra, but they’re not entirely sure if sandra dee is her real name. she hums songs from musicals all the time and has expressed that grease was always her favorite. at least once a month she requests to go hunting with patrol and gets mad when maria tells her no
- senior center tea: shirley and darla have longstanding beef with sandra dee because she always cheats at cards during game night, shirley knows about gary being sweet on darla but is lowkey jealous about it because SHE is sweet on darla, and everyone thinks mr. wilson has a thing for maria but he actually told her in confidence last month that he is actually sweet on gary. mama shirley and mr. wilson can’t STAND each other
- tommy calls the seniors the jackson five. all of them call him thomas. he and joel bring them all basic living supplies at least once a week, but are known to be around there pretty often
tsym for anyone having interest in this pls feel free to add anything u want!!
tagging :))) @clickergossip @nerdieforpedro @mrsmando @callmekittenandyourmajesty @steeb-stn (ty for the idea of putting it next to the daycare!) @thatoneobsessedlinguist-writes
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