Chapter Text
Colin Bridgerton would like to think that by the age of twenty-seven, that he’s learned a good deal about who he is as a human being.
He’s more or less admitted to himself that his sleep schedule will never be what he wants it to be (he’s a night owl in his soul), and (possibly related) that he’ll come to regret that evening cup of coffee, but probably drink it anyway.
He will always make the mistake of wearing some sort of the wrong item of clothing on a plane (which there’s really no excuse for, considering he’s on them constantly), and only a few people know that intense turbulence still throws him more than he’d like to admit (Penelope is one of them).
He knows that he gets irritable if he goes too long without food, so he tries to always pack protein bars, flattened a bit like a pancake but still nutritious, down at the bottom of his rucksack. He rarely needs paracetamol or plasters, but the idea of needing them and not having them gives him a little bit of anxiety, being one of eight siblings (someone always having a headache or needing a patch-up), so that’s stuffed in the bottom of the bag, possibly expired, but always there, too.
He knows his phase of hooking up in darkened club sport party corners was cringeworthy to say the least, not for what it was or the feeling of his hands on another’s cheek, neck, or lower back, but for how hard he tried to be someone he wasn’t – and that making out with a stranger didn’t really do it for him then, and it certainly doesn’t do it for him now.
Colin knows that touch has always been something he just does. He knows that despite his reluctance these days to seek warm limbs entangled with his own, that touching for touching’s sake, nothing more, for friendship, for comfort, to show affection – it's always been something he’s good at – something he does and something he seeks out.
Maybe it began tussling with Eloise for the remote, an elbow to the side, howling, giving up, collapsing on the carpet, his head resting on her left leg. With his father, hugging him tight, age eight, at his football game, unashamedly despite Colin’s twinge of embarrassment while the other boys looked on. His mother, brushing his hair away from his forehead, age fifteen, when he was filled with angst and so, so much anger at the world around him, the world that broke his family apart with a heart attack. He scoffed and pulled away, but over time he learned it only made the ache in his chest worse, so eventually he leaned into her gentle press against his worry lines – he still does today.
Or maybe it’s inherent, nature versus nurture, something he was just born with.
He remembers volunteering to braid Daphne’s long, flowing hair and Francesca’s gentle waves. Wanting to know how his father knitted his fingers just so through curtains of chestnut to make magic appear.
Benedict and Anthony used to be more clasp-shoulder-and-clap-on-the-back types, but Colin, Colin always turned it into hugs again from the time in his early twenties when Anthony met Kate, and he allowed himself to feel again. It was suddenly safe to hug his big brother again, the way he did when he was a boy.
The wrapping of his arms around Kate, when he unwraps a holiday present that no one else would ever know he wanted, the shoulder bump and knowing look shared with Eloise when Benedict waxes a little bit poetic a little bit too long about some artistic master he’s never even heard of (and Colin goes to more museums than anyone in the family, so that’s saying something), the squeezing on a Bridgerton House sofa, sneaking his arm around, pinching Hyacinth’s waist stealthily until she yelps and scowls at Gregory, innocently on the other side of her – it's who he is.
He touches, ruffles hair, he brushes arms, pokes sides, and he hugs. Everyone in his family probably notices, but they’re all decently big huggers as is, so it's not like they mind. But he’s the one to bring them together, physically, more than anyone else.
When his plane lands back in Heathrow for each holiday and birthday, he squeezes them, wrapping them up in his arms, clinging to their consistency and goodness, savoring that feeling for when he’s off again, north, south, east, or westbound.
If he cared to look a little closer, he’d probably admit that these days, beyond touch being a fundamental piece of who he is, there is almost an urge to bottle it up, to tuck their warmth away for a rainy day – or else being away becomes a little more unbearable than it already has been lately.
That maybe constantly leaving behind that glow he gets in his chest at being with his favorite people isn’t the most efficient path to the life he ultimately wants to live.
But there are some things that even a man in his late twenties – a man who knows who he is and mostly what he wants – chooses to not look at directly, chooses to not stare directly in the eye, lest he gets trapped there and can’t pull himself out.
But he digresses, and he avoids it.
After all, he’s just turned twenty-seven; he’s home, (because isn’t it funny he’s closer to thirty than he is twenty now, but he still thinks of Bridgerton House as home, his landing strip in any storm), and they’re gathered in the pub around the corner. It’s the pub that Anthony and Benedict took him to for his “first” pint at eighteen, and the lights are golden and the floors are just a little sticky, and he’s pressed up in a booth eating chips, sandwiched between Eloise and Penelope, fighting for the curry sauce, and everything is warm and safe, and anything else can be forgotten about until he gets back on a plane in two days time.
He has nothing but time to deal with reality and some deep-seated emotions he may or may not be avoiding.
And then COVID hits.
___
Travel can be a fickle mistress, but a deadly pandemic turns out to be even more so, taunting him, with multiple facetimes showing so many Bridgerton faces squished in one little screen, Edmund aging quickly, far too quickly, eyes wide behind his little cloth mask, and Miles joining the family, born in the middle of a pandemic that keeps them scattered – scattered at first. A nephew he’s never even met, and isn’t that a complete, devastating malady in itself?
Francesca stays in Scotland, at first, but eventually caves and joins the rest in London for the duration of 2020 with John, encased in her childhood bedroom in Mayfair, him in a guest bedroom down the hall. They get engaged halfway through the year and announce it calmly at the breakfast table, as Francesca asks an open-mouthed Eloise to pass the marmalade.
Hyacinth and Gregory bicker over dining room table space for university Zoom meetings (even though it's more than large enough for the both of them, and goodness sakes, there's more than enough rooms in this absurdly large house that dates back to the 1720s).
Eloise loses her job and is found wandering the halls with a blanket cape around her shoulders at all hours of the day, writing cover letter after cover letter.
Penelope throws herself into the gossip rag she writes for even further (people are desperate for more “absurd, insignificant news than ever before,” she snarks), and Colin, Colin misses it all.
They’ve all convened at Bridgerton House, or at least in London, and he’s stuck in a foreign country, with so much beauty around him and so much pain in the world, and he knows his is minor, so minor compared to so many, and he feels greedy beyond belief for wanting more than a 6x3 inch phone screen.
They’re healthy; he’s healthy, but his apartment in Morocco begins to feel like a trap, sure, but even more so like a maze, a well-worn path, bedroom to bathroom to kitchen, his footsteps laying one over another over and over again, even his daily walks around the neighborhood letting the unseasonably gray sky seep into his soul.
Even the stars, when they appear, seem to offer little comfort.
He texts with Benedict and Eloise until there’s nothing really to text about, which is most days, since they’re all in this surreal limbo where work is expected to carry on despite the ambulances that are apparently whipping past the windows of his childhood home, ambulances that Francesca has a hard time hearing, flinching suddenly, day in and day out.
Amelia and Belinda have a new theme of dress-up every single week, apparently, and Daphne sends him videos of them tussling over flower crowns and fairy wands, curls flying, their little four- and two-year-old limbs rolling around on the rug.
His mother writes him honest-to-god letters, and he’s not embarrassed, not in the least, about how comforting he finds her handwriting, despite talking to her on the phone twice a week. Eloise sends a photo of Penelope across the square, her face practically pressed up against the window, waving, and Colin grins at her look of joy at reuniting, at least visually, with her platonic soulmate of nearly twenty years – he knows returning to the Featherington residence means a lot of loaded comments from Portia and endless bickering from Prudence and Philippa.
Penelope texts him photos of her baked goods – starting with sourdough bread, like the millennial she is, moving on to tarts, biscuits, and the cruelest, (Colin thinks) of all – (despite her insisting it's the least exciting to look at, visually) – various fruit and peanut butter crumbles. She drops them off on Bridgerton House’s doorstep, timed amazingly well with when Anthony just “happens” to swing by, mask on his face but a sparkle in his eye – Eloise is convinced he’s employed Hyacinth to be on a near-constant baked goods watch.
The year passes, with various lockdowns lifting and lockdowns being put back into place, and nearly everyone asks, with Violet’s voice asking the loudest, why he hasn’t come home yet. They will mask; they’ve been masking; they’re being extra careful with Francesca’s lupus and little Edmund’s diabetes.
And there’s nothing he wants more, but he knows it’ll be harder than ever before when he leaves again, and he’s not honestly sure his heart can take it.
So he misses Christmas, and spends it watching horrible Hallmark movies over facetime with Penelope, who Felicity has sent her illegal .mov files of from the States, and watching her pack up old pajamas, peeling paperbacks, and odds and ends as she plans to move into her new flat with Eloise in the new year. Most of her items, from the flat they moved out of in April, are in a storage unit in Camden Town, but some things, Penelope insisted, had to come along to her childhood bedroom, even temporarily, for the comfort they’d give her soul.
“It feels wrong, moving into a new chapter–or rather, a sort of new-old one, as the world is still a clusterfuck of pain and misery,” she admits as she struggles with a roll of packing tape.
Colin grins as she tries to pluck a strand of her hair from the end of a strip, before ultimately giving up and slapping it on the corner of a box that’s already tearing under the weight of what he’s pretty sure is every single Inspector Armand Gamache book.
“Honestly, it's a miracle you lasted as long as you did with Pru and Portia, and besides, you and Eloise moving back in together was bound to happen sooner or later,” he says, shrugging.
“Just because the pandemic is lasting longer than we all delusionally thought it would apparently doesn’t mean we can put our lives on hold–or at least that’s what my editor is trying to tell me… seems pretty fucked.”
She snorts, and gazes around her childhood bedroom, which looks like a tornado has been through it.
“Isn’t it all, truly?”
He pauses and looks at her worried brow, hands on her hips, staring into space at the number of boxes covering the carpet.
“Pen,” he says softly. “Pen, It’s okay. It’s what you need for your sanity. You’ve said to yourself you need some space from your family.”
She flashes him a smile, and her shoulders drop a little. She nods. “I know, it's going to be better for my mental health and probably all of us in the long run. It’s too small a house these days for four adults, six if you count Albie’s masked visits and Felicity’s three AM facetimes, which I sometimes do.” She smiles. I’ve actually had some nice moments, though. Philippa and I are almost done binging New Girl, and I’ve had, I guess what you’d call, interactions with Pru.”
She grins at him, eyes sparkling. “Believe it or not, did you know she’s been doing virtual Hinge dates and texting me a one-sentence, ranked-star rating of each afterwards from across the living room? I’ve told her to just tell me, but she refuses.” Colin laughs. “But then again, it's more than she’s talked to me in the last fifteen years, so who am I to complain?”
“No, I did not know that, but that seems on brand. Does she rank the dates out of five or ten stars?” He asks, grinning.
“Thirteen, don’t ask me to explain why. I couldn’t tell you.”
He chuckles, leaning back into his shitty sofa. “Good to know at least someone is finding love during COVID, or at least is trying to; I’m certainly not. Who needs it?” he says, shrugging, as he reaches over to the side table and takes a sip of the sad-excuse of hot chocolate he’s tried (and failed) to make.
It’s just too watery, he thinks. His Mum’s is never this watery, but he was out of milk. He relates to this sad mug of hot chocolate he thinks. Worn out, runny, worn thin. Depleted.
He grimaces, thinks some more. “Kate and Anthony, and Simon and Daph still put on the newlywed show, even 3,000 kilometers away and through a phone screen. I’ve told Daph, there’s really no excuse; it’s been over five years. But you know no one listens to me.”
He pauses, rubs the back of his neck. “At least Fran and John keep it to themselves, with just loving looks across the room.”
She looks up from the box she’s packing and can see her roll her eyes even from across the small room, her phone propped up to talk to him while she putters around.
“Sure, Colin.”
“What?”
“What do you mean, what? Good joke,” she huffs.
He pauses, and watches her shake her head, and reach over for a permanent marker to scribble on the side of a box.
It was a joke, about not needing that, or wanting it, but it wasn’t very funny. It’s also a lie, and Penelope realizes that. Of course she does.
“Doesn’t it make you feel lonely, watching them? Destitute? Destined to end up alone?”
She bites her lip and comes to sit down, perched on the edge of her bed. “Sure,” she says slowly. “Probably more than most people.”
He watches her, watches her eyes drift downward, until they’re staring at her hands resting in her lap.
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
Guilt seeps into his core, a slow drip until the bottom of his stomach feels sickeningly full with the unfairness of it. He feels like he’s wronged her. It’s not a feeling he likes having about anyone, but having it with Penelope is the worst feeling in the world. He’s only felt it a few times in his life.
Colin knows Penelope hasn’t been in a relationship, unless there was one in uni that they never talked about, but he doesn’t think there was. She probably had college hookups, party games, and hungover mornings – he knows Eloise said they made out once, “for the greater good” (aka trying to get two very inebriated friends together) during spin the bottle (a weird fact he probably could have gone his whole life without knowing), but…
He knows Penelope doesn’t date. He’s never understood why, really, but he knows she’s shy until you get to know her, until she feels safe, and then she’s suddenly woven into your life, tethered to the deepest part of every childhood memory and every adult misstep. She’s seen it all.
She's really good at not judging you, providing biscuits, and being the best person to judge everyone else with.
And he feels special to be one of the rare few to get to see her. The shy and curled into a window seat, reading her fourth-book-in-two-days-over-the-winter-holiday-Penelope. The bouncing, exuberant, two-cocktails-in-Penelope – that only a select few ever get to witness. The Penelope that always, without fail, orders chips for the table without ever making anyone pay her back.
He realizes how unfair he sounds, waxing on about loneliness and lack of romance, when this tends to be a topic they skirt around. When he’s at least had a few doomed relationships, a face or two, to tie romance to.
And he’s not sure she’s ever had that.
“Pen–I–”
“It’s fine.” She gives him a small smile. “Truly, there’s just nothing like a pandemic to make you feel alone in the world, romantically or otherwise–I get it. I just–I know that you see them, and want what they have, or–” she rushes ahead, “or at least I think you do, based on your travel log excerpts you’ve shared and what I know about you from, um, well, fifteen years of friendship.”
She blinks a few times in rapid succession, almost as if she’s realizing that she’s calling him out on his bullshit in sort of a brutal way. She only ever does it in small doses, but she’s good at it, and he likes that about her; he always has. It’s something Penelope only does once she gets to know you, really know you – there’s a level of honesty she brings that no one would ever guess about otherwise; he knows it's a sign of her care and affection.
He’s just realizing she hasn’t had to do it a lot lately with him, not this year, when they talk almost every day and text even more. He talks to her more than he talks to just about anyone, these days. He’s not sure how or when it started happening, but it did.
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be with someone, Colin,” she says quietly.
She stands up and follows this statement by immediately turning her back to the camera as she rearranges some pillows on her bed, something that makes no sense whatsoever, given the entire room is in a state of utter chaos.
He blinks. Swallows. Stupid of him to put on a mask, stupid, and it's not like him. He doesn’t do that anymore. Not at all, and especially not with her. He’s been away from home for too long, away from the people who know him best.
He does want that; he wants a partner, wants what his parents had. He wants it more than most things, more than anything if he’s being honest. He opens his mouth, pauses. Frowns.
“I’ve known you for twenty years, not fifteen.”
She cranes her neck towards the phone, scoffs. “That’s what you got out of all that? I’ve been friends with El since we were five! The two of us didn’t get close until a few years later, Colin.”
He frowns. “No, that’s not true. I was seven, so I do have the superior memory here. But–but anyway, you’re right, Pen. Of course you are. Sorry.” He winces. “I meant it as a joke, but it’s not funny, or–true.” He rubs the back of his neck again and drops his hand to his lap, cupping the sad mug of watery chocolate.
“I–I didn’t mean to–well, I know we don’t usually talk… about that.”
It’s hard to tell from the golden hue that spills around her bedroom, the phone propped up on a desk lamp, he assumes, but he’s not blind, and he knows her, so he knows that she’s turning pink. She always does – when she’s embarrassed, when she’s overheated, when she’s been in the cold air too long, when she’s overthinking things.
“Talk about what? Dating? Love? Not dying alone?” She rolls her eyes. “It’s fine; I don’t.” She bites her lip. “I don’t talk about it with anyone, really. El’s heard the most, but even that’s not a lot. You know how she gets with mushy stuff.”
He sees her wringing her hands, and he wishes she’d stop. It looks like it hurts. The call isn’t the best quality, but he can tell her fingers are turning white as she twists them, weaving them in and out of the gaps between the rings on her hands. Her hands are so small.
He nods. “Eloise Bridgerton only talks about emotions in limited doses, after midnight, after a bottle of wine, or weirdly, over text. She’s good at that. Random paragraphs affirming her love or a total blank look at an expression of emotion. No in between. But it’s not … well, mushy of you. It’s important.”
“That is,” he clears his throat, “if it's important to you. It’s not for some people, and that’s totally okay, too.”
She gives him a small smile. “Thanks. Yeah, it is. It really–it really, really is. I mean, you probably know how many romance books I read.” She takes a deep breath and perches on the corner of the bed again.
“I just–don’t talk about it. I never have. But it's been eating away at me a bit. I’ve been talking with my therapist about it. I had this whole plan to finally, well, date, at twenty-five. But then… 2020… and yeah,” she says, quietly.
He feels weird. He feels weird, and he doesn’t know how, on Christmas Eve (or, really, Christmas morning, he supposes), at two AM, he’s talking to his oldest friend about dating. A topic that has previously been off-limits. He's not really sure why, but it always has been.
Colin thinks he’s actually quite good at hearing about other friends’ relationships, or lack of them. So he doesn’t mind. It’s not a bad weird; it's just… weird. A weird he’s realizing he wants to hear more about.
Of course Penelope would want to date; of course she wouldn’t want to be alone. Not that she’d ever be actually alone; she’s a part of every Bridgerton extended holiday and every Aubrey Hall summer, Hyacinth’s past meltdowns about a fight with Felicity, and Fran’s future wedding.
But Colin suddenly realizes that she sees what he does, and what the rest of the world must too – there’s quite a lot of them, Bridgertons, that is, and they tend to–well, they tend to pair up quite nicely.
He tries to be realistic, and he’s gotten better over time, removing his rose-colored-glasses and knowing that no relationship is perfect, not even his mother’s and his fathers – but, well.
Bridgertons are quite good at falling madly in love, it seems.
It’s normal, the most basic human wish, to pair up, to fall in love. He certainly wants what his parents and siblings have. (He wants it more than he likes to think about, most of the time). He just doesn’t know why he’s never thought much about Penelope doing those things.
“That’s great, Pen. That’s really great. When the world opens up again, for real, I can help you with the apps–” he pauses, swallows.
She’s too good for the apps.
Most decent people are, and he knows they work out really well for some people. His friends Will and Alice have been going strong for three years thanks to one of them, and he suspects an engagement is around the corner. And Anthony and Kate never would have met without them; his brother’s second date with Edwina was going decently well enough “all things considered,” according to Anthony, a man just ticking the boxes because he was nearing thirty and knew it was “time to settle down,” being interrupted by Kate throwing a glass of water in his face when she stormed into the restaurant they were eating at.
But she’s – she’s Penelope.
She deserves so much more than topless bathroom photos, bad come-ons, and people posing with a fish (something he’d heard from El is no longer “just a visiting American” thing, tragically).
“Or, you know, I can ‘wingman’ you, or whatever, uh, in bars, if you want that.”
Penelope flops back on her bed, her hair loose in a nearly falling-out ponytail, spilling over a pillow, and groans.
Colin pauses, worried he’s somehow made it more awkward, made it worse–but she props herself up on her elbows then, and huffs out a laugh and says quietly, “Thanks, Col.”
He blunders forward. “I mean, it sucks; it all sucks. I haven’t uh–you know, even tried since like last year, maybe actually 2018, with all the travel, but also because it sucks, pretty badly, too. Less for me than for women, I’m sure… but. It’s not a fun time. But you obviously have to force yourself to do it, they say; if you want to meet someone, the right person, so I go through waves of trying. We can commiserate about how bad it is together.”
He watches her nod, slowly. Her eyes seem a little distant. He wishes he could hear what she was thinking.
“To find the right person, yeah. Makes sense that they say that.” She gives a small smile, a little bit of a sad one, sits up, tucks her legs under her a little, and begins to twist her fingers again.
“It’s just embarrassing. Not that I’m what they call a–uh–“late bloomer”- I’m trying to, well, embrace it; I know it's probably way more common than people talk about. And I’m not well, totally hopeless. I’ve done–you know–some stuff–” her cheeks redden even further “–of a more physical nature. But I don’t want it, not now, if it's not in a relationship, and I’ve never had one.”
Colin feels his cheeks vaguely turning warm himself and wills himself to get it together. He sets his watery hot chocolate to the side, shifts on the sofa, bringing his outstretched legs up, knees bent, so he’s a little more curled in on himself. So he matches her, 3,000 kilometers away.
He wants her to feel supported. He wants her to know he’s listening.
He wants to listen.
He just doesn’t know why his face is turning a little pink.
He tells himself this is fine. Tells himself she’s his oldest friend – one of his closest friends, truly. He tells himself to not be weird, and to let her talk about this.
Penelope, luckily, doesn't seem to notice his blush, and continues on. “I think that it's more that it's embarrassing because I don’t have anyone to talk to about it. I’ll touch on it, with El, but. It’s hard. She started dating in secondary school, for Pete's sake. Most people do, or at least by sixth form. Your family is sort of, well, odd.” She laughs at the look on Colin’s face.
“Okay, Not odd–just, Daphne got married at twenty-one. Twenty-one, Colin, in the 21st century. Anthony may have waited till he was thirty, but he dated a good deal before Kate, and now he’s madly in love. And Francesca never dated in uni, but now she’s engaged at twenty-four. And well, we all know how your parents were,” she adds quietly.
And Penelope does know how his parents were. She was pretty little when Edmund died, but she remembers. Remembers, and knows how different it was from her own parent’s marriage.
Colin likes it that Penelope remembers his dad.
If remembering and cherishing the memory of someone brought them back from the dead, Edmund Bridgerton would’ve walked through the door a long time ago, and Colin thinks that that has to count for something. He doesn’t know what – but something.
Colin shrugs. “Daph and Fran just found their person early; Fran talks all the time about how she’s surprised herself with that one. And Benedict’s ancient! Well, not ancient, but past thirty. He barely dates; you know, he just goes–uh–the other route.”
He pauses, hears Penelope snort out a laugh.
“That’s what Eloise would call a tasteful way to say he’s a whore, Colin.”
Colin snorts. That does sound like his sister.
“And kudos to him,” he says, laughing a little, “He should do what he wants. But we don’t all want that. I don’t think most of us do. El is still single, and so am I, and I don’t see that really changing anytime soon.” He pauses, trying to think of other people in his life. Thinks then, of the best example he knows.
“–And my mum didn’t marry my dad until she was almost thirty. She was the oldest of all her friends. And thirty isn’t even old! Unless, again, we’re talking about Ben.”
She gives him a small smile. “She was?”
“Yeah, I mean, you know how many kids she ended up having, but she actually told me a few years ago that she didn't start dating at even twenty-five, I think. She waited, like you.” He pauses, and remembers his mother telling him he had time on a quiet summer afternoon, when she held his hands. That he would find the right person, like she did.
“She was almost–what? Forty six? Forty-seven when Hyacinth was born? Which was, honestly, a bit wild, especially in the early 2000s, just health-wise, but Hyacinth's not all there, all the time, as you well know, so it’s fine.”
Penelope grins, bites her lip. “Violet really doesn’t look her age, does she?”
Colin huffs out a laugh. “No, no, she does not. But–Pen… we don’t all have it figured out. It’s okay.” He watches her soft smile, and something in his heart twists just a little.
He takes a deep breath. “In some ways I really wish I’d waited, to date and stuff, until I was older. I’m–I’m the same; more than you know, I know I really don’t want it unless it's, you know–uh, emotional.”
He looks down at his lap, finding it hard to meet her eyes. “I don’t want to sleep around; it’s different than with Ben. Or with some of my friends from uni. It just doesn’t hold any appeal to me.”
When he finally looks up, he sees her tilt her head back a little, and look at him, carefully.
“It doesn’t?”
She looks at him not like she doubts him, but like she’s listening. Listening to him ramble. Her eyes are tracking his face, and he smiles.
“No, Pen, it really doesn’t. It doesn’t hold the appeal it did in college, and it was actually pretty fake then, too, I’m realizing. And I would feel horrible the next day after a hookup. LIke I wanted to curl up into a ball and disappear.”
He takes a deep breath. “I know we… don’t, well. We don’t usually talk about this stuff, but I think I’m probably Demisexual. It doesn’t– I just don’t want any of that, I’ve learned. Not really.”
“You don’t?” she asks, cocking her head just a little. “Not at all?”
“No… I–” he sighs.
He’s bad at explaining this; he’s only done it to a very select few people. Francesca. He’s hinted at it, with his mum. Benedict, that one night his older brother got him a little too high, two summers ago. (Ben was supportive, but very out of it. He shook his hand, welcomed Colin to the “Alphabet Mafia,” and passed out in the Aubrey Hall walk-in pantry for the night).
“I want the physical stuff, I’m not completely asexual; I know that. And I love people watching; I mean people are just so–well… pretty. They live such absurd, bizarre, rich… ridiculous lives.”
He lets out a laugh he was holding; it escapes his mouth in a rush of air. He sees Penelope smile. She has such a warm smile.
“But it’s like… it’s almost just aesthetic if I don’t know them. It’s like–like staring at those sculptures you liked that I sent you from the Rodin museum in Paris last year. It’s.. art. The softness of people’s skin, the curve of a hip. It’s beautiful, absolutely. But I don’t know them. I’d need to know them, who they really are, at this point, to want to–well… you know.”
He feels a little bit raw, flayed, from the inside out. He feels well, just incredibly vulnerable. He knows his body language shows it too; he’s hunched himself over, his knees tucked into his chest like he’s a kid again.
And feeling vulnerable is not, well, it's not new with Penelope, especially after the year they’ve had. But it stings, and he finds himself not meeting her gaze over the camera lens again, even though she’s brought it closer to her, cupping the phone in her hand gently while he’s been rambling.
“Thank you for telling me,” she whispers. “It makes sense, a little, what–what you’re saying. I–” she pauses. “It makes sense. I think maybe, maybe I’ve seen it a little in your travel log, the earlier entries from Spain. Which, to be honest, are some of my very favorites,” she adds, mumbling the last bit, a little.
He feels his face flush, feels heat creeping up his neck. He closes his eyes for just a second.
“Thanks, Pen. You don’t have to–uh, but thanks.”
She gives her head a quick shake, another curl shaking out from her ponytail.
“I mean it, Colin; I’m not just saying it. One of my favorite things about your writing is how you describe not only the colors, sounds, and the world around you, but also the people–the people you meet are a part of that world. The encounters you describe, the small acts you witness between strangers or friends… You see the meaning behind the actions people take, you seek the story beneath the surface, and you never just write what the average passerby would remark on.”
She shrugs. “I think it’s pretty lovely–and makes a lot of sense that you can appreciate the beauty of someone but would want to connect with them on a deeper level before wanting anything more physical.”
And isn’t it just like Penelope, Colin thinks, to compliment him in a way that so far surpasses any piece of writing he’s ever done – leave it to her to apparently see him better than he can see himself. Maybe he’s not as self-aware as he thinks he is; maybe he’s not grown as much as he hopes he has these last few years.
All he knows is he feels exhausted, is a little hungry (because he’s once again stayed up far too late), and that he is indeed alone, in a foreign country, for the first Christmas in his life. It’s odd, then, but really, really nice that in this moment, despite everything, he doesn’t feel incredibly lonely.
He looks down at his lap, and gives a small smile.
He knows she’s the reason why.
He doesn’t know how to tell Penelope this, wouldn’t know where to begin, and would surely just embarrass them both, so instead, he just nods and looks down and plays with a thread on the edge of the sofa cushion.
“That’s a really kind way of putting it, Pen. It’s kind of scary to come to terms with, especially considering I did a bit of hooking up in uni, and, uh, after, yeah, in Spain–but it never felt good. And it’s tiring pretending to be someone you’re not.”
He looks up at her. “I’ve just gotten really tired,” he admits.
Penelope hums, and nods, and looks at him with an amount of fondness in her eyes that he’s so, desperately, overwhelmingly thankful for.
She gets it. He knows she struggled trying to figure out who she should be; too, he knows she’s grown in the last few years.
So he’s not surprised, not in the least, that she understands. He’s more surprised he’s waited this long to tell her, that they waited this long to talk about it. He wants to talk about it, he’s realizing, a lot of the time. He just doesn’t know how, and it's hard for him to feel – well, safe enough to do so.
It’s like standing at the edge of a cliff, legs shaking, as you look at the water below. Even if you know it’s deep enough, even if you know the waves will catch you, cushion you when you fall. Taking the leap is the terrifying part, not the landing itself. Telling someone is the hardest part, the part that makes his heart race – even if he knows the person well enough (god, he hopes he knows the person well enough) to know they won’t be cruel.
She takes a deep breath, drawing his gaze back to her
“It can feel scary, you know, with how much I… want something I haven’t had,” she says quietly.
“I feel like it's been bothering me more each year I get older. And it’s exhausting, too. I write all day about these dramatic celebrity relationships blowing up and coming back together, and I know real life isn’t like that, or my period dramas on the BBC, for that matter. But–I write about these things, see everyone around me experience them, and I’m exhausted from just not knowing, not living it, and being… left in the dark.”
He nods. Penelope has always hated the dark, he knows that. Literally, in childhood – she could be found clinging to walls, using flashlights at night to use the bathroom at Aubrey Hall. It makes sense she’d hate being left in the dark with this, too. His heart aches a little, at the thought of her feeling like she’s been left behind.
She continues, “And I know dating is going to be mostly horrible, lackluster questions sent back and forth on an app I don’t even want to be on, or bad cocktails at a bar I don’t even want to be at–” (Colin winces, doesn’t try to disagree with her there) “--but. I need to try, I think.”
He nods. “Trying is a really good place to start. Dating isn’t fun all the time for anyone, Pen. I know you know that, obviously. I think when it’s good, when–when you get a crush, it can be exciting and can make you feel on top of the world.” He pauses. “But it makes total sense that you pushed it to the back burner, Pen. I mean, love, and–all the things that come with it, all that stuff, well… it hypothetically is worth it, absolutely. Think of how many love songs and poems there are in the world.”
He pauses, and thinks back to his nineteen-year-old-self.
“But it's–well, it's agony when you’re younger. You don’t know who you are, let alone who another person is at that age, and it's just–messy, and can be so, so painful.”
Colin pauses, brightens for a second. “Plus, your frontal lobe is now developed! You know who you are, and that’ll probably make it easier to find the right person.”
She nods slowly. She looks like she wants to say something, ask him something, but she pauses and smiles instead.
“Yeah, I suppose. That is a good way of looking at it. Maybe I don’t have to suffer through eighty failed hookups and situationships to find someone at my age. Shoutout to my frontal lobe, I guess?” She wrinkles her nose.
He laughs. “Absolutely. It’s a really good one; I would know; I consult it often; we are on a first-name basis for sure.”
Penelope smiles and rolls her eyes. He sees her hop off the bed and prop her phone against another pillow, he assumes, as she starts to pop open another box. She stills, though, when he speaks.
“But–we can talk about it, Pen. I mean, if you want to. I don’t mind. I like hearing your thoughts. Even if they’re… mushy or–you know, even if they feel too much. They’re not. They’re normal. They’re good. You’re good. And I think it’s good we can talk about all this.”
He pauses, staring at a strand of her hair forming a perfect corkscrew shape against her left ear.
He can see the tension, written in her body; he can see this conversation has been enlightening but also a little soul-baring for the both of them. So, he focuses on that tendril of hair and says softly to it, more than to her face (because he knows staring at her isn’t going to help anything right now) –
“You’re really quite good. Do you know that?”
And then he feels a little like an idiot saying that, because it’s obvious, isn’t it? Obvious to literally everyone.
The grass is green and the sky is blue (but really mostly gray in Mayfair); you should never swim in the Thames (despite Benedict trying to convince him otherwise when he was little); Hyacinth and Felicity should never, ever be sat next to each other at dinner, unless you want Gregory tortured (and isn’t it funny that that's just as true on the cusp of their third decade as it was when they were eight)...
…and Penelope Featherington is good.
But she pauses, turns to face the camera again. She looks down first, smiles a little to herself. Then she looks up at him, cheeks pink and eyes so incredibly blue, even as she’s backlit against the lamp, it glowing behind her. The smile she gives him is radiant, just a little hesitant, and so incredibly Penelope that he feels an ache in his chest at their distance.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “That means a lot. More than I can probably say.” She bites her lip again, twists to look around the room, and he can tell she feels a little awkward still. It is new, navigating this deep level of friendship with her. And she’s never been good, not ever, at receiving compliments.
“That’s a really nice Christmas gift, actually.”
He smiles. “That’s not your gift, Pen; that's just being a friend.”
He smirks, leans back on his couch. “Your gift, while delayed, is arriving on Portia’s doorstep in approximately 23 days time, thanks to pandemic shipping delays.”
She laughs and leans over to grab another stack of books.
“But can it beat the gift of the deed to Sandra’s third-generation Christmas tree farm, saved from being bulldozed by her one true love?” She references their last completed film (if Americans and Hallmark, Incorporated can even call it that).
“It could never compete with that, I’m afraid. But still.”
He swallows. “I–I wasn’t gonna say anything to anyone, but I know I’ve been distant. And it’s been shitty. I know I need to be better. And obviously this is new-variant-dependent, but I hope to come home in the spring, if I can, and stay for a bit, once Fran’s vaccinated and the rest of us are on our way there.” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t want to tell Mum or anyone else to get their hopes up, and I have some things to sort here before I can come home… but. It’s past time. I know that. We won’t be able to do much, like go to bars then, or museums, but–”
“Colin.” She breathes out. “When?”
“The spring, maybe April or May–I don’t know when specifically yet, but–”
He’s cut off by her running up to the camera, tossing the packing tape on the bed, forgotten. She’s beaming, grabbing her phone and bringing it to the bed with her. The quilt bounces under her, hair flying around her shoulders, more coming loose from her scrunchie that's nearly falling on the floor at this point.
“Oh, they’re going to lose it when they find out! Belinda will be four by then, and Ben’s having an art show in May, he’s hoping, El told me just yesterday. And oh! Maybe we can do a masked picnic for Fran’s birthday! I’ve been knitting her this jumper, and I think it’ll be ready in time. Do you think she–”
Colin’s expression must make her pause because she cocks her head at him. “What?”
And Colin really doesn’t know what exactly, he just knows he’s smiling like an idiot, clutching the phone closer to his face. He just knows that she’s once again keeping him together, and that she’s been doing that a lot this year, actually.
Maybe it's double-sided tape, his arms stuck down by his hips, keeping his limbs together, stopping them from flailing around madly, as he’s stuck in one place. Maybe it's bits of Christmas ribbon and twine, or scraps from her current knitting project, cinched tight across his chest, little ties by his collarbone, keeping his heart from beating a little too desperately in his chest, making sure it doesn’t break through one of these days.
Maybe it's just her.
He’s never had a person who can make him feel tethered to his family so much, a rope connecting them, tied from his heart to her camera lens, even when he’s so far away, never had a person who makes him feel so seen in the hardest, darkest year he’s ever had.
Penelope knows him as three-eighths of a whole, but also as a whole person himself, and he thinks about what a blessing that is.
He smiles. Thinks about trying to find the words to tell her. Decides it isn’t needed.
“I’m just really glad you’re you, Pen.”
—
Penelope wakes up the next morning – Christmas morning – with the corner of a book poking into her temple.
She groans, rolls over, rubs her head at what she’s sure has left a sizable mark on her face, and glances at the clock. It’s a little after 8:00 AM, and she’s in a bed strewn with books, clean laundry she’s in the process of squeezing into a suitcase, and no memory of how – or when – she went to bed last night.
Her mind on the last batch of cookies she planned to bake today and the presents she was going to wrap and leave on the porch across the street, she slides out of bed, ties up her hair into a topknot with a hair tie she finds on the floor (the scrunchie she was wearing last night when she facetimed Colin long being lost to the covers), and makes her way downstairs, where Philippa is sitting at the table, eating what appears to be Penelope’s shortbread cookies for breakfast.
“Breakfast of champions, Pip?”
Philippa smiles. “You would know; you’re the chef.” She slides over on the bench, passes her one. “Besides, I came to believe a long time ago that any type of bland biscuit is so obviously a breakfast treat.”
“Bland?”
“Yeah, you know, like… if it’s plain, or… I dunno, white.”
“So. Like sugar cookies, digestives… meringue, or shortbread? Anything else?” Penelope asks.
Philippa gives her a look that says obviously, there are many more breakfast biscuits than that.
“Jammy dodgers, snickerdoodles, those ones with the craisins and chocolate chips and walnuts you make. There’s loads.”
‘Those aren’t plain, though!”
“No, but they either have jam, cinnamon, fruit, or nuts in them, so they’re healthy,” she says, like Penelope is the one struggling to understand the fundamental basics of the food pyramid.
Penelope snorts and says, “You know, Colin might agree with you, but I’m not sure many other people would.”
She shrugs. “That’s their loss then. Colin and I can eat your biscuits till the end of time, and I’ll save some for Albie, I suppose, but the rest of this greedy lot can sod off. I know you’ve been doing Bridgerton drop-offs,” she sniffs.
“They deserve Christmas cookies too, Pip,” she laughs. “Why don’t we have some actual breakfast–” Philippa glares at her–“alongside our breakfast biscuits, and I’ll put this last batch of dough from the fridge in the oven, and we can watch some New Girl while we wrap Mum’s gifts?”
Phililppa agrees and goes to set up the TV while Penelope runs upstairs for a jumper and her phone for the timer for the biscuits. It takes her a good few minutes to locate it, in the covers, but when she does, she smiles.
She knows, all of a sudden, how she fell asleep, because Colin has texted her a photo.
She opens the image and groans. It’s a screenshot of Colin’s phone screen, facetime open, Penelope nearly face-planted into a pillow, her hands curled in front of her chin. Her laptop is illuminated in the corner, playing another horrible Christmas film, no doubt long abandoned. Her hair is covering about ninety percent of her face (small victories, she supposes), and yes, there is a book pressed into the side of her forehead.
Colin’s gleeful face fills the rectangle in the bottom right corner, grinning, like her falling asleep on him is the best Christmas gift she could have given him.
Penelope knows that she needs to get a grip about Colin; she’s incredibly well aware of this fact.
She’s also aware that his friendship is one of the best parts of her life by far, as is the rest of the Bridgerton family.
She’s aware she’s loved spending time with him from the moment they met, at age five, and the years that followed, navigating worlds of their imagination (and also, grief), with Eloise, and Daphne and Francesca. The world was devastating at times, but it was also their oyster, and two of them at first (El & Penelope), but soon the five of them, all close in age, were each other’s deepest confidantes and fiercest allies in make-believe battles, failed math tests, attending funerals no one that young should ever have to attend (first Edmund, then Penelope’s father), and first menstrual periods (they left Colin out of those discussions, mostly).
Eventually Daphne started spending more time with older girls from school, and Fran threw herself into piano lessons. They were still around, of course, and would hang out for movie nights and all summer long, but her preteen years were filled with sugary drinks after school, mud pies in the backyard (even though they were more than a little too old for all that), E4 channel reruns, acne, and Colin and Eloise. She wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Penelope is aware that she began to find Colin cute when she was about thirteen (a testament to hormones, she thinks, because fourteen/fifteen was just about the height of Colin’s emo phase) and aware that this was also around the time when he began distancing himself from El and her, angry at his brothers for not seeing him, angry at his father for dying, angry at everything he couldn’t control, and angry at himself for wanting that control.
He compensated by trying to be someone he wasn’t.
Violet noticed. She made him begin seeing a therapist, something Colin today still is grateful for, Penelope knows – and while it took until after uni for Colin to find his footing in some things, in rejecting what he thought other people thought he should be (Penelope understands that more after their discussion last night), his relationship with Penelope warmed again by his late teenage years.
And Penelope?
Penelope fell in love.
Sometimes she tells herself that’s not really what it was. That small kindnesses, his smile across the room, just for her, ten years of friendship, and a very cute face shouldn’t have been enough to make her fall head first.
But it was.
And so, she fell.
She fell even though it made no sense and was absurd, and she fell despite the distance between them, physical and otherwise, in uni, soon after. Thanks to academics, part-time work, new friendships, and Eloise as distractions, she’d press pause on him, temporarily block her brain from transmitting signals to her heart at times, and develop a little crush on a boy in class, kiss a friend in a party game, but she never forgot him, not really.
Not when her heart would beat a little bit faster at every text she did receive, not during Aubrey Hall summers when he would rarely wear a shirt outside, not even earlier, when she overheard him emphatically state he’d never date her. (She wished, then, that she could have truly forgotten about him, wiped her brain of his image, his voice, his smell, everything about him).
But she couldn’t. So she accepted it and continued on with her life. He was in her bloodstream, in her mind, in her heart. She could avoid it, mostly; she had become very good at tuning him out, unless the frequency was on full blast (when he was near her), and she got used to the reality of loving Colin Bridgerton and knowing there was nothing to be done about it.
And then the pandemic hit.
2020 dawned and then it sort of crashed, only three months in and right after Colin’s birthday.
And thus a new reality was born, for everyone, but also for the two of them – because suddenly things were the same, but they were also different, and frankly, wonderful, but also horrible.
They texted, and they talked over facetime – constantly.
This level of friendship with Colin was new to Penelope, and this level of friendship, she suspected, had the means to destroy her.
She thought she knew what falling in love with Colin Bridgerton felt like at sixteen. And she did – she’ll hold that grace for her teenage self.
She just learns that falling in love with him all over again, at the age of twenty-five (deeper, in a devastatingly real way, for the boy, man, human he’s become), might be her downfall.
It’s December 25th, in the year that has changed everything for everyone, and Penelope quietly shakes her head, stops looking at the little rectangle of Colin’s face. and saves the photo to her camera roll (she’s human, okay?) and reads the messages he sent alongside the photo.
Colin: Knew it was only a matter of time before you fell asleep on me, Pen. Mum says she thinks she’s found a way to be devious with customs, so she’ll send along some biscuits she knows you’ll drop off for the gang tomorrow, so I suppose I’ll forgive you.
Colin: For the record, I might forgive you more if you pack her the ginger biscuits, but I’ll live either way.
Colin: Also, thanks for listening to me ramble last night (this morning?), and thanks for rambling to me too. I feel lucky to hear it. I mean it–anytime, okay?
Colin: Text me later today; maybe we can brainstorm how we tell the family about my trip home this spring. You probably have some brilliant idea of how.
Colin: PS - Oh, shit! Happy Christmas, Pen!
Colin: I’m lucky to have you–we all are. Xx
Penelope smiles, swallows down the ache in her chest, and the thoughts of him coming home, and heads downstairs.
—
Colin Bridgerton walks into the Heathrow Airport arrivals lounge at exactly 11:54 pm, local time, on April 7th, the day (well, six whole minutes) before Penelope Featherington’s twenty-sixth birthday.