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Benedict was looking for his right shoulder.
Well, not precisely looking for his right shoulder. Rather, he was trying to turn his gaze far enough to look over his right shoulder. Trying being the imperative word here, because his thirty five year old spine was vehemently communicating that someone his age sleeping in a bathtub and expecting full range neck mobility the next day was undeniably not only old, but also as smart as a bag of rocks on their way to the nursing home.
A bathtub.
What had he been thinking?
Clearly not a lot of thinking had been involved, as he had not only woken up in the most uncomfortable position ever, he was also completely wet - though his bathtub showed no signs of having been used for any other purpose than …sleeping. Maybe he was actually starting to suffer from dementia like his great-uncle Albert rather than just another devastating hangover.
He was never again throwing a house party. This was absolutely the last time.
Maybe he could convince at least his neck of his seriousness on the matter, because the rest of him surely didn’t believe him. He could hear his liver scoffing.
“Rise and shine, beautiful.”
A ray of brutally bright sunlight stabbed at his retinas, temporarily blinding him, driving home the point of how bad this day was going to get. His violated brain feebly strung together a few words , trying to express “Why the fuck did Colin tell me to let Eloise move in with me?”, but actually sounded more like “whtfukclioncieloiseFffuckj!!”
Eloise had not yet crossed over the magical threshold of thirty, the threshold that made you very aware that living was indeed a process with a definite end, an end you would be thinking about a lot more forcefully with every drop of alcohol everyone for some reason drank voluntarily.
Whining was not usually one of Benedict's coping strategies, but with his neck stuck at this most uncomfortable angle, his head pounding loudly enough to impair his vision and his stomach turning over thoroughly every little bit of bile it could find, whining seemed a very reasonable option.
“Beeeeneeedict…”
“Go away!”
“Oh, but you don’t want that.”
Eloise stood in the room with the unfair advantage of a twenty five year old with a working liver and access to her complete range of neck mobility.
“I think I just expressed that that’s exactly what I want. Close the blinds again and let me die in peace.”
“I fail to understand how you have everyone convinced Hy’s the drama queen of the family, when it truly has always been you.”
The room turned an even more brutal shade of white and Benedict seriously considered just turning his neck all the way over his left shoulder until -
“Aren’t you at all curious about what happened last night?”
~
An aspirin, a green smoothie and a warm shower later, Benedict still couldn’t process what his sister was telling him. Though that might also be because the concoction Eloise had served him as “green smoothie” was neither very green, nor had it resembled the texture of a smoothie the way it should have. He drank it anyway. Punishing himself for overdoing it last night was allowed to take different forms, after all.
“Oh no.”
Eloise was gleeful, there was no other word for it.
“Oh yesss.”
She forced her overly bright phone screen into his line of vision again and after his eyes had finished screaming bloody murder, he squinted to take a better look.
Eloise’s phone displayed a picture of himself in all his drunk glory - and still curiously wet from head to toe - doing what could only be described as a very intense snuggle with a breathtakingly beautiful woman. A breathtakingly beautiful and just as curiously wet woman. Something about her was familiar, even though her face was partially hidden by her hair in the picture.
Benedict’s headache intensified.
“Who is that?”
Eloise cackled and Benedict clenched his jaw. Mercy had never been one of Eloise’s primary traits.
“That, my dear, oblivious brother, is our new neighbour. Our new neighbour Sophie.”
Benedict groaned.
“Ohh fuck me.”
“Oh fuck you indeed. If she hasn’t already done that.”
Benedict looked at her incredulously.
“What? You don’t even remember she was there, maybe there is a whole other story you don’t remember?”
Shit.
Had he really? In the bathtub? With his apartment full to bursting with people? And with him and possibly her being so hammered he couldn’t remember a thing?
Shit shit shit shit.
Blood and colour drained from his face in a rush, plummeting into his already upset stomach. He barely made it to the kitchen sink before he had to reacquaint himself with Eloise’s smoothie. It was, incredulously, even worse than his first contact with it.
“Jesus, Benedict, take a breath. We can fix this. And clean up your mess while I open the windows.”
Mercy wasn’t Eloise’s primary trait, but strategy and getting him out of trouble had always been one of her strengths. Once his dry heaving and panting had stopped enough for him to have a glass of water and take care of the mess, he managed to form words again.
“We can?”
“Of course we can, oh ye of little faith. Follow me.”
~
“Mr. Bridgerton, I really am very cross with you.”
Mrs. Crabtree peered at him over the rim of her glasses and Benedict was torn between shouting “Well, get in line.” and “Please, Mrs. Crabtree, I’ll do better next time, just don’t give me detention again”. Finding out he had bought the apartment next to his old English teacher had been an interesting day four years ago, to say the least.
“Don’t look at me like that, I am very tolerant of all the shenanigans you young people are up to, but last night someone ruined the Lady in Silver in the hallway and you know I am ever so fond of that painting.”
Benedict breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t perceived the damage on his way over, but as he was intimately familiar with the artist who had drawn the painting - i.e., himself - this was a problem that was fixable.
“Of course, Mrs. Crabtree. I will inspect the painting tomorrow and get it back in shape in no time.”
“You better, young man.”
Despite the bad day he had been having, Benedict smiled. Mrs. Crabtree had accidentally interrupted him mid …well, paint session did not really cover the mad haze he had been in when he had painted the Lady in Silver. It was one of his rare works painted in full flow state, inspired by a mystery woman on Instagram he had been secretly following for several weeks. The madness had started when she continued to post pictures that never showed her face fully, but yet had hinted at a face so beautiful it drove Benedict into an artistic frenzy. Mrs. Crabtree had knocked on his door with a pot of soup in hand, stating that she had seen him through her kitchen window painting without a break for ten hours straight and that she was exceedingly worried his mother would accuse her of man slaughter if she didn’t intervene.
As a gesture of gratitude, Benedict had hung the finished painting in the hallway between his place and the Crabtrees.
Tomorrow, he would inspect the damage and make sure Mrs. Crabtree was happy again. Benedict didn’t care much for the painting anymore. His mystery woman had stopped posting and he had drowned his sorrow about that in enough alcohol to put the entire population of Soho to shame. Looking at it now with a hangover was not a good idea.
Mrs. Crabtree woke him from his musings by handing him flour, milk and eggs, and a packet of electrolytes.
“There you go. Take some of that medicine, you look awful.”
Mrs. Crabtree got on wonderfully well with Eloise, much to Benedict’s relief and - later on - chagrin.
With his arms full of everything he needed, he slowly returned to his apartment.
~
“Benedict? Benedict!!”
Once again, Eloise brought with her a stab of brutally bright daylight and once again Benedict wondered why on earth he couldn’t just go ahead and die right here, at his kitchen counter. His ears were still ringing and his right shoulder still played hard to get. Life in your thirties was not for the faint of heart.
“Go away, Eloise.”
“Benedict, did you remember to put a timer on for the cake?”
“Of course I remembered to put a timer on, look, I did it right … here.”
The timer on Benedict’s phone blinked happily back at him, displaying that it would faithfully let him know once the next fifty hours had passed. Well, forty eight hours, to be precise. Because apparently, Benedict had fallen asleep at his kitchen counter and now -
“Fuck!”
Eloise was already one step ahead of him, deftly opening the oven door with the fire proof gloves he had to acquire after one of Hyacinth's chemistry experiments in his kitchen had gone wrong.
With careful movements, Eloise removed the cake - and started cackling again. God, whoever thought having seven siblings was a wonderful thing for all the company they would provide had never met his seven siblings. His headache pulsed unhappily behind his right temple. Crawling back into his bathtub and drowning was getting more and more appealing.
But he was a man on a mission and drowning needed to wait until at least after tea.
“What? What is it??”
“I wish the others were here to see this. You forgot to turn the oven on, you absolute idiot.”
A fish out of water would have congratulated Benedict on his incredulous stare and yapping for air while his sister tried her very best not to let the cake batter pour out of the form as her body shook with laughter.
They managed to get the cake back into the oven at last, Eloise carefully setting the alarm at Benedict’s and her phone for 2 pm, still cackling with glee as she vanished into her bedroom.
An hour later, Benedict finally had a reason to laugh at Eloise for a change because the cake was very crispy indeed. Eloise had got the temperature wrong.
Life was alright again.
~
Benedict supposed that if his heart could beat any louder, Francesca might be able to hear it up in Scotland.
He stood in front of their new neighbours door, sending a silent thank you to whoever in the spiritual heavens was listening for helping him at least save some part of the “cake” - though calling it a cake was certainly a gross overstatement.
First, he forgot to turn the oven on. Then Eloise had turned the temperature up way too high. And now, he had fallen over a few boxes their new neighbours had - probably temporarily - put outside of their apartment and into the hallway, and which Benedict for some reason hadn’t seen - despite them being perfectly visible from every angle he now looked at them - and so the “cake” had flown through the air a lot more than any cake ever should. Gathering up the remains of the - well, he needed to get honest at some point, so he might just do it now - the remains of the biscuit crumbs from the floor, rubbing his smarting shins and then deciding to just get it over with, Benedict now stood sweaty, disheveled and with biscuit crumbs on a plastic plate in front of a white apartment door that looked very similar to the door leading to his and Eloise’s apartment.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, he raised his hand and rang the doorbell.
For one long, horrifying minute, nothing happened. Then, his ears picked up movement behind the door before it was opened to reveal the woman Eloise had shown him on her phone screen.
She looked startled and for a moment, they just stared at each other.
Then -
“Benedict, uhm, hi?”
He swallowed.
Her voice.
He had heard that voice before.
He had heard that voice do lovely, indecent things to his ear drums last night.
The memories came back to him in hazy snippets, dancing around his Hippocampus, refusing to come together in a coherent picture. It truly didn’t pay to get wasted to the point of blackout.
Shit.
“Benedict?”
“I made cake.”
Sophie’s eyebrows rose. Understandable.
“Well, I tried to make a cake, but then I was so hungover that I forgot to turn the oven on and then Eloise woke me with her phone screen of fury and put the cake in the oven again, only that she thought our oven couldn’t handle that much batter all at once so she turned it up to the highest setting and then I fell over your boxes, which are perfectly visible by the way, and shattered the remains of our cake and now I am here to apologize for last night because I remember nothing though I am almost willing to trade my sister in for my memories because I really hope there is nothing to apologize for because I was hammered and whatever we did, I shouldn’t have done any of it in the first place without checking with you first and I am not even sure I did that, so here is are some biscuit crumbs and please say something to make me stop rambling…”
Sophie’s eyebrows had undergone an interesting journey throughout his chaotic speech - first both of them had moved up, then they had knitted together before one of them decided to go on a little break and let the other one do the work. Now they were back in their usual place, arranging themselves with her eyes, mouth and nose to a crinkly smile that at last had the ability to make Benedict stop talking.
One of her hands reached out, gently prying the plastic plate from his grasp and setting it on another pile of boxes.
Her fingers reached out again, loosely tangling with his.
“Hello, Benedict Bridgerton. I am Sophie Baek.”
Benedict swallowed. Sophie didn’t seem finished.
“I am quite fond of ... crispy crumbs.”
Her smile was infectious and his facial muscles responded in kind without any conscious effort on his part. That was probably better anyway, given how most of his conscious effort had led to one minor disaster after another.
“And I would very much like to tell you that nothing happened yesterday that I was not consenting to.”
The weight he had been carrying around since he heard Eloise tell him about his night of passion in the bathtub fell off his shoulders in a silent, thunderous “whooosh”.
Sophie stepped closer to him, still holding his hand.
“I was actually wondering when you were going to show up. With all your talk about how we are going to be doing this regularly and whether I would want to be your neighbour with benefits, which I refused, by the way; you were devastated for a full ten minutes by that - but then you proceeded to give me this excellent handjob that has left me wondering what you are able to do when fully sober and ready for something more… personal than neighbours with benefits.”
Jesus Christ on a cracker, that was a lot to take in.
Benedict swallowed and asked the first question that came to his mind:
“Why was I so wet?”
Sophie barked out a laugh and Benedict’s heart did something unnecessarily complicated at the sight of the mischief in her eyes.
“You needed some fresh air, so we went on the balcony. You didn’t believe me that it was going to rain, so I insisted we should stay outside until I could prove my point. It took a minute in the pouring rain, but then you did admit defeat.”
Sophie stepped closer again.
“Though I did enjoy your speech about the rain being just ‘a collection of mist’.”
Ohhh God.
Benedict gathered his courage.
“Well then, Sophie Baek. Would you like to bake some proper cake with me tomorrow? Once I’m not hung over anymore?”
She smiled again and Benedict cursed his past self for indulging so liberally in the Bridgerton Brother Bramble Colin so faithfully had supplied him with last night. Some pathetic part of him pleaded with his Hippocampus to at least dig up the memories of the handjob. He was so engulfed in tracing the faint “aahhh” of Sophie’s voice his Hippocampus grudgingly presented him with, that he almost missed Sophie’s answer.
“I would love to.”