Chapter Text
They fell asleep promptly after, sweaty and giggly, tucked into each other in this narrow bed. It hadn’t seemed so bad then, when he was still full of endorphins and too content to pay his twisted limbs any mind. He feels it now. He’s still keeping to the same position he’d been in when he drifted off hours earlier, his knee burning with the need to stretch his leg and a knot in his shoulder from the awkward angle of his neck.
The perils of being six feet tall.
Penelope’s small frame is curled up underneath the soft blanket, her back against the wall, breathing softly. Getting up to stretch his sore limbs, Colin is jealous of the ease in which she fits anywhere and everywhere. He has no doubt Penelope has always fit right here, with him, which logically implies he must fit with her as well, right? Long, awkward limbs and all. He can’t have slept for more than a couple of hours but he feels awake. In fact, he feels more awake than he’s felt in years, the fog of doubt finally lifting and letting him see the path home. Because he has a feeling this is it. From now on, this is home. Home is anywhere with Penelope.
He reaches blindly inside his bag for some clean clothes and, in his restlessness, starts looking for his phone. What time is it? Is it still snowing? How long do they have before they’re pulled back into the real world?
He can’t remember where he left it last night since all his senses had narrowed to a singular focus when he realised how distressed their kiss had left Penelope. He was terrified to have hurt her again. Eventually, he finds the phone peeking out of his pants pocket on the floor where he’d carelessly tossed it earlier. It’s dead. He plugs it into the charger but decides against turning it back on. As much as he needs answers, he’s not ready for the outside world to encroach upon this moment yet – and by outside world, he’s specifically thinking of his family’s meddling in the group chat. He checks the time and weather on his otherwise app-free tablet. It was strictly for journaling now. Notebooks were cumbersome and heavy to cart everywhere and he didn't want to leave them around for anyone to find.
It's only 5:33 a.m. After inventorying his aching muscles, he hears the loud growl of his empty stomach.
Thirty minutes later, Colin’s walking back to their room, two cups of coffee in hand and an eclair and a half—because he couldn’t very well bring it up to Pen without tasting it first, could he?—in a box tucked under his arm, as he struggles to open the door without dropping their breakfast.
Their breakfast in bed.
Because he’s the lucky bastard who gets to have breakfast in bed with Penelope now. Just thinking about it makes him feel giddy. Eloise will simply have to learn to share her best friend because he isn’t about to let go of her now. He finally wins the battle against the digital lock, sneaking inside and closing the door with his foot.
And then he looks up.
He looks up to see Penelope sitting up in bed, all tousled hair and swollen eyes, likely from the crying they both did last night. Swollen eyes that are flying over the screen of his tablet.
His stomach drops. The fingers in his right hand are singed because he’s squeezing the plastic cup too hard. Then, in his attempt to correct his hold, he accidentally moves his left arm and the box of eclairs falls to the floor with a loud thud. Startled, he tips one of the cups and feels the burning liquid dripping over his palm and drops the cup by reflex. He barely has the presence of mind to put the remaining coffee down on the bedside table, the aching heat starting to throb.
Penelope gasps, looking up from the screen and drops the device on the bed as if she were the one who got burned.
“Colin!” she yelps, securing the white sheet around her naked body and jumping up from her perch to carefully hold his wrist and examine the injury. “Oh, this might blister,” she murmurs, already dragging him to the bathroom sink and opening the faucet. The cold water on his red palm is a welcome respite from the pain, much like the burn was a respite from the humiliation. He wishes to linger in this liminal space forever, dreading the inevitable return of both his ailments.
“I’m sorry, ” Pen starts, closing the tap and pulling him in the direction of the bed, effectively ending whatever relief he might have found. “I didn’t mean to—”
“What did you mean to do when you picked up my personal tablet, Penelope?” he snaps, standing his ground as Penelope attempted to push him to down on the bed. His heart is loud in his ears.
She huffs, moving to her suitcase and hastily pulling out a flowery toiletry bag.
“Give me your hand,” she whispers, having found the healing cream she was looking for. “Please.”
His heart is still racing but the dull ache in his palm is starting to throb so he stretches his arm out to her, focusing on the softness of her skin as she tenderly spreads the cream on the wound. The relief of the cream isn’t as effective as the cold water but her touch quiets his inner demons like nothing else ever has.
“There,” Penelope says after a while, her fingers drawing soothing patterns on the back of his hand, even if her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “Good as new.”
She lets go, taking a step back to look him in the eye and he can no longer hold his frustration back. He huffs, “Why, Pen?”
“I wasn’t thinking, I just wanted to check the time. But Colin, your writing, it’s–”
“My writing?! What do my personal notes have to do with the time, huh?” The humiliation is coming into the forefront and it is unbearable. No one was ever supposed to read his stupid ramblings. And now Penelope has read it—Pen, who, by some god forsaken miracle, found something to love in him. “You had no right!”
There’s fire in his chest and its burn is a hundred times more distressing than the coffee’s. If he could just catch his breath it might cool him down but he can’t, so the burn just keeps spreading up his neck, his face, the top of his head. He scrubs his face harshly with his good hand, trying in vain to get rid of it all.
“Colin,” Pen whispers, pulling on his forearm to get a clear look at his face, “look at me.”
He resists. His eyes are the ones burning now. A knot forms in his throat.
“Please?” Her voice is so, so soft. She could ask him to commit murder in this voice and he wouldn’t be able to deny her.
So he relents, blinking away the tears and letting his eyes rest on her figure. She looks blurry, her red hair framing her face like a halo as she stares up at him. Wrapped only in the white sheet, she looks like an angel.
He deflates, stumbling into the bed and reaching for the forgotten tablet. With the fury gone, he’s all fear and shame.
“I am truly sorry, Colin,” Penelope starts again when his eyes reluctantly find hers. “I should have closed the app as soon as I realised, I just–”
Colin swallows. “Why didn’t you?”
Penelope smiles at him, shaking her head. “You have no idea, do you?”
Colin can only stare back, puzzled.
“Your writing,” she touches his hand above the tablet. “It is so good, I couldn’t stop.”
Colin smirks, rolling his eyes. “Be serious, Pen.”
She’s the one looking puzzled now. “I am.”
He snorts. “It’s nothing; I just like to put my thoughts to paper when I travel.”
She squints at him, suspicious. “Colin?”
“Mm?” He feels lightheaded now that the adrenaline is dropping.
“When did you start?”
“Start what?”
“Writing.”
“Oh, um… I don’t know, it’s just something I do when I’m away,” he says, awkwardly scratching his neck.
“Have you been writing since your first trip?”
“No.”
The silence stretches between them. Eventually, Penelope sighs. “You don’t have to tell me; I didn’t mean to pressure you.”
Colin thinks she sounds dejected but he can’t bring himself to look at her. His palms are sweaty, which is doing nothing to help with the burn.
“I am truly sorry,” she continues, resting a hand on his shoulder. “I should have stopped when I realised what it was.”
And then she’s moving again, turning her back to him for the first time since their breakfast crashed on the floor. It startles him out of his mortified stupor and he finally looks at her. His heart sinks. She’s the one avoiding his eyes now, all frantic movements as she hides in her blanket-cocoon and makes a beeline for the bathroom.
He takes a hand to his hair in exasperation; this is all so familiar. He’s tired of the cat and mouse game. He thought they’d moved past it last night but… Then again, since when had sex magically solved everything? And yet, even as he thought this, it felt wrong to diminish their experience so. It wasn’t just sex. It was special.
And it still didn't fix everything. Now he's hurt her again.
So how does he fix it?
She takes her time in the shower so by the time she’s done, Colin’s already tidied up the room to the best of his ability and is busying himself with packing. It takes all of his self-control not to watch the bathroom door when it opens. She’s wrapped in a fluffy towel because she didn’t take a change of clothes with her. But this isn’t about desire so much as it is about the need to repair what he broke.
Their connection, once an undercurrent sizzling just beneath their skin had burst forth with their proximity, and Colin could not, would not, did not want to live without it anymore.
But he has a feeling he’s going to have to work for it. He’s not afraid of putting in the work, to be sure… It’s just that revealing his soft underbelly to one of the smartest, strongest people he knows is probably the hardest thing that’s ever been asked of him.
He listens to her moving around the room and tries to picture what he’ll say.
‘I started writing because I was lonely.’
‘I don’t know what words are coming out of my brain half the time.’
‘These words are nothing more than evidence of how little I have to offer…’
And then he hears the door close as she locks herself back in the bathroom to get dressed. All the air comes out of his lungs in one big exhale along with every word he didn’t have the courage to say. He’s standing by his bed—the one that had been used for nothing besides holding his open suitcase since yesterday because he’d been happy to twist his limbs into a pretzel on the other side of the room but he’s not sure he’s welcome there right now. Besides, this is where all his stuff is and he needs to pack.
Pants, check. Hoodies, check. He can’t pack his toiletries yet, obviously.
“Fuck,” he whispers, pressing the balls of his hands into his eyes (uncaring of the sting in his right hand), any pretence of packing abandoned as he pushes the bag aside and drops onto the mattress. When he opens his eyes again he notices there’s a small snow globe decorating his bedside table. He picks it up, shakes it so he can watch the fake snow fall on the couple of snowmen at the centre. His throat feels tight, all of a sudden.
He doesn’t know how long he has before she joins him again but there’s something in him that just knows his window of opportunity is closing fast. His words are failing him at the worst possible time but he can’t give up.
He needs a plan.
And then he sees the tablet, still abandoned on top of the bed they’d shared, holding countless words that his lips can’t say.
He can’t let himself think about it too much, lest the shame take hold of his entire body again, so he doesn’t. He simply rises from one bed and moves to the other, picks up the tablet, opens the app, and waits.
She’s a fool.
Really, just because she’d spent the better part of her life watching Colin from afar—pining for him—doesn’t mean they’re particularly close. Sure, they’ve had a couple intense moments since being snowed in. Stuck inside this magical Christmas wonderland, really.
And yeah, they had sex.
Really great sex.
The best sex of her entire life.
But that doesn’t make them characters in one of her silly novels and this isn’t a happily ever after. Just because she admitted to loving him and he was… receptive (this word does feel like the understatement of the century), it still doesn’t mean he wants her reading his personal thoughts uninvited. She wouldn’t like it either, would she? For him to go snooping and find all the NSFW fiction she’s written over the years?
Physical intimacy is one thing, but emotional vulnerability? It's like turning her body inside out so all her insecurities are plain to see. And now she's read his private thoughts and forced him to do what she's been so afraid of. Against his will. Pot, meet kettle.
They’ve only started opening up to each other like this for a couple of days, what was she thinking? (She wasn’t thinking, is the problem. She’d woken up still lost in the fantasy of it all absentmindedly reached for the tablet before even wiping the sleep from her eyes.)
Penelope sighs. She’s been staring at her reflection in the mirror for too long, her lower lip raw from biting it, and it’s becoming increasingly harder to pretend she’s still getting dressed.
She takes a deep breath and moves to the open the door.
It’s time to face the music.
He’s not packing anymore. For a brief moment she thinks he might have left the room, and then her eyes find him sitting there on the unmade bed, tablet in hand.
“Pen,” he murmurs, motioning for her to join him.
Her heart is thudding loudly in her chest when she sits beside him. It skips a beat when he hands her the tablet.
“Colin, you don’t have to do this,” she blurts out, “This is personal—I shouldn’t have pushed you. I-”
“Penelope, please,” he begs. “I want you to read it.”
She searches his expression and she’s not entirely convinced she should accept it.
“Colin, are you s—”
“Yes,” he interrupts. “I am sure. I won’t lie, this is terrifying and I feel like I’m about to disintegrate from the shame but—”
“Colin, there’s nothing shameful about your writing,” she says, unable to hold back. “It’s beautiful.”
Colin swallows, shaking his head almost imperceptibly.
“It’s true,” she insists, impatient.
“How would you know?”
She wishes she could be annoyed by his question. It would be so easy. She could simply act offended and throw it in his face that she is a librarian, for God’s sake, her passion for the written language is hardly a secret. But his tone is anything but accusing, his eyes pleading with her to help him understand what she sees in him.
It breaks something in her.
She hates him a little bit in that moment, for she knows the best way to help him understand is by unveiling her own secret, and she’s already given him so much of herself in the last forty-eight hours she’s afraid there might be nothing left when he inevitably leaves for his next adventure. Her time, her thoughts, her food, her body, her love…
Her secret.
“A writer recognises a fellow writer when she sees it,” she tells him in one big exhale. “You’re a good writer, Colin. The way you described that little café in France was so immersive, I felt like I was right there beside you.”
She hears nothing but her heartbeat in the silence that follows, squirming under his suddenly attentive gaze.
“I wish you were there beside me, Pen,” he says an eternity later. Then, as if time had finally caught up with him he lowers his voice to a whisper, “A writer, huh?”
Penelope fiddles with the rumpled sheets.
“Yeah,” she says in a voice even smaller than his.
“So what have you been writing? Is it another monumental gossip column?” he jokes.
She’s worried she might look like a ridiculous fish, eyes wide and mouth agape like this because what?!
How did he find out about this??!
He’s just laughing at her now, and it’s annoying how gorgeous he looks in that moment. She shouldn’t want to punch him and kiss him at the same time.
“Excuse me?”
“Your little college endeavour, Pen. Don’t tell me you forgot all about it in your old age,” he continues, shamelessly.
Penelope’s eyes narrow. “I have no idea how that information ever got to you, but no, this has nothing to do with Whistledown.”
“Whistledown!” he exclaims with a smirk. “That’s what it was called.”
Pen huffs, covers her face with her hands and groans, “Colin, please, I don’t want to revisit my teenage years.”
She’d been hyping herself up for a different kind of self-exposure but now she’s been humiliated enough for one morning.
“Forget about it,” she says, standing up abruptly. “Pretend I didn’t say anything.”
She feels the warmth of his hand circle her wrist, and because it’s such a light, tender touch she makes the mistake of looking down at his face. And because he’s looking up at her with those puppy dog eyes and she can see the ringlet of gold amidst the deep blue—why is he so close to her when she’s standing up and he’s still sitting?—she stays.
“I’m sorry, Pen, what were you going to tell me? No more teasing, I swear.”
She resents him all the more for apologising since she can barely pull herself together enough to remember why she was mad in the first place. Then he lets go of her wrist and holds her hips, adjusting so she’s now standing between his spread legs. She’s close enough she can feel the heat of his body and she doesn’t know how to tell him this isn’t helping her keep track of the conversation.
“Pen?”
She bites her lip in an attempt to ground herself, resting her hands on his shoulders. “I was saying that I know what it takes to put words down on a page. I know it can be… vulnerable, so I shouldn’t have snooped but—”
“Pen.” He squeezes the softness just above her hipbones. “Just what have you been writing?”
She’s the one who can’t hold his eyes now, focusing intently on a bit of fuzz sticking to his shirt, just beside her right thumb. She wants to brush it off but she feels frozen, somehow. She feels his large hands squeezing her again and it sets her heart racing.
“Penelope?”
“I—” Her mouth is so dry. “Just some books,” she grumbles.
“Come again?”
“Books!” she spits out, “God!”
His eyes are comically wide. “Pen, are you saying you’ve written multiple books? Why would you keep it a secret? What are they about?”
She wants to take a step back but the weight of his hands on her waist keeps her frozen to the spot. “Just things.”
“What things?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me!”
“For fuck’s sake Colin, it’s nothing big! Just silly things.”
Colin’s getting flushed again, just like he did when he caught her earlier, all the way up to his elven ears. Both of their voices keep growing louder but neither one moves away, somehow cradling all that frenetic energy in the small space between their bodies.
“Sillier than my droning on and on about the smell of the coffee in that Parisian Café? No, nothing beats the paragraph about the temperature of the freaking ocean! Who even cares about all that?!”
She squeezes her eyes shut, digging her nails into his shoulder blades. “Oh, shut up! I care, I do! You write the most beautiful imagery about the places you visit and I loathe it when you diminish it like that. Why won’t you tell me when this started?!”
It’s his turn to huff. “You’re one to talk! Why won’t you tell me what you’re writing about?!”
She pushes at his shoulders, gasping for air. “Because it’s fucking embarrassing, alright?! Will you let it go, now?”
He cocks an eyebrow. “You read my journal—my most private, embarrassing, personal thoughts—and you’re saying you’re embarrassed? Come on, Pen. Tell me. Unless you don't trust me...”
“It’s not the same! The books I write… They’re just…” She can’t bring herself to say the words that are swimming around in her mind. Dumb, frivolous, immaterial. Just evidence of her stupid heart’s unrequited love for you, you idiot. All fight leaves her, then. “They’re novels.”
She sees the twinkle in his eyes the moment she utters the words but she’s not ready for another round of questions, her skin pulled tight over her tired bones.
“It doesn’t matter,” she interrupts, raising a hand from his shoulder in a silent plea for him to stop. “This isn’t about me, I simply wanted you to know I understand, better than you think. I’m sorry if I fucked it up earlier. I didn’t mean to.”
To her horror, she feels her throat tighten and tears spring to her eyes.
“Damn, that was the last thing I wanted after—” She stops short of confessing too much, if there even is anything left to confess. Her eyes are darting to the ceiling in a valiant attempt to keep the tears in.
“Penelope, I am not mad anymore,” Colin says, lifting a hand to her chin and prompting her to look at him. “Not about you reading my musings, at least.”
Stupid, stupid tears. When will this rollercoaster ride be over with? Why is everything so heightened when she’s next to Colin Bridgerton?
“I am only sad you had to keep this secret,” he says, “because I know why I did it. I’m just… me. But I cannot understand how someone as brilliant as you would doubt yourself like this.”
“Col, this is bullshit, you have got to stop putting yourself down like that, I hate it.”
He blinks up at her. “I’ll try.”
She nods, relieved.
“But the same applies to you. If I'm not allowed to diminish my worth, you're not allowed to, either. Please tell me you haven’t been doing this to yourself; you’re smarter than that.”
“I know my writing has worth,” she admits now that she no longer feels crippled by shame. “If anything, the fact my publisher just signed me up for a trilogy is—”
“What?!” Colin interrupts. “What do you mean, your publisher?”
Penelope frowns. Hadn’t they established she’d been writing novels for a while?
“Pen,” he says gravely. “Are you saying you’ve been a published author all this time?”
Her throat is dry now. Is this the straw that will break the camel’s back? Was it fun to know she’s written novels when they were her quirky little hobby but not when she’s making money off of them? Not that she’s making that much money but—
“You are,” he begins, interrupting her spiral, a tentative smile teasing at the corners of his lips, “remarkable.”
Her cheeks burn.
“You’re writing a trilogy?” he continues, no longer containing his grin. “Of course you are, you’re the most brilliant person I know.” He stands up then, towering over her for a fraction of a second before wrapping her in a bear hug. “I am so, so proud of you, Pen.”
Penelope’s mind is still reeling but she shivers at his gruff whisper. Her skin raises in goosebumps and her traitorous arms lift to wrap around his waist.
He is so warm.
“Are you cold?” he asks, after who knows how long, rubbing his hands over her arms.
She shakes her head that’s still buried in his chest, “No. Not even a little bit.”
He chuckles before tentatively putting some distance between them so he could look at her face again. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
Penelope wants nothing more than to deflect, every muscle in her throat straining with the need to keep her words in, but… “I was ashamed.”
He frowns. “Ashamed of being a badass, published author?”
She can’t hold his gaze as she admits, “Ashamed of the types of books I write.” She takes a step back, fiddling with her hands. “I’m not Dostoyevsky or Dickens or Austen,” she says bitterly, “And even if I were to stick to the present, I’m not Jodie Picoult either, whose writing I very much admire for its brave, honest depiction of human nature. I’m just… me.” She swallows. “I write silly romance novels. Some of them could be called bodice rippers. It’s just glorified smut.”
She buries her face in her hands, pressing her palms into her eye sockets and hoping the pressure will be enough to distract her from the humiliation. Her mouth kept running despite, or perhaps because of her forced detachment. “And it’s not like I was ever some grand authority on sex to begin with; those were all fuelled by teenaged fantasies and fragments of other people’s experiences because God knows the few I had were insubstantial at best, depressing at worst.”
She takes a deep breath and looks into his eyes. And then he takes her breath away.
“Last night was the best sex I ever had.”