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Hyacinth was not having a very good day. Not at all. Not one bit! She woke up and immediately saw that she had somehow missed her alarm, got to class a full thirty minutes late after chasing a bus, and then spilled her coffee down the front of her jeans so it looked like she pissed herself.
She got a B- on her paper explaining the view on historical imperialism in the modern era, which was not up to Hyacinth Bridgerton standards in the slightest, then also saw a group of tween girls laughing at her while she waited for the bus home, which did absolutely nothing to help her confidence or her mood.
A guy immediately told Hyacinth what a fine ass she had as she got off of that bus, which, funnily enough, definitely did not improve her confidence or mood.
To top it off, here she was at family gathering time, her mom trying to set her up with some guy she saw at a hardware store.
“Mum, I’m not doing this right now.” She grumbled at the pictures her mom had taken of the dude. It was incredible, really, the extent that her mother would go so that Hyacinth might be miserable.
She was really not in the mood.
With all of her siblings in happy, healthy relationships, five of them already married, Violet had turned all of her attention onto Hyacinth. She might be grateful, if not for the fact that she was perfectly content as she was and really did not need the disgustingly sappy lives her siblings all led.
Really.
She looked about the living room for any assistance, someone she could direct the attention to, but every one of her siblings was occupied in some way that was either disgusting or just useless.
Francesca was in Scotland, Anthony was in a heated debate with Kate, Colin was being fed strawberries by Penelope (yuck), Eloise was still in the country, Daphne was discussing art with Benedict and Lucy, and Gregory was trying to describe why her garden soil wasn’t working to Sophie while Simon took a nap in the corner.
Essentially, no one to save her. For a moment she debated following Simon’s lead, but her mother would not appreciate that, and it would end in an earful even more degrading than the one she was being given now.
Hyacinth sighed as her mother continued on her spiel of how perfect this guy was for her, how Hyacinth should at least take his number! When the clock marked fifteen minutes of putting up with what were becoming increasingly boring family meetups, Hyacinth stood, apologized to her mother, and walked out of the house to a taxi, which took her back to her sad little apartment she shared with her happy little roommate.
The happy little roommate, Felicity, greeted her with a handful of bills she had to pay by the end of the week. Lovely. Hyacinth blamed these bills for letting her guard down, because somehow between her moping and thinking about how much time she’d have to spend with Professor Danbury to get the money, Felicity had roped Hyacinth into going to a party at Cho’s that night, saying that it would cheer her up and she would have such a fun time.
And here she was, standing in his living room with a stale beer and a mild headache, Felicity missing in action. Hopefully not too much.
She hadn’t an interaction with Cho, but he let mostly anyone into his parents’ house as long as they weren’t on a watch list, and really, wasn’t that all you could hope for in a college frat boy’s party?
She rather thought Gareth St. Clair ought to be on a watch list, with the gads of girls he had gathered around him across the room. There was Cressida Cowper, of course, who was desperate for anyone’s attention, clad in a stringy top and tight, tight, tight shorts. Some pretty Italian girl on an exchange program from Bologna, tits bouncing in a sparkly red dress. Hyacinth recognized a blonde communications major with an abominable fake tan so intense that she was darker than Gareth himself, a pretty girl in a lovely blue number, and-
“Felicity!” Hyacinth’s friend whipped her head around at her name, taking her attention off of the brief grin Gareth tossed her way. How the mighty have fallen , she thought, a frown appearing on both of their faces. Felicity’s at her swooning being interrupted, Hyacinth’s at her swooning.
Nonetheless, Felicity made her way over to where Hyacinth stood with a beer. “Whaat,” She whined, nose scrunched in annoyance.
Hyacinth was not amused.
“I cannot believe I just saw you drooling over Gareth St. Clair. Gareth.”
Felicity shrugged.
“Felicity! The man is a whore!”
Despite her mild exasperation, Felicity curled a lip in amusement. “And good with his fingers, I hear.”
“Gasp! This is breaking girl code.” Hyacinth warned, hand on her hip and beer pointed at Felicity. It really was a break of girl code, considering the many nights Felicity endured the growling rants about Gareth, how he always teased her, how he called her stupid in front of her favorite professor, how he looked at her in condescension whenever she suggested an idea.
Being an almost TA to his grandmother (as close as you can get in undergrad), she often ended up in close quarters with him, considering that Professor Danbury somehow appreciated Gareth’s scholarly advice as much as she did Hyacinth’s.
“It’s not like I would date him or anything!” Felicity protested. “I’m just curious, is all.”
Hyacinth glanced up at where Gareth wooed his horde. Miraculously and horrendously, he shifted his eyes from the cute Italian up to her in the same moment, flashing her a devilish grin when he caught her looking. She returned with a sneer, unembarrassed, and turned back on Felicity, who stood with her lips shaped into a pout.
Hyacinth sighed, “Fine! Whatever. I do not, however, want to see you drool like that ever again over Gareth. What happened to you and Geoffrey, anyway?” Felicity had been drooling over him for weeks now, and yet here she was making heart eyes at Gareth, of all people.
Felicity shrugged again, her gaze trailing over to some guy doing a keg stand in another room. “Not exclusive yet. We went on a date last night, though.”
Hyacinth rolled her eyes, remembering Felicity giggling about how Geoff took her dancing and managed to sprain his ankle doing the tango. “Don’t remind me.” She groaned, and looked down at her empty cup. “I’m going to get a drink, and you’re going to stay on this side of the room. Want anything?”
Felicity grinned. “Gareth, maybe.”
“Shut up!” Hyacinth called as she walked back towards the keg unoccupied with a moron. She understood the general appeal of Gareth, of course; she knew his reputation just as well as everyone else. Hell, even his grandma teased him about it. Nonetheless, he was a dickhead, and she would be damned if her forever friend Felicity fell into those dickhead arms. Felicity was smart, but Gareth was a charmer. She was gossipy enough to know that a good chunk of his one night stands ended up lovestruck fools by morning.
Felicity would not be among them, she thought angrily as she filled her red solo cup with more shitty beer. Really, she didn’t know why she went to these parties so often, saw him so often, why she even agreed to go tonight when he’d probably be there and she wanted to crawl into her sheets and die. Mainly the guys she could flirt with and then laugh about later when remembering how they floundered at her retorts.
She found them to be cheap entertainment. If she was particularly lucky (and benevolent, let’s be honest) Hyacinth spent a night with one of the better bozos. The process quite fun, really.
It was not so fun, however, when she turned from the keg and was met with the grinning face of none other than Gareth St. Clair. “Hey, Hyacinth,” He drawled, in that tone he saved specifically for her. The tone that was just condescending enough to make her fist twitch and just charming enough to make her knees weak.
“Gareth,” She scowled, her sharp gaze meeting his. Hyacinth hated running into him at parties, mostly because she was tipsy and whenever she looked into those deep, brown eyes, twinkling with amusement, as if he always knew something she didn’t..
“Surprise to see you drinking,” He gestured to her cup. A fat lie. He always saw her at parties nursing a glass of something. She knew, because he always made a point to catch her at the alcohol counter and piss her off. As he was doing now. “Thought you had a stick far enough up your ass that alcohol just couldn’t go down your throat.”
Hyacinth sharpened her glare, downing her entire cup without breaking eye contact. An acquired skill, refined by spite. “I thought so too, but it turns out that seeing a walking dick is so revolting I need some kind of liquid to wash down the taste of vomit.” She punctuated her statement with a loud burp, which she blew right into Gareth’s face before turning around and filling her cup up again.
While such behavior would make any other man stop in shock and affront, perhaps call her a bitch or a whore or whatever profanity men used for women these days, Gareth was not any other man. Gareth was infuriating.
“That dick has many talents, dear Hyacinth, though I wouldn’t say that walking is among them. Perhaps you could teach me the technique?” She could hear the grin in his voice. He always had a grin in his voice.
She spun back around, glare never faltering. “I’m not sure you’d have the capacity to understand it,” Hyacinth growled, echoing the words he often told her in his grandmother’s office.
He stepped closer to her, taking the cup out of her hands and bringing it to his mouth. She cringed, knowing she’d have to throw that cup away. “I don’t think you’d even have the capacity to teach it. Have you even seen a dick, Hyacinth? Or are you so prickly and nauseating that you scare off the entirety of the male population?” Gareth snarled.
And Hyacinth fumed . It was one thing to insult her intelligence. Another to insult her personality. A completely different hit to her pride was to imply that because of those things, she was revolting. She knew he stared at her when he thought she couldn’t see, that he barely protested his grandmother’s matchmaking habits, that there was a reason he sought her out at every opportunity.
Hyacinth knew.
She was upset. She was wretched. She was insulted, she was outraged, she was exhausted, and she was just so. Very. Over. Everything.
So she did the only logical thing, really. Hyacinth steadied herself, rolled her ankle, and kicked him directly in his non-walking dick as hard as she physically could. Never was she more grateful for the years spent playing football.
“I’d rather be feared than be like you.” Hyacinth snapped, and took her red solo cup and her dick kicking legs directly out of the room and down the hallway to the numerous bedrooms in the Cho house until she found one that was unoccupied. She plopped herself on the bedsheets, which emanated a suspicious must. Not that it mattered, when she was just so pissed off . Pissed at Gareth for his dickishness, pissed at herself for letting him get to her, pissed at everything and everyone that was horrid, like Hitler. She was pissed at Hitler.
She was so pissed she started crying, and she was so pissed that she started crying that she cried more. Hyacinth practically sobbed into the stale pillows, her emotions swelling up in a ball of abhorrent misery.
She sobbed through the soft knock on the door, the quiet, “Hyacinth?” In her lovely Felicity’s voice, the light footsteps fading away. She sobbed until she couldn’t anymore, which took a surprisingly short amount of time, and then she sat. She sat and let her eyes bore into the wall, her head aching from the tears and her chest aching from the emptiness.
The door swung open.
Hyacinth didn’t bother to look. She didn’t bother to check who it was, what they were doing here, if it was a Gareth fangirl coming to cuss her out. She didn’t bother because she already knew who it was by their footsteps, the familiar weight with a similar sound. She almost smirked at the slight limp in their gait, but found she was simply too exasperated to.
They closed the door, unmoving from their spot in the room.
They just stood in silence.
“Hyacinth,” Gareth broke, her name coming out soft but determined. “Will you,” Jump off a bridge? Ever get over yourself? Ice my dick?
“Go on a date with me?”
Well, if that didn’t get her attention. Hyacinth whirled towards him, blinking blankly at his intense stare, his resolve steadfast.
She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but all that came out was a pitiful little, “Wah?”
“Will you, Hyacinth Bridgerton, go on a date with me?” Gareth repeated, gaze somehow more formidable.
“Um,” Hyacinth fumbled, trying to find words, “Why?”
“Because I want to go on a date with you.”
Hyacinth gaped. “No shit, why?”
“I like you.”
“Yeah, why?”
Gareth didn’t respond, a flat look on his face. “Do you ever stop talking?”
“No, why?” Hyacinth returned, a small smile growing on her face.
A sigh. “Yes or no, Hyacinth?”
“Depends on your answer of why you want to in the first place.”
“I asked you first.”
“And I asked you second.”
“So that’s a no.”
“I never said that.”
“So what did you say?” Gareth looked impossibly more exasperated.
“I didn’t say anything. I asked why you wanted to go on a date with me.” Hyacinth’s grin widened.
“And I’m beginning to regret asking.”
“Why?”
“You’re exhausting.”
“Is that why you wanted to go on a date with me?”
“No.”
“So why did you?”
“I don’t anymore.”
“Yeah, but why did you in the first place?”
Gareth paused, pinching together his eyebrows before looking up at the ceiling. “Because,” He started, and Hyacinth sat forward. “I might, just the barest bit, like you, Hyacinth.”
Hyacinth’s smile reached from ear to ear. “Are you a masochist, Gareth?”
“Honestly?” Gareth deflated, flicking his eyes over her form, slowly unfolding from its crumpled state. “Maybe.”
“Is that why you are asking right after I kicked you in the dick? Did it turn you on?”
“No, Hyacinth.”
“Then why?”
Gareth sighed again. It was becoming a habit. “Because, Hyacinth, I realized that you are possibly the most entertaining woman I have ever met, and nobody else will ever satisfy me now that I’ve met you. Even though anyone who kicks me in the dick obviously has no idea what that dick does, with you, I feel as if that should be rectified.”
Hyacinth blinked. She wasn’t expecting that. Gareth was supposed to say it was a dare, a prank to avenge his balls. He was not supposed to spill his soul to her in this stenchy bedroom in the maze of the Cho estate with her eyes puffy and his crotch wounded . Still, “That’s such an odd way to say that you want to sleep with me, Gareth.”
“You’re an odd girl. I thought it fitting.”
“Touché, St. Clair.”
“Is that a yes?”
Hyacinth pretended to think, well aware of her conclusion. Gareth was probably the only man who would ever be insulted like that and not run for the hills immediately. He was witty, amusing, a little bit ridiculous, and frankly? She knew the answer before he even hobbled into the room.
“I guess.”
Gareth smiled despite her bored tone, and Hyacinth thought that maybe the dazzling way that smile lit up his face would help too.
“You’re not forgiven for those comments, St. Clair, but I do suppose we are even now.”
“Can I sincerely apologize to you on the date I’m taking you on right now?” Gareth held out his hand, a rare genuine expression accompanying the gentlemanly gesture.
“Hmm,” Hyacinth pondered, tapping her finger to her temple in a show of thought. “I may have changed my mind, considering I do scare off the male population, don’t I?” Gareth’s face immediately fell, and she giggled. “I’m kidding. But you do have a bit of apologizing to do.”
“On our date.” She finished, and placed her hand in his. “I’m kind of hungry.”
…
Hyacinth texted Felicity a quick, on date! see you tmr before returning her attention to Gareth sitting across from her in a booth at an ice cream parlor, cherry garcia nearly gone as she barely had made a dent in her rocky road.
She would really hate the triumphant look Danbury would give her when she found out.