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He probably should have stopped at five shots.
Gregory knows this now, in his infinite booze-induced wisdom, as the floor begins to play tricks on him, sliding this way and that.
The thing was, he had older brothers to impress—it wasn’t every day he was invited into their fold. And it certainly wasn’t every day that they insisted on taking him out, though Gregory had a feeling that the idea had somehow been the brainchild of his eldest sister-in-law.
They had suspiciously insisted on it after the news of Hermione and Richard’s engagement broke—it wasn’t difficult to put two and two together.
All night—all week, really—people had apologized to him and muttered something along the lines of “rotten luck,” and though Gregory knew he should say something, all he could ever do was shrug.
How could he possibly explain that the news hadn’t felt like a punch in the gut, but rather a quick tug of a bandaid? Painful for a brief second, a flash in the pan—and then gone just as quickly, leaving him rubbing a ghost of pain, more irritating than anything else.
He couldn’t.
The sixth shot goes down worse than the fifth.
Faintly, he can register his brother’s words in his ear–they’re garbled, though–incoherent as he stares up at the sky, admiring the way the stars glimmer–silver and smudged around the edges, beautiful and seeming so close and yet so far away at the same time.
“Do you think that she sees the same view from her window right now?” He asks–truthfully, he thought it had been a musing to himself, it isn’t until he hears his brother answer that he realizes he had spoken it aloud.
“Who, Hermione?”
Gregory scoffs.
“No,” he sighs–what hadn’t been clear about his initial statement? “Lucy, she lives just across the street, a few houses down,” he points vaguely in the direction of his friend’s house. He quickly realizes this is a bad idea as soon as he wobbles on the stairs of his brother and sister-in-law’s house, his arms shooting out to rebalance himself and recenter.
His brother is quiet for a moment, so quiet that Gregory is tempted to risk his balance once more to twist around and look at his face.
He decides not to.
“I don’t know, Egg,” Colin says finally.
Greg screws his face up at the nickname–he had always hated it, hated how all of his family seemed to have one for him, hated how he was still treated as a child.
They tumble through the door, and, unsurprisingly, straight to the kitchen.
They stand at the counter together, each with an open bag of crisps in front of them–careful not to to be too loud, wary of the sleeping members of his brother’s household.
“Your room is all set downstairs,” Colin whispers–nodding in the direction of the guest bedroom on the first floor.
Colin and Penelope’s guest bedroom had seen him through a handful of drunken nights before–this routine wasn’t new to him.
He nods.
“So…Lucy, huh?” Colin asks, and Greg is about to open his mouth to ask him what he means, when an idea dawns on him.
He decides not to answer, instead moving towards his brother’s fridge with newfound determination.
Colin asked about Lucy, Colin surely has plenty of sandwich ingredients in his house, Lucy would definitely appreciate a late night snack .
Greg has just set down the last of the ingredients he had gathered when he finally hears Colin ask him what he’s doing.
“Making a sandwich for Lucy,” Gregory answers, and he can hear her words in his head– her impassioned speech about the crafting of the perfect sandwich as she had cracked the salt over the piece of tomato–exactly four times, no more, no less.
“It’s 3:00 in the morning, Greg,” Colin reminds him, but Greg continues slathering the mayo on both sides of the sourdough in front of him (“it’s extremely important that a sandwich isn’t dry,”).
It’s challenging to wield the knife in his condition—but not impossible.
“She’ll wake up for this.”
He thinks steps leading up to the door of peoples’ houses are one of the worst inventions to date–he ponders this as he knocks three times on his friend’s door.
He has time to count in his head as he waits for the door to be answered.
Gregory makes it to seventy-three before Lucy’s body is finally standing in her doorway, her hands on her hips as she studies him.
He tries very hard not to think about how his soul feels at peace the moment she is back within his field of vision.
“It takes seventy-three steps for you to get to your door when I knock,” Greg says to break the silence between them. It is, he thinks, the exact kind of information Lucy will appreciate.
She gives him a scrutinizing look, but he must pass whatever screening she was giving him in her mind, because she finally smiles—just a bit, the corners of her mouth lifting.
“Gregory,” she finally says, and he smiles—his most charming grin. “If you ever show up at my door at 3:00am again, I will murder you,” she says, and she smiles sweetly as she says it, even though she opens the door and steps out of the way enough for Gregory to enter.
“You’re not being very nice to someone who brought something for you,” Gregory taunts–and he waves the brown paper bag he had carried with him in front of her.
It is, perhaps, just a little childish–but he decides that it is almost immediately worth it when he sees the intrigue flash across Lucy’s face. He is untethered in more ways than one tonight–an intoxicating mix of the alcohol and the comforting presence of Lucy as she leads them to her kitchen.
“You have about thirty seconds to tell me what you brought before I kick you out,” she teases back–Greg grins wider.
“I present for your consideration: the world’s best sandwich…a Gregory Bridgerton original,” he says, and he finally opens up the brown paper bag to slide the foil-wrapped sandwich across the kitchen counter to her, plopping himself down on the bar stool across from her.
Lucy unwraps the sandwich carefully–it is an art, he thinks, the exacting way that she goes about unwrapping a sandwich–she had explained to him once that she had the perfect method to prevent drippage and minimize mess.
“She’s a little messy…” Lucy comments, and she is lifting up the top piece of the bread, trying to examine each ingredient. “I’m going to have to dock points for the presentation, chef.”
“Heard, chef,” Gregory responds, and he knows his words come out more of a slur than anything else. “Permission to present on the meal now?” He asks, propping his hands on his chin as he studies her fidgeting with the sandwich.
She nods.
“Okay so get this: sourdough bread, mayo on both sides, layer of ham, layer of cheddar, then a tiny dollop of dijon, a layer of turkey on top of that, two pieces of bacon, three tomatoes–yes, with salt cracked over the top–and exactly three pickles.”
Lucy hums thoughtfully, her smile widening as she decides to pick up half of the sandwich–when a tomato slides out with a plop, he realizes he had perhaps not wielded the knife with as exact precision as he had initially thought–he had been sure that the slices were so carefully curated to fit without sliding off.
She quirks a brow at him as if to say sloppy work— she doesn’t need to say it out loud for him to get the message. She brings the sandwich to her lips.
She chews thoughtfully for several agonizingly long seconds before she wipes her hand on a napkin, pushing the sandwich towards him.
“Structurally it leaves a lot to be desired, but the pickle and Dijon were a stroke of genius, I have to admit. I picked up notes of a smokiness in that turkey, which paired well with the bacon…I say it’s a solid 7.3,” she says, giving her best impression of a judge on a cooking show.
“A 7.3 are you crazy?! I used the good shit, Luce! Colin gets organic tomatoes… organic! It’s at least an 8,” he argues, grabbing the other half of the sandwich and taking a bite to prove a point. “Maybe even a 9,” he amends through his bite.
She stares at him, eyes twinkling in amusement, but his eyes catch a small glob of mayo on the corner of her lip. Thoughtlessly, he leans across the counter, wiping away the glob with his thumb.
He had successfully removed it—but his eyes lock on hers and he finds he cannot bring himself to pull away. His breath hitches, eyes flickering to her lips.
He doesn’t think. His mind is blissfully empty.
He presses his lips against hers, his body feeling just as twinkly as the stars in the night sky.