Chapter Text
The thing is that Colin always knew deep down how Penelope felt about him. His brothers would tease him in a good natured way. Never hard enough to make him cross but the right amount to make him uncomfortable. Benedict would wax on about her perfect female form, the delight one would get from mixing colours to find her unique shade of red. Anthony approved of her mind, how she kept Eloise planted a little more firmly to the ground. No small feat as not a single Bridgerton had ever been able to achieve it. His sisters and mother, all of them, adore everything about her. His family has always had exquisite taste.
So yes Colin knows how Penelope feels about him but he can’t think about it. More so he doesn’t let himself. If he thinks about how she feels then he has no choice but to acknowledge how he feels in kind. He’s not ready for that, he doesn’t think he ever will be.
Since he can’t look inward he focuses firmly on what’s in front of him. Today it’s a purple and pink sky reflected in the smooth glass of the lake.
He comes here when the wanderlust gets too much and a jaunt across the ocean isn’t an option. Here he can keep his thoughts on a silent hum. It helps that his mobile gets no reception out here as well.
It drives his mother mental, convinced that the minute any one of her children is out of reach they will turn to pillars of salt. Or be stung by a bee.
He misses his father, of course he does. Sure, he had his brothers to lead him towards being a man, though they weren’t really that much further ahead. Still there is always a spot that is empty, a void no one will ever be able to fill for all of them. Yet every child knows one day they will be without their parents, you expect it. It is a right of passage for most one day.
He doesn’t remember the shock of the loss, more the numb ache left behind. No, what he remembers is his mother, his strong, kind and beautiful mother letting out a wail of pain that will haunt him for the rest of his days. He watched a piece of her die along with his father, like a limb that still tingles long after it is amputated. She picked herself up, she raised them and put every part of herself that remained into her children. They were lucky to have her, lucky to be a piece of the great love his parents had. A love that broke his mother in two when it was gone.
Colin closes his journal and tosses it beside him on the dock. They’d built it together, one weekend of the Bridgerton clan had produced a new dock, roof repairs and a solid cleaning of the small cabin that came with his piece of heaven. He can still remember the joy on Gregory’s face when he’d finally mastered how to use the drill. He remembers Daphne holding Amelia’s fingers as she toddled wide eyed at the trees and the grass and, well, everything.
Mostly he remembers Penelope handing him a knitted blanket held together with a ribbon. It was soft and grey, he knew she’d made it for him. Knew that it would be large enough to wrap himself in and feel safe.
Her lips were plump and pink as she smiled so sweetly at him. A curl had come loose from the haphazard pile atop her head, it brushed softly against her cheek.
Fire against porcelain.
“I know it’s not technically a home but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t feel like one.”
Her voice had a raspiness to it, it always does when she speaks just between the two of them. Around his family she is so bright it blinds him, twinkle lights of laughter and fireworks in her eyes. Alone it’s as if every word is a secret that must be delivered delicately. She is flicker, a candle flame that lights up the darkest portions of his heart. The places where all his true secrets lie.
Colin shakes his head as he rises to his feet. He is not old but not nearly as young as he’s like to be. His back aches a little from how he’d hunched over to write his latest chapter. It drove his editor crazy that he never uses a computer for his first draft, hates what a waste of time it is. But not to Colin. If he must pour his soul out on pages for the world to see it must be as raw as possible, he knows no other way. Blood from his veins pours out through his fingers and turns to ink from his pen.
When he enters the cabin he kneels to put more wood on the fireplace embers and debates making himself something to eat. He knows the emptiness he feels can’t be filled with something as banal as food but alcohol will at least soften the edges of this harsh reality.
He’s well into the red wine, drinking it straight from the bottle and imagining himself a pirate when the ritual begins. It’s always the same when he comes here, when he longs for…
It doesn’t matter, his dance is the same. He leans back on the sofa, soft where it should be firm and hard on his shoulders. Then he turns his head, let’s his cheek rub against the cashmere that had the joy of being molded by her fingers. For the first few months it smelled like her, cinnamon, citrus and the hint of the unnameable that only Penelope possessed. The scent is long gone but when he closes his eyes he can almost taste it on his tongue.
Eventually it ends up around his shoulders, his fists clutching it like a lifeline. He should have known that even in the place he chose to keep everyone from she would find a way to be there.
And when he’s just tipsy enough that some of the walls come down he’ll admit the real reason he bought this place. It wasn’t for inspiration or peace and quiet. It wasn’t to have something that was singularly his.
It was his place to hide.
When the ache for her became too much. When he caught her smiling at another man and he feared this would be the time she’d slip away too far. When he was desperate to fit his face in her neck and hold on for dear life...well then he needed somewhere to run. Somewhere that he could drink and be vulnerable but most importantly unable to contact her.
Because drunk Colin was head over heels, Shakespearean sonnets carved in marble, fight a thousand wars, endure a million scars, in love with Penelope Featherington.
Colin looked out because when he looked in all he saw was her. Her kind heart, her nerves of iron, the colour that was more than just the red and silky smooth white. She was yellow sunshine, orange groves and rolling fields of green. She was the black of the deepest ocean and the blue of the finest silk. She was technicolor violet and neon pink.
She was the love of his life and she could break him. She could fill him to bursting. She could hold his heart like fine glass in her hands and drop it at her whim.
Colin had sworn he would never fall to pieces forever. Instead he hides and does it for a few hours instead. He’d always believed this way he could keep her, and she would keep him. That somehow it would be enough. It had to be enough. It used to be, or so he had told himself.
He needed to win the game, stay one step ahead. He just never took into account the other player. How beautiful and perfect she was and that he wasn’t the only one who saw it.
When she’d first downloaded the dating app Eloise told him with steel in her eyes.
“Maybe she’ll finally meet someone worthy of her.”
It had stung, just like his sister knew it would. He left for his cabin the very next day and stayed the night.
When she went on a string of first dates Gregory told Colin he wished Penelope was really his sister because then she would never leave them.
Colin left for his cabin that night and stayed for a weekend.
When she changed her relationship status on social media Daphne waved her phone under his nose and smacked him upside the head. Colin barely packed a bag before he got into his car and drove through the inky black evening.
That had been six days ago and he didn’t know if he would ever be able to live in civilization again.
Colin pulled out his phone and used the remaining battery power to look at photos of Penelope he had saved. Her with his siblings laughing into her beer at their local. Her with his mother learning to make the famous Bridgerton pudding with a dusting of flour on her nose. Her with her head on the cushion of his sofa, eyes shut and lips pursed having fallen asleep during one of their movie nights. Her staring into the distance with a pensive look on her face, eyes hidden by sunglasses and unaware Colin was even there.
Then he got to his favourite one. It was from Daphne’s wedding, a moment in time caught by the photographer in the waning hours of the celebration. A bridesmaid at the end of a long evening, a suit jacket over her shoulders as she leaned her cheek on a groomsman’s arm. There was a shy tilt to her lips and a peaceful glow in her face. The groomsman had his eyes closed, the tip of his chin dipped into her curls and the most contented aura about him. Two people in a bubble of their own making that neither questioned.
Simon had texted it to him a month after the wedding with the simple words: You are an idiot.
Colin can’t bring himself to do anything other than stare at the photo until his mobile eventually dies. By then it’s burned into his vision, she is there even when he blinks.
It’s not late but the fire is getting low. The alcohol has lost its impact on his senses. Instead of standing to walk the few feet to where his large bed waits he curls up on the too short sofa and pulls the blanket to his chin.
He doesn’t expect sleep to come as easy as it does.
Nor does he expect to wake not long after when water is thrown on his face. He opens his eyes to Gregory smirking at him with a glass in his hand. Behind his youngest brother is Benedict pinching the bridge of his nose, Simon staring daggers at him and Anthony with his arms crossed.
Colin sits up suddenly, unable to stand with Penelope’s blanket wrapped around his legs.
“What are you….”
“Shut up, Colin.” Anthony, as the oldest, has always expected his siblings to listen and obey. They rarely do but then again Colin’s never seen him like this before. He figures the best decision is to keep his mouth shut. And even though Colin is 28 years old, a published author three times over and quite able to handle himself he can’t help but feel the cold fear at the tone of his brother’s voice. “This ends now or you really are going to lose her for good.”
He darts his eyes from Anthony’s hard gaze to Benedict whose face holds so much sympathy that Colin feels ashamed. He glances at Simon who just shakes his head in veiled disgust. Lastly he looks at Gregory, so close to being a man and yet so much a boy with the trappings of childhood ideals. It’s his face that does Colin in, the look of conviction before he growls out words no one has ever said before.
“You’re in love with Penelope you daft idiot. So what the bloody hell are you going to do about it?”
Colin does the only thing that he has the strength to do in that moment. The thing he’s put off for so long that he no longer can bear it. He lets go, dropping his head in his hands and let’s himself cry for the first time since his father died.