Chapter Text
Somewhere between losing her knickers and being slammed into her kitchen counter, Kate began to wonder how she had managed to find herself here.
Granted, most of her attention was on Anthony’s mouth, which was dipping deliciously lower with every lick, kiss, bite, tease, all the way down her neckline - and at least thirty percent of her attention was also on his hands, which were gripping at her thighs and spreading her apart for him to take his place in between them, making her quiver like a swooning heroine in a romance novel. A lingering five percent of her waning conscious thinking couldn’t help but be occupied by the echoing pain from the handle of the drawer that had dug awkwardly into her back and was sure to leave a bruise, all thanks to how enthusiastically they’d thrown each other around the room while they made out.
But still, miraculously among all that, there was still at least one errant thought available - to wonder how, in basically no time at all, she’d gone from being a woman who’d had a dry spell so long and depressing she’d had to stop swiping left - to having an intoxicatingly handsome man turning up on her doorstep every other day, with every new excuse for being there flimsier than the last, practically begging to fuck her?
Life, Kate pondered briefly as she wrapped her legs around him and he made a guttural noise into her neck, could be fucking bizarre sometimes.
It was 4 a.m.
There was no earthly reason she should have run into anyone at 4 a.m.
It was why she had dipped before the guy had woken up, slipping out of his apartment and into an Uber that was so cheap it took her nearly clean across London without a stop. It was the means by which she had intended to sneak into her flat, her sister none the wiser, with as few interactions with her nosey neighbours as possible (who would, no doubt, judge her for the absolute state she was in, stumbling home still a little bit drunk and very obviously in the clothes she had left in the night before).
It was why she had not anticipated running into any single person at all - it being four in the morning.
It was why, when she saw a tall man, slouched forward against the door to her building and his head firmly resting against the buzzer - Kate didn’t really know what to do.
“Colin,” the man groaned into the microphone, despite the fact no-one was clearly there to listen to him. “You lousy piece of shit.”
A name Kate recognised, at the very least. Still, she hovered, unsure of how to proceed.
“I’m cutting you off,” the man continued, entirely oblivious to her presence. “You’re a useless leech. Let me in.”
Colin was many things, as far as Kate had been able to ascertain in her brief time of knowing him. Tall - yes. A little bit annoying? Certainly. Extremely charismatic, and somehow able to convince her to pick up his mail whenever he left the flat next to hers for weeks or months at a time? That too. But she didn’t think she ever would have called him a piece of shit - he did buy her booze as thanks for helpfulness, after all.
“I know you’re in there, you tosser. I’m going to punch you in the dick.”
She’d had worse neighbours. All of them had been worse, in fact. The guy before him had a trombone that he practised every single day at 6pm just as she got home from work, even though she knew he had a night shift job and could have very easily saved his lack of musical talent being inflicted on his neighbours for during the day. After she’d politely asked him about that he’d only gotten louder; she suspected he had moved his practising room to the one that shared a wall with hers, just out of spite.
Alternatively, Colin did things like send her apology notes with puns in to tell her how sorry he was that the girl he shagged the night before was a screamer. Though the noise was just as annoying, men making half an effort with Kate unfortunately charmed her. It was a weakness she was all too aware of, but did not stop her from being thoroughly and accidentally charmed all the same.
“You’d better be in there. I’m going to keep calling you every bad word I know until you let me in or I kill you, you lazy fuck. Wanker. Bastard. Bellend - “
“ - Cunt?”
She was cold, was the thing. The dress she had on was not the most modest available in her wardrobe, but she hadn’t exactly gone out last night with the intention of avoiding the male gaze. Plus, she’d abandoned her heels and was currently standing barefoot on the stone slabs outside her building, and Kate was sure if she didn’t get inside and put some socks on soon she was likely to lose a toe or two.
The man swung around at the interruption, blinking wide-eyed at the woman who’d just interrupted his tirade with a neatly placed cunt. He looked barely any better than she supposed she did, the dark circles under his eyes starkly visible against his pale skin, and, she noted, at least one missed button on his shirt.
“You sounded like you were going to get there eventually,” Kate elaborated into the silence. “Just thought I’d speed it up ‘cos - you know - “ She gestured to the door he was blocking. “ - I’d like to get into my flat one day.”
It took him a few more seconds of blinking at her before he even began to consider moving.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, shaking his head and stepping away. “Fucking - weird night.”
“I gathered,” Kate replied. The stranger, for all his apparent anger at Colin, appeared weirdly docile as she shuffled past him; but that still did not stop Kate from gripping her keys a little bit tighter between her knuckles the closer she got. And then again, before she moved to buzz herself in, another preservation instinct kicked in - one which had her hesitating and throwing another hasty look over her shoulder to the man whose dark eyes had not left her since she announced her presence.
A beat of stillness passed between them.
“What?” the man asked.
“Just wondering whether I’m about to die,” Kate said out loud, before she could think about the consequences of bringing up the fact that she was in a hopelessly vulnerable position. “Not exactly Walking Home Safely 101 to let the man making violent threats at your door inside the building.”
“I’m not - “ He huffed, and looked away finally. “I’m not actually going to kill him.”
Kate grimaced. “That’s comforting.”
His eyes flashed back to her again. “My brother lives in 502, and I left my phone in his flat by accident when we went out,” he explained, almost like he was talking to a child. “I need my phone.”
“Most people do,” Kate interrupted, which got her presented with another severe look from the stranger.
“Exactly,” the man started again, through what looked like gritted teeth. “And now he is either ignoring me, or has been a complete fucking prick and stayed over at someone else’s like he promised he wouldn’t.”
From what little she knew about Colin, this did sound like something someone with that cheeky a smile would do; all the while knowing, of course, that he would be able to get away with it the next day with a few of those smiles and a whole lot of his stupid charm. And he did live in 502, which was another point in this man’s favour, but did not answer the question she still had on the tip of her tongue.
“And if he’s out?” she asked. “What are you going to do when you get inside?”
The man’s face twitched into something even more frustrated somehow, almost impossibly so given how unhappy he already looked. “Haven’t had the luxury of thinking that far. Break his fucking door down, probably.”
He had some balls, she had to give him that.
“And that’s meant to encourage me to let you in, is it?” she asked, raising a brow. “A new threat of violence?”
His eyes narrowed. “Don’t make me beg.”
She considered this. “I’m not above that.”
It was as some new, unidentifiable emotion flashed across the man’s face that Kate realised that perhaps angering the already agitated man was probably not the smartest thing she’d ever done. It was in these sorts of moments that she wished she’d listened more to her aunt and learned to reel in her gobby streak when she was younger, when she could have unlearnt the joy she found in answering back. Now she was in her mid twenties, she feared that that ship had unfortunately sailed; she was stuck in her ways, cursed with being a mouthy bitch who liked watching arrogant men crumble if she said something on the right side of scathing.
There was, however, not much joy to be found by being murdered by a street random just outside her flat, she thought.
“Sorry,” she said quickly, and before she could think anything more on it, buzzed open the door.
“Thank you,” she heard the man say behind her, and she very much hoped she would not regret it.
“You’re welcome,” she murmured.
She did not look back at him to tempt fate, and instead walked over to the cluster of pigeon holes in the foyer, content to let the man drift off to where he needed to be and hoping that he would cease to be a problem if he left her sight. As per usual, there was very little in her box beyond a random letter from her bank, and a flyer for the new Thai place opening a few roads down; a very sad indictment on the state of her social affairs, from the outside looking in.
A quick look at Colin’s just above hers made her sigh.
Of course, there was a package for him - most days it was more surprising to find it empty. Even when he was gone for a month at a time, there would be all sorts of boxes and envelopes piling up for him, painting the picture of perhaps the most popular man in England. Kate could not say the same - she only ever stayed in the same place, and she never got so much as a postcard.
Against her better judgement, she took it along with her own sad letter and turned to search again for the tall man with the dark hair, who probably did look enough like her neighbour to be identified as his brother. When she found him lingering by the lift, his hands on his hips, she had a dejected sort of inkling she knew where this was all headed.
“It’s not working.”
He startled at her voice for the second time that morning, and spun again to look at her with the same taken aback look. She was lucky he appeared to be a bit of an arsehole, otherwise she might have had the mind to be a little endeared by its goofiness.
“It’s been like nine hours since I was here,” he said, as if it meant something. “How is it still not working?”
Kate nearly laughed. “Well it hasn’t been working for a week, so I don’t really know what nine hours difference would make.”
The man’s face spasmed through at least five emotions before he settled on sighing.
“Jesus Christ.”
“I tried the building owner first when maintenance was a dead end,” Kate said. “But I’m not above asking for divine help at this point.” She pointed to the door, equidistant from both of them. “Until he turns up though, you’ll be needing the stairs.”
He sighed again. “I know where the stairs are. I’m just fucking tired.”
“Aren’t we all.”
This, apparently, was the first moment that either of them had really taken a pause to actually look at one another - and when they did, they were able to find almost exactly the same thing.
Beyond looking tired, the man in front of her looked positively debauched. The shirt, which had clearly been buttoned up with no effort at all, hung mostly open and was barely held together by about three mismatched buttons; the low neckline revealed a whole smattering of hickeys down his neck that no amount of fabric short of a turtleneck would have been able to hide. His lips, bright and swollen, were red from more than just use, as the last telltale smudges of lipstick could be seen inching from the corners of his mouth and up his stubbled cheek. And, then, finally, his hair, which topping off any other ensemble might have been able to be passed off as artfully messy, could then only add to the picture of a man who had just spent some time in the pursuit of some thorough sex.
Where her eyes tracked upwards, his went down; he clearly catalogued every oddity, from her own wild curls escaping from the pins she’d attempted to tame them with the night before, to her chest, and all the way down to her bare feet and the matching heels in her grip. She had not bothered to look in the mirror before she had tiptoed out of the random Mile End flat about an hour ago, but she had to imagine that the bra currently stuffed in the bottom of her handbag was noticeably missing when you looked at her. She had, after all, debated wearing one at all the night before, and ultimately decided she’d never make it the entire night without something slipping out where it shouldn’t in the chosen dress; the only reason she hadn’t put it back on for the journey home was a potent mixture of laziness and no longer giving a fuck in the cold light of day.
When the stranger cleared his throat through the silence, she wondered whether she actually did give quite a few fucks. Several, in fact.
“Good night?” he asked, after a few long moments.
The first upwards quirk of his lips she’d seen told her all she needed to know about the conclusion he’d come to.
“I’ve had worse,” she replied, and hoped that as she crossed her arms and covered her chest with his brother’s post that she wasn’t being too obvious about it. “I’ve also had better.”
The man made a noise through his teeth. “Brutal.”
She shrugged.
Silently, and together, the two of them took to the stairs.
“I promise I’m not following you,” the brother said, after they passed their first floor side by side.
“I know,” Kate told him. “502.” She spared him a look across. “If anything I’m following you.”
“What do you - “
“I figured you’d need a key,” she answered before he had time to ask the question. “We already have a broken lift, I don’t need to call maintenance about your brother’s front door getting kicked down too.”
“You - “ He paused long enough that he was suddenly a few steps behind her and scrambling to keep up. “You have a key? For Colin’s flat?”
“I do,” Kate confirmed. “You’d better be his brother or he is going to kill me for letting some stranger rob him blind.”
“How do you - actually, never mind. I don’t care.” He sounded happier than she’d ever heard him, in their strange ten minutes together. “I just need to get my phone and I will fuck off.”
“Music to my ears.”
There was something quite polite at the way he lingered by her open door a few minutes later, whilst she fumbled through her drawer in search of the little pouch she kept the spare for 502 in. She was under the impression she was going to have to ask him to respectfully keep his distance and not just follow her into her flat, but before the words had even formed in her mouth, he had paused at the threshold, as if held from entering by some supernatural force.
“Give me two minutes,” she’d told him, unable to stop the curious arch of her brow as she watched him. He’d simply nodded, and did as he was told.
He was a strange man; it made sense that he shared genes with Colin, she thought idly.
“How long has he been back?”
“What?”
“Your brother,” she added, for his sake. “I didn’t know he was back from - where was he?”
“Crete,” the man filled in. “And a day, I think. He has a habit of not letting any of us know where he is until the day he’s seeing us though, so I can’t be sure.”
Kate huffed a small laugh as her hand gripped the sought after key. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
With only an extra moment to pull on the hoodie she’d left thrown over the back of her sofa, she rejoined him. When she finally let him into the flat in question, it was with a happy noise at the back of his throat, and this time he did not politely pause; instead he barged past her and down a hallway she’d never seen the end of. Kate blinked after him, and assumed when she heard a loud “Thank fuck!” from one of the other rooms, he had found what he was looking for.
And God help her, even though the problem appeared to be solved, she could not help her curiosity.
“How did you even get back here?” she called out, dropping the new package onto the pile she’d already collected for her neighbour over the past two weeks.
“Uber,” she heard him call back. A few footsteps later, and he was back in the main room, staring furiously down at his phone. “Had to wake the bird up and pester her to use her phone - but I paid for it, so she managed.”
“So you remembered your wallet,” Kate asked, unable to help herself, “but you forgot your phone?”
At her tone, the man spared a look up at her, clearly unamused. “Yes.”
Kate had to open and close her mouth a few times before she formed a sentence that wasn’t completely rude. “And you managed that, how?”
“I was,” the man said, slowly, “extremely high.”
“Right.”
“Wouldn’t have been a problem if Colin had done as he said and just come home,” he said, dipping out of sight for one more moment to pull a piece of paper out from a notebook left out on a dresser. “Tosser.”
“So you said,” Kate murmured, and watched him pen this note with a biro he miraculously managed to pull out from one of his jacket pockets. She couldn’t help herself: “So you had a pen - but not your phone.”
“I cannot emphasise enough,” he said, not even looking up from his message, “how high I was.”
The piece of paper then went promptly up on the messy, magnetic notice board near the door, proudly and loudly in the middle of the rest of the chaos pinned up there.
Colin, it read.
Thanks for nothing, you cunt.
Anthony.
P.S. Don’t forget you owe Eloise £20 for Fran’s birthday.
Anthony, or so he claimed he was called, had taken notice of her reading it, mostly because she hadn’t made any effort in hiding it. He watched her with a tilt of his head, that sent one of his wilder, out of place curls hanging over his forehead.
“Nice use of ‘cunt’,” she offered, since he looked like he wanted an answer. “And a very convincing play if you were really just here to steal a phone. Anthony, is it? I’ll be following up with Colin to make sure you exist.”
He rolled his eyes, and began to reach into his pocket again. For what exactly, Kate couldn’t even begin to guess. “Notice that I’ve not asked why you have a special key for my brother’s flat even though I have no idea who you are?”
“I have,” Kate said, her eyes narrowing. “Which I also find suspicious.”
He answered by holding out a card to her - a business card, upon inspection - for an Anthony Bridgerton, President of some company that made her eyes glaze over in her own insignificance. It all seemed a little too big-league for him to be slumming it in their old, sad building that was crumbling at the edges at four in the morning, but such was the peculiarity of life.
“That pass muster?” he asked.
She paused.
“So you had your business cards - “
“ - But not my phone, yes, alright - I get it, for fuck’s sake - “
Their parting was uneventful. He nipped off back down the staircase with a hand up in farewell and a grudging thanks. She flicked the business card onto her desk and climbed into bed with her dress and make-up still on.
Kate fell asleep almost instantly the moment her head hit the pillow, only wondering idly as she closed her eyes if the strange man at the door would ever make it home.
It was a few days later when Colin himself finally turned up with his bottle of thanks, giving her that dangerous smile of his as he handed it over.
“Pinot?” Kate looked over it. “Nice. Thanks.”
“Straight from duty-free,” he told her, leaning against her door frame and dipping his hands in his pockets. “So you’re welcome. Thank you for being my postman.”
“It’s an easy job when I only have to take it next door,” Kate pointed out. “I wouldn’t do it if I had to walk any further.”
Normally this would have been about as far as their conversation went; maybe he would have told her what he’d been up to briefly, before jetting off to some other thing that he had to be doing, or she might have asked him about what his trip had been like. But most of the time the two were quite happy to part with nothing more than their quick thanks and you’re welcome’s, and go about their day like the comfortable acquaintances they were. Today though, there was something about the way Colin hovered that told Kate he actually wanted to talk to her about something, and for the life of her she couldn’t begin to figure out what.
That was, until -
“So - a little birdie told me that you met Anthony?”
It took her a second to remember. The business card had sat almost completely forgotten on the edge of her desk for the past two days as she got on with life; her life, which, unbelievably, had not stopped moving just because she’d had one weird, drunk morning. Frankly the whole interaction had sort of felt like a strange dream when she’d woken up in the middle of the day twelve hours later, more hungover than she’d have liked to have been, and fielding questions from Edwina about where exactly she’d been the night before.
But she got there, after a couple of seconds.
“Oh,” Kate said out loud, forgetting to filter out her thought process for a brief moment. She pulled a face. “So he was your brother?”’
Colin snorted in a way only he could probably make look elegant. “Yes. He did say you made him work for it.”
“Well I didn’t know who he was,” Kate defended herself. “He could have been anyone! He looked a mess. At first I thought he might just be a random drunk guy who’d got a bit confused with what building he lived in.”
“Given the state I left him in that night, that doesn’t really surprise me.” Colin smirked. “But he said to send along his thanks, anyway. You apparently made quite an impression.”
For crying out loud -
“Alright,” she started, crossing her arms. “We were both doing walks of shame, so you can pipe down on the judgement - and if I hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have been able to get in at all, so maybe he should have thought about that before he started telling people about it.”
She should have started tailing off, really, the moment she saw Colin’s eyebrows start creeping up his forehead. But Kate, unfortunately, was not the sort of person that tailed off anything, even when she knew she was in too deep to safely back out. Instead, she just had to face his bemused look by stubbornly following through to the end of her little rant.
“You were doing a walk of shame?” he asked when she was done, his voice curling up in suppressed laughter, and Kate felt all the fight leave her in a single second.
She swallowed. “He didn’t - tell you that?”
Colin’s smile widened. “He did not.”
“Right.” She coughed quietly, the awkwardness sitting uncomfortably at the back of her throat. “Right - well. Cool.”
“I mean, if you wanted to know what he said to me, feel free to ask,” Colin said, smiling still. “If we’re in the business of blunt honesty, the reason I brought him up was that I got the impression he wanted to fuck you.”
Of all the things she had imagined happening today, finding out the stranger from the door debacle who miraculously hadn’t murdered her also might be into her? It had been low on the list. Kate bit her lip in the effort of thinking back, her face scrunched up as she relived all she could remember; from her braless, shoeless attire, to actually calling him a murderer to his face, all the way up to rinsing him for leaving his phone behind whilst having his business cards tucked in his pocket.
“I don’t…think so,” she said eventually, pulling a pained face at Colin. “That doesn’t seem right.”
“And yet,” Colin replied mysteriously.
“It really was not the vibe,” Kate told him, vocal in her disbelief. “Like, I cannot think of an unsexier conversation.”
Colin ignored her.
“Are you single?”
“Yes - but I - “ She sputtered, blinking fast. “Colin.”
He blinked back, all innocence. “What?”
She almost laughed at the audacity of him. “You’re not setting me up with your brother!”
He put his arms up, finally pushing himself up and away from her door frame. “I’m not doing anything, I’m just - “
“ - Being a nuisance,” Kate finished, scowling after him as he took a step back. “I’m not interested.”
He hummed as he continued to back away. “Noted, noted. Anyway - I told him next time he comes over and I’m not in, he can try buzzing you.” He smiled again, that cheeky grin that defended him against all attack or reproach. “That alright with you?”
Kate, who was struggling to form words and understand exactly how she’d made it here, shook her head.
“Exactly how often are you expecting him to turn up unannounced?” she asked after him, having to lean out into the hall to follow him back to his own door. Colin just shrugged in reply.
“Open invitation,” he said. “Brother stuff.”
Perhaps when she’d felt bad at hearing Anthony call his brother a piece of shit, she’d been a little too hasty.
“The lift’s fixed, by the way,” Colin told her before she could get another word in. He fiddled through his keys. “Maintenance came this morning.”
“Oh.” Kate wasn’t entirely sure how that was at all relevant to the conversation they’d been having, but she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t happy to hear it. “That’s good.”
“Yeah,” Colin agreed. “Apparently they had a call from some very loud, shouty guy who threatened to sue over their building’s inaccessibility. Or something.”
It wasn’t like Colin to be so coy about something like that, and it certainly didn’t sound like him to shout down the phone to someone, but the way his smile had turned self-satisfied told her that she ought to take notice of what he was saying.
“Well I’m glad they decided to listen to you,” she said slowly, and crossed her arms over her chest. “They were happy enough to ignore me.”
“Oh, it wasn’t me,” Colin told her without pause, still grinning.
“Then who was - “
But she knew - she knew from the smile that was growing ever wider and the silence Colin was letting stretch between them.
Kate blinked down the corridor at him.
“But - why?” she sputtered, unbelieving.
“That is the question,” Colin said, with a thoughtful hum. “Enjoy the wine!”