Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A knock at the door.

*

It’s Christmas Day and Pen is knocking on the lacquered door of Colin’s house, a tote bag of gifts at her feet and a bottle of wine in the crook of her arm. She is about to enter the thunderdome of Christmas Days. All eight Bridgerton siblings are inside, plus their partners and kids, plus Violet.  

It’s been a week since Hyacinth’s 18^th birthday drinks, where said Bridgerton siblings ambushed Pen by forcing her to be in the same room as Colin. A week since she yelled at him so loudly and forcefully that she lost her voice. A week since Alfred saw her yelling at him, and then broke up with her because of it, so yes it’s also been a week since she’s been dumped.

Don’t look at her.

Partly she’s been sulking about how pathetic it is to be dumped a week before Christmas, but mostly she’s been thinking about what Colin said to her that night. That Al wasn’t right for her. That he was too sterile, too into his work. And that he didn’t get her jokes – that one gets to her, for some reason. And after all that, Colin’s insistence that all he wanted was to ensure her happiness.

The fucking nerve of him.

No wonder Al dumped her. He’s a sensible man, he knows when to walk away from crazy. A man of science, of reason. Of nice arms and a good mind. A clean, orderly house. Passionate about environmental science almost to a fault. Driven, together, knows what he wants.

That much she knew for sure about Al: she knew what he’d wanted. Their whole relationship, his intentions were clear. He wanted a life partner. A companion. Someone to move through life next to him, who wouldn’t mind him going back to Antarctica for another research stint, which is where he’s heading in a few weeks.

She could have done long distance with Al. She’s very good over text. She could have been what Al wanted, because she knew what he wanted.

She thought she knew what Colin wanted. She’s not so sure any more.

And now she’s thinking about Colin again. Fuck!

God, she doesn’t know what she’ll do when she sees Colin. Yell at him for twenty minutes straight maybe, her body becoming a super sayan blast of rage at him, then all that will be left are his smithereens. Nothing noble about a man’s smithereens. Maybe she’ll just be stony and hard, completely metallic and blank against whatever he throws at her. Or maybe she’s so fragile and tenuous that she’ll vanish completely, just break down and cry like a soap bubble glimmering out into nothingness.

The reality is worse.

He opens the door, and immediately her heart tightens into a perfect ball of desire.

She watches his face pass through about a dozen different emotions, and she discerns them like she’s tasting the notes of a wine – the top notes are panic and bewilderment; the mid notes are apologetic and anxious; and the bottom note, right at the heart of his emotional core, the note that will last the longest on her tongue, unmistakeably, is joy. He’s happy to see her.

The motherfucker.

“Pen,” he says, and her name in his mouth is warm and deeply resonant, like a hot chocolate spiked with cinnamon and brandy. He breaks into a smile which glazes his whole face.

Penelope’s heart thrums. She feels adrenaline lifting through her torso and sparkling at her fingertips. Colin’s smile is so familiar, so complete, so that it takes over his whole face, crinkling his eyes cutely at the corners.

The motherfucker!

“It’s good to see you,” he says, quietly. “I wasn’t certain if you’d really be coming today.” He’s in dark grey trousers and a forest green jumper that looks incredibly soft and warm and reliable. He’s also wearing the most ridiculous elf hat in history. It has bells, for god’s sake, and fake ears at each side. But it is Christmas.

The last place she wants to be on Christmas Day, of course, is here, standing in front of him. But her mum was a dick about the breakup, and her sisters are either at capacity or with Portia, and so with a very grumpy heart Penelope resigned herself to the fact that she only had one option: come crawling back to Bridgey Chrissy with her tail between her legs. She’s doing her best to ignore the other feelings between her legs at this point in time.

“I’m just… glad you’re here,” Colin finishes, a bit lamely, and at that exact moment she realises that she’s glad she’s here, too. Fuck! The sensation is so overwhelmingly annoying that she decides she needs to pull the rip cord and get the hell out of this interaction before she humiliates herself by showing that she’s happy to see him, just so incredibly happy to see him.

She presses the bottle of wine into his arms. “Merry Christmas,” she mutters stonily, avoiding his gaze.

“Thanks, Pen,” she hears him say, but she grabs her other presents and pushes past him (like a coward) and moves into the hall quickly – frustratingly, not quickly enough that she avoids smelling him. He smells like cinnamon cookies and cooking oil from the Christmas lunch prep, and under that he smells of sandalwood and verdant floral stems. He smells so uniquely, wonderfully him, and she pushes that thought down because she has to.

She is still fuming at him, technically. She’s never been so angry at someone in her life.

Her whole body has been on a low simmer all week, occasionally bubbling into a fever pitch of incandescent ire at the fucking gall of him, and every night she’s had to wring it out of her with body-wracking orgasms alone in her bed. She tells herself they’re just mechanical – that she just needs to flood her senses with pleasure to wipe the misery of the breakup with Al from her brain, to give her the endorphins she needs to lull her into sleep – but she knows they’re not.

No matter what depraved video she puts on, no matter what debauched erotica she scrolls across her screen, Colin’s words squeeze through her mind and crowd her senses. “You’re important to me, all I want is to ensure your happiness.” By the time she climaxes, it’s just those words in his voice over and over again, and she’s so desperate for release that she allows herself the grace to imagine him underneath her, mouth open, catatonic with ecstasy and moving his hands all over her body while he comes inside of her, and the vibrator has surely singed a hole through her underwear from the heat but she’s too full of pleasure to give a shit, and then she comes and realises she’s gone and bloody done it again and wishes she could bring the vibrator up to her head and singe a hole through that instead.

But she’s going to be normal today. Because it is Christmas. Violet is here, even. Violet thinks she is a nice, normal young lady, with a boring government job and a silly online gossip hobby. Not someone who is hyperfixating on her idiot son with the intensity of a fourteen-year-old girl who’s seen Gilbert Blythe in the 1980s Anne of Green Gables for the first time and lost her mind. She cannot disappoint Violet.

She turns the corner into the main living area.

In the kitchen, meandering a wooden spoon through gravy, is Francesca, with John and Sophie keeping her company; John nurses two glasses of mulled wine, while Sophie holds a hot chocolate with one hand and the underside of her pregnant belly with the other. Eloise is on the other side of the kitchen island, half chatting with them, half zooming Hot Wheels along the counter for Davey, who is gurgling merrily on her knee. Beside her sits Simon, patiently and lovingly lifting a spoon of porridge to the mouth of Caroline like a fanatic passing water to the mouth of a dying martyr, but only if that dying martyr were two years old and filled with a single-minded determination to smear oats across their entire face. Daphne is enacting the same oaty ritual with Belinda at the other end of the island, also with variable success, and Benedict stands next to her, rapt with the Hastings’ diligent parenting and peppering Daphne with questions. There is a little white baby monitor sitting on the counter, giving a live feed of the cribs set up for the little kids in the office.

“Help! I’m under attack!” calls a voice from the living room. Pen turns to the scene there.

On the Persian rug in the middle of the room, a pair of legs scramble, Wicked Witch of the East style, under the delirious giggles of Augie and Edmund; Violet, Hyacinth, and Kate look on from the sofas in bemusement at the sight of Gregory being flattened by his nephews. “I’m going to be squished into jelly!” Gregory says, and the two boys collapse on top of him in mirth. “Nooooooo, Uncle Greg!!” shouts one of them.

Towering over them all is the biggest Christmas tree Penelope has ever seen indoors, almost reaching the vaulted ceiling. It is festooned with enough lights, baubles, and crayoned homemade ornaments to fill a small car, and at the very top is a childish looking angel with googly eyes and a crown made of pipe cleaners – a Bridgerton classic, made by Anthony when he was in kindergarten. The tree takes up her whole vision for a moment, before she realises Anthony himself is in fact standing next to it, cradling Miles, who seems overwhelmed by everything going on; Anthony is rubbing his back and whispering gently to him, and Miles nods shyly, thumb in his mouth.

Every single Bridgerton in the room, without exception, is wearing an elf hat identical to the one Colin has on.

“Penelope!”

It is Violet who has noticed her first, rising from the sofa to greet her. No escaping them now.

“Merry Christmas, everyone!” Penelope says brightly, and there is an overly cheerful “Merry Christmas” back from them all. The siblings, too, are in the shit with Penelope, and it is very comforting that they know that. Frannie, the lone Bridgerton sibling not present at Hy’s birthday, and thus the only one who didn’t witness the yelling match with Colin in person, gives a wave at Pen. But even she is not innocent in this, as Penelope has every reason to believe she is just as much across the debacle as her seven con-conspirators.

Violet has not noticed the performative cheer, from her children – or, has elected to ignore it – and bumps her cheekbones against each side of Penelope’s face with a kiss in greeting.

“Oh, it’s so wonderful to have you for Christmas, Penelope. It’s always such a treat to see you,” she says.

“Thank you, Mrs Bridgerton,” Penelope says. Violet nods, pressing her lips into a warm smile, and then pulls Penelope into a proper hug.

“There’s nothing quite as hard on a broken heart as Christmas Day,” the older woman murmurs, and Pen remembers that Al dumped her again. “I hope it heals quickly and fully.”

“So do I.” Violet releases her from the hug, and is immediately handed her youngest grandchild by Eloise, who then pulls Penelope into an embrace.

“Hello! Okay, show’s over, no one else gets to talk to Pen until I have, bye!” and with that yanks Penelope across the hall and into the office.

The room is small, and has two cribs all set up for naptime. Eloise turns off the baby monitor in the corner of the room.

“Merry Christmas, Eloise,” Penelope says coolly. It’s the first time they’ve seen each other in person since the breakup, which took place a mere hour after the argument with Colin. With no one else to turn to, Penelope placed her furore at Eloise under a temporary armistice so that her oldest friend might comfort her in the immediate post-breakup haze. But the next day, the initial grief subsided enough for her to put Eloise firmly back in the doghouse, which is where she’s been all week.

“Pen, I’m so sorry,” she bursts.

Good, thinks Penelope.

“Hy’s birthday drinks…” Eloise runs her hands down her face. “It just got completely out of hand, we shouldn’t have put you in that position. I don’t know what we were thinking…”

“You were thinking that you knew what was going on between me and Colin.”

Eloise nods.

“Look. I’m still pretty pissed off with you all, if I’m honest.” Another nod. “I don’t really fancy getting into the weeds of it at the moment.”

“Pen –”

“No, Eloise,” and to her great credit, Eloise stops talking. “Look, let’s not… Not now. I’m already emotionally overwhelmed as it is, I don’t want to…”

Doesn’t want to what? Admit anything to herself? Ask about Colin? Eloise is still looking at her, silent. Uncharacteristically silent. Actually, she’s not even looking at Pen, that’s not the right word – she’s analysing her. Hm.

“I’m not going to do that today of all days. It’s Christmas, and I’m no grinch.”

“Are you sure?” asks Eloise.

“Definitely not the grinch, no. I’m more like the MILF played by Christine Baranski.”

“God. She is hot.”

“Mother.”

“Mother,” Eloise nods sagely. They both smile. “Have you talked to Colin yet?” Eloise asks, her voice almost too casual.

“Yes,” she lies.

Eloise’s eyes narrow. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Well she’s not going to be seeing shit. So that’s something. Pen’s game plan is to continue blanking the third eldest Bridgerton with as much temerity and decorum as she can muster in her short little body. And so long as Colin keeps his distance and doesn’t do anything to spike her emotions, she can get through the day. She will get through the day.

“Look, can’t we just go obliterate ourselves on mulled wine and ham, please?”

“Sure,” Eloise nods at her, her voice resigned. “But you need to talk to him today, Pen.”

“Yeah, yeah, I will,” she lies again.

*

Lunch is a whirlwind. Everyone wears the paper crowns from the bon bons on top of their elf hats, except for Gregory whose paper hat is yoinked from his head by Benedict and put into a glass of water to disintegrate. “Elf hat only, Greggy boy,” Ben says, and all the other Bridgerton siblings laugh uproariously at this. Pen makes eye contact with Kate, who gives a confused shrug.

Colin serves platter after platter of incredible dishes – cherry glazed ham, sourdough so crunchy it’s like falling into a pile of leaves, herby turkey with homemade spiced stuffing, a rich wine gravy, Hasselback potatoes with garlic butter... “All dairy free!” Colin says to the whole table, but Pen knows she’s the only one who’s lactose intolerant. She doesn’t look at him.

There seems to be a large saucepan – perhaps a cauldron? – of mulled wine somewhere in the house, because everything smells like star anise and honeyed merlot, and Penelope has at least five glasses of it; it toasts her, making the edge of her skin feel fuzzy and warm against her thermals. Hyacinth, seated next to her, matches her glass for glass, eventually discarding her shoes when she stumbles up to get more. Penelope quietly swaps Hy’s next cup for a glass of water when she’s looking the other way; Violet mouths a silent ‘thank you’ at her, and she smiles shyly.

Then, pudding, to be served with the famous Ledger Brandy Sauce.

Penelope knows, from previous Christmases with the Bridgertons, how important this recipe is to the family, passed down from mother to daughter for a couple of centuries now, and Violet makes a big deal about how Colin is the first man to ever receive and make the recipe. Pen has never tasted the sauce, given it’s full of cream, but she knows what a big deal this is to everyone else around the table. They all watch as Violet dips a teaspoon into the mixture and tastes it; Gregory starts a rambunctious drumroll against the table in anticipation, and everyone joins in, waiting for Violet’s reaction. Her eyes light up and she nods and says “It’s perfect!”, and everyone applauds as she kisses a very pleased Colin on the cheek, and Pen cannot help smiling, and catches his eye for a second – just a second! – and it’s the best second of the day so far, seeing him be celebrated and loved by his family and still seeking out her opinion. Bastard.

And then Anthony has to take Miles out to the next room because the noise from the drumming has made him start crying. At the sound of her cousin, Caroline also starts to cry, and so before desserts can be served there’s a break where the youngest two, Caroline and Davey, are put down for nap time. Penelope wishes she could also be put down for a nap, but she is twenty-seven years old, not twenty-seven months. Thwarted yet again by the cruel passage of time.

She asks Hyacinth about her first term at university, and Hy talks without drawing breath about how thrilling forensic science is, and everyone around the table is listening to their baby sister at length and realising she’s growing up, and Pen’s just glad that she doesn’t have to be doing the talking and has thrown Colin’s attention away from her.

Those with parent duties return to the table, and pudding is served, flaming and brimming with silver pieces, and the brandy sauce doled out to grateful Bridgertons who roll their eyes in bliss as the creamy liquid soaks into the pud. On Pen’s plate, Colin dollops a slightly different coloured substance, before handing it to her. “Dairy free version,” he says quickly. She nods, and takes a bite.

Fuck, it’s delicious.

The spoon in her mouth is a vessel of the heavens. It brings the sweet, tart sauce into her body, where she hopes it will stay forever and become a part of her. She cannot help it – she hums serenely. She opens her eyes to dip her spoon back into her bowl, and notices Violet is looking between her and Colin with a gentle curiosity. She does not know if Colin is looking at her. God, she hopes Colin isn’t looking at her.

“Does the Ledger Brandy Sauce withstand a dairy-free option?” Violet asks.

Penelope nods.

“It’s just cashew cream instead of regular cream.” Colin’s voice is low and shy. “I’d give you some, but I only made enough for one serving, sorry Mum.”

“Cashew cream, how inventive…” Violet says, and then she says nothing else. Pen has another mouthful.

Fuck, it really is delicious. And he only made enough for her.

*

Dishes cleared off the table. It’s 3pm. Bridgerton Christmas rules (of course there are Bridgerton Christmas rules) dictate that presents can’t be opened unless everyone’s there, and the two little ones will be napping for another couple hours at least.

But Colin has a contingency for such an event, it seems.

“I have a surprise,” he says to everyone. “It’s upstairs.” Francesca and John, who are staying with Colin and privy to his machinations, look to each other with excitement in their eyes.

“Must we, brother?” says Benedict, pouting childishly. He’s lying on the couch, his head in Sophie’s lap, running his hands over her belly.

“Yes, you must. Come on boys,” he says to Edmund and Augie. “Up you get, you’re with me seeing as Uncle Ben’s a slow poke.” He lifts Edmund onto his hip and grabs Augie by the hand, and then he motions to everyone else. “Big kids, too! Up the stairs! Last one there gets the pink mallet.”

The words sink in.

There’s a scramble as all Bridgerton siblings rocket up the staircase as quickly as possible – Sophie forgotten, Benedict pulls Gregory at the legs to bound past him; Daphne digs her fingers into Hyacinth’s armpits to tickle her out of the way, shrieking; Anthony blocks an indignant Eloise with his body, yelling “Mallet of death, Kate, mallet of death!” as his wife leaps up two steps at a time, barely avoiding Colin and the boys to get to the room above. Within twenty seconds, the room is empty save for Sophie, Violet, and Penelope.

“Don’t mind me, I’m a bit Christmased out,” Sophie calls from the couch. “You go up!” Penelope and Violet decide to ascend with grace, arm in arm.

“Are you having a good Christmas, Penelope?” she asks.

Pen nods, but doesn’t meet Violet’s eye. They turn the corner to the second flight of steps.

“Colin has done a lot to make this day special,” Violet continues, her voice clear and light. “It’s obvious he cares deeply about getting it right.”

Goddamnit, does Violet know too? She seems to know something.

They finally arrive at the top floor, where Colin has set up a mini pall mall course between the bedrooms. The hoops, propped up with braces, are all painted to look like candy canes; the pathway through the course is indicated by fake snow on either side lit from within with fairy lights, and up against the big bookcase by the window is a giant inflatable Rudolph, looming mighty jolly over them all. All Bridgertons are silenced by the sight.

“Oh, Colin!” It’s Kate who talks first. “It’s breathtaking!”

“You’re just saying that so he’ll let you win,” Anthony mutters.

“To win pall mall, my love, you must start playing before the first ball is struck,” she says, and he kisses her hairline fondly, handing her the black mallet which has been widely acknowledged as hers for six years now. She lines it up against the corresponding ball.

“Ah, hold on Kate, you know the rules. Oldest first,” Colin says. “Mum, would you do the honours?” He hands her a mallet, purposefully avoiding Penelope’s gaze.

Violet is silent for a moment, making eye contact with Penelope briefly. Pen shakes her head, almost imperceptibly small. Violet smiles quickly.

“Oh, no sweetheart, I’ll sit this one out,” she says, “you’re all bad sports when grandma wins,” and she leads Penelope over to the corner of the library to watch, arms still linked. She doesn’t say another word to Penelope throughout the game, but gives her hand a squeeze every time Colin laughs.

*

Two hours, one broken vase, and two bruised shins later (both belonging to Daphne for the sin of standing too close to Augie as he tried to obliterate the ball out of existence), Kate emerges victorious as the first ever Christmas Day Pall Mall Champion. This gives her the great honour of decreeing whether the next treat should be cheese or chestnuts, to which she decides that both should be offered simultaneously, and so everyone rumbles downstairs again and plops themselves in front of the fire to alternate mouthfuls of crackling hot chestnuts and Stilton with homemade quince paste.

Davey and Caroline are retrieved from naptime, and so it is time for presents. Augie and Benedict share the role of handing out gifts from under the tree, with Benedict selecting and reading out the recipient’s name before handing it over to Augie for delivery.

Penelope isn’t expecting anything. She’d only said she was coming two days ago, and had been non communicado for the week preceding that, and so it is to her great surprise when she hears Benedict say, “This is a very special one, Augie, you go and take this to Aunty Pen.”

His bright little face beams as he presents the gift to her like he is making an offering to the gods. “Thank you Augie,” she says, and he gives her a sticky little kiss on the cheek.

It is wrapped in a soft, cornflower-blue paper embossed with velvet snowflakes. There’s no card, just her name on a small tag at the heart of the ribbon; she can’t tell whose writing it is.

“Who’s it from?”

A moment of silence. Pen looks up and sees most of the Bridgertons look at Colin, seated on a pouffe by the fire. Daphne turns to face Pen, her mouth opening to speak.

“It’s from–”

“It’s from all of us,” Colin interrupts gruffly. “All eight of us.” Daphne nods, swallowing her words.

Pen looks back down at the gift. Unpicks the ribbon. Delicately slips her fingers under the tape, releasing the paper from its secret.

Inside is a small square book with a spiral spine, bound in linen in her favourite shade of mauve. There are roses and hyacinths on the cover. She opens up the first page.

Wednesday, January 1, 2025

@whistle.at.moi

Dearest gentle followers, please, I beg of you, do not caption your post today with “New year new me!" unless you actually intend on changing. I am *begging* some of you to actually become new people. Please. You’re all completely rotted.

[Originally sent January 1, 2022]

It is laid out beautifully, with space to write notes and events. The paper is thick and beautiful, the dates in the same mauve as the cover but reflective in the light somehow. And it is such a stupid joke.

She flips forward a few weeks.

Saturday, January 18, 2025

COOLin: Benedict has recently decided that his new favourite joke is to send me links to sex dolls

penny dreadful: ???

COOLin: bc I don’t have a wife & he does

penny dreadful: hm have you considered proposing to one of the sex dolls, colin?

COOLin: Pen

penny dreadful: oh! too good for a sex doll wife are we!

penny dreadful: you are no longer welcome in my home. me and my beautiful wife VulvaShock5000 have recently bought a ranch in uncanny valley, and our life is perfect.

[Originally sent January 22, 2024]

Fuck. It’s another good bit. And not from Whistle at Moi, it’s a joke she made to Colin a while ago, just after Ben’s wedding. Then she realises that the date of the joke is Ben’s wedding anniversary.

Are all the days’ jokes themed, she wonders?

She flips the calendar forward to her and El's friendversary.

Monday, September 1, 2025

The wits 🧠 : tits UP, brains ON, and all that

The wits 🧠 : or is it brains up tits on

The tits 🗻 : tits out brains out

The tits 🗻 : ogle my rack and then lobotomise me

[Originally sent October 4, 2024]

She doesn’t even remember saying that. But it is, somehow, a perfect encapsulation of their bullshit.

Forward to Colin’s birthday, now.

Friday, November 7, 2025

lady fuck 🍆: colin, you there?

lady fuck 🍆: ah he’s dropped off to sleep. farewell to the land of nod, sweet birthday baby.

seduction king 👑: no I’m here I’m here

lady fuck 🍆: GO TO BED YOUNG MAN

[Originally sent November 7, 2024]

Just, funny little moments. Little quips and jokes from months ago – years, even.

On this page is the first Whistle at Moi post that got big; this must have been the earliest conversation she had with Hyacinth; here was a message sent to Eloise when she graduated university; this was from when Gregory finally beat her in Words With Friends a couple weeks ago. But mostly, it is DMs between her and Colin.

Some she barely even remembers. Some are burned into her memory. Some she has lost all context for. All of them lovingly gathered together, ordered, formatted, and bound. Every day a different funny thought from her. Organised thematically to celebrate momentous – or small – dates of significance.

Fuck. Fuck!

And she realises why it’s annoyed her that Colin said Al never got her jokes, why that particular barb has been rolling over in her head like a sock in a washing machine for a week straight. It’s because he’s right. Al would look through this personalised one-a-day calendar custom made around her sense of humour, and he’d smile, but he wouldn’t get it. He wouldn’t understand what it means to see her pithy little words printed and bound, attributed to her in meticulously crafted detail. He wouldn’t get why it’s important that Colin does get her jokes – and not only does he get them, he likes them, enough to gather and catalogue them and remix them into a deeply personal, deeply funny gift.

It is a message so overwhelming that it feels like it is being screamed in her ears until she has emotional tinnitus. I care about what you say.

She realises no one else is talking. The only sounds are the rustle of wrapping paper on her lap, the fire popping slightly, and the soft crooning of 50s Christmas tunes through the speakers.

Colin breaks the silence. Of course he does.

“Do you like it, Pen?”

She nods, and finally does what she’s wanted to do since he opened the door to her this morning. She looks him in the eye – straight and true. Purposefully. His face is expectant, hopeful, concerned. Lips pressed tight in anticipation, brows raised. His skin is flushed tender near the firelight, the planes of his face beautiful and real in front of her.

“Thank you.”

It’s all she can muster. It’s barely above a whisper. But she says it directly to him, straight to his face: his anxiety melts instantly, and his lips curve into a smile.

Pen feels the rest of the room relax a bit, and she realises the other Bridgertons have been holding back before reacting.

“Thank you to all of you, guys. This is… This is just wonderful.” She hopes her voice communicates the depth of her earnestness, that they know what this is for her.

“You’re welcome, Pen,” says Eloise.

“Our great pleasure,” Daphne says.

Gregory claps his hands, smacking through the silence.

“Enough calendar time. Next pressie, Benedict!”

And Penelope is inordinately grateful to him in that moment, because it allows her the cover to lean over to Eloise and say something about the mulled wine tiring her out so she can sneak to the upstairs bathroom and cry.

Chapter Text

That evening, Pen arrives back home to her very grey one-bedroom flat, which she has made marginally less grey through the strategic acquisition of floor lamps from facebook marketplace. She flops across her couch (also grey) and though she wants to burn off the top layer of her brain with tiktok videos, she instead flicks through the calendar again.

She thinks about Colin making it for her. Sitting in his AirBnB or wherever @colinwilltravel is taking him this week, sifting through past conversations and the entire posting history of Whistle At Moi and siphoning them into an inevitable spreadsheet, categorising and recategorising each entry, finding suitable dates to pair them with. Alone. Just reading and rereading her words, diving into them so thoroughly that he understands them from every angle, maybe understands them more than she does herself. It is so touching that she is almost mortified by it.

She refused to let Colin apologise to her a week ago and refused to let him even speak a word to her today, and yet he knows her words inside and out, and it is fucking excruciating, actually.

It is 6:33pm, 25 December 2024. Her phone pings a message from Eloise.

The wits 🧠 : you are a coward

And like, obviously! Yes!

She has had over a decade to face up to her feelings about Colin. Twelve years, since she was fifteen. She’s been so many different people since then, so many different Pens, but all of them have been utterly in love with Colin Bridgerton.

And all of those versions of her are captured in this fucking calendar he made for her, clear as day.

*

Tuesday, December 30, 2025

@Colin Bridgerton: hey! we’re connected now! happy new years eve eve

@Penelope Featherington: crazy that it’s 2013 on thursday. only 2 more days for the world to end!!!

@Colin Bridgerton: fingers crossed lol

@Colin Bridgerton: thanks again for helping me so much with that essay over the winter hols, jane austen’s genius is eluding me slightly less thanks to your pride & prejudice crash course

@Penelope Featherington: I am simply glad that my obsession with keira knightley’s filmography has been put to good use

@Penelope Featherington: please advise me when ur studying pirates of the caribbean, I have opinions about it

@Penelope Featherington: (my opinions are that keira knightley is incredibly hot)

[Originally sent December 30, 2012]

The first message Colin ever sent her, just after her first Christmas at Bridgerton House.

Eloise was her dorm sister at Cheltenham, mostly because Eloise had cycled through just about every other girl in their form by offering them a mixture of feminist derision and abrasive self-confidence. Penelope, as a new entrant to the school, was thus placed with That Bridgerton Girl in the hopes that the extenuating circumstances of her late-entry enrolment might preclude her from kicking up a stink about Eloise’s more acerbic personality. To everyone’s great relief, the two were friends immediately, which meant that now only Penelope was privy to Eloise’s every thought on every issue, and the rest of the cohort could carry on in relative peace.

For her part, Penelope was just glad to have a friend, let alone a best friend. She had never had one before.

She had been concerned that her later enrolment – joining in third form instead of first – would limit her ability to make friends. If not that, then her other fear was that her intelligence might scare the others away, as was the case at her previous school. After all, she was on an academic scholarship, and she was not about to waste it.

She had worried that her marks might not be high enough to get in, but of course they were. Portia had put her and Philippa through some of the most rigorous tutoring that money could buy – or at least, the most rigorous tutoring available to those families who had failed upwards into England’s petit bourgeoisie.

Their mother had done this because, the previous year, Prudence had scraped through her A Levels so dismally that Portia’s shame sent the entire family into chaos. To cover up Prudence’s lack of university offers, Portia had organised a hasty gap year placement at a boarding school in Australia for her, so while their eldest sister was sunning herself in Sydney’s wealthier suburbs, Philippa and Penelope endured hours of equations, epistrophes, and elements to sharpen up their marks for a hopeful academic scholarship at England’s most prestigious girls’ school. Portia needed at least one daughter to do something worthy of bragging at the golf club.

(Penelope’s father Archie, still alive at the time, seemed indifferent to all of this, but he had also seemed indifferent to the fact that he had a wife at all, or three children, or even a life outside of the golf club sports room which displayed horse and greyhound races 24/7.)

But only Penelope achieved the necessary marks to join Cheltenham midway through third form, possibly because of her academic diligence, but mostly because she had the greatest desire to be packed off to boarding school. And so Penelope settled into Cheltenham Girls, fitting easily into the other half of Eloise’s conversations, and overjoyed to have found a friend as well-read and funny as she was.

When Penelope realised that her mother wished nothing more than for her to focus on her studies – far away from the Featheringtons – she leapt at the opportunity, professing to her mother that she and her new friend Eloise would have a much better chance studying together if she simply spent the Christmas holidays at Bridgerton House. The lying was far easier than Penelope thought it would be (a dangerous precedent to set).

And so, in 2012, she found herself at her first ever Bridgerton Christmas holiday break, walking through the grand front hallway with an overstuffed bag full of clothes and another full of gifts. She did not know the Bridgertons, but she hoped that Mrs Bridgerton would appreciate her hand-written thankyou note, decorated with decoupaged images of hyacinths and roses, as well as a bottle of wine Portia had procured to give to her hosts (which would soon become Penelope’s customary gift to the host of Bridgerton Christmas). Violet accepted her offerings gladly, but accepted Penelope even more gladly.

“It is so lovely to meet you, Penelope, Eloise has told us so much about you I feel as if you are already a part of the family!”

And just like that, she was.

Nestled right between Eloise and Francesca in age, she found herself suddenly experiencing what sisterhood might look like if she, Philippa, and Prudence were not being constantly pitted against one another. And, with Gregory at the lower end of the pecking order and Anthony at the highest, she also discovered what it might feel like to have both an annoying little brother and an annoying big brother – annoying, it turns out, but pleasing nonetheless.

The most elusive Bridgerton sibling through all this was Colin, who was home from Eton but spent most of his time holed up in his room studying for his exams, even though they wouldn’t be for months. He emerged only briefly for meals to grab a plate and return to the ivory tower of A Levels prep, barely noticing anyone in the room.

Penelope passed her first few days finding herself distracted enough with the liveliness of the other seven Bridgertons. Hyacinth, who’d just turned six, still believed in Santa, and Penelope had inordinate fun joining Daphne, Eloise, and Francesca as they whipped their sister into a fervour by running around the house trying to catch a glimpse of Santa Claus with her; meanwhile, Anthony and Benedict jingled bells around the house to lead their littlest sister this way and that. Gregory, who was eight, sat out these festivities with his arms crossed in a strop, as he had realised sometime in the last year that Santa wasn’t real, and was thus extremely mardy with the rest of them for “being so childish and fibbing to Hyacinth”. His abstention from the game was no great loss, but Colin’s absence was sorely missed by the other siblings, as apparently he could give the most convincing “ho ho ho”.

At first, Penelope didn’t take much more notice of Colin than she did any of the other Bridgertons – they were all the same level of unattainably beautiful, so much so that she felt, sometimes, like she was living in a novelty reality TV show where one ugly fat girl was put into a house of rich deadset hotties just to see what would happen. (Reflecting back on this memory as an adult, she recognised that this was an uncommonly unkind thought to have about herself, but she was fifteen, and it was 2012, and her mother was obsessed with WeightWatchers. There was a lot working against her self-esteem. Even skinny people were barely allowed to have mental health issues in 2012, so there was little hope for her to embrace the finer nuances of body positivity.)

But then, on Christmas Eve, she actually spoke to Colin, and her tiny heart was set.

Violet was preparing dinner. More accurately, she was overseeing dinner, as she had put just about every available Bridgerton to work – the little kids were giggling while they grated cheese onto a plate; Francesca was setting the table for ten with scientific precision; Anthony and Daphne were stirring and bickering over various sauces at the aga; and Eloise and Benedict were dicking around as they washed and dried any dishes that could be cleaned. Penelope felt rather feckless.

“Mrs Bridgerton, is there anything I can do to help?”

At that point, Eloise splashed a watery missive (wet sponge) at Benedict’s head, which distracted Violet slightly.

“Young lady you are fifteen years old! Act like it!” Violet turned to face Penelope, and calmly said, “You are our guest, Penelope, I won’t remind you again.” She smiled kindly but firmly, yet Penelope’s resolve did not waver. If she was to be invited back here again – and she sorely hoped she would be – she would need to earn her keep.

“Are you sure I can’t help?” Penelope asked. “I could go and grab Colin for dinner, maybe?”

Violet relented. “You know, that would be – Benedict Bridgerton, get that knife away from your sister’s face – that would be lovely, dear. He’s the last door on the top floor, just beyond the loo.”

Penelope ducked out of the doorway, and immediately the pressing warmth of the aga and the Bridgertons’ cheerful bickering vanished from the air. She hauled herself up the grand staircase of the house, flanked on the left by an enormous tapestry of a boy on a horse some ancestor had acquired in Europe. At the top of the stairs was Violet’s bedroom – door closed, but featuring a sprig of mistletoe over the frame. She walked along the corridor, passing the girls’ rooms on the right and the boys’ on the left.

The final room was Colin’s, also with its door closed, and featuring two pieces of decor: the first was yellow warning tape that said “DO NOT DISTURB” across it (classic teenage boy fare), and the second was a printed photo of grumpy cat that read “What I look Like When I Study For A Levels” – 2012 was not a year feted for having particularly sophisticated internet humour.

She gave a knock on the door.

“Come in!” he called.

She opened the door slowly and padded just over the threshold. She had never been inside a teenage boy’s bedroom before.

His duvet was a dark blue plaid, and the walls were a matching deep midnight. There were some childish looking glow-in-the-dark stars blu-tacked sweetly along the ceiling. Above his bed was a map of the world, with some smiley face stickers pressed on a few cities – Tokyo, Vancouver, Paris, Rome – presumably places that the Bridgertons had visited on family holidays. There was a bookshelf at the back of the room which mostly held folders and exercise books for school, but on the bottom shelf were some worn Alex Rider and Hardy Boys books, as well as a leather-bound Sherlock Holmes folio nicked from the grand library downstairs.

Right near the door was a desk with a little architect’s light; under the light was a very scribbly novel and a stack of lined paper covered in notes; groaning slightly in front of this spread was a very stressed looking Colin Bridgerton.

“Hi, um, your mum wanted me to call you down for dinner?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m…” he trailed off, and then flipped a few pages over in the book and pressed a sticky tab to the page uncertainly.

He was every bit as beautiful as every other Bridgerton in the house, even with pimples scabbing at his temple. All soft lashes and cheekbones and thick, chestnut curls. He was worrying his lip with his teeth and furrowing his brow a bit, frowning at the page covered in his handwriting. It looked like it might be a paragraph in progress. He struck a diagonal line across the entire sheet and sighed miserably.

Penelope waited a few seconds. He still hadn’t really noticed she was there. She cleared her throat and he looked up at her, startled.

“Oh! I’m so sorry! I thought you were Frannie.” He gave a weak smile.

“No, just… me! Penelope.”

“A Levels are killing my brain a bit, sorry Pen.”

“Oh. Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Are they really that stressful? Should I be anxious about doing them in three years?” She moved a bit closer to the desk and saw that the novel he was working from was Pride and Prejudice.

“Probably not. I’m probably just a bit thick,” Colin replied, chucking his pen down on the desk and leaning back in his chair, staring down his study notes.

“I’m sure that’s not true,” she said awkwardly.

“Nah, it is. Ask any of the others, they’ll tell you I’m the dumb Bridgerton.” 

“Oh,” she said. This was her new best friend’s older brother, and she barely knew the guy, and here he was opening up to her. This was not in her Teenage Boy Behavioural Handbook. “I don’t think any of them think that, Colin. Really.”

“Well Ant and Ben got through their A Levels without the freakout I’m having, so I’m either stupid or adopted.”

“Well, let’s hope for adopted. At least that way you can get through the exams.” He chuckled lowly, and Penelope felt something spark in her. She felt like there were tiny monkeys chattering in her brain. She decided it would be her mission to make Colin laugh properly.

“Thank you, Pen. That actually makes me feel a bit better,” he said, visibly relaxing a bit. He looked back up at her, more openly. “Do people call you Pen, by the way? Or are you a Penny?”

Penelope almost always went by her full name. She occasionally got a snide ‘Penny’ from her sisters, or from teachers who didn’t know her very well but wanted to be kind to the quiet ginger girl. No one had ever called her Pen before.

“Yeah, sure, I get called Pen,” she said, like a liar. “Except when I make mistakes, then they call me Pencil.”

Dumb joke. Bad! But he laughed (mission accomplished!), and she felt his laughter through her whole body, and she laughed as well, and so did the monkeys in her head.

“Pencil. You’re funny, you know?”

She did know, albeit no one usually told her. She felt her ears get a bit warmer at the compliment.

“Well, um. It’s dinner time.”

“So it is. May I chaperone you back to the kitchen?” and he stood up with a wry expression. “I hear these parts of the house are dangerous at night for young ladies.”

“A turn about the room?” she asked bravely, indicating her head towards the book, and he gasped in recognition.

“Oh shit, you’ve read Pride and Prejudice?”

“Quite a few times. I reread it every year, actually, it’s one of my favourite books.”

“Well then, I insist,” and he offered her the crook of his elbow.

She giggled, and put her arm through his. She was actually touching him. It was the closest she had ever been to a boy she wasn’t related to, and cousin Jack didn’t count. The monkeys in her head were now screeching at full volume.

He span them around the bedroom in a tight circle at great speed, making her laugh with surprise. “Room turned! Dinner time, let’s go, Pen,” he said merrily, and then led her out the door of the bedroom.

Penelope felt like her whole body was still spinning. He had given her a nickname and now he was using it for her and it sounded so nice in his voice. She wanted to hear him say it again.

“What about the A Levels is stressing you out, do you think?”

Colin’s demeanour shifted inwards a bit. Kind of sheepishly, he turned to her properly and said, “Look, Pen…” and a thrill ran through her body. “I know we don’t really know each other, but if you have read Pride and Prejudice, I actually might enlist your help on this essay.”

That was unexpected. “What do you mean?”

“Sorry to ask, it’s just that I’m bloody struggling with it. I cannot make head or tails of Jane Austen’s language, it’s just… not clicking for some reason.”

“I’m only in third form,” she cautioned. “I’m not sure how much help I can be with an A Levels English Lit essay.”

“The essay part’s fine, I’m a good writer – it’s just the reading I’m having difficulty with. I just feel like I don’t fully get what’s going on in the book – can you walk me through it maybe?”

“I mean, can’t you ask your mum for help?

“Violet is… She's a great mother, but a poor teacher,” he said. “Always talks in metaphors. The sex talk she gave me was incomprehensible. She kept talking about flowers blooming and streams flowing.”

Penelope shifted uncomfortably at the mention of sex.

“What about your siblings then?”

He scoffed. “Ant and Ben did different books to me, and the girls would absolutely rip me to shreds if they found out I needed their help with a romance book. I’d never hear the end of it.”

“It’s actually not a romance book though, it’s a moral education book disguised as biting social satire disguised as a romance.”

Colin smiled broadly. “See? There’s the other reason I’m asking you. Eloise said you were on a scholarship at Cheltenham, so I figured you were pretty smart – you just proved it!”

She was sure her entire face was pink. “I suppose so…” she said, and then saw his eyebrows raised. “Well, yes – but only because I’m adopted,” she joked. It was just a silly callback to earlier, but he actually stopped walking to laugh at it, a full throaty laugh. God, it was fun making him laugh. The brain monkeys were throwing bananas around with reckless abandon.

They were outside Violet’s bedroom now. The room with the mistletoe over the door. Colin turned around to face her, and held both of her hands in his. Pen felt her whole body glittering.

“Come on, Pen. I might be able to actually enjoy Christmas if someone smart can talk me through this book. Please, it’s gotta be you.”

He smelled like Lynx Africa, and under that, the leafy verdant scent of his skin.

“Sure, okay. If you think it’ll help…”

“Yes!” and he brought both her hands up to his mouth and gave a quick kiss on her knuckles. “Thank you thank you thank you! Alright, let’s go down to dinner, I’m famished. Come on!”

And he turned and pulled her down the stairs by her heart.

Saturday, May 17, 2025

@Colin Bridgerton: A LEVELS COMPLETE!

@Penelope Featherington: levels? hell yeah I love avicii, lol

@Colin Bridgerton: lol

@Penelope Featherington: but that rules! congrats colin!

@Colin Bridgerton: I AM FREEEEEEE… of English Lit at least, couple more exams to go. this will be u in three years time, btw.

@Colin Bridgerton: thanks again for all ur help! ur da best

@Colin Bridgerton: well, def the best of all the best friends of all my sisters. top of the pile.

@Colin Bridgerton: wait maybe second top. hyacinth’s best friend martha knows a LOT about dinosaurs.

@Penelope Featherington: martha sounds cool, wish I were talking to her right now instead of some fuckin nerd who’s finished his english A levels

[Originally sent May 17, 2013]

Early on, she lived in tentative fantasies that he would kiss her. They messaged back and forth from their dorm room laptops across his final year at school, initially about his English texts, but eventually they were just messaging as friends. She allowed herself to imagine that, after his A Level results were in, he would thank her for helping him understand the writings of Jane Austen, and he would kiss her chastely like in the final frame of the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice they watched together over the phone.

This, of course, did not eventuate.

A few years later, Penelope’s initially chaste little thoughts about Colin began to coalesce and congeal into something hungrier. She discovered parts of her body, and then rediscovered them while thinking about him.

She hovered around his social media presence, watching him neglect his university studies in favour of last-minute trips to Prague and Corfu with girls who were altogether too glamorous to be even the same species as Penelope. He began posting photos of these journeys to a new travel instagram account, which he called @colinwilltravel. He gained over 30,000 followers within a month.

She spent a humiliating amount of time in her dorm room at school daydreaming about what she’d do if he ever invited her on a hasty international weekender. Maybe Italy. Holding hands walking through art galleries, visiting little wineries on a Vespa, eating copious amounts of pizza and cheese and gelato together (in her daydreams, she did not need lacteez). And then, at the end of these sweet daydreams, she would imagine the vigorous sex she would have with him. They were early sexual fantasies, so nothing crazy, mainly kissing and touching and penetrative orgasms and then him coming inside of her (in her daydreams, she did not need the pill, either).

She sought out friends to lovers erotica on fanfiction websites, barely caring about the quality of the writing or even the source material, just to catch a whiff of potential, hoping some of it rubbed off on her and brought her the courage to push her desire towards him. It didn’t.

But she learned how to come with her fingers. The fingers Colin kissed.

Tuesday, September 2, 2025

Col Me Maybe: happy first day of sixth form Pen! though I have fled the horrible wet island of the UK for finer pastures (mostly lying on a beach in Mexico) I will be with you every step of the way along your A Levels journey just as you were for me

Penny Lane: haha thanks!!!!!

Col Me Maybe: not that you need MY help with A Levels, lol, but please keep me abreast of how it’s all going! I still owe you for everything you did for me!

Penny Lane: the only thing I’m keeping a breast of is your insta feed

Penny Lane: do you ever put a shirt on? get those tits away from me

Col Me Maybe: it’s hot here!! the sun is always out! plus those posts do well

Penny Lane: well thank god for that. while you develop new and exciting skin cancers at least the posts will do well.

Penny Lane: you’re gonna get consumed by melanoma. it’s gonna come up and strangle your brain and start piloting you around like a ratatouille.

Col Me Maybe: I came here to have a good time & I am feeling very attacked right now

[Originally sent September 2, 2015]

Colin bailed on his final year of uni. On a whim, he bought a one-way flight to North America. He didn’t even call home to tell them he’d done it – Violet found out via instagram.

He did this while Penelope was entering her final year of school, which annoyed her a bit. Given there was less than a year until she was at university, she’d felt that she might finally emerge onto Colin’s radar of romantic possibilities, so his departure felt keenly tortuous, like waking up from a coma the day after he left for Jupiter. At least he documented his travels voraciously.

In between her rigorous study schedule, Pen inhaled every video he posted, analysed every photo deeply. Even when he posted photos with the most unreasonably hot women ever seen within the four corners of an Instagram post. Even when he posted topless photo after topless photo, his hair dripping seawater. Especially those ones.

The influencer ecosystem was still in relative infancy, but already @colinwilltravel had something special. Violet’s qualms about his dropped degree soon faded. Colin expanded into sponsored content and monetised youtube travel vlogs, quickly becoming something of a small business with a demanding work schedule despite only ever being on holiday.

But life back home moved on. The final stretch of school rolled out before Penelope. She got through it all by twiddling the knob of her crush so it was more like a poorly tuned radio signal – still there, but just blurry under white noise. She still liked making Colin laugh, but maybe more out of habit than any burning need. Maybe.

They still messaged each other – anecdotes from their days, jokes from the internet, whinges from her about A Levels. She mused that school must seem like a distant memory to him, but he glanced over those comments, always checking in on how she was feeling and keeping her accountable to her study schedule, which he had insisted she send to him.

She sat her exams at the start of June 2016, and then suddenly, it was over, and she was free!

An adult, with adult responsibilities – and with Brexit looming, she was able to exercise those responsibilities quickly.

So, on 23 June, 2016, she voted Remain.

On 24 June, 2016, her father died.

Tuesday, June 24, 2025

The wits 🧠 : how are you going today? xx

The tits 🗻 : on the five year anniversary of joining the dead father club? grief is grief is grief. you know how it is.

The tits 🗻 : it’s bad today, but not any different than usual. just more intense.

The wits 🧠 : I get that

The tits 🗻 : hey can I tell you an extremely dark but extremely funny thought I had on the day he died?

The wits 🧠 : of course

The wits 🧠 : one of the few privileges of being in the dead father club with you is, of course, the gallows humour

The tits 🗻 : it’s pretty funny that he voted leave and then he actually left

The wits 🧠 : CHRIST

[Originally sent 24 June, 2021]

Whenever she thinks about her dad’s death (relives it, really), it feels like it happens in a different part of her memory. All present tense, all wrong.

It’s weird and sudden.

Some complex medical explanation that slides off her brain.

All that matters is that he’s gone.

At least politically, with Brexit, the whole country feels similarly untethered to match Pen’s mood.

So that’s something.

There’s a voicemail from him on her phone about picking something up from the post office and she replays it over and over again.

Pip and Prue come over from their houses just to exist in silence with her. The three of them crawl under the covers of her bed like when they were really little. Prue holding Pip holding Pen.

No words.

But no one to hold Portia, she thinks.

She dozes a little.

Dawn looks the same as dusk when you have no sense of time.

His voice on repeat, “Penelope, there’s a parcel for you at the post office. I sent you a text about it – did you receive it? Anyway, go and pick it up so I don’t keep getting these blasted emails.”

Why would he care what flowers are on his casket?

Her short-term memory is sloughing off her body.

She’s having breakfast with her mother.

She’s having lunch with her mother.

She’s having dinner with her mother.

And then, finally, the funeral.

She’s empty and she’s wearing black and it makes her feel emptier.

Every Bridgerton is present at the funeral – Colin’s flown in from god knows where to be there. She’s the best writer in the family, her sisters insist, and so she has to give the eulogy on behalf of the three of them. She agrees, the turbidity of her grief clouding her judgment.

She gets up to the pulpit, paper in hand, and only then recalls her paralysing stage fright.

Her skin is volcanic with sweat, her gut shredding itself to pieces, the paper shaking violently, and she barely ekes out the words, “Archie Featherington was…” before she collapses. Drama queen, she thinks to herself as she hits the floor.

She comes to, and they all think it’s the grief, thank god. Prue and Pip take over the eulogy, reading out her words while Eloise helps her to sit at the side of the church, growing white with embarrassment.

Someone hands her a bottle of water and puts a hand at her shoulder. She looks up. It’s Colin, of course. Eloise nods at him that she’s got this, but he sits next to Penelope anyway, just in case they need him for anything else.

After the service, the burial, the dirt in the ground, she feels strangely dry. At the wake, she just sits in the corner, a wallflower again, except it’s her father’s wake and she fainted so people want to talk to her.

Eloise and Colin immediately become her guard dogs, each of them holding one of her hands, saying nothing. They stare down anyone and everyone who tries to approach her. Giving her the permission to be withdrawn. They know how it feels to talk with strangers by your father’s grave, and they utilise all the power of the Bridgerton glare to shield Penelope from that fate.

Wednesday, October 15, 2025

Penny Drops: I’ve taken over your room in the flat

@Penelope Featherington has sent a photo

Penny Drops: your precious coat hanger is mine

Penny Drops: wire me 4 quintillion pounds immediately or you’ll never see her again

Col Me Maybe: but extortion is illegal

Penny Drops: I know you’re not Coat Hanger’s real father. I’ll tell her.

Col Me Maybe: no!!!!!

[Originally sent October 15, 2016]

After the funeral, she didn’t talk to Colin for a few weeks. He was almost too good to her, too protective. It felt too close to something other than what they have. Plus, he went back overseas to continue travelling with a devastatingly beautiful instagram model called Marina, who then became a devastatingly beautiful instagram girlfriend.

If ever there was a time to pull away from a hopeless childhood crush.

The grief sank into the cracks of her life, a gentle but constant hush through her, like water between shingles. She got her A Level results. All A*s. She didn’t tell Colin.

She and Eloise decided to transition from dorm sisters at Cheltenham to house mates at university. They moved into a cosy little London flat that had passed down the daisy chain of Bridgerton siblings: Bridgerton-owned, of course, and so Penelope insisted Eloise take the larger room with the pleasant light and the en suite, which used to be Daphne’s before she moved in with Simon.

“No problem, Pen,” Eloise said. “I’m very happy not to take Colin’s old room.”

“You’re… what?”

But El was distracted, already flinging her clothes out of their boxes onto the floordrobe, and so Pen shuffled into the other room, which contained a few of Colin’s forgotten items: a set of weights in the corner; a bedframe but no mattress; a single wooden coat hanger in the wardrobe. They all suddenly became embarrassingly treasured items to her.

It was enough to shake her into messaging Colin for the first time since the funeral. Enough to wake her up to herself again, rouse her from the drag of grief and the weightless transience of new adulthood.

It felt good to make him laugh again. It made her feel warm, like she was closer to the surface of herself. He was in a relationship, so it must have been platonic, what she was feeling. Must have been.

She wondered if she could make anyone else laugh the same way, and if it would feel as nice.

Monday, January 20, 2025

The wits 🧠 : oi forgot to mention before you left, we’re having a very low key family dinner for ben’s birthday on saturday night, can you come?

The tits 🗻 : I cannot

The tits 🗻 : due to the fact that I am hanging out with my BOYFRIEND then!

The wits 🧠 : WHAT??? IS THIS!!!!????

The tits 🗻 : oh shit sorry, forgot to translate into lesbian for you

The tits 🗻 : a boyfriend is like a girlfriend except the friend is a boy

The wits 🧠 : 😤

The tits 🗻 : I mean it’s kind of like a wife? but only if the wife were not yet married to you, and also the wife were a boy. does that make sense?

The wits 🧠 : so glad I live with you so I can punch you in person. and also get all the details. WHAT!!!

[Originally sent January 20, 2017]

Three months into university, she finally had her first kiss.

Eloise invited most of her cohort from her social work degree over for a housewarming, and Pen found herself at the edges of the party (by the spice rack in the kitchen) with a quiet boy called Kritya. A fellow wallflower.

He had kind eyes and made a weak pun about his favourite spice being ginger when he saw Penelope’s hair. Penelope responded with a diatribe about how Ginger Spice is the only Spice Girl who is an actual fucking spice, and how the only reason we don’t have Paprika Spice or Turmeric Spice is because England is too racist, and that made him chuckle.

She made a boy laugh! Time to be brave.

His lips were warm and nervous, and she could taste Coca-Cola on his mouth. “It was not unpleasant,” she told Eloise later, “Just nothing particularly spellbinding.” A perfectly reasonable first kiss.

But in her head, her real first kiss was still the gentle brush of Colin Bridgerton’s lips against her adolescent knuckles in the hallway in 2012. She had relived the sense memory of his kiss on her hands so many times that she felt like she could pick it out of a police lineup if she had to. Fuck!

She dated Kritya for a couple months. When they had sex, it was new and clunky but kind of sweet. He laughed awkwardly through a lot of it. In fact, he laughed awkwardly through a lot of their relationship, and Pen realised that that was because his laughter was more indicative of nerves than a sense of humour. The relationship fizzled. They parted ways amicably.

She didn’t date anyone else for the whole of uni. She tried to, but either the sex or the jokes petered out after a fortnight, which was insane because she knew she was great on both fronts.

Also, Colin and Marina broke up.

Saturday, June 28, 2025

Col Runnings: congrats on finishing uni!!!

Penny Drops: oh baby boy

Penny Drops: you haven’t heard

Col Runnings: ?

Penny Drops: I am going to do another year of uni

Col Runnings: ????

Penny Drops: the chancellor knocked on my door and said “your brain… it’s so perfect… please, please stay here with us….. I want to absorb your perfect brain and become the Uber Chancellor…. ”

Penny Drops: and then we mind melded

Penny Drops: it was quite erotic, actually

Col Runnings: sounds it

Penny Drops: (I am doing an honours year because I am a nerd)

[Originally sent June 28, 2018]

She finished her undergrad degree and chucked an honours year on the end to forego having to make a decision about her career. A year seemed like it would be a long time, but then all of a sudden, somehow, she had written 20,000 words on emergent digital cultures, and she got a university medal, and she quickly got tapped for a job doing digital work for a startup flooded with VC cash, and the decision about her career was kind of made for her.

The work was constant and demanding, but her team was nice and the pay astonishingly good – so good that her guilt at living rent-free with Eloise finally won out, and she moved into her own flat in late 2019. It was very grey, but it was hers, so fuck it. It was still new to have something that was completely hers, somewhere she could really stretch the arms of her own free will.

Bridgerton events came and went: birthdays, graduations, Christmases; Daphne’s wedding, Anthony’s wedding, and Violet and Edmund’s 30^th wedding anniversary. Penelope attended just about all of them as Eloise’s plus one – platonic, of course (although when Eloise came out as a lesbian Violet was not easily convinced of their platonic status, and they’d had to talk her down from a spring wedding, Penelope apologising profusely for the sin of being straight). Colin attended most of these occasions, then some of them, then made the occasional appearance, but his habits at each Bridgerton event did not waver over the years: he never came directly to Pen, and she always intended to spend only a little of her evening talking to him, but they inevitably ended up ensconced in a corner, talking and laughing conspiratorially for an hour at least. Eloise dipped in and out of their chats, able but unwilling to commit to the bit for as long as the two of them. “Do you two ever stop doing inside jokes with each other?” she would say, exasperated, before going to smoke outside with Benedict.

During these conversations with Colin, Pen was funnier and livelier than she was with anyone else – she wasn’t trying to show off for him or anything, he just seemed to bring it out of her. More than anything, she still just liked to make him laugh. Dead annoying, but she was used to it by now.

“Fuck, Pen,” he said, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes one time. It was Christmas 2019 and he’d just returned from Ibiza (alone), and he kept pronouncing Ibiza with the (correct) lisp sound on the z, and so she’d been deadpan lisping every sibilant to make fun of him, refusing to yield. “You’re brutal at this. You should like, do stand-up.”

“Very thweet of you to thay, Colin,” she replied, and he giggled madly again, and her heart gave a citrusy little squeeze at the sound. Stupid! She dropped the bit. “No, but I have the most appalling stage fright – remember my dad’s funeral?”

“That was grief. Extenuating circumstances, Pen.”

“It absolutely wasn’t grief but that’s besides the point. I’d flop on stage!” She took a swig of her mulled wine.

“Nah-uh.”

“Yah-huh. I’m talking full flopsy mopsy cottontail, Katy Perry Witness, flop til I drop. Once again, my endless wit is curbed by my endless cowardice.”

“Start a comedy account then,” he shrugged, taking a sip from his cup. “Become a professional shitposter.”

“No one’d read that. Too much bloat in shitposting these days, reckon you could only crack into the market if you suck dril off.”

He barked a short laugh. “See, that’s funny. You’d find an audience pretty quick for your relentless bullshit.”

“Look man, just because you have an online following doesn’t mean everyone in your life needs one, too. I do not need clout to hang out.” She raised her eyebrows in mock concern. “Or are you gonna stop being my friend unless I have a million followers?”

“Good lord, no. Two million, Pen, dream bigger.”

She rolled her eyes, which was sad, because it meant she stopped looking directly at his face for a second. His beautiful, beautiful face.

“It’s not gonna happen,” she said, but the seed was already in her mind. Colin not only thought she was funny, he thought she was funny enough that others needed to hear about it. “I’m too busy with work, anyway.”

Two months later, the pandemic hit.

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Frannie Fine: john said we’ve gotta flatten the curve, n I tend to listen to the public health experts on this shit, esp public health experts that I am de facto with

Penny Pine: flatten the curve this, flatten the curve that

Penny Pine: portia has been trying to flatten *my* curves for *years* and yet no one has hailed her as a modicum of public health!

[Originally sent March 18, 2020]

Suddenly, Pen was not so busy with work any more. Suddenly, Pen did not have a job. Suddenly, the four grey walls of her apartment which had signalled freedom were a psycho-spatial prison determined to keep her in zoned torment.

Penelope fielded biweekly panic calls from her mother, and fortnightly check-ins with her sisters. Eloise messaged her as much as possible, but her schedule had become incredibly time-consuming as an essential worker in emergency social care. The only other person who messaged her with regularity was Colin, trapped in iso in New York.

She started to lose it a little bit. She was so caged in and alone and he felt so far away and they were both so scared that the short tether she’d kept around him slackened slightly.

Wednesday, April 30, 2025

Col Runnings: how’s today in iso gone for you

pendulum: two ubereats orders, three gin & tonics, four job applications, five breakdowns

Col Runnings: only five?

Col Runnings: that’s an improvement on yesterday

pendulum: yeah but the breakdowns yesterday were sexier so it feels like a downgrade

Col Runnings: how do you make a breakdown sexy

pendulum: it’s easy

pendulum: when I start crying, I go into the coldest part of my flat so my nipples get hard

Col Runnings: Jesus, Pen

pendulum: oh too good for hard nipples colin?

pendulum: I thought you were an ally to women

Col Runnings: is isolation insanity a thing? if yes, you have it, if no, medical science is gonna LOVE you

[Originally sent April 30, 2020]

Making him laugh was the only thing that kept her going. But if she kept messaging him nonstop, she might say something she regretted. Like that she may have had five breakdowns that day but she’d had twice as many orgasms, or that the main reason her nipples got hard was because she strummed her fingers past them lightly with a vibrator at her clit while thinking about his cock in her mouth.

There was only one solution. She needed an audience. She needed to learn how to be satisfied by making people other than Colin Bridgerton laugh.

In a moment of weakness, she started @whistle.at.moi.

Chapter Text

Penelope comes to for a second, and glances up from the calendar to examine the clock on the wall (another facebook marketplace acquisition). It is now 7:50pm.

She narrows her eyes at the clock, with its irrepressibly smooth minute hand wheedling around, so carefree. That minute hand embodies joie de vivre. Is it not aware of the heavy burden it places on her? Does it not know that every rotation around the circle is another minute she has to spend stewing in her own fucking cowardice?

She should message him. Now.

Or. Or.

She looks back at the calendar.

*

Part shitposting, part gossip, part satire, Whistle At Moi was Penelope’s saving grace during lockdown. Her first tweet went viral only a couple of weeks in – a big alt comedy account retweeted her, and she gained a few thousand followers overnight.

Thursday, May 15, 2025

@whistle.at.moi

if boris johnson wanted to do something for the good of this nation, he would make covid-safe massages available to all uk residents to help alleviate stress. a covid-safe massage is where the masseuse drives a remote control hot wheels truck up your back for 45 minutes.

[Originally posted May 15, 2020]

↪ @whistle.at.moi

jfc look at the date on this tweet. do you think boris johnson had a covid safe massage during partygate.

[Reply originally posted December 1, 2021]

The first ten thousand followers were the hardest built, but she had time on her hands. So much time.

Her bullshit was nestled in the Venn diagram overlap between internet socialites, political wonks, and alt comedy nerds. Slowly but surely, her fellow degenerates found her and settled in for the long haul through iso. The notifications from each tweet did little to etherise the panic in her mind, but at least they distracted her from being embarrassingly needy for Colin at all times.

Sunday, May 18, 2025

@whistle.at.moi

immune system, can you come and pick me up? there’s viruses here. yeah, corona ones. yes I know it’s after curfew.

[Originally posted May 18, 2020]

She stayed anonymous mostly because she was still on the job hunt and she really did not want a recruiter to ask her to clarify what she meant when she tweeted “characters from pixar’s cars ranked by how likely they’d be to post hole (1/25)”.  A sensible choice, really – no one could blame her for keeping it anonymous.

But keeping it secret? Not even telling Eloise? That was another thing entirely. Especially once Eloise started quoting her own jokes back at her.

“It’s like I’m constantly on the brink of a meltdown. I’m just stressed out in like, new and unanticipated ways,” El said over facetime. She was walking to the tube from a house call, having picked up the habit of calling Pen afterwards to alleviate some of her essential worker stress. “My whole routine is so fucked, my brain feels itchy.”

“That sucks, El. Do you… need solutions now? Or just having a whinge?”

“Solutions, please.”

“Maybe to combat itchy brain you gotta make new routines? Something else to ground you in everyday quotidian life?”

“Oh, I have. I’ve been rewatching Paddington 2 every night. Like in that silly tweet I sent you. It’s been very quotidian I can assure you.”

“What tweet?”

“Wait, have I not sent it to you? How have I not sent you this tweet, it’s right up your alley, dude. Fuck, it’s so good.” Through the blocky pixelated screen, Penelope could see El’s breath venting up from the sides of her mask to pearl against her glasses as she swiped through on her phone. “There. Sent the screenshot.”

Pen blew the image up to full screen, but she already knew what Eloise had sent her. As she read her own words (“the covid situation is so dire right now, and the solution is clear: we need paddington 3”) she had the strange sensation that her stomach had suddenly filled with gravel.

“It’s so good right?” El’s voice cut across her words.

“Yeah,” Pen said, trying to keep her tone innocuous. “He’s a good little bear.”

“The best. I’m obsessed with this twitter account by the way, it’s so good. I wanna meet whoever’s behind it and give ‘em a big kiss on the mouth.” She gave a big laugh. Penelope swallowed tersely; a non-covid-related tightness was squeezing her throat. “Anyway, I’m just being bad brained, but I’ll let you know if the thoughts get to 2015 levels again. About to hop on the tube, I gotta go. Love you!”

“Love you, too.” But El had already hung up. The black screen now showed only her own glassy reflection. Pen shuffled uncomfortably.

Saturday, May 31, 2025

@whistle.at.moi

certainly the worst part of the novel coronavirus is the mass fear, death, and social destruction that is wreaking havoc on our way of life.

the second worst part is that all the travel influencers are trying to branch out into other content. colinwilltravel has posted three singing videos today. all shirtless. is the virus not torment enough.

[Originally posted May 31, 2020]

In truth, maybe the real reason she kept the account secret was because she liked having the freedom to release her little thoughts about Colin The Influencer. She needed a vent for all the feelings creeping up the walls of her heart, and Whistle At Moi became that vent.

She varied her targets, of course, so as not to draw attention to Colin in particular. All gentle teasing, and only ever for big accounts who she knew could hack it – she was mostly just shitposting about whatever came across her feeds.

She didn’t mean to start breaking internet gossip: that happened quite by accident.

Cressida Cowper, aka @cressidadarling, aka England’s most viciously beautiful influencer, aka one of Penelope’s crueller bullies from her time at Cheltenham, tweeted about being in hospital with covid. This would have been concerning if Pen hadn’t noticed that Cressida had reused photos from a previous stint in hospital that she’d posted on her stories, and thus was clearly faking covid in an effort to garner sympathy for herself after she’d been micro-cancelled for micro-fatshaming. Pen discerned this fakery because in the photos, Cressida was wearing a particular set of custom earrings even though she’d bemoaned losing one of them on her tiktok only a few days prior.

Pen shot off a quick tweet about it with receipts.

Friday, June 6, 2025

@whistle.at.moi

every day I log on to twitter dot com and learn something about cressida cowper against my will. today’s cress stress is the knowledge that she is absolutely faking having covid rn for clout. as soon as the scientists have a cure for covid they gotta start working on a cure for chronic influencer brain – cressida, darling, just because you’ve got no taste it doesn’t mean you have covid.

[Originally posted June 6, 2020]

What Penelope perhaps hadn’t realised at the time was that this was the sort of thing that could only be divined by a terminally online obsessive who hate-followed Cressida Cowper across multiple social media platforms. And as a former victim of Cressida Cowper’s teenaged tyranny, Penelope fell right into that category.

Unfortunately, the other person who fell into that category was Eloise.

“This Cressida shit is wild,” El said.

“It’s bonkers,” Penelope agreed, stirring an egg into her third bowl of instant ramen for the day.

“Cannot believe I got in on the ground floor of Whistle At Moi and got to see it in real time. I feel like one of god’s chosen children.”

“For following a silly twitter account?”

“For following a good twitter account, Pen.”

Pen smiles at that.

“Although,” Eloise offered, “does Cressida really deserve this level of hate?” With covid fear at a fever pitch, Cressida had become the internet’s villain of the week, as the whole country (plus a few others) united around a common enemy. “Surely being Cressida Cowper is punishment enough.”

“And yet she persists.”

Eloise’s eyes narrowed.

“Enough of that harpy,” Pen waved the conversation over. “What have you been reading?”

While Eloise talked, Penelope refreshed her twitter again.

Over the next week her followers quintupled, and her internet notoriety bloomed. And, as she would learn some years later, she had unwittingly entered in a bitter feud with Cressida Cowper.

Sunday, December 25, 2025

@whistle.at.moi

met the little drummer boy at a house party one time and he wouldn’t stop vaping

↪ @whistle.at.moi

also, very gauche to do this on christmas day, but here’s a face reveal. I am doing this because the losers and the haters have decided to blackmail me to reveal my identity (not a bit). I have decided that being blackmailed is actually incredibly chic, and is a sign that I have a perfect brain (also not a bit).

[Originally sent December 25, 2022]

In spite of the dent Whistle At Moi made in her childish little crush, every time she and Colin messaged, she still found herself looking through his words, trying to divine his tone. But (and it was her own stupid fault) they were always joking, constantly on a level of irony poisoning that made their true feelings indecipherable.

And then, suddenly, it was December of 2022. Ten years since she had first met Colin and fallen almost instantaneously in love with him. Somehow, the pandemic had stolen her early twenties from her and spat her out the other side and she was still pathetically pining over her best friend’s older brother.

She had a career, damnit (boring government work, but it paid enough to float her out of her covid debts), and she had creative fulfilment with Whistle At Moi. She even had a good relationship with her sisters, now that they had both paired off with suspiciously wonderful men (she described her delicate ecosystem of sisterhood as “tenuous co-workers about to form a union”, which amused Eloise greatly). In any case, she was a fully-fledged adult now, but she was still acting like a lovesick teenager about Colin Bridgerton. About an influencer, for godssakes. Get a grip, bitch.

Enough was enough.

She decided she would no longer be in love with him. In fact, she decided this as she was making her way up the path to the front door of Bridgerton House on Christmas Day, traditional wine bottle in the crook of her arm.

Hyacinth opened the door, still in pyjamas even though it was nearly midday. She was rubbing her eyes and yawning, revealing her slightly stained invisalign.

“Pen!” she said, startled and a bit bleary.

“Hi, Hy!” Pen joked, offering the wine bottle out to her; then, thinking better of handing alcohol over to a sixteen-year-old, she retracted it. “Merry Christmas!”

“Oh man, I’m so sorry, I…” Hyacinth trailed off, frowning slightly. “I guess we must have forgotten to tell you in the rush. Christmas is off. Daphne went into labour at like 3am last night.”

“Oh my god! Has she had the baby yet?”

“No, she–” and Hyacinth yawned again. “She’s still going. Mum’s sending through updates from the hospital every hour.”

“Oh… Well, should I…?” she pointed her thumb behind her and rotated her body a couple degrees, as if to leave.

“No, no, of course not Pen, come in. You may as well.”

Pen stepped over the threshold and put her gifts at the side table, unspooling her scarf and coat and hanging them over the end banister of the staircase.

“So, who’s around then?” Pen asked as she began knocking off her boots.

“Mum and Simon went with Daph,” Hy said, counting off her fingers. “Soph and Benny are looking after Augie and Belinda at Simon and Daph’s house, Frannie’s over at John’s apartment, Eloise is still on shift... Oh, and Ant and Kate and the kids are doing a Sharma Christmas this year, so they were never here in the first place.” Hyacinth took a big breath. “So it’s just you, me, Greg, and Colin.”

“Great!” Pen said, her nerves making her voice overly bright.

“But Greg’s upstairs doing A Levels prep and doesn’t want to be disturbed, so really it’s just you, me, and Colin.”

Of course the only line of defence between herself and Colin was Hyacinth. Of course!

Pen finished taking her shoes off as Hyacinth padded languidly back down the corridor. She was so tall now, and her legs so long, that Pen had to scarper after her to keep up.

They entered the open plan kitchen-living room. Colin was leaning forward on the couch, absorbed in his phone. A single brown curl drooped just over his eyebrow. He was biting a hangnail nervously.

“Any updates?” Hy asked. He nodded his head without looking up.

“The baby’s breech,” he rasped.

Pen felt a twist of nerves at the base of her stomach.

“What does that mean? Breech?” Hyacinth asked.

“It means the baby’s upside down, Hy,” Pen said faintly. Colin looked up at her voice.

“Oh! You’re here! Of course, Christmas Day. Sorry Pen, I should have-”

“Don’t worry about it. What’s the news about Daphne? What did your mum say?”

He handed the phone over to Hyacinth, who took a seat next to him and read aloud. “‘Baby is breech. Still trying to turn, if not then caesarean. S more worried than D. Will call soon.’ A caesarean’s a c-section right?”

Colin nodded.

“Emergency exit,” Pen confirmed.

Colin exhaled a quick laugh through his nose. “Yeah, something like that.” He flopped back on the couch. “Wish we could do something. Waiting around is excruciating.”

“Daph’s a tough cookie, she’ll be okay…” Hyacinth’s voice warbled slightly.

Colin yanked his little sister back into him, pulling her into a hug. “I know. Still hard.” Hyacinth closed her eyes on his chest, uncharacteristically quiet. Penelope watched as the teenager’s eyes closed and opened up again, instinctive and cyclical like the leaves of a plant in a time lapse video. Colin looked up at Pen and gave a hapless shrug.

“How much have you slept, Hyacinth?” Penelope asked.

“A few hours,” Hyacinth said.

“Two,” Colin corrected. Hyacinth frowned against his chest but didn’t disagree. Penelope looked at him and raised her eyebrows accusatorily; he shook his head. “I’m fine, though. Still jetlagged.”

Pen crossed her arms. The youngest Bridgerton looked utterly wiped.

“Colin, take her up to bed.”

“I’m sixteen, I’m not-” Hyacinth’s somnambulant indignation was cut off by another involuntary yawn.

“Don’t care, babes. You have to sleep.”

She relented. Penelope was using her babysitter voice.

“Come on, Hy. Up you get,” Colin said. He hauled her up into a piggyback and made his way to the stairs. “I’ll be back in a moment, Pen.”

She gave a thumbs up.

Penelope sat down on the couch. Felt restless. Her muscle memory reached for her phone. A direct message request to her personal Instagram account flicked across the top of the screen.

@cressidadarling: I know it’s you

Immediately she swiped it open and swung into the Instagram app. She accepted the message. The three dots did a sinister little jig as Cressida composed a follow up.

@cressidadarling: took me a while to figure it out but its obvious

@money_penny98: merry christmas! what are you talking about?

@cressidadarling: don’t play coy. I know your whistle at moi.

@cressidadarling: so if you want to keep your little hater account

@cressidadarling: heres what your going to do

She laid it out plainly. Give her some of the money she’d made from Whistle At Moi, or Cressida would reveal her identity. The only problem was, Pen had not monetised Whistle At Moi.

@money_penny98: I have not monetised Whistle At Moi

As if that would work on Cressida.

@cressidadarling: as if that will work on me

Classic.

That Cressida Cowper had enough brain cells to hold a grudge for three and a half years was shock enough, but that she somehow had the intelligence to figure out that Penelope was Whistle At Moi and threaten to out her was a whole new level of unexpected. And now, heaven forbid, she was doing maths.

@cressidadarling: I figure with the number of followers you have, you should have made around £50k this year?

@cressidadarling: £20k or I spill

@money_penny98: jesus christ dude

@cressidadarling: you have 24 hours or I give them your phone number, too

@money_penny98: in for a penny in for twenty thousand pounds hey

@money_penny98: cressida I’m sorry for whatever financial situation you have got yourself into that this seems like the only viable pathway out of it. truly I am.

@money_penny98: but I am not lying to you. I’m making no money off of whistle at moi. I do it for me.

@cressidadarling: why

Why indeed. Her original intent with Whistle At Moi was to distract herself from her needy over-reliance on Colin and Eloise.

@money_penny98: it’s fun. have you never had fun?

And then the conversation dropped off. For the first time in her life, Penelope wished she were speaking to Cressida Cowper. It was a horrible sensation. Gave her the heebie-jeebies.

To be unmasked by her would be humiliating beyond words – least of all because Cressida had taken a staunchly anti-mask stance during covid, so that in and of itself would induce a deeply ironic kind of misery within Penelope which would become a gaping emptiness at the core of her soul. That being said, there was something approaching a gaping emptiness in her bank account at this point in time, too.

It was at this moment, when she was flopped back against the couch and picking anxiously at a blind pimple on her jawline, that Colin came back downstairs. She made a solemn resolution to herself not to tell him about her newfound dilemma.

“Hy conked out almost immediately.” His voice was flat, his eyes slightly unfocused.

“Any other updates?”

“Yeah. Daph’s getting the caesarean. Mum texted me while I was coming downstairs.”

“Shit. That’s full on.”

He nodded absently. He was looking at his hands, as if by staring at them he might divine a deeper, more significant meaning from their shape. Penelope put her hand on his knee – a gentle perch, just to reassure him. “She’s gonna be alright, Colin.”

He shut his eyes tight, and then nodded. “Yep. I know. I need to… I need to focus on something else right now. Come on.” He clapped his hands together loudly, which made Penelope start back and place her hand back in her lap. “What’ve you got for me. Hit me with your biggest Christmas Day distraction.”

“Cressida Cowper is blackmailing me for twenty thousand pounds.” Hm. First sign of Colin in need and she crumbled like a wet biscuit. Perhaps the part of her brain that made and kept resolutions needed to be hit very very hard with an anvil.

“What? Why?”

“She figured out that I run Whistle At Moi.” A second anvil, perhaps?

“WHAT?”

Colin leaned back from her in shock. His eyes darted over her face, searching for a punchline in her expression. He seemed distracted, at the very least. “Like, the actual Whistle At Moi account?”

“Yup.”

“Is that… the one Eloise calls ‘dril for hot girls’?”

“That’s it, yes. Surprise!” she said, and twiddled her hands like sarcastic little pom-poms besides her face.

“For how long?”

“For the whole time.”

“What, just you?”

“Yeah.”

He rubbed his jaw with his hand. His eyes were thoughtful.

“Jesus. That’s like, seriously impressive Pen. That account is all hit no miss.” She glowed slightly under his praise. “How many followers do you have, 300 thousand?”

“500, I think.”

“Woah. That’s cool as hell.”

Pen felt her ears tinge a bit red. “Thanks.”

“Do you make much money off of it?”

She shook her head. “None.”

He furrowed his brows in a manner that was deeply endearing. “Then why is Cressida blackmailing you? Is she thick?”

“Colin, have you ever met Cressida Cowper?”

“Point taken. God… consider me thoroughly distracted. What are you going to do?”

“Well, I can’t pay her,” she said.

“Would you want to even if you could?” Colin asked.

She thought for a second about how it would feel to give twenty thousand pounds to Cressida goddamn Cowper; felt briefly like she was on the precipice of inventing a new, more horrible way to vomit; and then shook her head.

“Fuck no.”

“Exactly. We don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

“What do I do, then? I can’t have Cressida out me!”

Colin sucked his tongue over his teeth and winced. “Could you out yourself, maybe? I mean, why do you need to stay anonymous? Is it a security thing?”

It was a good question. Whistle At Moi was a project she had started so she could cut the apron strings with Eloise and Colin. Her anonymity had made sense up until Eloise had become hyper-fixated on the account, at which point Penelope probably should have told her, but by then she was too enamoured with the little red bubbles which told her the people in her phone thought her latest bullshit was funny.

But it was also a point of pride. Here was one thing she hadn’t got into on name or connections or a flashy degree. It was entirely her brain, her thoughts, and it was reaffirming to know that even if she weren’t attached to Penelope Featherington’s life, she could still be Penelope Featherington in all the ways that mattered. That was the freedom of her anonymity.

“Mostly sunken cost, I guess.” Coming out of her mouth, it sounded stupid.

“That sounds stupid.”

She laughed. “It is, kinda. I dunno, I just… like having something that’s all for me.”

“Pen, it’s not all for you, you have 500 thousand followers.”

“Sure, but they don’t know it’s me they’re following.”

He frowned.

“And that’s important somehow?”

“Somehow.” It really was.

“Twenty thousand pounds worth of somehow?”

She thought of Cressida sliding down a pile of her money like the Joker and grimaced.

“Probably not.”

“Do you want to sue her, then? I could ask Ant to draw something up, blackmail’s a pretty big charge.”

“Over a twitter account? Hardly.”

“Well then. I think you’ve gotta come out, then.”

She clucked her tongue. “What about my job?”

He gave a small shrug. “In my experience of working online, most places don’t care. So long as you’re not ragging on your boss, I think you’ll be right.”

“Mmph,” Pen whined. “This is haaaaaard.”

“I know buddy.”

“I don’t wanna be internet famous! Every influencer is a nightmare.”

He thunked his hand over his heart in mock outrage. “Surely you don’t mean me?”

“I mostly mean you. You’re a menace.”

Colin laughed. “Look, if you decide you do want to come forward about it, I’m happy to use all my sordid influencer knowledge to make it bearable for you, Pen. Whatever you need. I can hook you up to my management, if you like?”

God he was being so sweet about this pretty little mess she’d made herself.

“Thanks but no thanks. Cressida’s given me 24 hours to make my decision, so I guess I’ll use them.” She ran the palms of her hands cross each other in uneasy circles; her skin made a soft whooshing sound.

Colin stilled her hands with his. “Whatever you do, I’m right beside you.”

She looked closely at his eyes. Even though they were deep-set and dark in colour, they reflected the light from the window in such a way that they seemed to be lit from within. She found herself, once again, gripped by the impulse to make him laugh.

“What if it involves physical violence to Cressida Cowper?”

He laughed. Mission accomplished. “Especially then.”

And then he gave a quick kiss across her knuckles.

At that moment, his phone buzzed and lit up as Violet’s contact photo filled the screen. He dropped Pen’s hands abruptly and swiped across to answer the call. “Mum, hey. How’s Daph? Yeah, yeah, of course I am…” He popped a finger in his other ear, and moved to take the call elsewhere in the house, mouthing ‘Sorry!’ to Pen as he went. She waved his apology off.

Once he was out of the room, Penelope moved her fingers across her knuckles, right where he’d kissed her. It was a supportive, friendly gesture, but it felt full circle, him kissing her in the same spot as he had ten years prior.

She admired the poetic symmetry of it.

If she had decided not to be in love with Colin any more, she didn’t need some silly secret account to vent her silly secret crush. The decision felt, suddenly, extremely obvious.

It took Penelope two minutes to compose the face reveal post, and five to get the selfie just right. And then, her thumb on autopilot, she posted it immediately. Then she turned her phone off.

Five minutes later, Eloise walked through the front door.

Chapter Text

She stops turning over the pages of the calendar and brushes her fingers across her knuckles thoughtfully. Maybe if it had ended there, as she had intended it to, she would be having a normal one, instead of swirling anxiety through her body on high speed like a blender.

But alas, she is the dumbest bitch alive, and the one part of the adult heart that cannot die is the teenage heart that exists within it one layer down. Stupid dumb cunt of a teenage heart.

The clock now reads 8:27pm. And Penelope still reads the calendar.

*

Monday, December 26, 2025

colt classic: baby Caroline has arrived safe and sound. Daph doing okay.

pendulum: CAROLINE!!!!

colt classic: just the best Christmas present ever

pendulum: see you say that, but a couple christmases ago gregory got me one of those singing fish and he programmed it to say ‘help, I’m trapped in this fish’

pendulum: so that was a pretty great present

pendulum: but a new niece is probably good too

pendulum: give my love to you all. especially el, if she’ll take it.

[Originally sent December 26, 2022]

She does not remember the specifics of her conversation with Eloise from that Christmas Day. She remembers Eloise’s phone in her face, open to the Whistle At Moi post; and then the yelling, scorching hot; and then Colin coming in from next door bewildered and putting his body between them as Eloise became more savage; and then Gregory marching downstairs to scold them all for disrupting his study and Hyacinth’s nap; and then Eloise going into meltdown, the slope failure of their friendship crumbling unsteadily into debris beneath them; and most of all the hot, screaming panic flushing through her body like bile. But she doesn’t remember what she or Eloise said to each other. Except for one thing.

“I cannot believe that you, of all people, would keep something so big a secret from me for so many years.” Eloise’s eyes were acidic with betrayal. “We’re meant to be best friends.”

It was such a childish thing to say, which is how Penelope knew it was honest. Colin walked her to the door at that point.

“Pen, I think you should go.”

“Colin, I’m sorry, I didn’t –”

“She’s just stressed about Daphne. I’m sure she’ll calm down in a couple days. You go home and look after yourself, I’ll message you soon. Thanks for… Thanks for today.”

Penelope gave a small watery nod.

“Merry Christmas, Colin.”

“Yeah, that too.” He gave a tight little smile and closed the door.

She was out and alone on Christmas Evening. Thank god it wasn’t snowing at least. One small moment of grace where the fallout of the climate crisis intersected with the fallout of her personal life.

The tube whirred her home in a daze. Her flat felt two dimensional when she entered it.

She poured a glass of wine. The shape of Eloise’s words pressed against her ear uncomfortably.

She flopped on the couch and turned on whatever programming the Beeb had lined up for lonely Christmas Nighters like herself, which ended up being a Call the Midwife Christmas Special that made her cry, and it felt good to cry at these fake ladies who had real problems because it made her feel less stupid about crying about being a real lady with fake problems. It was only at the end of the episode when the nuns gathered around the little Christmas baby and a sweaty bouffanted mother that Penelope remembered Daphne’s emergency c-section. The realisation that she’d been so wrapped up in her own bullshit to remember Daphne made her cry harder, because it affirmed every dark and cruel thought she had about being a self-centred, bad friend.

Why hadn’t she heard anything about Daphne? Oh shit. Her phone was still off. She turned it on.

Immediately her phone thrummed with a sinister energy, almost floating off her hand from the constant vibrations caused by dozens of notifications flying in simultaneously. Right. She’d done a face reveal on Christmas, and now every gay person who followed her had fought with their family over dinner and retreated to their childhood bedroom to scroll through twitter.

Fifty thousand retweets and seven hundred replies. Missed call from her mother. Four thousand new followers. WhatsApp message from Pip. Daily Mail article about her. Five DMs from Cressida. Quote tweeted by her favourite comedian. Email from Prue. One DM from Hyacinth (“????”). She was a trending topic in Great Britain.

Nothing from Eloise.

Pen put her phone onto Do Not Disturb, then turned it off again. Then she poured another glass of wine. The pinot slipped down her throat and coated her insides like a ceramic glaze, and she hoped the heat from her anxiety wouldn’t fire her guts solid. She put on a load of laundry and went to bed, staring at the parallelogram of street light cast across her ceiling for what seemed like hours before she finally nodded off.

Penelope cracked her eyes open on Boxing Day and, as was her immensely healthy habit, immediately opened her phone. She thrashed through the thicket of notifications like a blind prince in thorns, vainly hoping for a message, any message, from a Bridgerton. She was rewarded for her pains with a text from Colin informing her of the safe arrival of one baby Caroline. Finally, a moment of joy.

She asked about Eloise, and he repeated his sentiments from the previous night: that she was probably stressed and would come around in a couple of days.

But as the winter break blurred into January, and January teetered messily into February and then March, she was perturbed to discover that Colin was incorrect. Eloise didn’t calm down in a couple days as divined. In fact, Eloise muted Penelope for four months.

Wednesday, April 29, 2025

colt classic: actually I think probably you’re my closest friend

penny dreadful: are you sure?

colt classic: positive

penny dreadful: no, are you sure you have the physical ability to think?

penny dreadful: I thought that head was also just full of muscle

colt classic: Pen

penny dreadful: yeah you too buddy

[Originally sent April 29, 2023]

For the first time in over a decade, she did not have a best friend. For the first time in over a decade, she was not a standard invite to Bridgerton events.

The lone thread connecting her to the Bridgertons was Colin. Sure, she got the occasional Instagram story reply from Hyacinth or Frannie, plus her usual Words With Friends games with Gregory (in which she remained undefeated), but by and large the Bridgertons kept their distance.

Meanwhile, Colin was messaging her more than he had previously, which Penelope was immensely grateful for, because Eloise’s silence was depressurising her body and creating a vacuum of guilt in her intestines. She missed Eloise deeply. Penelope made a rule to only ask Colin about El once a fortnight. Every time, he affirmed his belief that she would come around soon and was just disturbed at a sudden, unexpected change more than anything.

Most of the time, they talked about her.

Since the Whistle At Moi reveal, Colin was the only person who still treated her like she was regular old Pen rather than Internet Meme Queen Penelope Featherington (yuck, truly). He was vlogging full time again now that covid restrictions had eased enough for sustained international travel, and Pen thought it was really sweet that he still found time to message her through all the excitement of sponsored trips and multi-day hikes and palatial hotels to coach her through her newfound notoriety (again yuck). Colin’s lonely years in the internet’s cold limelight enabled him an easy empathy about Whistle At Moi.

She was getting recognised in public at least once a week, which made her skin crawl. There were no words on earth that made her cringe more than hearing “Hey, I recognise you from twitter” from a stranger. None of them had been weird or anything, she just didn’t know them and didn’t know how to talk to them. She always laughed too hard, or too little, or ended up fanning herself over enthusiastically with whatever she was holding and putting them off.

colt classic: what do they want from you when you meet them? selfies?

penny dreadful: nah that’s only for airhead hottie influencers like you

colt classic: hey!

penny dreadful: I’m on twitter, so my parasociality seems to be jokes-based

penny dreadful: they wanna make me laugh

colt classic: are they successful?

penny dreadful: I don’t know really? they talk to me and I go into a fugue state

penny dreadful: my eyes go black

penny dreadful: the horrors emerge

penny dreadful: you know, basic social interaction stuff

colt classic: they just want to share something with you Pen

colt classic: because they think you’re cool and funny

penny dreadful: I guess

penny dreadful: I just feel like I always disappoint them by not reacting the way they want me to??

penny dreadful: like having to listen to someone else try to tell me jokes is just excruciating because I am paralysed with dread that I won’t get it or I’ll mishear it or I’ll laugh at the wrong thing and will be Mega Cancelled

colt classic: hm

colt classic: you’re like half jokes half gossip right

penny dreadful: sure

colt classic: well instead of getting them to share jokes, get them to share gossip

colt classic: even if it’s local gossip about regular people

penny dreadful: jesus I take back what I said about you being an airhead

penny dreadful: that’s fucking genius

colt classic: on behalf of the airhead community, thank you for these kind words, my people will treasure them

colt classic: just get them talking about themselves. you perform for them online, get them to perform for you irl.

penny dreadful: is this the secret to colin bridgerton’s frictionless social interactions? get the other person talking?

colt classic: why else do you think you’re always so chatty with me, little miss wallflower?

penny dreadful: stockholm syndrome, I assumed

She didn’t want to tell him the real reason she had always been so chatty with him. She still wasn’t entirely normal about the fact that her best friend of over a decade was ghosting her and her new best friend was her old best friend’s older brother, whom she had been in love with for a decade.

But now that she had decided she was no longer in love with him, so best friends was fine. Great, actually! She really liked being best friends with Colin. She was really good at it.

(Was she still fantasising about Colin railing her? Look. Look. Maybe she had been mazzing and then at the very last second an image of her new best friend leapt into her mind, and she couldn’t control it because she was at the peak of orgasm, and she found herself thinking about Colin racing his tongue across the dips and curves of her body, his fingers pulling at her hair and clutching her throat, his hard cock stretching her mouth. But she was only human! Whomst amongst us hasn’t been in such a situation, hmm? Let they without sin cast the first stone.)

She still missed El, though. For all the joys of a deepened friendship with Colin, he was still in another country, and he wasn’t as big into binging Star Trek or brunchy gossip or playing rounds of Hinge roulette as El was.

colt classic: okay I’ve been thinking about this & actually

colt classic: I think if you told El about whistle at moi in person maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad?

penny dreadful: wdym?

colt classic: she found out online, at the same time as everyone else & I think it probably made her feel… idk. unimportant?

penny dreadful: hm

penny dreadful: there may be something in that, bridgerton

colt classic: I feel so bad Pen, I rushed you into that post

penny dreadful: ??

colt classic: feel like if I’d actually given you the time of day we could have actually come up with a better game plan & you wouldn’t have rushed it

penny dreadful: are you being so for real right now

penny dreadful: your sister was in labour dude

colt classic: I guess

penny dreadful: you have *gotta* stop relitigating this man, the *last* person who is at fault here is you!!!

colt classic: yeah but I should’ve put together that that info would trigger a meltdown for Eloise, I grew up with her

penny dreadful: I!!!! grew up with her too!!!!

penny dreadful: we literally shared a dorm for four years and an apartment for another four!!!!!

penny dreadful: I was legit there WHEN SHE GOT THE DIAGNOSIS!!!!

colt classic: oh. right.

penny dreadful: I know you feel responsible for el with her asd and stuff

penny dreadful: big brother stuff I get it

penny dreadful: but this is between me and her. it’s on me to make things right, it’s not your responsibility.

colt classic: yeah but I wanna help

penny dreadful: fine. what do I do then

colt classic: you gotta talk face to face

penny dreadful: ?? face to face?

penny dreadful: yuck

colt classic: tis the bridgerton way

colt classic: we always resolve face to face

penny dreadful: what is it with you bridgeys. why don’t you just bottle it up inside of you, permanently, forever, like normal families do?

penny dreadful: you know, press those feelings deep, deep down, until they get pressurised into a little diamond

penny dreadful: no one cares about familial arguments when they have a little diamond, colin

colt classic: your squeamishness has been noted & ignored

colt classic: just because you always avoid conflict doesn’t mean she does

penny dreadful: I don’t always avoid conflict!!!

col classic: oh yeah?

penny dreadful: sometimes I just give the other person a really big present that makes them forget all about the argument

colt classic: ?

penny dreadful: used to work with my mum all the time as a kid, I’d just get her a new scarf or a bunch of flowers and suddenly I wasn’t grounded any more

colt classic: what on earth did YOU do to warrant being grounded?

colt classic: wait never mind

colt classic: you have to talk to Eloise

penny dreadful: ugh!!!

The opportunity for a face-to-face with Eloise presented itself within the week: Benedict surprised all seven of his siblings by announcing his engagement to a woman named Sophie. The surprise was that they hadn’t known Benedict and Sophie were even dating – she was an Australian illustrator who had moved to the UK at the start of 2020 for a contract with Benedict’s graphic design company, and through a confusing bureaucratic mix-up of passports, accommodation arrangements, and lockdown laws, she had found herself trapped at Benedict’s house for a couple of years. When the Australian borders reopened, she moved back home, and apparently only then had she and Benedict begun a relationship. Most of the Bridgertons had met Sophie before, but only as Benedict’s employee; they were enraptured at the thought of meeting her as his fiancée.

They were engaged in mid-April and the engagement party was at the start of May. It was so last minute that not even Colin’s platinum frequent flyer card could secure him a flight home in time. She’d be encountering Eloise without her Colin-shaped support dog in tandem, which was not her preferred way in. Penelope’s RSVP suddenly seemed hasty and sweaty.

The party was at Bridgerton House. It was the first time she’d been back since Christmas. The wisteria had started to flower.

A hired waiter answered the door, and directed her down the corridor to the main room, which was humming with a lot very trendy looking people Penelope presumed to be Ben and Sophie’s designer and artist friends. She made this deduction by the haircuts on display, which sat on a Kinsey scale from tiny bangs to only bangs. Waitstaff cut through the crowd delivering platters of food and personalised thank you notes designed and illustrated by Benedict and Sophie. Penelope’s featured a beautiful watercolour illustration of ginger, which was the kind of ribbing about her hair colour that she would accept from Benedict only. She caught his eye across the room and he gave a wave hello; she raised her glass up to him in a mini toast, and mouthed that she’d talk later, which seemed to fill him with relief. He clutched Sophie closer to his waist and rejoined his conversation.

After scanning across the room of organic jewellery and ironic tattoos, she finally located the rest of Bridgertons. They were clustered in the corner of the room as well as Bridgertons can cluster; that is, all siblings were swapping various children and babies amongst themselves in between gulps of hors d’oeuvres and champagne. For their part, Augie, Belinda, and Edmund (all still under five) were giggling to no end during this game of aunt- and uncle-based pass-the-parcel. Partaking in this rigmarole were Ant, Kate, Simon, Francesca and her boyfriend John, Gregory, and Hyacinth; Daphne sat serenely to the side breastfeeding baby Caroline while speaking to Violet.

But no Eloise.

Francesca spotted her first. “Pen!” she called, Belinda wriggling upside down in her arms. She handed her niece to John to give Pen a kiss on each cheek.

“Hi Frannie,” Pen said nervously.

Francesca took one look at her, her cheekbones almost blinding Penelope, and said quietly, “She’s outside with Miles. The noise was overwhelming him.” Pen nodded, then downed the rest of her champagne and handed the glass to Fran.

She slid outside, the air cool and light on her skin in the way that early spring afternoons love to exist. She heard a little voice, Miles’, surely, which seemed to be counting. She followed it to the pagoda.

Eloise was seated like a pretzel with her heels beside her, watching with ardent fascination as her nephew walked among the gardens surrounding the pagoda, counting each little brick that penned in the garden beds. When she was sure Miles was distant enough from her, she took a light swig from a vape and blew the air away from him, nodding encouragement occasionally.

“Mm-hm, yep. And what about that one, buddy? With the yellow roses?” An exhale of blueberry-flavoured mist.

“One, two, three, four…” Miles’ concentration consumed him.

“Nothing more interesting to talk about with him?” Penelope asked. Eloise looked up, startled. Her brow furrowed slightly.

“He’s not even three, yet. This is pretty good so far.” She put the vape into her pocket. “You wait ‘til he discovers you can add numbers together.”

“The day Aunt Daphne shows him her spreadsheets he’s a goner.”

Eloise’s face broke into a wry smile. She motioned for Penelope to take a seat next to her. They sat in silence for a bit, watching Miles compile his diligent ledger of bricks. Eloise directed him to count the number of trees in the garden, and then turned to Penelope.

“Hi,” she said. Penelope swallowed.

“El, I’m so sorry. I should have told you about Whistle At Moi in person.” She thought for a moment. “Well, I shouldn’t have lied to you in the first place.”

“You didn’t lie, you just… didn’t exactly truth.”

Pen gave a short chuckle.

“I just liked having something all to myself.”

Eloise scoffed slightly. “Pen, you have half a million followers. You’re not exactly journalling at home alone here.”

“You’re right. I think a part of me was pretending that it was still just for me. Like I didn’t have any real impact on anyone else or whatever.” She looked down at her hands. “It felt like… Like if no one knew, then it didn’t matter than you didn’t know. But it did matter. I shouldn’t have kept that from you, not when it meant so much to you.”

Eloise adjusted the collar of her shirt against her neck. “Funny thing is, it felt like Whistle At Moi was just for me, too. The writing was so… it was so good Pen. I mean, it still is. But I felt like I’d discovered something that was being written just for me. I felt possessive of it. And then when it was you…”

She sniffed and pinched her nose. Penelope said nothing, but nodded. Eloise cleared her throat.

“Anyway, I owe you an apology too,” El continued. “I’m sorry I went AWOL on you there.”

“You were in meltdown El, you can’t help what the fallout looks like. Remember first year uni? When that girl you liked… Thea, right?”

“Oh fuck, Thea. Told me she’d join my union ticket and then changed her mind, and then I…” Eloise closed her eyes in embarrassment. “Not my finest moment.”

“Hey, that’s student politics babe. You find out what your limit is, make some lifelong enemies, then join forces to spit on the Tories.” El laughed, then looked at her again. That was a win. Pen continued talking. “Point is, having a meltdown is never ideal but it’s out of your control. I’m sorry I did something that caused a flashpoint.”

Eloise breathed in stiffly, like she’d touched something cold.

“I just… I don’t think I can do big secrets. Not like that. Not from you,” she said.

Penelope thought about the secret that had been growing inside of her for over a decade.

“Is that… going to be a problem, Pen?”

And then she remembered that she and Colin were best friends now, and she was not in love with him any more, so she figured it didn’t count.

“Not at all.” And she really thought she meant it.

Saturday, January 11, 2025

penny dreadful: ready for ben’s bucks?

COOLin: I am gonna go, & I hope I’m saying this right, buck wild

penny dreadful: well I am going to go *hen* wild on sophie’s hens.

penny dreadful: although she and posy keep calling it a chooks night.

COOLin: wtf is a chook

penny dreadful: I think it’s some australian bullshit that they are inevitably foisting upon us. that’s what you get for letting convicts into your family!!

COOLin: they’re your family too. in every way that counts.

penny dreadful: if being a part of your family means having to talk to australians then I am revoking my honorary bridgerton pass

COOLin: ☹

[Originally sent January 11, 2024]

Colin came back for Christmas of 2023, but Penelope didn’t see him then because her December was filled with the unexpected joy of new auntdom. Her niece, Philomena, was born in November of that year, and Portia, in a rare moment of maternal sweetness rather than her typical maternal ferocity, insisted that Pip, Albi, and the baby do Christmas with her. Oh, and Prue and her fiancé and Penelope might as well join them, I guess. That’s what families do, right? Sure.

So it eventuated that the next time Penelope saw Colin in person was in January 2024, a week before Benedict and Sophie were married, at their Bucks and Hens Nights.

Sophie’s Hens Night (“It’s a Chooks Night, and you can get wrecked if you say otherwise!”) was a small but elite crack team. It consisted of: Sophie’s freckly step-sister Posy, who had flown in from Melbourne earlier that week and was wearing a MAID OF HONOUR sash; all current Bridgerton women, sans Hyacinth, who was pretty miffed to be missing it given she was less than a year out from being 18; and finally, Pen, who was honoured beyond belief to be the only non-relative or in-law in attendance.

After having alcohol and cheese, and alcohol and dinner, and alcohol and dancing, the chooks moved onto their next activity: alcohol and party bus.

Penelope was having an uproariously good night. She wore a baby blue mini dress that she had unearthed in a charity shop – no small feat for a titch over size 16 – but the thing fit her like a glove and had shoulder straps wide enough for her to wear a proper bra, so the girls were front and centre. She had somehow wrangled her hair into a little updo with curtain bangs, and she felt stupendously cute about it, emphasised further by the constant compliments that the Bridgerton women were all chucking at her. Daphne had even directed a “Shut the fuck up, you look incredible,” her way, which was kind of like having an angel descend from heaven and ask her what lip gloss she was wearing.

Penelope felt entirely at home, quite brash in comparison to the usual wallflower habits she had typically employed on past nights out. She thought this might partly be because she was at a party where she already knew and liked everyone, but it might also be the way that her now-public internet fame had settled into her sense of confidence. Her ability to socialise in public had been quite the trial by fire, but she was now very well-practiced at turning it on when needed. Thank you, internet.

Also, as mentioned, she had been drinking. Quite copiously, in fact.

The party bus was small. The party bus was dark. The party bus was pumping Nelly Furtado’s ‘Maneater’ relentlessly loudly.

The wallflower was let loose.

“Oi oi oi oi oi! Shut up! Shut up!” Daphne yelled at them all. Her voice had a wobbly lilt to it, part tipsiness, partly just from the effort of staying awake so late after her children’s usual bedtime. “Simon’s calling me! Simon! My husband!”

“Fuck Daph, are you married? You’ve literally never mentioned it!” Eloise hollered back, and everyone laughed.

“Shush, it’s the boys!”

Schoolgirl hushes ran up and down the bus. A moment of silence as Daphne concentrated all her sobriety into her left ear to hear what Simon was saying to her over the phone.

“They’re at karaoke, they want us to join them!” she cried, and then she turned to Sophie for a response.

“Fuckin ay, let’s go!” Sophie called, her broad Aussie accent brimming with reckless cheer, and she straightened her plastic bridal tiara. “Bus driver! To karaoke!” She pointed in the air very seriously like she was uttering a royal decree, which made Pen laugh. Kate leaned forward, Daphne’s phone in her hand, to give the party bus driver new directions.

“Oi,” Sophie called. “Oi, where’s my sash?”

“We’ve got it!” Francesca called from the back seat, and Posy lifted Sophie’s BRIDE TO BE sash up in the air triumphantly.

“Done!” Posy crowed proudly. “Every good hens do needs arts and crafts. Here you are, chooky.”

She teetered up the aisle of the bus until she reached Sophie, and with a tipsy cackle, put the sash over her body. She and Frannie had diligently rearranged the letters stuck on the sash and ripped one of the B’s into a capital I, so instead of BRIDE TO BE it now read BEER IDIOT. Sophie gasped.

“It’s perfect,” she said, taking it from Posy with all the earnestness of a little girl given a princess barbie doll for Christmas, which elicited more raucous laughter. This quickly transformed into a primal scream of delight from the two Australians at the opening strings of ‘Untouched’ by the Veronicas, and their joyful yelling of the lyrics carried the bus most of the rest of the way there.

The bus stopped, and there was a tumble as the women rugged up in their coats before tipping themselves down out onto the street and up the staircase to the karaoke bar.

They moved along a dimly-lit corridor to the main area, which had been entirely rented out for Benedict’s bucks. The space was a deep plush burgundy, boasting a stage with a few seats around it and a karaoke machine; K-Pop music video clips were projected onto the wall behind the stage. There was a bar at the back of the room staffed by a wide-eyed woman with a fringe, and to the left, a corridor which led to some private karaoke rooms.

The boys were at least twice as drunk as them, though only half as rambunctious. Simon and John were in a deep, philosophical conversation leaning against the far wall; or at least, the conversation was as deep and philosophical as their inebriation enabled – each held a beer, and they were clinking glasses every ten seconds or so, seemingly without realising the frequency of their toasts. In the seats by the stage, Gregory and Colin swayed asynchronously to the music; Benedict and Anthony were onstage, half screaming a duet of ‘Piano Man’. On seeing the hens, the two eldest Bridgertons yelled “Ayyyyy!!!” and dropped their microphones to the ground as they leapt over to terrorise Sophie and Kate with drunken, starry-eyed affection.

“My beautiful fiancée!” Benedict cried, his arms up in the air, voice an arpeggio of delight. “Hey! Hey! Has anyone told you that you,” and he tapped her nose, “are my fiancée?”

Sophie laughed, embracing him. “Yes!!! You have! Just now! Has anyone told you that you are my fiancé?”

“I’m your fiancé?” he cried in disbelief. “Fuck, don’t tell Sophie, we’re meant to be getting married in a week!” and they collapsed into giggles at each other, kissing sloppily.

“Please Kate, tell me we were never that disgusting,” Anthony pleaded, and his wife shook her head and said, “Much worse,” before pulling him into a kiss as well.

Then Simon saw Daphne, and John saw Francesca, and suddenly they, too, were swaying over to their partners like dopey puppies. Penelope could say one thing about the Bridgertons, which was their extremely annoying habit of being disgustingly happy in love.

“Well, this is very gross and monogamous of you all,” Eloise smirked, reading her mind.

Posy nodded, frowning. “Completely agree, El,” she said, and then gave a sharp whistle at Colin and Gregory. “You two single ladies, over here!”

The two younger brothers sauntered over to them through the sea of partnered Bridgertons smushing faces. Gregory looked vaguely indie sleaze in speed-dealer sunnies and a black jacket and tie that looked like it might have been his high school formal suit. Colin looked effortless in a white t-shirt and gold chain, both of which highlighted his gently browned skin. He gave Pen a slightly dazed wave; she returned with a playful middle finger and a cheerful grin. He returned with a middle finger of his own, and a laugh.

“Welcome!” Gregory said to them, in the overly focused and sober way people talk when they are apoplectically drunk. “All sisters are welcome at our den of musical mayhem.”

“Oi! And me!” Posy said.

“And Posy too! You’re basically a sister now, though. Sisters out the wazoo! I am drowning in sisters. Where is my beer.”

“Greg!” Pen said. “I am also not your sister.”

He pointed at her. “Penelope Featherington, j’accuse! You’re at more family events than Colin is, you’re more my sister than he is.”

“That is because I am in fact not your sister, but your brother,” Colin enunciated. He was swaying slightly.

“We will leave such details to the philosophers to divine,” Gregory replied sombrely.

“Ignore him,” Colin cut in. “I’ve been trying to all night. You look good by the way, Pen!”

His tone was jovial, his words slightly blurry. She noticed his gaze wasn’t entirely focused on her face, and he tried to take a quick glance down her body, but he seemed to stop for a microsecond at her cleavage and again at her hemline on her upper thigh. The brave, flirty, drunk part of her thought he might be checking her out. But within Drunk Penelope sat a tiny Sober Penelope, still technically at the wheel, who reminded Drunk Penelope that Colin was her best friend, and it really was a very short dress, and he was probably just ribbing her for being so dressed up.

“Don’t mock me, Colin.”

“I’m not.”

Clearly he was drunk, otherwise he wouldn’t have said that. As she opened her mouth to give a retort, Eloise cut in.

“Nice as these pleasantries are, some of us are here to dazzle with our singing. Pen, let’s go fuck it up.” El stuck her tongue out at her brothers, yanking Penelope with her up to the stage, giggling like they were fifteen again. Eloise started plugging their Karaoke Song Of Choice into the system.

“Woo! Yeah the girls!” Daphne yelled up at them from her seat in Simon’s lap (one night away from their children, honestly).

“If you sing out of tune I will disown you!” Francesca called.

“If you sing in tune Anthony will disown you,” Benedict said. “This fucker may carry the family but he can’t carry a fucking tune!”

“Hey, Benny! That’s not true,” Kate called.

“Thank you, Kate,” slurred Anthony.

“Ant absolutely does not carry the family.”

“You traitorous motherfu-” his protest was cut off by Kate’s lips.

“Well, legally I am not related, divorced, or married to any of you,” Pen said. “So if I’m shit, you’ll all just have to kill me with hammers, I guess.”

“You’re not related, divorced, or married to any of us yet,” called Gregory from the back of the bar. “The night is young.”

“Gregory,” Pen replied, her voice echoing in the microphone. “I mean this with every ounce of seriousness I have in my body: ew.”

Everyone roared with laughter, including Gregory. She looked to Colin, who was laughing, if anything, a bit too much, wiping his eyes slightly. Penelope waited for her stomach do its regular little Colin-shaped backflip, which she had mostly grown to ignore by now; but instead she felt a grabbing, reaching want sail out from her sternum, like she was reaching out to him with an invisible arm. Hm. Nope! She decided to ignore that.

“Shush everyone!” Eloise called. “It’s our song!”

In the silence before the song began, Pen inhaled, steadying herself. She swatted the grabbing feeling away from her chest. She needed to focus on something knowable, fit herself back into a format and a rhythm that made sense. She needed to stay in control.

The Song Of Choice rang out over the speakers. It was, of course, categorically the best karaoke song: ‘I’m on a Boat’ by The Lonely Island. T Pain’s opening vocals boomed across the bar at approximately four billion decibels, and Sober Penelope formally handed the keys to the brain to Drunk Penelope. Time to perform.

Pen and El bellowed the rap with such well-practiced ease that it was immediately obvious to everyone else why, at school, the duo were always assigned the dorm-room furthest away from staff quarters. They bodied the lyrics, barely looking at the karaoke screen, just abject filthy fucking nonsense recalled with perfect accuracy straight from the dome. Penelope could hardly hear her own voice for all the cheering and singing along from every Bridgerton in the joint, all beside themselves at the perfection of the Andy Samberg (Eloise) and Akiva Schaffer (Pen) on stage. It was exhilarating. It was joyful. It was dumb as hell. All she could see was Colin’s face, his mouth wide open in exuberance, then sheer laughter.

After they finished the song, she and Eloise hugged tightly, triumphant in their bullshit. Gregory held out a hand to help Eloise down from the stage; Colin held his out for Penelope.

“That was stupendous,” he said, and Pen gave a wobbly curtsey.

“Thank you, I trained at Julliard.”

He laughed. “Truly, that was something else, Pen. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you cut so loose before.”

This made sense, because she hadn’t ever cut this loose before in her life.

“It’s the alcohol, probably,” she said.

“No, it’s not. It’s something else,” he said. He gave a boyish smile which crinkled his eyes, and her whole chest glowed with the yearning, grabbing pull again.

Goddamnit. Goddamnit! She thought she’d finally given herself the grace to release her stupid brain from her stupid childhood crush. Fuck! Sober Penelope was clawing back at the control panel, urging Drunk Penelope to get the fuck out of this conversation before she asked him to kiss her.

“Your turn now,” she said.

“I’ve already sung like five songs!” Colin protested.

“Yeah that was before we were here.”

“I’m shy!”

“No the fuck you’re not,” Eloise cut in. “Here, let me prove it.” And then she began pawing madly at the screen again to put in another song.

“I don’t get to choose what I’m singing?” Colin asked.

“Nope!”

Colin turned back to Pen and thudded his hand against his heart. “Duty calls, Pen.”

“Chookas,” she replied, ignoring the tug from inside her begging to touch her hand to his heart as well. Go away!!

Colin took centre stage. The sporty opening screeches of ‘Get’cha Head in the Game’ pumped from the speakers; Colin rolled his eyes at Eloise. Anthony gave a surprisingly enthusiastic yell of delight.

“Let’s go Wildcats!” he yelled. Colin kept his middle finger up at him right up until the first chorus.

It was delightfully silly. He, too, did not need the lyric video to sing the song perfectly. There were even some low-level dance moves involved. Why did he look so hot. Fuck!!

And then, in the bridge at the middle of the song, where Troy Bolton is singing about Gabriella making him feel so right, Colin reached his hand out to Penelope, entirely in character, motioning for her to take his hand. The invisible hand attached to Pen’s heart reached out and clasped his fingers at the same time as her real hand actually clasped them. His hand was surprisingly cool to the touch, his skin a bit dry.

“Should I go for it?” he sang, and then he gave her a quick little kiss right on the knuckles before letting go of her and continuing on with the song.

But that was it. The kiss across the knuckles. She was gone.

She was fifteen again, and he was kissing her knuckles outside Violet’s bedroom, and he was completely wonderful; she was 24 again, and he was kissing her knuckles after she’d come clean about Whistle At Moi. She was every age she’d ever known him, and all of them loved Colin. Suddenly the promises she had made to herself seemed irrelevant. The idea that she could ever not be in love with him was insane, the unhinged wishes of a tyrant.

Colin finished singing, and hopped down from the stage, handing the mic over to Gregory.

“Hey. Hey! I wanna nother drink. You wanna nother drink?” he said to her, and she nodded, jaw slackColin yoinked her to the bar at the back of the room as Gregory began to sing ‘Somebody to Love’ by Queen at the top of his lungs.

Colin leaned over the bar to the woman there, and looked at her nametag, which said Rae. “Rae, is it?” and Rae nodded. “Rae, can I please have two peach sojus? On the tab?” She smiled her acquiescence.

“Fuck Colin, two sojus?” Penelope asked. “Are you planning on dying tonight?”

“No! I’m planning on living!” he said, and a mad dazed look cut across his face. He was incredibly beautiful. His hair fell in dizzying little curls around his temples, and his skin was glowing in the vibrant magenta lights of the bar. The verdant, almost mineral smell of him was radiating in intoxicating waves. Penelope wondered if he had always smelled so absorbingly good, or if her olfactory centre had acquired a Pavlovian response to him. Either way it was indecent.

The soju arrived, and the two of them bumped the bases of their bottles together with a “Kanpai!” Penelope took a sip; Colin a swig.

“I love weddings,” Colin said loudly. “Can’t wait for Benny to cry at that altar like the little bitch boy that he is.”

“Oi!” Benedict called from the other end of the room, and Colin gave him the finger cheerfully.

“As one of the groomsmen on this bucks night, is it not like, your job to be nice to him?” Penelope teased.

“No,” he said breezily. “My job is to talk to the prettiest girl at every event.”

His easy charm had bubbled down to a lazy sexiness, his friendliness open flirtation. Penelope felt a pleasant turn at the base of her gut.

“How’s that going for you then?”

“You tell me.” And then he fucking winked at her. There was a tussle between Drunk and Sober Penelope at the control panel in her cerebral cortex.

“Colin, aside from Posy and me, every girl here is related to you by blood or by marriage, you really do not have good options.”

“Doesn’t matter! You’re still the prettiest girl at this event!” he said, his voice slightly loopy. “You’re the prettiest girl at every event! The smartest and funniest, too.”

She took in a slightly ragged breath at that, and then swallowed. “You’re just saying that because you’re drunk.”

“Not true! I’m saying that and I’m drunk. Very different, Pen.”

Sober Penelope exploded in her mind. Crashed into the sun, kaboom. She was gone. It was Drunk Penelope’s time to shine.

“Colin, I know we’re friends,” she started.

“So true! We are friends!”

“I know we’re friends, but I really want you to kiss me right now.”

Penelope tried to say it in a casual way, but the words felt incredibly important. She felt like she had elected for all the oxygen in her body to turn, momentarily, into fire. She felt like every side of her body was pointing at him, like even if she flew to the other side of the world, he’d still be able to see the exact shape of her body and desire through the molten core of the earth. She searched his expression, desperate to know what his reaction would be.

Colin raised his eyebrows slightly, his lips parted in shock. She saw another emotion sparkle across his face, but couldn’t place it – Repulsion? Reticence? Relief? Pen felt the blood rushing around her head acutely and loudly.

He was staring at her with intensity, too. Finally, he swallowed, and then lilted, “I’m trying to push myself out of my comfort zone, so sure. Let’s kiss!”

Comfort zone? The fuck was he talking about? He just said she was pretty and smart and funny, how was that not within his fucking comfort zone? Or did he mean comfort zone in terms of kissing a friend? She was about to ask him to explain himself when he kissed her, and suddenly she truly did not care.

It was gentle. Dizzying. But also a white hot light.

She felt like her whole self was pushed forward into her mouth, like every nerve ending in her body was concentrated there so she could remember and catalogue every microsecond of feeling. His lips were soft, and he tasted like soju. She felt him place his hand gently along her jawline, felt him breathe against her, focusing his kiss on her lower lip. She moved her head slightly, lifting and chasing his mouth, dipping her tongue against him.

She’d thought that if she ever kissed Colin, it would be like her innumerate daydreams, but it didn’t feel dreamlike at all: it felt incredibly real and vivid. The heat from him, the closeness of his body. The way that her neck tightened slightly from the angle (even in heels she was ridiculously shorter than him).

She raised her hand up to his head, and let his hair filter through her fingers gently. He moaned slightly at her touch on his scalp, which was something else. Jesus Christ she was kissing Colin Bridgerton and raking her hands through his hair and he was fucking loving it.

And his whole family was there.

Suddenly, Eloise’s words from over a year ago burst into her head. “I cannot believe that you, of all people, would keep something so big a secret from me for so many years.” She broke away from the kiss quickly and looked around to see if anyone had noticed them. God, if Eloise saw…

Mercifully, Gregory’s caterwauling had kept the rest of the room rapt. Penelope released the breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding, and turned back to Colin. A dazed shyness bloomed across his face. It was a magnificently cute expression; he gave a small smile, and touched Pen’s upper arm softly. She felt a little static shock prick at her skin, and another at her heart.

“Well,” he said. “That was something.” She giggled slightly and covered her mouth with her fingertips, right where he’d kissed her. Colin gave a delighted little chuckle, then he turned to Rae behind the bar, who had been tactfully pretending to clean glasses while this occurred.

“Rae, may we please procure a private karaoke room?”

“On the tab?” she asked.

“Please.”

Pen felt his hand brush against hers below the bar, where no one else in the room could see. He was leading a delicate but deliberate little dance, gracing his fingers against her in a way that made her whole body feel hot. When he slipped his hand into hers, she was sure her entire chest was flushed, and maybe her lungs were a metre away from her body? Oh my god? It was fucking happening??! Let’s?? Fucking go??!!?

Rae tapped at her screen. “Room 3 is available for you both. You can’t take glass in there though,” she said, indicating to the two bottles of soju.

“No problem,” squeaked Penelope, and she set her bottle aside. She looked to Colin, and saw him down the rest of his soju in one massive gulp, which perhaps did not bode well.

“Come on,” he said, and he squeezed her hand, sending a zap of anticipation through her.

“Hey!” Rae called. They stopped. “Clothes stay on or everyone gets kicked out.”

“Deal,” Colin said, then gave Pen’s hand two quick squeezes.

Good fucking god.

They snuck down the corridor to the private booth. It was around the size of two toilet cubicles, with a couple of microphones and two benches on the side walls facing opposite each other. Penelope pushed in first, and span around to see Colin come in after her, a half delirious look on his face. With the door closed behind them, the sound in the space felt close and intimate; Pen could hear Colin’s voice as if his mouth was directly next to her ear.

“Do you want me to kiss you again?”

She nodded.

“Good. Because I really want to kiss you.”

“Go on, then.”

He closed the space between them, half lunging towards her, and pressed his lips to hers urgently. White hot light again. God, he tasted good. She felt reckless and entirely unselfconscious, and like her lungs had taken in twice the usual amount of air.

Colin ran his tongue along her lip, and she tugged at him slightly with her teeth in response. The movements were all a bit too big and bold; there was a slightly sloppy artlessness to the kiss that made it both very unserious yet very real. They were both just going for it, too lost in the feeling and the headiness of the soju to overthink. Penelope felt like her head was spinning from it a bit. It was a giddy kind of kiss. She smiled against him, then broke away.

“You’re a good kisser, Bridgerton,” she said.

“Mmm,” he hummed back happily. “You’re easy to please.”

She raked her fingers through his hair like she’d done at the bar, and he closed his eyes at her touch, leaning into her hand.

“Oh, I’m easy?” she teased.

Eyes still closed, Colin smirked. “Literally shut up.”

“Nah. Don’t reckon I will.”

He kissed her again.

She felt like a teenager. It was such a new kind of kiss, a depth of feeling and tension that she hadn’t ever felt with anyone else. It was like she was learning to kiss again, but it also felt automatic. She was pure instinct, just blurry sensation.

His mouth was hot, and he lifted the sides of her face up to him. She moved her hands to his shoulders, relishing the delightful friction of fabric stretching over his warm body. She tried to pull his face down to her more, and at that Colin broke away from the kiss.

“You’re so short,” he laughed.

“I am fun sized.”

“Gremlin sized, more like,” he laughed. “I can’t get a good angle.”

“Skill issue,” she replied, and then went in to kiss him again, but he dodged her mouth and picked her up (!!!) to kiss her straight on, pressing her back against the door. He held her there in weightless bliss for all of five seconds before she started sliding down the door – quite noisily, too. She tried wrapping her legs around his waist to stabilise herself, but the movement shifted his centre of gravity, and he stumbled back against the opposite wall and slid down to the bench, Pen falling off his lap. They both collapsed into laughter.

“That was ambitious, maybe.”

“I’ll get there one day,” he said, holding his sides. “I’m a bit tipsy.”

Penelope smiled broadly. He’d get there one day. There would be another day to get there. He wanted to do this again. On a day. Another day!!! Jesus, how much soju had she had?

Muffled slightly by the door, the familiar tones of ‘Take On Me’ skittered down the corridor from the main room.

She pulled herself upright and adjusted her legs so she was straddling Colin properly, kneeling on the carpeted bench either side of him. As she settled over him, she felt him move his hands to the small of her back until she steadied herself. The bottom of her baby blue dress stretched between her thighs, taut against his torso.

“Hello, Colin,” she said, relishing the wondrously cute expression on his face.

“Hello, Pen.” She felt warm everywhere at his voice. Head. Heart. Tits. Stomach. Cunt. Warm, warm, warm.

Slowly, he tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and then lightly trailed his fingers down her neck and collarbone. She shivered at his touch.

At that reaction, he got a look of sheer bewilderment on his face, and met her gaze. It was as if he hadn’t truly realised the effect he was having on her, which was insane, because she felt like they had discovered kissing. She felt like her skin was blurring into his skin, like her desire was visibly misting in the air between them in a brilliant wanting haze of condensation. Some of it was surely the alcohol, but most of it felt like him.

“Colin. Touch me,” she pleaded.

“Where?”

“Anywhere that won’t get us kicked out.”

He laughed softly. “Can do.”

He moved his hand down to her breast and squeezed gently, eliciting a gasp from her. He cupped his hand under her more fully and pressed her up to hold more of her in his hand, then crushed his lips against the satiny skin of her upper breast.

She moaned, closing her eyes to live in the feeling of his tongue and teeth on her. It was pure sensation, fluid and automatic. She put a hand against the wall to steady herself, because she truly felt as if she might topple off him and melt into the carpet like a crayon left by a fireplace. His fingers demanded at her breast; even through the fabric of her dress she could feel the strength of his grip. Colin nipped and soothed at her skin, causing her to buck slightly over his lap – a movement which revealed to her the hardness pressing against his trousers. Good lord.

She moved her body over him as much as the cramped karaoke bench allowed her, manoeuvring little wiggles and body rolls to get herself closer to his erection. Maybe she could discern the exact shape and texture of his cock from here, hidden beneath his clothes, like an erectile augur. She certainly felt like she needed to adjust all her daydreams by at least half an inch. Dry humping in a karaoke booth was not dignified, but it was certainly extremely fun. Was Colin having fun?

She panted, dazed from the headiness of it all, and pulled his mouth away from her breast. She could already feel a mauve mark blooming above her nipple. Colin emerged reluctantly, eyes heavy lidded, lips swollen. He looked utterly drunk on her. No, he looked like a kitten whose entire face was covered in milk, disoriented by the horrid reality of milklessness.

“You having fun?” she asked, and he nodded, slack-jawed.

Penelope swooped down to kiss his neck, flattening him back against the wall with a thud, which incurred a glorious moan from him. He began moving his hands across her body, settling on the curve of her ass as she trailed kisses down his Adam’s apple to the base of his throat. He made a pretty little breathy noise at that, and then she wheedled another out of him by running her tongue back up the line to the roughness of his stubble again. Colin clutched at her thighs.

She moved up to the corner of his jaw and then tugged on his earlobe with her teeth, before hushing the spot with her tongue. Colin’s body tensed under her, and he breathed out her name, broken in two syllables.

“Pe… Pen–”

She tugged at his ear again, and he let out an honest to god whimper.

“You like the ear thing?” she breathed. He nodded, powerless. “Good.”

She moved back to face him. He looked completely enamoured.

And then his face dropped.

“Oh no,” he said.

“What’s up?”

“Pen, I think I’m gonna throw up.”

“Oh god.”

She hopped off him quickly and he wrenched open the door, hand at his diaphragm.

“Pen I’m sorry. Soju...”

“It’s fine, go!”

“We’ll ta… we’ll talk…”

“Later, I know – GO!”

And he dashed out of the room.

Pen sat back on the bench and raised the back of her hand to her forehead. Her skin was searing hot and buzzed slightly, like it was tender after a sunburn. She steadied herself against the wall of the karaoke booth and committed to memory every sensation he had pressed onto her body. A wordless, blissful ache knotted at the base of her stomach and prickled through her pleasantly, like she had ASMR of the heart. She could still taste Colin on her lips. Colin! Her best friend! Oh my god! Oh my god!!!

And then she came to. Colin. Throwing up. Ah, Jesus.

She surfaced from the world’s most blissful karaoke booth and moved back to the main room, anxious that someone had noticed their absence. But no one seemed to have done anything other than obliterate their lungs and livers (Currently onstage: Francesca. Song: ‘Running Up That Hill’). Penelope gave a small smile at Rae behind the counter, who gave a knowing but kind nod in return.

Her next mission was a sensitive one: she needed to find someone to go and help Colin, who was presumably still throwing up. That someone needed to be A) capable and willing to nurse a grown adult who was spilling his guts, B) not suspicious of how Penelope, currently flushed pink across her chest, had acquired this intelligence, and C) a man. Gregory failed at A, Anthony at B, Benedict at both, so that left Simon or John. She looked over at the two of them and saw John entirely entranced by Frannie’s singing (relatable, she had the voice and cheekbones of higher order seraphim). Simon it was. Penelope made a beeline over to him.

“Hey.”

“Penelope, hello!”

“Don’t ask me how I know this, but Colin is throwing up in the men’s.”

Simon raised an eyebrow. “Okay?”

“Can you check on him?”

He gave a small smile and nodded curtly.

“Won’t be a moment,” he said, and then ducked down the corridor to the loo.

Three minutes passed, which by Penelope’s count constituted several moments, during which time Daphne got on stage to sing her karaoke pick (‘Bonkers’ by Dizzee Rascal). Simon emerged again just as she was finishing up her song, gave Penelope a surreptitious wink, and then approached his wife with large claps. She blew a laughing kiss to him, and as he helped her off the stage he murmured something in her ear. She gasped and gave a quick snort.

“Oh no!” Her voice cut through clear and sweet on the microphone. “Guys, apparently Colin’s throwing up!”

“Oi-oi!” called Benedict.

“Taxi!” Sophie yelled, and laughed, and with the jovial endorsement of the buck and chook, everyone decided to call it a night.

Penelope was looking around to see who would go help Colin when Eloise grabbed her hand. “Where’d you disappear off to, little guy?” Eloise’s grip suddenly felt tight and cold.

“Had to pee, then got my period,” Pen replied, the lie sliding coolly off her tongue before she could think about it.

“Damn. We’re not in sync any more,” Eloise pouted. Penelope felt her shoulders relax. “Share a ride home?”

“Of course.”

Everyone poured out of the karaoke bar into the frigid January night and began hopping into cabs, the party bus long gone. Eloise called their uber as she drawled on her vape. The car was 300m away when Francesca, John, Gregory, and Colin slowly, finally, made their way down onto the pavement. Colin was staggering slightly.

“Hey, you okay Col?” Penelope asked.

Colin chucked a weary thumbs up at her, then swallowed dangerously.

“We’ve got him,” said Francesca. “We’re all at Mum’s.” Pen nodded her thanks.

“Uber’s here in two minutes,” said Eloise. “Another cracking finish to a Bridgerton party, I say.” She turned to Penelope. “We should get a photo. We haven’t got a photo yet tonight, you always want us to get a photo so you can post on your stories and show that you’ve had social interaction.”

“I am nothing if not dedicated to the brand,” Penelope laughed. She pulled out her phone and started to line her cheek up with Eloise’s for a quick selfie, but then Colin stepped forward.

“Here, Pen, El… lemme take it. Show the full fit.”

Before Penelope could argue, he’d swiped her phone from her fingers (a flash of desire at the touch of his skin on hers again), and then he was lining them up just so under the light.

“Oi scooch, you’re in shadow.”

“Ooooh my goooood are you a photographer? Do you take photographs for your job?”

“Shut up Eloise, I have the instagrammer’s eye.”

He took a few shots with a lucidity that bordered on miraculous given how gone he was, and then handed the phone back to Penelope. “For you,” he said, and she murmured a shy thanks in response.

El gave a shout. “Pen, uber!”

“Bye,” Pen said, and looked up at Francesca. “All of you get home safe.” Frannie nodded, then put her hand on Colin’s shoulder as if to steady him.

Penelope wobbled in her heels as she stepped into the street towards the uber. Eloise, the sensible lesbian, had opted to wear sneakers, and so ducked around to the other side of the car as Pen teetered uncertainly across the cobblestones.

But Colin lurched toward Pen.

“Hey lemme… Lemme help you.”

He took her hand, giving her something to lean on as she walked towards the uber. His forearm was firm and steady. He opened the car door for her and guided her inside, like she was something precious.

“Mmkay. G’night Pen. Don’t throw up, wouldn’t recommend.”

“Sage brotherly advice,” Eloise’s voice curled playfully, even though he hadn’t addressed her.

“Night, Colin,” said Penelope. “Get home safe. Talk soon.”

“Hey! Pen!” he said, his voice suddenly loud and fast. He leaned down towards the car. Pen thought he was going to kiss her again, right there in front of El, and her eyes widened in panic for a second, but he just grabbed the seatbelt buckle and handed it to her. “Safe,” he said, nodding thoughtfully, then he stepped back.

The gesture made her ache slightly. “Thanks,” she said, and he smiled broadly at her. Reluctantly, she shut the car door, and their uber took off. Against the seatbelt strap, her heartbeat pounded with a vehemence that she feared would concern medical professionals.

“I’ve forgotten what a weapon Colin is when he’s drunk,” Eloise said.

“Bless his cotton socks,” Pen replied.

“He’s not usually that weird though. Benny must’ve made the boys go pretty hard.”

“Sounds like Benny.” Pen tucked her head onto El’s shoulder. “Dudes rock, etcetera.”

“Dudes rock...” Eloise said absent-mindedly.

Penelope flicked through her phone lockscreen and navigated to her photo album. At the top of the screen were the three photos of her and Eloise that Colin had taken. She clicked the earliest and it bloomed into the full screen. The photo was ever-so-slightly blurry, but it seemed intentional and artistic rather than erratic. It was taken from higher up than usual, and the angle seemed to emphasise all her plush features. Her lips looked poutier than normal, her hair seemed to ripple like an oil painting under the glow of the street lamp, her skin was almost opalescent against the baby blue of her dress. She looked – it could not be argued otherwise – hot. Downright fucking ethereal. God, was this how Colin saw her?

Eloise cut through her thoughts. “Did you have a good night Pen?”

Penelope closed her phone and nodded. “The best.”

And this time she truly meant it.

Chapter Text

Saturday, January 18, 2025

seduction king 👑: Benedict has recently decided that his new favourite joke is to send me links to sex dolls

lady fuck 🍆 : ???

seduction king 👑: bc I don’t have a wife and he does

lady fuck 🍆 : hm have you considered proposing to one of the sex dolls, Colin?

seduction king 👑: Pen

lady fuck 🍆: oh! too good for a sex doll wife are we!

lady fuck 🍆: you are no longer welcome in my home. me and my beautiful wife VulvaShock5000 have recently bought a ranch in uncanny valley, and our life is perfect.

[Originally sent February 14, 2024]

The bucks and chooks nights were only a week before the wedding itself, and Colin was so involved with groomsmen duties that Penelope didn’t see him at all – in fact, they didn’t even message, which was unlike them. She knew that now wasn’t the time to talk about the kiss – there was more important stuff going on.

But her tactful silence didn’t stop her from running down the batteries on her vibrator while thinking about their thirty minutes in the karaoke booth. Her memories were slightly foggy, but there were enough details preserved to get her over the line quicker than she ever had before. The taste of his mouth, his hands on her tits, his lips on her skin, his whimpers as she tugged at his ear, the hardness of his cock beneath her – these details became as worn and familiar to her within five days as his initial kiss of her knuckles at fifteen had become over the previous eleven years. The sense memory of the kiss eddied within her for the week, and by the time she and El were making their way to Aubrey Hall for the wedding on Friday night, Penelope was at breaking point.

It was just so annoying that she couldn’t talk about it with him.

She had been the one to ask him for a kiss, and so Colin would have to be the one to bring the conversation back around to it. It was basic etiquette. She reasoned that if she did bring it up and he wasn’t into it, he’d feel pressured and weird, and that might mean the end of their friendship. She had opened the door, and now he had to step through. He would mention it to her at dinner tonight, surely.

But Colin was not present at dinner – in fact, all four Bridgerton brothers were ensconced in the other wing of the house, as the Bridgerton tradition was for the soon to be married couple to not see each other from the time they stepped foot in Aubrey Hall. How could she have forgotten?

No matter. The next morning, then.

At 10am, Penelope wrapped herself in a floaty mauve dress and a sky-coloured coat, and tortured her hair back into soft curtain waves once more. Every Bridgerton and the kitchen sink complimented her when she emerged, but still no Colin – he had gone ahead to set up the church, apparently. Alone. Without any other groomsmen. In fact, both Anthony and Gregory seemed downright lackadaisical about the whole affair. Hm. No matter.

Two hours and one wardrobe malfunction later (Hyacinth’s, luckily Pen had an extra safety pin), they arrived at the chapel, which was the old parsonage a short ten-minute drive from Aubrey Hall. Colin was torturously distant, up at the altar next to Benedict. He caught her eye and gave a little wave of recognition, and she felt her heart superheat. Okay. Cool!

The ceremony was glorious, of course. Sophie’s wedding hanbok was an ethereal, iridescent silver that reminded Pen of fish scales. Benedict looked entirely besotted, his face reddening slightly with tears as she walked up the aisle with Posy at her arm. Colin settled a firm, encouraging hand on Benedict’s shoulder, smiling proudly. Pen watched him through the entire ceremony, entranced, but he was too taken with the proceedings to look at her.

Then, the traditional English wedding afternoon tea back at Aubrey Hall.

Penelope thought she might have a chance to talk to Colin here, but he was overwhelmed by Bridgerton and Ledger cousins, nephews, nieces, and family friends, and only managed to swing past Pen and Posy for thirty seconds at a time, mostly because they stood right in between the heaters and the food table.

It was laden with an array of delights: glasses of elderflower cordial; vats of tea; scones, jam, clotted cream; and a childish but fun Australian party food which Posy said was called fairy bread, which consisted of cheap white bread smeared with butter and pressed into hundreds and thousands. The dairy in the butter meant that this particular delicacy was unavailable to Pen, but she watched with fascination as Posy ate ten slices single-handedly. Colin, for his part, stuck to the scones.

“Sorry guys, I’m off my feet with groomsman duties,” Colin said to them on his fourth drive-by of the platter of scones. “Posy – it’s really great to see you!” Then he smashed a jam and cream covered missile down his gullet like a pelican and was off again. It was starting to feel like he was brushing her off.

Oh god, it was so over.

Pen thought she might have a chance of speaking with him in the gap before the evening reception, but she found herself roped into helping Daphne and Anthony settle the six little ones for bed. After a big splashy bath and four picture books, she wrestled herself into her evening gown – this time a floor-length emerald satin – and pinned her hair up. She’d get a hold of him during the reception. Surely.

Food. Wine. Conversation, but not the conversation she wanted to have. Nothing, nothing, nothing all night. He didn’t even catch her eye once during the meal, not even when Gregory, who was the evening’s MC, accidentally said Benjamin instead of Benedict due to nerves. He was clearly avoiding her. He had to be. Pen’s stomach churned, and she poured more wine into it in an attempt to settle it, which perhaps did not bode well. Then Colin gave her a wink at the very end of Anthony’s best man toast which mentioned the overhwleming importance of love, and Pen thought her brain might melt.

We are so back!!!!

The string quartet struck up, and Sophie and Benedict had their first dance. Slow. Sparkling. Sophie had changed into a reception dress which looked like her body had been dipped in liquid pearl. She was show-stopping. As Benedict twirled his new wife around the dancefloor lucidly, Pen noticed Violet was tearing up – the only parent present. Before Pen could nudge Eloise to intervene, she saw Colin move over and take Violet’s hand, sweeping her out for the next song. Violet brightened at the gesture, and was soon surrounded by all her children, who each took it in turns to dance with her for a few counts of eight. Pen relaxed into the warmth of this vision, giggling at Gregory’s abysmal attempts to not step on his mother’s toes, when Colin came over to her.

“Come and dance, Pen,” he said, holding his hand out to her. As she took it, she felt like every cell in her body underwent spontaneous nuclear fission.

His grip was firm and steady as he pulled her in towards his body. Pen was suddenly grateful for the ballroom classes her mother had insisted she take as a teenager. The rest of the room was a bit of a blur as he bandied them around the floor with decent confidence.

“I’ve barely seen you all weekend,” she said. “It feels like ages since we last spoke in person.”

“I mean, it actually has been an eternity.”

She smiled. “It felt like that for me, too,” she said warmly. Colin looked perplexed.

He looped her gently out and back in towards his body, and she felt like her heart was being looped out and back in as well. Surely now, with his hand on her waist and their breath melding in the air. Surely, now, he’d mention it.

But he didn’t say anything. She couldn’t take it any longer.

“Hey, do you want to talk?”

“I’m sorry, Pen. I’m just… a bit talked out, if I’m honest. I just need some comfortable, friendly silence if that’s alright. Just something familiar.”

Comfortable friendly silence. Something familiar.

Oh god.

Her skin began to prickle like white noise.

He couldn’t be any more clear. He hadn’t been missing opportunities to talk to her by chance – he’d been avoiding her on purpose. The reason he hadn’t brought up the kiss was because he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to talk about it. He just wanted familiar, friendly silence.

He just wanted them to be friends. As they always had been.

Penelope’s heart felt incredibly small in that moment. But she knew that if she lost Colin as a friend, it would disappear entirely. She swallowed, and gathered every thread of grace she could find in herself.

“Friendly silence I can do, Colin,” she said.

He smiled. Penelope felt humiliation engulf her body.

Wednesday, August 27, 2025

COOLin: another unsuccessful date?

penny dreadful: would you believe it: yes

COOLin: what was wrong with this one?

penny dreadful: TERRIBLE teeth

penny dreadful: like, criminal amounts of plaque

COOLin: a bit yuck but bad enough to forfeit another date?

penny dreadful: colin if he ever ate me out I would develop vagina dentata

[Originally sent August 27, 2024]

Colin didn’t want to talk about the kiss – and that’s fine, she’d told herself, it’s fine because he’s a grown man, he’s allowed to drunkenly kiss his best friend and then move on with his life. That’s a normal thing to do. It’s fine. (Devastating, and completely isolating because she couldn’t even yap about it to Eloise, but fine. Fine!!)

And so she tried to do the same. She doubled down on her friendship with Colin. She’d lost him as a romantic option, sure, but the chances of that had always been slim to none anyway, and she would be damned if she lost him as a friend as well. Losing him as a friend would magnify her pain tenfold, which was simply not an option. So, friend he was. Now all she needed to do was spackle over that gaping romance hole in her life and she’d be normal!!! So normal!!

Penelope threw herself into the snakepit of online dating and kissed every snake in there. She downloaded the devil’s app – Hinge – and committed herself to have conversations with London’s best (worst) and brightest (most boring) options. She committed to at least two in person dates every month, and by October, she had been on dates with thirty men, which was more than in the previous eight years combined.

She’d even been on a date with a woman, mainly to get Eloise off her back – but after her failed evening with Andie, a fascinating, witty psychologist who had flawless skin and angelic beaded braids, she came to the incredibly regretful conclusion that she must simply be straight. Alas. Back to men it was. (She tried setting Andie up with Eloise, but it turned out they had three mutual ex-girlfriends in common, which was too pathetically sapphic even for Eloise to stomach.)

Before each date, Penelope would face herself in the mirror and affirm that she would not compare him to Colin this time. That that wouldn’t be fair to her date, and that it wasn’t fair to her friendship with Colin. He had moved on past their kiss, and so she would do that as well.

But nearly every time, the man opposite her elicited a sense of dread in her gut. It was never something big – she screened out the assholes long before the physical dates occurred. The dread was always caused by something pretty negligible that nevertheless made her skin crawl.

On one date, it was the way he talked about his brothers – not unkind, not cruel, just the words he used.

On another, the fact that he didn’t like to read. Actually, no: he did like to read, but he only read summaries of books that he got ChatGPT to make for him, which was actively worse.

One notoriously memorable date had been with a surgeon who was entirely normal in their early messages and charming enough on their first date for her to push for a second, at which point she went home with him. Then, for the week afterwards, he sent her five messages a day begging for photos of her backrolls, unprompted, and seemed unwilling to talk about literally anything else. At first it was funny; then bizarre; then it cycled back around to being funny again; before finally she decided that no joke was worth her skin being flayed from her spine and worn around, even if said flaying was done with a surgeon’s expertise. Blocked and reported.

And so she forged on, reaming through every remaining London bachelor with the temerity and fortitude of someone on death row.

Eloise quickly placed a blanket ban on Pen talking about horrible dates with men (“I’m too gay for this, please”), and so she instead began presenting all the vulgar musings about her dates to Colin over messenger while he traversed the world and the instagram algorithm.

She’d never really talked about her love life in detail with Colin before, always glancing over the minutiae out of respect for her decade-long crush. But now that he had firmly drawn a friendship line in the sand, she decided to treat him like she did her other close friends, and get dirty with the details. She hoped that by moving the friendship into a different space it would give them both distance from the kiss they had avoiding talking about. (She might also be better able to convince herself of their friendship, too.)

Eventually, Colin also got tired of her complaining about the dating pool. But instead of Eloise’s blanket ban, he decided to help her out. She saw this as an incredibly positive sign: Colin was explicitly upholding this new level of their friendship. She wasn’t going to lose him. He took over her Hinge profile and set her up on a date. A good date.

Finally, the snakepit had delivered. And his name was Alfred Debling.

Thursday, 8 October, 2025

@whistle.at.moi

pretty fucked up that everyone is glamorising that baby hippo moo deng. she’s literally a minor???

[Originally sent October 8, 2024]

When she arrived at the pub for their date, Alfred exuded a straightforward, genteel sort of calmness about him that made Pen feel immensely safe. He was tall and had a Norse sort of huskiness about his figure. His hair and beard were well-groomed, his clothes all natural fibres, and he wore no cologne. He grabbed them a jug of cider to split and she expected that they’d go through all the basic first date questions – job, family, uni.

“So,” he said, his voice low and mellifluous. The tedious laundry list of prospective questions stretched out before her, and she braced herself for impact. “What was your favourite animal as a child, and why?”

She paused.

“Why as a child? Why not my favourite animal now?”

“Because children are much less self-conscious about what their choices say about them.”

“I think you vastly underestimate how self-conscious I was as a six-year-old, Alfred.”

He raised his brows and tilted his head ever so slightly. “Call me Al.”

“Okay, Al,” she smirked. Something about him made her want to tell the truth. “Hippo.”

“Why?”

She thought about it for a moment.

“They were big and strong and happy. And I guess as a bit of a big kid, I wanted to be strong and happy, too.”

He smiled, and the smile reached his eyes; a sparkling, intelligent curiosity danced in his gaze. “And are you?”

“Am I strong and happy?” Alfred nodded at her. “Yes to the first, although all personal growth has come about against my will, and I’ll get back to you on the second,” she joked. Then she realised what she’d just admitted to. “Is that revealing too much?”

“Not at all, Penny.”

It was disarming, suddenly showing emotional depths like that. There was something in him that seemed to unspool her a bit: he seemed interested in picking her apart and understanding her, and it was entirely unperformative.

“How about you?” she asked. “What was your favourite animal as a kid? Penguin?”

“No, actually,” he replied, and took a sip of his drink. “I liked the zebras.”

“Well. Zebras are the penguins of horses.”

“Are they indeed? I am unaware of the zoology connecting them.”

“You clearly have much to learn. They’re both black and white.”

“Ah, I see.”

“It’s obvious, really. And yet, the scientific community refuses to listen to my theories.”

He spread his hands in front of him. “Well, on behalf of all scientists, I’m here now, Penny. I’m listening.”

When they kissed she didn’t feel white hot light, but she did feel a warm, flickering glimmer. And later that night, sex with him also glimmered slightly, and she assumed that that glimmer would build into white hot light over time. She wanted it to build into white hot light. He was so nice.

They moved into a surprisingly stable, well-defined relationship. Al made her feel competent. She felt like a real grown up with him. Sensible. He always asked her seriously about her day, and did his best to remember her coworkers’ names and understand the elaborate Whistle At Moi lore she dumped on him. He shared his enthusiasm for his environmental science research with her, which made her panic about the climate crisis with a more prescient fervour than she was comfortable with, but he was also unendingly positive that change was coming and could be made, which made her hopeful about the climate crisis with a more prescient fervour than she was comfortable with. He cooked her dinner and introduced her to his mum and kept a bamboo toothbrush for her at his flat.

A proper man. A proper relationship. Finally, she felt she was making decent headway in moving past Colin. Everything could be normal.

And then Colin stopped speaking to her.

Friday, November 7, 2025

lady fuck 🍆: colin, you there?

lady fuck 🍆: ah he’s dropped off to sleep. farewell to the land of nod, sweet birthday baby.

seduction king 👑: no I’m here I’m here

lady fuck 🍆: GO TO BED YOUNG MAN

[Originally sent November 7, 2024]

She panicked. She’d done all this work to keep him as a friend and move on from the kiss and now he was drifting from her. His posting on @colinwilltravel became more strained. She was left on read for days, sometimes. She worried it was all her fault, that she’d made it awkward.

But then El let slip that he was messaging her and the Bridgertons’ sibling group chat almost daily (which he had never done before) and Pen suddenly realised what was going on.

Colin missed home.

Of course he missed home! It wasn’t about her at all! Relieved that she could fix it, she took the horizon of his 30^th Birthday as a challenge, and decided to put together a book of interviews with all his siblings about what they loved about him. The perfect homesickness tonic.

The seven other Bridgertons were all really keen to help her out, and between one of Violet’s Sunday luncheons and some weeknight zoom calls, Penelope got through all the Bridgerton siblings within a week. Each one of them spoke for an hour at least about how and why they loved Colin, pausing to make sure Pen understood that they all thought Colin was kind, and funny, and affectionate, and great with kids, and good at encouraging others to be creative, and great at getting people out of their shell, even if he sometimes stumbled around his own emotions. She knew all of this about him of course, but it was really special to capture it in their words, and accompany it with childhood anecdotes.

“One time he broke one of Mother’s vases and borrowed money from half of the rest of us to pay for a new one before Mum even knew about it. He was in debt to us for months,” Daphne effused. “He’s too sensitive to other people’s feelings to ever make them even slightly uncomfortable.” Made sense, then, why he’d avoided the topic of the kiss entirely to ensure they were both at ease in their friendship going forward. She was glad of that kindness from him.

Frannie told a story about Colin listening to her doing scales over and over again to calm her down before her first piano exam. “He just knows how to love people in the way that they need to be loved. Sometimes they don’t even know they need to be loved that way, you know?” Pen could see that. Obviously, Colin knew she needed to be loved as a friend because there was an important part of her that his friendship unlocked; changing that would fundamentally change them both. And look at how well it was working! She was able to have this steady relationship with Alfred now because of it!

“Colin’s sense of humour is elite,” said Gregory. “I think it’s because he really gets people, you know? Like, he always knows exactly what memes are gonna send me, and he saves them for when I’m having a bad day.”

“That’s not that special,” Pen replied. “I do that too.”

“Oh,” said Gregory, his eyes darting quickly to Hyacinth. “Right, of course.”

“What he means is that Colin prioritises communicating with people in a way that’s meaningful for them,” Hyacinth cuts in. “Like, he and I always recount our practical jokes to each other even when we’re not in the same country. There’s like… a depth to him. Anyone who’s loved by Colin knows how special it is.” Hy nodded very seriously at this. Pen had to agree with her there: she treasured Colin’s friendship above almost all others.

“I think he works too hard,” said Benedict. “I think he’s always worked too hard. He doesn’t need to prove himself. He needs to take some more time to connect to what really brings him joy, you know? To who really brings him joy.”

“That’s what this gift is gonna help him do,” Pen explained. “That’s why I’m interviewing you all. Because you all bring him that joy.”

He had a weird expression on his face, like he was swallowing a marble. “I hope so, Pen. I just… think he finds it hard to know what brings him joy any more. He spends too much time trying to bring it to other people.”

She thought about his efforts in setting her up with Alfred and nodded. “I think I see that,” she said. Benedict gave a grimace of a smile.

“What the fuck are you both talking about?” said Eloise, who was standing next to Benedict. She typically didn’t pontificate as much as her siblings did. She took a bite out of her macaron, and through fluffy pink crumbs, said, “Colin’s an idiot, and his life will improve enormously once he realises how much of an idiot he really is.” She took another bite of her macaron. “You and he have that in common, Pen.” Penelope laughed.

Even Anthony gave his insights into Colin, and Pen typically regarded Ant with the type of adolescent wariness one usually reserved for substitute maths teachers. “He knows everyone else around him so completely that he sometimes forgets to know himself. But I think you help him straighten that out, somehow.” The fact that even Ant saw the value of her friendship with Colin was deeply touching, and convinced her further of the utmost importance of this mission.

She had to make Colin feel like their friendship was intact, and that she was still the same old Pen. It was crucial for them both. This memory book was just a part of that.

She got Hy and Gregory to track down some childhood pictures, and spent an evening collaging the interviews and the photos together, before sending it off to Colin’s current travel destination. It arrived just in time for his 30^th, and had the exact effect she wished for.

He called her, and they spoke for over three hours. It was late his time, and he was getting ready for bed. “I’ll put you down on the sink,” he said as he gently positioned the phone in front of him. He squeezed a blob of toothpaste onto the bristles, and started brushing his teeth.

“I’m not gonna break the sink there am I?” Pen said. “It can handle me?”

Colin tipped his head back, his mouth already half full of foam, and said, “I’ll look after you, don’t worry.” He pretended to pat her head by hovering his hand over the top of the phone, and a little dribble of watery toothpaste slid out the side of his mouth. Penelope swallowed slightly. “You’re like a little fairy, Pen.”

“A tooth fairy!” she said. “That rules. When I was a kid and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said I wanted to be the tooth fairy.”

“Why did you wanna be the tooth fairy?” he said, before resuming his brushing.

“Tooth fairy is gainfully employed. I wanted to be a fairy but I didn’t want to be destitute, Colin – Portia put the fear of that in me early.”

“Ai noh ee the air-ee ee?”

“What are you trying to say?”

Colin spat in the sink. Penelope shuffled on the pillow slightly.

“Why not be the fairy queen?” he repeated. “She’s rich as hell. You’d get to live in a fairy palace. Have little elfin guards and drink champagne out of raspberries every day.”

“Cause fuck the monarchy, that’s why,” she said, like it was obvious. “I’m a blue-collar fairy. Part of the magical proletariat. Viva la revolution.”

He nodded sagely. “Such a politically engaged child.”

“Thank you, I have always been incredibly based.”

For a day, things were normal once more. They were talking. Messaging. The easy ebb and flow of friendship between them resumed, and just as she was relaxing back into their witty repartee, Colin spoiled everything.

She mentioned she was going to Al’s for Christmas, and he made a comment about that being “his move”, and that Al was “stealing his girl”. The fucking nerve of him. He’d rejected her, and now he had the nerve to get possessive? He was like a child who hadn’t learned to share. And suddenly Penelope realised what was actually going on. He hadn’t been pulling away from her because he was homesick – he was being petulant.

He needed Penelope in his life because he liked the attention. He liked having poor lonely Penelope Featherington at his beck and call. She was just like his squillions of followers: real-world affirmation of his intrinsic self-worth, the foundation upon which his big-headedness was constructed.

And look what she’d proved to him: he could vent his thoughts to her for a decade straight, kiss her, ignore her, and she’d still stay, because he was just that charismatic. Fuck! How shallow did he think she was?

Hell, it probably helped that she was internet famous, too – he probably thought she was just the same. Needing that fleeting moment of connection with someone else who understands the tantric isolation of online notoriety.

She was the fucking lodestone of his ego.

Well, fine. He could fuck himself and die as far as she cared. Fucking fragile influencer brain poisoning.

Colin kept his distance again, going cold turkey on messaging, but this time she wasn’t angry. She was glad. Finally, a clean break from his self-serving bullshit. A clean break from his funny jokes and caring words and creative support for her writing – it was all fucking pretend. It was all a means to an end. Feeling better about himself. Fuck him.

That night, she and Al had sex. It was as it was every other time she’d been with him. Five minutes of kissing, ten of touching, precise mathematical circles on her clitoris until she came, switching through three positions until he came, him moving to the bathroom to clean up and get her some water. Occasionally he’d let her blow him, or he’d come on her body instead of in the condom, but most of the time it was the standard set menu.

Technically perfect. Centred on her. Utterly frictionless.

She’d heard her friends and co-workers talking about getting to the point in a relationship where the sex settles and stops being so exciting. So this had to be normal. She just needed to go in harder, she decided. Relationships were a two-way street. Perhaps if she enmeshed Alfred properly into her life, imbricating him further into her social fabric, then the physical aspect of their relationship would sync up better.

She decided to bring Al along to the next party she was invited to, which turned out to be Hyacinth’s 18^th drinks. Ideal.

Tuesday, December 16th, 2025

Feathers McGraw: hyacinth! happy birthday!!

Shaun the Sheep: 🥰 🥰

Shaun the Sheep: thanks pen!!

Feathers McGraw: 17!!

Feathers McGraw: you must use your year as the dancing queen wisely

Shaun the Sheep: hahahaha

Feathers McGraw: I’m being serious. you’re the current reigning monarch. if you wanna nuke gregory, now’s your chance babes

[Originally sent December 16th, 2023]

“Okay, so let me get this straight,” Al said, the night beforehand. He took a breath. “Anthony is the oldest, he’s a lawyer. Then Benedict the graphic designer. Colin’s next, I’ve met him virtually. After that is… Daisy?”

“Daphne. Mum of three. Wait, four, she had another bub a couple months ago.”

“No job?”

“She was working in management before that I think. Next is…”

“Easy, Eloise is next, I know her already. Then the piano teacher whose name I’ve forgotten who lives in Scotland.”

“Frannie.”

“Francesca, that’s right. Okay, F, F… After F comes G and H, who are Gregory and Hyacinth, and they’re both in uni.”

“Yep. Greg’s doing paediatrics, Hy’s just started forensic science.”

“STEM kids. I might stick close to those two.”

“Word of warning: they’ve both got internet brainrot leagues worse than mine.”

“Got it. I think I’m ready.”

“Oh, Al. You will never be ready for the Bridgertons. No man on earth ever could be. But you’re smart and you’ve got fantastic legs, so you’ll do.”

He gave a soft chuckle. “You like my legs?”

“Mmm. Very much so.”

It was easy to initiate sex with Alfred, but still she found the follow-through lacking. She wanted something hot and rough and coarse, but instead she got the usual French, feel, finger, fuck from him. It was rote by this point, and she was impatient.

Al was being too gentle with her body. His mouth felt dull on her. What had once made her feel safe and cared for now made her feel like an automaton. For an animal scientist, Al was certainly not very animalistic. She realised she could see the cogs turning during sex: he was thinking his way through every action, making calculated decisions about what to do. There was no instinct to it. Sure, Penelope thought, he clearly derived physical pleasure from the act, but had he ever really let go? Had sex with Al ever been exciting? She swallowed the feeling.

The next day, as she was heading to Hy’s party, he messaged her that she’d be late. That was okay, it would give her time to celebrate with Hyacinth one on one before she was on full boyfriend babysitting duty. She needed to make sure she was in the right mindset with him. She also needed to ensure that the Bridgertons didn’t ambush him.

And then – and then! – the fuckers ambushed her instead. It turned out to be a fucking set-up of a party because fucking Colin who was meant to be in fucking Australia and not fucking talking to her popped up out of fucking nowhere.

Immediately she turned away from the gaggle of Bridgertons, none of whom was surreptitious about their interest in her arrival; instead, she made a beeline for the bar, ordered a cider and a shot of vodka, shot off an irate message to Eloise who was already looking guilty, downed the vodka, and returned to the table. She handed the cider to Hyacinth and then turned on Colin. He looked incredible. It was infuriating.

“Pen, I–”

“You’re meant to be in Australia. What the fuck are you doing in London.” She hadn’t meant to say anything to him. She hadn’t wanted to say a word. But he at least owed her an explanation for what, exactly, was going on.

“Oh. I um…” he looked down at his hands, twiddling his signet ring nervously. Good. He should be nervous. “Yeah, I guess it was very last minute, my schedule’s been so up in the air recently.” He was trying to be nonchalant, but she could hear the strain in his voice. “You know, my manager thinks–”

“Actually, I’m not interested.” She heard Portia’s voice in her mouth, and her throat felt hot. “What you said to me was fucked up. It was childish and humiliating. You don’t get to be jealous of me.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re not allowed to be a dick to me about my boyfriend, Colin.”

He mumbled something in response.

“What was that?”

“I said I helped you get him, so I think that gives me some right to have a say.”

Incredulous didn’t fucking cover it. Penelope went into what she would later describe as a fugue state.

“Actually, Colin Bridgerton, it gives you the right to jack shit! You don’t know the first thing about my relationship with Al, and at this rate you never fucking will.”

“Don’t say that, Pen.”

“Don’t. Call me. Pen,” she seethed. How dare he be fucking familiar with her. He didn’t know her. She felt she barely knew him, in this moment.

“I just owe it to you to tell you the truth.”

“Oh, and that’s your job?”

“It is when no one else will.”

“Oh, you wanna know the truth? The truth is, Colin, that I’m actually pretty happy right now. Or do you just not want me to be happy at all? Do you not want me to ever be happy?”

His face crumpled. “Pen– I mean, Penelope. You’re important to me. All I want is to ensure your happiness.”

That motherfucker.

“You want to ‘ensure my happiness’? Please be so fucking for real with me right now Colin, I can't be that fucking important given you basically ignored me for the best part of two months.” He looked away, his cheeks burgundy. “And now? You’re what, trying to control who I love? Who I fuck? Flying back whole continents to get your grubby little mitts all over my personal life? Jesus Christ, if anything, all you’re ensuring right now is my abject fucking rage!”

Penelope sensed the pub quietening down. The Bridgertons in her periphery were now boldly staring at them, not even maintaining the pretence. Gregory was even craning his neck to get a better view. God, they were all in the fucking shits.

“It’s just been hard to see you with the wrong guy, that’s all,” Colin muttered.

“Oh, do go on, please keep talking, I beg of you,” she taunted.

“Pen, he’s not right for you.”

“He’s not right for me?” She laughed hollowly. “Jesus, what cunt gave you the right to be judge jury and executioner of my fucking love life?”

And then Colin somehow wormed his way under and through her relationship and exploded it from beneath. He talked about all the infinitesimally small but cumulatively significant ways Alfred wasn’t right for her.

And fuck him, because Colin was right. Her relationship with Al didn’t feel like it fit. The kisses weren’t turning white hot. And he really didn’t get her jokes. He’d noticed every little detail that she’d steadfastly refused to admit to herself. Fuck!

But she couldn’t admit that. Not here. Not now. Her nerves had been sandblasted back by the force of his noticing her. So she used the only weapon left in her arsenal: the truth.

“Oh fuck me dead, did you make a fucking list, Colin?” she half shouted. “You know what, you never liked Al. You just think someone who kisses me and then wants to date me afterwards is broken, don’t you? Well fuck you, liking me is not a fucking character flaw!"

“Pen, I don’t–”

“You’re not my fucking boyfriend, Colin, and you never have been!”

At that, she heard Daphne gasp. She turned to face her, and saw her horrified gaze was fixed firmly on the door of the pub, alongside every other Bridgerton’s. Penelope followed their eyeline.

Standing there, his face cast with a mixture of understanding and resignation, was Al.

*

Of course Al had broken up with her. She’d have broken up with her if she’d been witness to such a ludicrous display. The question that plagues her now isn’t what went wrong with Al: it’s why Colin won’t let her move on.

Penelope looks back down at her phone. 8:59pm, 25 December 2024. She’s been flicking through the calendar since 6:30. Thinking almost entirely about Colin for two and a half hours. Genuinely fucking humiliating.

She closes the calendar. Then she throws it across the room.

The truth is stuck at a midway point between them, she knows. She is just too much of a coward to go there, too comfortable standing against the wall of her desire where it is safe and can’t change.

She swipes her way back to the conversation Eloise has been trying to have with her.

The wits 🧠 : message him

The wits 🧠 : now

The tits 🗻 : no

The tits 🗻 : what if things get worse

The wits 🧠 : what if they get better

She can’t allow herself to think that things could work out. It is too maddening, too painful. There’s too much happening at once.

So instead of thinking about the past twelve years, Penelope tries just thinking about the day. Just this Christmas, 2024.

She replays every moment from the day, every glimpse of him from when she dared to look at him. At the door. Passing her special-made pudding. Playing the special-made game. Opening the special-made gift. A perfect Christmas vision.

Then she replays the original Christmas vision she has of Colin. The one from back in 2012, by the mistletoe. The one she’s turned over in her mind weekly for twelve years now. His lips on her fingers, pleading for her help. The Colin in this vision is 18. She can see the baby fat and zits and boyish haircut on him as if he were standing right in front of her.

Then the Colin in the vision switches, and it is 30-year-old idiot Colin with his beautiful idiot face asking for help on his idiot A Levels, kissing her knuckles. Then all the different Colins from over the years layer on top of one another, each at a nearly invisible opacity, but stacked together to form one whole, knowable, tactile Colin. She passes her mind through them all simultaneously, and through each one is a different refraction of her desire for him.

Is she still even angry at him now? Why? She realises she’s been stroking across the back of her knuckles absent-mindedly. She splays her hands apart quickly, embarrassed.

El’s right: she has to message him.

Infuriating. Why did Bridgertons have to be correct at the most inconvenient times?

Chapter Text

IT’S ON SIGHT MF (DMs)

Direct messaging between @Colin Bridgerton (Nickname: seduction king 👑) and @Penelope Featherington (Nickname: lady fuck 🍆)

[Originally sent December 25, 2024, 9:03pm]

lady fuck🍆: hey colin

lady fuck🍆: merry christmas

seduction king 👑: merry Christmas, Pen

lady fuck🍆: thanks for having me

lady fuck🍆: you throw a really good chrissy

seduction king 👑: thank you

seduction king 👑: I actually really enjoyed it

seduction king 👑: kept me busy for a week

lady fuck🍆: I’ll bet

lady fuck🍆: I also want to thank you for the gift

lady fuck🍆: properly

seduction king 👑: you like it then?

lady fuck🍆: I love it, colin

lady fuck🍆: so much

seduction king 👑: I’m so glad

seduction king 👑: the others helped out a heap

lady fuck🍆: I’m sure they did

lady fuck🍆: but come on. who else is insane enough to make a one-a-day calendar that features a corresponding whistle at moi joke for every day of the year.

seduction king 👑: you are! you’re insane enough to make something like this!

lady fuck🍆: oh I’ve made insane gifts before, but nothing like this. this is a particular kind of insanity.

seduction king 👑: also it’s not just whistle jokes! so many of the jokes in there are ones you made to me, or to El, or to the others in our DMs. all our favourite Penny Whistle Bits

lady fuck🍆: yes, and each joke has clearly been categorised to within an inch of its life in order to fit it on specifically resonant days.

lady fuck🍆: tell me, little control freak, how many columns did your spreadsheet have when you were putting this together

seduction king 👑: no comment

lady fuck🍆: this has colin bridgerton all over it. detailed, poetic, brilliant nonsense.

lady fuck🍆: finally feel like I’ve been beaten at my own game

seduction king 👑: woah

lady fuck🍆: it’s nice that you enjoy my silly inconsequential little jokes enough to commemorate them

seduction king 👑: your jokes are always the best, Pen

seduction king 👑: you deserve to be reminded of how funny you are every day

seduction king 👑: & they’re not inconsequential. not to us.

seduction king 👑: certainly not to the 600k people who follow whistle at moi, either. & you’re not even trying to grow that account or putting in significant effort to it or anything, it just… comes naturally to you. it’s pretty impressive.

lady fuck🍆: thanks

lady fuck🍆: and thanks to A through H as well

seduction king 👑: yeah they were pretty happy with how it turned out

seduction king 👑: I think they all want a copy, too

seduction king 👑: they only had 24 hours to pull it together & then Daph could only organise to get one printed in time, but I think she has more on back order

lady fuck🍆: yeah the quality of this is BONKERS

lady fuck🍆: cotton paper! with a special lustre on the dates! bound in linen! personalised floral embossment on the cover!

lady fuck🍆: wait did you say she did this in 24 hours?

seduction king 👑: she could run the solar system if she put her mind to it

seduction king 👑: but the main reason they all helped is because they feel terrible about what happened at Hy’s 18^th

lady fuck🍆: yeah I kind of figured

seduction king 👑: they wanted to make it up to you

seduction king 👑: properly

lady fuck🍆: I see

seduction king 👑: is it working?

lady fuck🍆: look. yes.

lady fuck🍆: this is easily the nicest, most thoughtful, elaborate, personal gift I’ve ever received

lady fuck🍆: I feel like they have done penance for their sins adequately

lady fuck🍆: full ian mcewan atonement

seduction king 👑: they’ll be very relieved to hear that

lady fuck🍆: I’m sure they will

seduction king 👑: brilliant

seduction king 👑: & what about us, Pen?

lady fuck🍆: what about us?

seduction king 👑: can we talk about it now?

seduction king 👑: the fight?

lady fuck🍆: it’s 9pm on christmas day

seduction king 👑: please, Pen

lady fuck🍆: big heavy sigh.

lady fuck🍆: christmas is a day of charity and clarity.

lady fuck🍆: so yes.

lady fuck🍆: let’s talk.

seduction king 👑: okay.

lady fuck🍆: but how about we do it over messenger. give us a chance to think before we type, make sure we don’t say anything we regret.

lady fuck🍆: be precise. purposeful.

seduction king 👑: so far so sensible

seduction king 👑: shall I start?

lady fuck🍆: why not

seduction king 👑: you were right

lady fuck🍆: yes

lady fuck🍆: about what though

seduction king 👑: what you said at Hyacinth’s bday

seduction king 👑: I was jealous

lady fuck🍆: oh, that

lady fuck🍆: yeah, you were

seduction king 👑: & I had no right to be

seduction king 👑: bc you are your own person & just bc we’re friends does not give me any say in how you live or who you date or what you do

seduction king 👑: I’m sorry

lady fuck🍆: dumb thing is I kind of liked that you were jealous

lady fuck🍆: and then I hated that I liked that you were jealous

lady fuck🍆: and then I was angry for hating that I liked that you were jealous

lady fuck🍆: and then I posted about it on whistle at moi

lady fuck🍆: which was fucking stupid and cruel of me

seduction king 👑: look not your BEST moment

lady fuck🍆: I know

lady fuck🍆: noticed that one didn’t make the calendar

seduction king 👑: well, you took it down. no record of it.

seduction king 👑: that was good of you, by the way

lady fuck🍆: did your account get any kickback from it? lose any followers? nasty DMs?

seduction king 👑: I actually GAINED followers if you can believe it

lady fuck🍆: I can. the internet loves drama!

lady fuck🍆: whistle at moi gained followers too. some account called colinsgirl99 replies to every post asking for updates now

seduction king 👑: oh that’s a brazilian teenager called marisa who has a very intense parasocial relationship with me, I recommend muting her for your peace of mind

lady fuck🍆: noted

lady fuck🍆: I am sorry for posting it, though. my emotions were running a bit high, I shouldn’t have said anything online.

seduction king 👑: hey, I am not expecting an apology from you

seduction king 👑: if anything I wish I could have apologised to you first to stop us both from escalating

lady fuck🍆: look. maybe I should’ve let you apologise. before coming in all guns blazing.

seduction king 👑: feel like your guns were at appropriate blaze levels given the circumstances

lady fuck🍆: but maybe, colin, you should have fucking talked to me!

seduction king 👑: yeah

lady fuck🍆: told me you were in the country!

lady fuck🍆: told me you wanted to meet up and clear the air!

lady fuck🍆: instead of fucking ambushing me and being insane

seduction king 👑: you’re right!

seduction king 👑: obviously you’re right.

seduction king 👑: I acted like a total fucking asshole.

lady fuck🍆: yes

seduction king 👑: an insane selfish idiot asshole

lady fuck🍆: keep going

seduction king 👑: possessive

lady fuck🍆: uh-huh

seduction king 👑: careless

lady fuck🍆: yep

seduction king 👑: egotistic, myopic, arrogant, aggressive

lady fuck🍆: wouldn’t agree with that

seduction king 👑: didn’t respect your boyfriend

lady fuck🍆: now that one i DO agree with

lady fuck🍆: al deserved better

seduction king 👑: he did

seduction king 👑: I’m sorry

seduction king 👑: he wasn’t a bad guy

lady fuck🍆: he really wasn’t, was he?

seduction king 👑: not at all. Alfred was a perfectly decent man.

lady fuck🍆: like I’m a week out from this breakup now and I still think he was lovely and smart and hot and nice

lady fuck🍆: and I had a really fun time with him whenever we hung out

lady fuck🍆: like, extremely decent boyfriend

seduction king 👑: that’s really good, Pen. healthy.

lady fuck🍆: but I never really missed him when he wasn’t there

seduction king 👑: that’s a bit sad

lady fuck🍆: plus, his messenger game was pretty mid. he never really got my jokes.

lady fuck🍆: so, loath as I am to admit it, you were kinda right about that

lady fuck🍆: popped off with that one

seduction king 👑: he didn’t know how to riff!! you were out there running LAPS around him

lady fuck🍆: I was doing an olympic joke decathlon and he was doing an egg and spoon race

seduction king 👑: see

seduction king 👑: riffing midway through my apology

seduction king 👑: was he good to you?

lady fuck🍆: he was good to me but he wasn’t right for me

lady fuck🍆: felt like he could’ve swapped me out for another woman and it wouldn’t have made much of a difference

lady fuck🍆: and I am not interchangeable

seduction king 👑: damn right you’re not interchangeable

seduction king 👑: you’re Penelope Fucking Featherington!

lady fuck🍆: too fucking right I am

seduction king 👑: good

seduction king 👑: never forget that

lady fuck🍆: 🥰

seduction king 👑: god, wish I’d had the tact to say THAT to you instead of whatever the fuck I ended up saying

lady fuck🍆: anyway. now he’s going back to antarctica again, so. that sucks!

seduction king 👑: was that a decision he made pre or post breakup

lady fuck🍆: pre *relationship*, I think

seduction king 👑: damn

lady fuck🍆: or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part. in truth, I don’t know.

seduction king 👑: you know what I think?

lady fuck🍆: what

seduction king 👑: I think that fumbling you made him feel so apoplectically wretched that he had to move down to the south pole about it

lady fuck🍆: hahahahaha

lady fuck🍆: yeah that’s probably it

lady fuck🍆: I don’t think it would have worked long distance to be honest

lady fuck🍆: but I would have liked to try, at least?

seduction king 👑: yeah

lady fuck🍆: you know, would have been nice if *I* could have made that choice

seduction king 👑: completely reasonable

seduction king 👑: I’m so incredibly sorry for fucking it up

lady fuck🍆: thanks

lady fuck🍆: while we’re here, why DID you fuck it up?

seduction king 👑: been asking myself about this for a week.

seduction king 👑: locked in an interrogation cell playing good cop bad cop with my idiot brain trying to solve the puzzle.

lady fuck🍆: and?

seduction king 👑: I think I was. I don’t know. confused. & probably a bit homesick & lonely

seduction king 👑: this job has me moving places & meeting new people & keeping up with new trends constantly. it’s all go go go go go. I’m barely even me when I’m doing it.

seduction king 👑: I think, when I was putting together the calendar, I kind of realised that there’s not really a hard line between Whistle At Moi and Pen. you use the same voice. they’re inseparable.

seduction king 👑: & it comes so naturally to you, you’re not even trying! it doesn’t even make you money, you just do it because you love it! because you’re good at it! it’s who you are!

seduction king 👑: & I’m good at Colin With Travel, really… but I’m not me. that’s not who I am. I’m not doing it for myself – not any more, not really. the account is so big that I have to become like, distant from who that person is.

lady fuck🍆: that sounds kinda bad, dude

seduction king 👑: & you were kind of the only constant through all of that that made me feel like I was colin the person, not colin the content machine

seduction king 👑: messaging you every day was like. coming home to my body. to myself.

seduction king 👑: I don’t think I fully realised how much I relied on you as my tether & when things started to change, when you started dating al & I realised you didn’t rely on me in the same way, I just. lost my mind a bit, I don’t know.

lady fuck🍆: oh, colin

seduction king 👑: I keep thinking about what I said to you & I just cannot fathom what possessed me. it’s excruciating. maddening.

seduction king 👑: you deserved so much better, especially from a friend. I’m sorry.

lady fuck🍆: thank you

lady fuck🍆: and I forgive you

seduction king 👑: really?

lady fuck🍆: how could I not after that

seduction king 👑: I appreciate that

lady fuck🍆: that’s full on, I didn’t realise you relied on our friendship in that way

seduction king 👑: you’re different, Pen

seduction king 👑: you’re important to me

seduction king 👑: your friendship is important to me

seduction king 👑: I’m sorry I didn’t have the language to articulate that properly

lady fuck🍆: I’m glad you’ve found it

seduction king 👑: okay then, let me articulate myself again in that case

seduction king 👑: assuredly, fervently, loudly:

seduction king 👑: I absolutely need us to be friends again

lady fuck🍆: I need us to be friends again, too

seduction king 👑: friends?

lady fuck🍆: friends

lady fuck🍆: 🥲

seduction king 👑: hell yeah

seduction king 👑: I still feel bad about catalysing the breakup between you & Al though

lady fuck🍆: look I’ll tell you what

lady fuck🍆: al may have been a perfectly serviceable boyrfriend but I was never fully serviced

lady fuck🍆: if ya know what I mean

seduction king 👑: I do know what you mean, yes

seduction king 👑: you are not a subtle woman

lady fuck🍆: like the sex was fine but really nothing to write home about. a bit too precise and sterile.

lady fuck🍆: is this tmi?

seduction king 👑: look, if you’re oversharing about your sex life that definitely means we’re friends again

seduction king 👑: so, penelope featherington, my best friend

seduction king 👑: tell me about your sex life with Alfred Debling

lady fuck🍆: okay! okay! jeez you’re keen

lady fuck🍆: it wasn’t for lack of trying

lady fuck🍆: we truly did have a lot of sex

seduction king 👑: good for you!!

lady fuck🍆: thank you, I have a healthy and varied libido

lady fuck🍆: I kinda hoped we’d sync up and get into a groove over time? grow into it a bit? didn’t happen even slightly

seduction king 👑: that’s disappointing

lady fuck🍆: idk, have you ever had sex with someone and it just doesn’t feel right?

seduction king 👑: in what way?

lady fuck🍆: like I thought that maybe being in a good relationship with a good person would make the sex better, but it still just felt a bit… incomplete? mechanical, almost

lady fuck🍆: like I feel like the sex should open you up to knowing them in a whole different way, and it just…

seduction king 👑: doesn’t

lady fuck🍆: doesn’t

lady fuck🍆: exactly

lady fuck🍆: so weird to be that physically intimate with someone & still feel like there’s an impassable wall between you

seduction king 👑: oh yeah the sex wall, I’ve heard of that

lady fuck🍆: hehehe

seduction king 👑: no but I know exactly what you mean, Pen

seduction king 👑: it’s like you want to be completely lost in the other person but there’s nothing to get lost in? no depth to it.

seduction king 👑: I have had plenty of vacuous sex with vacuous people and that emptiness kind of eats you from the inside out

lady fuck🍆: it sucks because what I WANT is for the emptiness to eat me out on the inside

seduction king 👑: I am electing to ignore that comment

lady fuck🍆: ladies and gentlemen, we got him

lady fuck🍆: anyway but with al, it was like he was reading a how-to-fuck manual. x plus y plus z equals orgasm. like let’s go from x to xxx and gimme a bit of y to the power of z.

lady fuck🍆: but no. no spontaneity, no creativity.

seduction king 👑: paint by numbers

lady fuck🍆: TAINT by numbers

seduction king 👑: fucking hell

lady fuck🍆: oh we are SO BACK

seduction king 👑: but the art of seduction was lost on him?

lady fuck🍆: truly

lady fuck🍆: simply put:

lady fuck🍆: he was no seduction king!!!

seduction king 👑: my reign continues, the false usurpers o’erthrown. I have been consolidating power and now my rule is strong.

lady fuck🍆: this golden age will last for a thousand years, poets will write great epics of this time & the annals of history will be thus celebrated.

seduction king 👑: 👑👑👑

seduction king 👑: I’m glad we’re talking again, Pen

lady fuck🍆: so am I

seduction king 👑: I’m sorry I got weird

lady fuck🍆: it sounds like you just need to spend some more time at home? stop the constant travel.

lady fuck🍆: it’s colin WILL travel, not colin ONLY travels, after all

seduction king 👑: I think you might be right

lady fuck🍆: I always am

seduction king 👑: you are

seduction king 👑: maybe I’ll stick around for a bit

lady fuck🍆: good

seduction king 👑: but only because you said so

lady fuck🍆: I’ll make sure I make it worth your while then

lady fuck🍆: 😜

seduction king 👑: tongue out winky face???

seduction king 👑: deranged

lady fuck🍆: 😜😜😜

seduction king 👑: penelope featherington are you flirting with me

lady fuck🍆: Colin Bridgerton are *you* flirting with *me*

lady fuck🍆: ?

lady fuck🍆: ???

lady fuck🍆: hello?

seduction king 👑: god, really have no idea if this is the right time to do this

seduction king 👑: but it’s clarity & charity time so what the hell!

seduction king 👑: let’s go there

seduction king 👑: yes

lady fuck🍆: yes what

lady fuck🍆: ?

seduction king 👑: yes I am flirting with you, pen

seduction king 👑: actually I have been trying to flirt with you for a while now

seduction king 👑: & actually my attempts to flirt with you are part of why I acted like a complete fucking idiot

lady fuck🍆: well then

lady fuck🍆: yes

seduction king 👑: ?

lady fuck🍆: I am also

lady fuck🍆: flirting with you

seduction king 👑: !!!!

lady fuck🍆: !!!!!!!!!

seduction king 👑: oh no

lady fuck🍆: oh YES

seduction king 👑: oh NO

lady fuck🍆: OH YES

lady fuck🍆: (I’m very good at screaming oh yes by the way)

seduction king 👑: Pen!!!!!!

lady fuck🍆: Colin!!!!!!!!

seduction king 👑: this is fucking wild

lady fuck🍆: isn’t it?

lady fuck🍆: colin I like you…….so much

seduction king 👑: I like you also so much

seduction king 👑: so incredibly much, Pen

lady fuck🍆: [cocks gun] how long have you liked me

seduction king 👑: properly?

seduction king 👑: a year?

lady fuck🍆: ONE WHOLE YEAR

seduction king 👑: yes a year!!! it’s been fucking torture. but also I didn’t want it to stop.

lady fuck🍆: you are like a baby

lady fuck🍆: try twelve years, fucko

seduction king 👑: !!!!!!!!!

seduction king 👑: WHAT DO YOU MEAN TWELVE YEARS

lady fuck🍆: I mean that I got a stupid little crush on you when I was 15 and then it just

lady fuck🍆: never went away

lady fuck🍆: and then it got stronger and stronger until it kinda became the background noise to my life a bit hehe

seduction king 👑: you’ve been into me for TWELVE HUMAN YEARS???

seduction king 👑: why didn’t you SAY anything!

lady fuck🍆: well the first few years you were my best friend’s older brother

lady fuck🍆: complete no-go obviously

seduction king 👑: obviously

lady fuck🍆: and then you were always travelling! and there was always some ig hottie on your arm!

seduction king 👑: mostly collabs organised by my mgt

lady fuck🍆: oh so you never hooked up with any of them

seduction king 👑: look. LOOK.

seduction king 👑: this is clearly vacuous sex / vacuous people territory!

seduction king 👑: anyway no tangents! I’ve been travelling solo for a couple years now, why haven’t you made a move since then?

lady fuck🍆: bc we became friends

lady fuck🍆: like *really* good friends

lady fuck🍆: and it was suddenly even more dangerous territory

lady fuck🍆: bc if it fucked up then I’d be losing my best friend

lady fuck🍆: and I couldn’t bear that

seduction king 👑: I get that

lady fuck🍆: and then when you didn’t say anything after the kiss…

lady fuck🍆: idk, I guess I thought you didn’t see anything serious in me!! which sucked but I understood. so I doubled down on our friendship and started looking more seriously for other options romantically.

seduction king 👑: what do you mean

lady fuck🍆: I mean that’s why I projected such heightened vulgarity and bravado towards you and went so hard in with the apps and dating al

seduction king 👑: no what do you mean “after the kiss”

lady fuck🍆: ?????

lady fuck🍆: the kiss?????

seduction king 👑: ???

lady fuck🍆: at benedict’s bucks night??

seduction king 👑: WE KISSED AT BENEDICT’S BUCKS NIGHT??????

seduction king 👑: Jesus fucking CHRIST

lady fuck🍆: OH MY GOD

lady fuck🍆: COLIN

seduction king 👑: I’ve already kissed you!!!?????

lady fuck🍆: COLIN FUCKING BRIDGERTON

lady fuck🍆: we made out for like!!

lady fuck🍆: thirty minutes!!!!!!

seduction king 👑: HACHI MACHI

seduction king 👑: was it any good

lady fuck🍆: in a kiss your best friend while you’re both sloppy drunk and can’t stop laughing with giddiness kind of way? kinda?

seduction king 👑: !

lady fuck🍆: actually it was really good

lady fuck🍆: like REALLY fucking good

seduction king 👑: !!!

lady fuck🍆: which is why it hurt so much that you didn’t say anything to me afterwards

seduction king 👑: oh my god Pen I am so sorry!!!

seduction king 👑: wait

seduction king 👑: actually this is adding a lot of context for why you were so angry with me

seduction king 👑: oh….. oh no……….

lady fuck🍆: yeah man. you kissed me like you were obsessed with me and then didn’t say shit about it and THEN set me up with a great guy and THEN had the fucking gall to get angry at me for dating him!!!

lady fuck🍆: I felt like I was going insane!!!

seduction king 👑: yeah I don’t doubt it! god!!!!!

seduction king 👑: I fuckin gaslit you through sheer stupidity!!!!!

seduction king 👑: I am formally cranking this apology up to abject grovel mode

seduction king 👑: Pen, I am so so SO sorry for doing that to you. you deserved so much better & I am truly humiliated right now

lady fuck🍆: thank you, and also you are an idiot.

seduction king 👑: oh, big time!!!!!!

seduction king 👑: god, I cannot believe I did that!! & to YOU!!!

seduction king 👑: jfc, I actually asked to kiss you & then we kissed & then I FORGOT

lady fuck🍆: who said you made the first move?

seduction king 👑: ?

lady fuck🍆: I asked you, hot stuff

seduction king 👑: !!!!!!

seduction king 👑: what did you say???

lady fuck🍆: I said “Colin, I know we’re friends, but I really really really want you to kiss me right now”

seduction king 👑: and what did I say!!!??

lady fuck🍆: I believe the exact words were “I’m trying to push myself out of my comfort zone so sure”

seduction king 👑: oh no

seduction king 👑: oh this is suddenly sounding horribly familiar

seduction king 👑: Pen kill me now I did not say that to YOU

lady fuck🍆: you did

lady fuck🍆: and then we SMOOCHED

lady fuck🍆: with our MOUTHS

seduction king 👑: I think I need to learn how to tie a noose rn, hold on

lady fuck🍆: I think this is the best day of my life maybe

seduction king 👑: so wait. walk me through what happened.

lady fuck🍆: we were up at the main bar just after you did a pitch perfect rendition of getcha head in the game from high school musical, I said my dumb little pickup line, you said your response, then you kissed me really gently and got this real cute little look on your face

seduction king 👑: & then?

lady fuck🍆: and then you immediately downed an entire bottle of soju and ordered a private karaoke room for us

seduction king 👑: & then??

lady fuck🍆: and then we made out like a couple of teenagers at formal

seduction king 👑: so we just kissed?

lady fuck🍆: I was pretty lit, but I think there was a bit of over-the-clothes action

seduction king 👑: !!!???

seduction king 👑: what level of over the clothes are we talking here, featherington

lady fuck🍆: you honked my boob

seduction king 👑: sounds like me

lady fuck🍆: and it gets blurry but I think I also straddled you at one point?

seduction king 👑: wait

seduction king 👑: PEN

seduction king 👑: *YOU’RE* THE ONE WHO DID THE THING WITH THE EAR?????

lady fuck🍆: guilty, babey

lady fuck🍆: that’s a classic penny feathers move

seduction king 👑: I have been going INSANE trying to remember who that was because the sense memory of that has been DRIVING ME CRAZY

lady fuck🍆: …in a good way?

seduction king 👑: oh my god, pen.

seduction king 👑: Pen.

seduction king 👑: in the best way.

seduction king 👑: so much in the best way.

seduction king 👑: what happened next?

lady fuck🍆: you pushed me off you and ran out of the room

seduction king 👑: why!!!!!!

lady fuck🍆: did you not read the part where I said you drank an entire bottle of soju

lady fuck🍆: you went to throw up

lady fuck🍆: and then frannie and the boys found you and we all decided to go home

seduction king 👑: soju……………my nemesis……..

seduction king 👑: that you would stop me from making out with the hottest woman on the planet in this way………

lady fuck🍆: 😘

seduction king 👑: wait, Pen

seduction king 👑: what are we even doing

seduction king 👑: do you want to make out right now

lady fuck🍆: oh FINALLY

lady fuck🍆: he fucking ASKS ME

seduction king 👑: !!!!!!!!!!!!!

seduction king 👑: is that a yes?????

lady fuck🍆: yes!!!!! you fucking dolt!!!!!

lady fuck🍆: how soon can you get over here

seduction king 👑: I am in an uber on my way over right as I type these words

lady fuck🍆: already??

seduction king 👑: I called it when you said private karaoke booth

lady fuck🍆: hahahahahahaha

lady fuck🍆: you are KEEN

seduction king 👑: YES!

lady fuck🍆: you are ADORABLE

seduction king 👑: YES!

lady fuck🍆: you are an IDIOT

seduction king 👑: VERY MUCH SO

lady fuck🍆: how far away are you

seduction king 👑: 12 minutes

lady fuck🍆: okay I’m gonna

lady fuck🍆: not reply for 12 minutes

lady fuck🍆: get myself into working order, you know. ahem.

seduction king 👑: !!!!!!!

lady fuck🍆: absence makes the heart grow fonder, colin

lady fuck🍆: and you’ve been absent 12 years, so I have a very fond heart

lady fuck🍆: what’s another 12 minutes

seduction king 👑: I can do a lot in 12 minutes

lady fuck🍆: you wait til you see what I can do with 10

seduction king 👑: Jesus

seduction king 👑: I’m losing my mind Pen

lady fuck🍆: you’re about to lose your virginity

seduction king 👑: ????

seduction king 👑: I’ve fucked before

seduction king 👑: you know I’ve fucked before right

lady fuck🍆: could have fooled me!!!!

seduction king 👑: 9 minutes left

lady fuck🍆: okay I’m actually going now

lady fuck🍆: see you in 9

seduction king 👑: I can make it in 5 if I get the driver to run through these pedestrians

seduction king 👑: I’m being serious Pen

seduction king 👑: I’ll make this nice man commit vehicular manslaughter

seduction king 👑: on Christmas

seduction king 👑: just to spend another 4 minutes in your presence

lady fuck🍆: oh no you got it BAD colin

lady fuck🍆: for ME

lady fuck🍆: you fucking IDIOT

seduction king 👑: YES

seduction king 👑: I DO

seduction king 👑: I WILL

seduction king 👑: SEVEN MINUTES

seduction king 👑: SIX

seduction king 👑: FIVE

seduction king 👑: FOUR MINUTES

seduction king 👑: PENELOPE FEATHERINGTON RESPOND TO ME

@Colin Bridgerton called @Penelope Featherington for 00:01

seduction king 👑: GODDAMNIT

seduction king 👑: THREE MINUTES

seduction king 👑: VEHICULAR MANSLAUGHTER TIME

lady fuck🍆: no!!!

seduction king 👑: oh so you ARE there?

lady fuck🍆: I’m not!

seduction king 👑: TWO MINUTES

lady fuck🍆: shut the fuck up

lady fuck🍆: all the buzzing from the phone is very distracting, I gotta focus

lady fuck🍆: this unbelievably hot idiot that I have big stupid crush on is about to come over and eat me out until he asphyxiates

seduction king 👑: PEN!!!!!!????

lady fuck🍆: yes?

seduction king 👑: oh my GOD you’re so fucking hot

lady fuck🍆: oh so you like the vulgar bravado when it’s about us

lady fuck🍆: interesting interesting

seduction king 👑: ONE MINUTE

lady fuck🍆: you know what I’m wondering?

lady fuck🍆: what’s the point of underwear? have never understood.

lady fuck🍆: have decided not to wear

seduction king 👑: PEN I AM OUTSIDE

lady fuck🍆: and soon, inside…

seduction king 👑: let me in I know you can hear the doorbell

seduction king 👑: come on

lady fuck🍆: what’s the password

seduction king 👑: Pen!!

lady fuck🍆: password!!!!!

seduction king 👑: is it… is it sorry?

lady fuck🍆: close! but no!

lady fuck🍆: the password is “I am obsessed with you and I am a huge beautiful dummy and I want to fuck you *so fucking badly* right now and also be my girlfriend”

seduction king 👑: I am not saying that out loud

lady fuck🍆: yes you are

lady fuck🍆: HAHAHAHA YOU ACTUALLY SAID IT

lady fuck🍆: I have so much power

seduction king 👑: I am in the building

seduction king 👑: I am on the staircase

seduction king 👑: I am outside your apartment door

lady fuck🍆: not 4 long!!!!!!!!!!

seduction king 👑: !!!!!!!!!

*

He is so stupid. This is all Penelope can think.

Not only does Colin want her (!) but he has wanted her for a year at least (!!!) he was just too drunk to remember that they kissed at Ben’s bucks night (!!!!!).

Each of them has experienced the past year as two different realities. Two parallel worlds, slightly out of sync with one another like on an episode of Star Trek. It’s like they’ve been listening to a duet on stereo but each of them has only had one earpod.

He’s beside himself when he learns that they’ve kissed, even moreso that he’s forgotten it, even more moreso when he starts to remember parts of it, and even most morseso when he learns that Pen has liked him for twelve years.

Through these revelations, Penelope is overwhelmed by one simple thought: Colin Bridgerton is the stupidest motherfucker in the universe.

She’s never wanted him more.

Chapter Text

Colin is on his way to her flat to kiss her. The Kill Bill sirens are blaring in her head, surely loud enough for someone on the street to hear. Penelope tears through the apartment, stuffing laundry into the hamper and crushing UberEats bags into each other like shameful matryoshka dolls. She queries the medical safety of doing anything with her body this hot, her heart this fast.

She’s full of mulled wine and adrenaline, teasing him over messenger. They’ve been teasing each other for months, she realises, but now that it’s real, now that it’s confirmed flirting – god. This is a very different cat and mouse game. She’s hungry for him. And they are going to kiss again.

They are going to do more than kiss.

Wait, shit, what knickers does she have on? She raises the tartan hem of her skirt and wriggles out of her tights to check them. A big comfy black pair, featuring a decidedly unraunchy orange patch bleached into the gusset. Well! Into the hamper. No fresh ones in the drawer, either. She hasn’t done laundry in a week, she’s been processing a breakup for christssakes. She decides to make it seem intentional, firing off a message about not wearing any underwear for him, and that seems to go down extremely well, and oh god, Colin Bridgerton might actually want to fuck her as much as she wants to fuck him. She has to check. She has to know.

He’s outside now, he messages, and a second later the doorbell rings. But she wants to make him say it, out loud, outside the apartment building. That he wants to fuck her. That he wants to be with her. She cyberbullies it out of him, and the words drift up the building through the window to her.

“Pen, please!” he half laughs. “I like you so much and I am so stupid and of course I want you to be my girlfriend. Let me in!” She buzzes him up.

She can hear him moving up between the floors, hear his breath eager and loud as he escalates towards the entrance to her flat. And then.

A knock at the door.

She exhales quickly. Let’s go.

She opens it, and it’s Colin. Of course it’s Colin. It was always going to be Colin. Lips parted, eyes lit up, chest rising. Black puffer jacket over the same forest green jumper he’s worn the entire day. There’s a dampness at the top of his brown curls from the sleet. The high points of his cheeks are tinted deep pink from the cold. He looks absolutely perfect, more perfect than every other version of Colin that she’s recalled this evening, more perfect than in any of her fantasies stretching back twelve years. He looks like Christmas Day – it’s a childish thought that she has, but an honest one.

“Do you want to come in?” she says, and he doesn’t say anything, just leans down and grabs her face and kisses her, and she’s alive! His mouth on hers is needy and enthusiastic. His nose is cold, a cute little icy pad against her skin. He moves his hands down, cradling her face, and pulls away, his breath blending with hers in the air.

“Pen I am so sorry, I…”

“Literally shut the fuck up I don’t care,” she says, and she drags him fully inside, swings the door shut behind him, and pulls him into another kiss. He smiles against her and wrenches his jacket off, discarding it on the floor. His hands move down to her waist – his hands! On her! – and his grip is tight on the soft ribbed fabric of her shirt.

“This is a good kiss,” he murmurs.

“Told you so. Idiot.”

She pulls him down towards her, more within reach, and he smirks at her keenness. Colin’s touch, even muted by her clothes, draws electricity up through her body. He moves his hand down past her hip and around to the small of her back, lifting her up into him.

“God, I hope I remember kissing you this time,” he says between kisses.

“I just gotta make it more memorable I guess.” Colin laughs, allowing her to press teensy smooches from the corner of his mouth across his cheek. “You want to revisit some highlights?” she asks.

“Please.”

“Mmkay.”

Quickly, hotly, she runs her tongue along his jawline to his ear and pulls gently at the lobe with her teeth. It’s like he opens up under her, his body buckling slightly down at her touch, and he moans. It’s the most incredible thing she’s ever heard. She moves her tongue flat against the corner of his jaw and runs it down his neck. He tastes a bit citrusy, a bit salty. She breathes warm air against his skin where she’s wet it with her saliva, and he moans again, low and husky.

“Pen!” he gasps. She’s changed her mind. That’s the most incredible thing she’s ever heard.

“I want to make you say my name like that over and over again.” She presses kiss after kiss against him, returning to his mouth.

“Thank god, because those were my plans for the immediate future.”

She laughs. “How convenient.”

“It’s unrelated to the kissing though.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mm-hmm.”

She tugs at his ear again and he repeats her name, this time with a bit of a laugh.

“You sure?” she teases.

“Still unrelated.”

It’s the same as it’s always been. Absolutely relentless tomfoolery, just mercilessly dunking on each other, except now they’re doing it between kisses while excitedly pawing at each other’s bodies with all the artful subtlety of a dog in a bath. Clown kisses. Idiot parade.

He pulls away, and looks at her with, she realises, an expression of ardent lust on his face. His breathing is loud as his gaze moves from her eyes to her lips down to her breast, and back up to her face again. His mouth is open, breathing loud. He looks wild.  

“God, I want you, Pen.” She notices, not for the first time, but maybe for the first time fully, just how much taller he is than her, and she suddenly needs him to touch her. It is a feverish, urgent need that overcomes her entire body. She feels wretched with it.

She nods her head towards her bedroom, an invitation to him, but he shakes his head.

“You’re so hot, and I’m so dumb, I need you here first,” and he lunges towards her, pinning her on the wall like a thumb tack, and goes to town at her neck. Pen cackles at his ardour, and then quiets as the feeling of his tongue twirls through her body. She closes her eyes and lets her head rest back against the wall. He trails kisses down to just below her collarbone, and then moves his hands under her to press her tits up towards him.

“Colin Bridgerton, tits man all the way.”

“Shush, I’m in heaven.” He’s kissing the top of her breast now, his lips barely grazing her skin, like she’s a delicate manuscript.

“Fucking right you are, my tits are incredible.”

Penelope presses herself into his hands more firmly, and he squeezes. Fuck it feels right. “I have been thinking about your tits for months.”

She laughs and looks down at him. “Good.”

“Just… for so long,” and he kisses the swell of her in earnest, fluttering his tongue on her, and she gasps slightly.

“Colin!”

“Mmm,” he says – he’s responding to her every movement, her every moment. She feels instantly synchronous with him. They’re both moving on instinct and joy.

“Touch me,” she asks. “Please.”

He looks up to meet her gaze, eyes questioning. She nods.

His mouth still at the top of her breast, Colin slides his left hand down in between her legs, where she’s hot and slick.

“Fuck, Pen, I thought you were joking about not wearing underwear.”

“Stop getting distracted, I said touch me.”

His laugh against her is unbelievably sexy. She feels his fingers brush by the soft skin of her inner thigh, then he dips his fingertips into her cunt. Pen leans her head against the wall again, looking down at him as he draws his fingers up through her, bringing them to her clit, and starts running lazy liquid circles around her with his middle and ring fingers.

“Does that feel good, Pen?”

She nods wordlessly, mouth open, the air humid and high in her lungs.

“Good. I want to make you feel good.”

She closes her eyes and furrows her brow, focusing on the feeling. The pleasure fizzing through her is intense and thrilling. She feels completely detached from reality under him but also completely with him and within him. She feels like her soul is higher in her flesh, like the parts that make her her are sitting at her chest, radiating out of her in deep reds like a heatmap.

“Harder,” she pants, then grits her teeth, “touch me harder and faster.”

“You got it boss.”

Her laugh turns into another moan as he presses tight, firm little ovals around her clit, moving his lips up her throat, his breath dampening her skin.

“Fuck, Colin!” He chuckles against her when she says his name.

She’s dizzy, the pleasure is rising and expanding within her like an airstream – Colin is looking up at her now, and she rakes her hand through his hair for purchase like she did in the karaoke booth and on touching that sensitive spot his mouth drops and then he has to bite his lip in concentration and it’s so hot, so fucking unbelievably hot, that Pen feels a breathy, baking heat at her sternum.

“Colin, wait, you’ll make me come.”

“Good, I wanna watch you come,” he says darkly across her skin. Oh, now she’s certain: this is the most incredible thing she’s ever heard, definitely.

Her moans become strangled, the edge of her orgasm sliding further up inside of her, higher than it’s ever been before. “Come on, Pen,” he pleads, and it is the overwhelming yearning in his voice, his need to experience her pleasure, that finally crashes her over the edge, her orgasm buzzing, ringing in her ears.

She’s saying some words, maybe, but she’s too gone to know what they are, and she’s laughing because she laughs when she comes, and her whole body tenses and jolts but his fingers won’t stop moving around her centre again and again, and she has the sensation of falling off a cliff and being lifted back up to the top to fall off again, cliff-diving over and over, and at the very top of the highest cliff all the connective tissue in her body just vanishes and for a moment she is maybe just a bunch of atoms that, through a freak occurrence of the universe, became sentient with the sole purpose of loving Colin Bridgerton.

She has to push his hand away from her to catch her breath, the orgasm sizzling through her muscles, and he steadies her with his hands because she’s staggering a bit against the wall, legs shaking, and the shaking turns into more laughter – both of them laughing – and he leans down to tenderly kiss the top of her cheek as she pants.

“That was the hottest thing I have ever seen in my entire life,” he says, and she believes him, because it was the hottest orgasm she’s had in her entire life.

She’s still panting, regaining her breath. She swallows and then rasps, “Wait until… you watch me do it… naked.”

He laughs again, a low hum of a laugh, and kisses her. This kiss is soft, feather-light. It makes her ache a little on the inside – a good ache – and it just feels gorgeously right. He pulls away, kisses the tippy tip of her nose, which makes her giggle, and then he asks, “Do you need to sit down, Pen?”

“I need to be wherever you are, and if that’s on the bed then so be it.”

“I was thinking the couch…”

“Nope. Bed.”

And at her words he smiles, the full-face Colin smile, the one that transforms him into boyish joy, the apples of his cheeks pressing his eyes into cute crinkles, and it’s because of her! And Pen knows she’s grinning like an abject lunatic as well. Two little idiots.

Stupid!!

She leads him into the bedroom, and pushes him down onto the mattress, and he starfishes across it and sighs happily. She notices the hardness pressing at his trousers and points at it, a silly accusatory Whodunnit finger.

“You wanna do something about that?”

“Probably? Are you good to keep going?”

“Baby, I’ve got enough orgasms in me to last a month straight right now.”

His eyes widen a little at that. “I like that.”

“The orgasms?”

“No, you calling me baby,” and he sits up, flipping his jumper off him and dunking it over onto the Laundry Chair in the corner of the room. “I like it a lot, Pen.”

“God, you’re so into me it’s embarrassing.”

And he nods with a big open smile. “Uh-huh.” Fucking labrador puppy. “I meant every word I said over messenger. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you for months. I’m fucking losing it right now.”

“Literally same. I’ve had a crush on you since I was fifteen, and now you’ve burst down my door and fingerbanged me on Christmas.”

“Pen,” he says, his voice suddenly serious and entirely deadpan. He holds out his hands to her to take and she holds them, as if they’re at an altar. “I will burst down your door and fingerbang you every single Christmas for the rest of time if you will let me.”

She laughs.

“Hm. Compelling proposition, Bridgerton,” she says, and, still holding his hands, clambers on top of him, straddling his lap. “Are you open to bursting down my door and fingerbanging me on other occasions? Easter, perhaps?”

“No, only Christmas. Easter is for bursting down the door and eating you out. I’m very traditional like that.” He takes off his shirt, and she thanks the heavens that his body has retained the warm glow of the southern hemisphere from his travels. The hair on his chest is fucking mesmerising, she wants to floss with it. She runs her nails lightly down his chest, and his jaw goes slack at her touch.

“What about Palm Sunday?” she says. Gotta keep the bit going.

“Oh, 69, definitely.”

“Incorrect,” she admonishes, digging her nails in a bit harder. He tenses under her. Interesting. “It’s Palm Sunday. Gotta be a handjob.”

“You’re so right, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. One of us needs to think about these things.”

He motions to lift her top off her, and she raises her arms straight up for him. She’s down to just her skirt and bra – it’s her least comfortable bra, which is why it hasn’t made it to the laundry yet, however it is also her sexiest bra, all seafoam-coloured lace and mesh cups that allow the peachy skin of her areola to peak through. Colin looks completely dazed.

“Hey, my eyes are down here,” she says, pointing to her tits, and he laughs.

“Pen, are you always this talkative during sex?” he asks.

“Oh yes, I am a psychosexual nightmare.”

He laughs again. Good. Penelope allows herself the freedom to imagine making him laugh like that, while he’s sitting on her bed, many more times in the future, and realises it’s the first time she has allowed one of her fantasies to transform, even slightly, into an intention. She’s never given herself permission to indulge seriously in her fantasies, and doing so feels like crossing a line in her head, and she realises she needs to actively cross the line, here, with him.

“Hey, before we do anything else, can I ask you something?” she says, almost shyly.

“Anything, baby.”

She hums a little giggle at that.

“Oh, you like being called baby too?” and he places a little kiss right between her breasts (!!).

“Very much so.”

“Okay, baby,” he says, just to make her giggle again, and places a kiss at the lace at the edge of her bra. “What do you wanna ask, baby?”

“Outside, before I let you in. You asked me to be your girlfriend.”

“I did.” Another kiss, near the strap.

“But only because I texted that you had to...”

“No. Not just because of that.” Mouth off her breasts. Eye contact. “Pen, I want so badly for you to be my girlfriend. It’s… You make me so happy. And I want to make you that happy too.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re so important to me, Pen.”

“You’re important to me, too. And I want very much to be your girlfriend.”

“Hell yeah,” and he grins.

Pen returns a big bright smile, and leans forward to kiss him, her hands at either side of his gorgeous face. The kiss is deep, and clear, and her fantasies melt into the reality of the taste of Colin, the feel of him. His lips are soft, his stubble against her a sexy little friction. All her teenaged heartfelt yearning seems to fold, origami-style, into this kiss, all the complexity of kissing Colin after years of knowing him and allowing him to finally, truly know her too. It is a kiss that makes Pen feel completely whole and understood in the moment, her sense of self sliding and settling within her, gentle and flowing like silk on satin.

This feeling is interrupted by Colin’s fingers thrashing against the clasp of her bra with the fervent insanity of a hamster in a bucket.

“You okay there little guy?” she asks.

“I’ve got it,” he says, surely gouging out a golf-ball sized lump of flesh from her back.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Thought you said you’d fucked before.”

“Shut up, this thing is like a Chinese finger trap.”

She laughs, and he relents, pouting. She stands up from his lap, away from the bed, sweeps one hand to her back, and releases the bra instantly.

“I loosened it for you.”

“Sure, buddy,” she says. He scrunches his face up all cute and stupid. God, he’s so cute and stupid.

His faux ire is forgotten the instant she releases her breasts from the bra. She lifts her chin slightly as she drops it to the floor, watching intently the look of abject awe on his face. She feels his gaze run over her figure and can almost feel it reverberate back through all her memories it’s so intense. He puts his head in his hands.

“Pen, fuck, you’re so hot,” he says, pressing the base of his palms into his eye sockets. “What… what the fuck.” Colin releases his eyes from his hands to look at her again, the runs them down in his face completely agog she unzips and releases her skirt from her waist too. She is completely naked before him, but feels somehow more naked than she’s ever been before in her life. She is utterly and completely exposed, and utterly and completely herself.

Colin presses his palms together in prayer against his lips, shaking his head slightly at disbelief, and then he collapses back on the bed and gives a high-pitched little giggle.

“You alright Colin?”

“Pen, you’re the hottest woman I’ve ever seen. Perhaps the hottest woman who’s ever existed.”

He looks back up at her. She blushes.

“Please, I need to touch you,” he says.

She shakes her head. “Not yet.”

His expression falters. “Why not?

“Colin. Baby,” she teases, hand on her hip. “You’ve got too many clothes on.”

He blazes into slapstick eagerness, half tripping over himself as he stands up and starts fussing over his belt loops and trouser buttons haphazardly. She laughs as the sight of him clattering and battling with his clothes, forgetting that he still has shoes on as he desperately tries to pull his trousers off his legs.

Stupid!! So stupid! She’s obsessed with him.

Finally, finally, he is also naked – slightly out of breath, but naked. He has a triumphant look on his face. And also an incredibly nice cock.

Penelope feels her heart stutter slightly. All the parts of him that were up to her imagination are now revealing how small her imagination truly was. He is so very real before her. Powerfully built, yes, but swathed in soft, tantalisingly touchable skin. His smile is roguish, his thigh muscles are taut, his erection scintillating. She swirls the vision of naked Colin through her mind so it coats every surface of her brain.

“I mean, it goes without saying that you are also unbelievably hot, Colin,” she says. “But you get that every day on instagram, so it’s not that special.”

“It is coming from you.” His voice seems almost shy. She realises that this is as big for him as it is for her. That he has felt as detached from his body as she has from her feelings. And then he starts moving closer towards her, and Penelope feels her heart punch the wall of her chest, begging, sobbing to be released. She can feel it all, everything she’s been trying to cut off from herself. Keep it cool, bitch!

“Okay then. You’re incredibly hot. It’s fucked up, actually.” She can feel his body heat rinsing over her skin. “You should be arrested, actually. You should be imprisoned.”

He chuckles. “Didn’t know you felt so strongly about it.” He touches her upper arms, as if to steady her.

“I am deeply invested in serving justice to people too hot for polite society.” He laughs again. “Many have called me a reckless crusader for the cause.” What is she even saying right now. Who cares, he thinks she’s funny and hot and he visibly wants her, she could live on that for millennia. It makes her brave.

“But until you are punished for your crimes, Colin, do you want to have sex with me?”

“Oh, nothing would bring me more pleasure.”

And he kisses her again, and the warmth of his smile on her mouth runs clean through her like a spear. His hands slide over and around her body, from her shoulders down to her waist, up to her breasts. He lifts them up, squeezing, and the weight of them is gone from her body suddenly – pure relief! – and she stands higher on her toes to kiss him deeper. He releases her tits – boo! – and then his touch becomes more fervent: he scoops his hands around her body and under her arse and lifts her up slightly and tips them both onto the bed. As they unfurl across her duvet, Penelope’s head narrowly misses the corner of the bedside table.

“Oi, be careful! I nearly whacked my head there!”

“Pen! Sorry!” He touches her head there and gives her a little kiss at the temple.

“You trying to give me amnesia?”

“I’m sorry!!” Another kiss.

“Try as you might, Bridgerton, I am not in a hurry to forget this.”

“Noo,” he laughs, and then kisses around her face. “I am simply too horny to think.”

“Oh, being horny means you can’t think?” As she talks, Colin starts kissing down her neck. “If that’s the case then you’ve been horny the entire time I’ve known you because you’ve never had a single thought in twelve years.”

“Penelope stop talking, I am trying to seduce you.”

“Too bad, this is part of my seduction. I am a master of the craft. You will quickly learn that– oh!”

Her joke is cut off by his mouth at her nipple. He swirls around the bud of her, grazes his teeth across, and then sucks. She feels like dazzling little sparks of desire are being pulled to the place her body meets his, like iron filings being magnetised. He looks up at her.

“Penelope, has anyone ever told you that you have perfect breasts?”

“Not in those words, Colin.”

“That’s dire,” he says, and he submerges his face into her again. She gasps against his touch. He kisses further down her body, down her belly, pressing the flesh from her hips up to his mouth to kiss more of her at once, and she’s in her head again.

“Ah, stop that,” she says.

“Why, does it hurt?”

“No, it’s just… I’m in a bad zone mentally about that part of my body.” She glances away as she says it, pushing down the frisson of humiliation bubbling within her. “Just when I’m lying down and naked.”

Colin looks up at her. “That sucks, and the idea that you’d hate any part of your body is literally insane to me, but also I get it.” He moves away from her stomach, coming to a kneel on the bed. “Sometimes, brain bad. You tell me where you do want me to kiss.” He gently rubs her thighs with his hands.

“There would be nice.”

“There?” he says, and places a kiss above her knee.

“Higher.”

He turns her leg out and kisses up her leg a bit, above the mole on her mid-thigh. “Here?”

“Higher.”

“What about here?” He kisses her inner thigh so reverently, the soft tissue of his lips barely gracing her glassy stretch marks.

“There’s good,” she sighs, turning her pelvis closer up towards him.

“Hm. Not high enough,” he murmurs, and then presses his mouth over her cunt. She gasps at the sudden sensation, squirming gleefully against the duvet. Colin kisses deeply, slowly swirling his tongue up her centre and around her clit like he’s drawing a question mark from the base of her to the tip.

“Good?” he asks, his breath warm against her.

She nods wordlessly, breathlessly.

“Good?” he repeats, tugging at her body slightly.

“Mm-hm!” she affirms, her lips pressed together in concentration.

“Good.”

She gasps as Colin presses his mouth back down, forming a seal of heat around her, and begins pressing his tongue over and over her again. His eyes are closed, she realises. Colin looks completely absorbed in the taste and touch of her, his fingers grasping at her thighs and pressing down her stomach to angle her further towards him. She runs her fingers through his hair, scrunches into his scalp, and he moans against her. The vibration from the moan shoots an arrow of pleasure up her middle, and she whimpers at the sensation.

“Fuck!”

He continues to lick up her hungrily. The sound of his mouth against her is wet, the feeling carnal. She is being devoured. It feels – god – organic. Completely animal. He finds the secret rhythm and pressure that must have been genetically encoded in her cunt, and instinctive, white hot pleasure eddies through her. She hands herself entirely over to Colin, letting go of any lingering restraint within her (not that there’s much, to be honest). Already one orgasm to the wind, she lets the next one roll up through her, pitching her moans higher and higher, and as it breaks the surface she hears herself give an unhinged cry in a cadence her voice has never reached before. Sparks stutter under her eyelids, and her brain feels like it’s either been wiped clean or liquefied, she’s sure she’ll have to learn how to speak again.

She’s vaguely aware that Colin has emerged from between her legs, is leaning over and cradling her now, lining her body with his so he can absorb all the movements from her orgasm as if he will be able to experience her pleasure through osmosis – frankly she feels so entirely connected to him in this moment that it might be scientifically possible.

“Pen.” Colin’s voice is hoarse. With some effort, she opens her eyes. He looks completely deranged with lust. “Pen, do you have a condom?”

She nods, her jaw shivering slightly as she replies. “Beside table, top drawer. Lube’s there too.”

He crawls over her to reach it, his stomach so close to her face. She musters the post-orgasm strength to lean up and blows a raspberry just next to his belly button, which makes him giggle.

“You’re a menace,” he laughs, as he returns with the condom in hand and sits back on his heels. She pokes her tongue out at him cheekily as he hands her the lube. She slips some onto her fingers and down to her cunt – it’s for security, really, as she’s already drenched from her own lubrication and Colin’s saliva, which is an incredible thought to have – and then passes the bottle back to him. He extricates the condom from its wrapper, dabs a little lube in the tip, and rolls it onto himself.

“Seatbelt on?” she asks. He chuckles again, then nods. She motions at him to come down for another kiss, and he rolls his eyes affectionately as he does it.

“You really wanna kiss me,” he says.

“Yeah, I do,” and she kisses him quickly. “I also really wanna fuck you. Chop chop.”

“After two orgasms already?” He has angled himself between her legs.

“Uh-huh.”

“Well if you insist,” he says, and slides into her still-moving cunt.

“Fuck, Colin!” she gasps automatically. The blunt shape of him inside of her… The stretch of it is unbelievable. She’s going to have to recalibrate slightly. “Hold on a sec, let me adjust.”

“Of course, baby. You tell me when to go.” He holds her hand up to his mouth, and presses another light kiss on her knuckles. The gentleness of it – the weight, the memory of it – relaxes her, and she melts a bit further onto the mattress and around his cock. Okay, she’s good. She gives a couple of little squeezes to his hand.

“Come on, in you get,” she says.

He laughs and slides his cock all the way into her, and god, it feels good. It feels the most natural thing in the world. She is so deliciously full, and he hasn’t even started moving. Penelope feels her eyelashes flutter slightly, as if Colin’s entire self is pouring into her and every cell in his body is intermingling with every cell in hers. She’s never in her life felt so close to another person, every part of her brimming with someone else. She runs her fingers through his hair again, and he closes his eyes at her touch.

“God, you really like that,” she whispers. He nods dopily. “I think you should fuck me now.”

“I also think that too.”

“Nice.”

Slowly, slowly, he presses the rest of his cock into her, and then pulls it almost entirely out. The action mingles with the heat of her still-cooling orgasm and sends a swell of pleasure through her muscles, like a weighted blanket being shook out in slow motion. He rolls back into her again, and out, and his slow, syrupy movements seem to drench her brain in an oozing, melting bliss. She hooks her legs around his waist to bring him closer, further into her.

One hand on his face, guiding his gaze towards her.

Breath intermingling.

He quickens the pace, thrusting with more force now. She meets his every thrust with her hips. An instantaneous rhythm, they fit together so perfectly, and it’s good, it’s so fucking good, she feels so fucking good, god. With each movement of their bodies, she gives off a breathy, cloudy sound, half moan half laugh, incredulous at the overwhelming fullness of it all.

“Fuck, Pen,” Colin says, and it sounds like he can’t quite believe it either. “You feel incredible.”

He stops suddenly; leans back on his knees; lifts her waist up off the bed and angles her legs further up him, so she’s suddenly become a curvy L-shaped beneath him; and thrusts back into her again, this time hitting a sensitive spot that makes her mewl pathetically.

“Right there, yes! God, yes, right there,” she babbles, and her words seem to egg him on, because he gets a delirious grin on his face and fucks her harder right there, right there, gripping her ankle, and she might actually come apart. The pleasure is so intense, dizzying, that it almost feels painful, a slice up through her system like she’s being mangled by a seam-ripper, but it is also sheer relief at being handled so enthusiastically – truly, if there is one thing she can say for Colin as a lover, it is that he seems pretty fucking happy to be there, and intent on making her feel the same.

“Come on Colin, come on baby, fuck, right there…”

She clasps frantically at his thighs – the only part of him within reach of her at this angle. His muscles are tight and powerful under her fingers, his skin slick with perspiration. She runs her fingers up to the crease of his leg and back down to the knee, his leg hairs tightening and recoiling as she passes over them. Her frenetic touch seems to make him wild, because he grits his teeth and fucks her faster, sloshing hungry pleasure through her recklessly.

“Baby come on, come for me, I wanna see you come!” she demands.

“Fuck, Pen, I–”

Colin’s thigh muscles tighten under her hands; his eyes close tight and his breath stutters. She is keenly aware of the rigidity of his cock inside her cunt, and as he grunts her name in disbelief, she feels the hot, tight pressure of the hitch of his orgasm pump within her. He releases her body back onto the mattress and leans forward again; she runs the pad of her thumb against his brow. Sticky. Wet with sweat.

However beautiful Colin has been to her in every moment in her life up to this point, nothing compares to the fidelity of his ecstasy in this moment. The connection is so close, it’s like she can feel everything he is feeling, and for a moment she sees herself through his eyes – looking up at him ardently, her sugary skin flushed pink and slightly splotchy, eyes alight with wonder at the thought that he’s seen her and known her and chosen her.

His shoulder curves down, and he pulls himself out from her and gathers her face in another kiss, and the way he holds her is so full of meaning. He holds her tenderly like she’s precious and roughly like she’s his; he kisses her both full of knowledge and hungry for more, and she kisses him back both amazed that it is happening (cause my god is it happening), but also completely unsurprised, because of course it is happening. It was always going to happen, how else could this have played out? This was unavoidable. Inevitable. She could not have resisted the inertia of Colin Bridgerton if she had the force of will of an entire planet, and she would never have wanted to.

Penelope’s entirely deranged post-coital musings about the nature and quality of predeterminism are interrupted by Colin’s voice.

“Holy shit.”

“Uh-huh,” she replies with a grin.

“Holy shit.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

“Maybe you were right, Pen, maybe I have never fucked before.” She laughs. “That was… that was something else.” She raises her hand for a high-five, and he complies with a broad, dazed smile. Then he leans over a bit and peels the condom off. “Where can I–?”

“By the bathroom door.”

He steps off the bed, away from her, and gently drops it into the bin. It makes a little crinkle sound in the plastic bag.

“I’m just gonna… clean up a bit. Whew. Want some water?”

She gives a dorky thumbs up.

“Cool.” Colin steps into the bathroom and flicks the little light on. She hears the tap water hush against the porcelain sink. Penelope grabs a pillow against her body and rolls onto her side, the better to look at his arse. Paler than the rest of his body, revealing his true English colour. Smooth. Tight. My god, this is her boyfriend. Her best friend.

Her best friend’s brother.

The truth of what’s happened finally hits her. She pulls the pillow over her face and moans into it.

“Nooo-ooo!”

“You alright?”

“Coliiiin,” she says, her voice warbling a bit.

“Yeah?”

“Colin, we forgot about Eloise!”

He pads back over to the bed and she feels him place his hand gently on the top of her head.

“She’s… god, she’s gonna be so mad at me.” She squishes her head further into the pillow, engulfing her face in the soft, worn cotton.

“Why would she be mad at you?” he asks, as he guides the glass of water into her hand.

She tips her head up from the cushion to look at him. His eyes shine with concern, brow furrowed slightly. She takes an anxious little sip of water. “Because I’ve had a crush on you for years and I never told her and she hates secrets and change and she’s gonna lose it.” She takes another sip. “Remember when she found out about Whistle At Moi? She didn’t talk to me for months!”

“Pen, that’s not going to happen.”

“Yes it is!” she wails.

He runs his fingers through his hair, shaking loose a little shower of perspiration. He is so fucking hot, even when gross and sweaty. Indescribably rude. How can she possibly keep this from Eloise? She presses her face back into the pillow.

“It’s not going to happen because she already knows,” he mumbles.

Penelope looks up at him. He looks embarrassed.

“What?”

“She knows that I fancy you. Actually, all my siblings know.”

She sits up.

“They’ve all known for months. Since the Buck’s Night.”

Penelope has another sip of water. Then a gulp. She reflects, briefly, on what each of them said to her during her interviews with them as she compiled the memory book for Colin, and feels, not for the first time tonight, entirely seen. “Nosey fuckers!”

“Yeah,” he laughs. Colin pulls back the duvet cover and crawls into the bed, and Penelope scrambles in beside him. “Yeah, that’s them. Downright annoying, sometimes. They mean well, but sometimes I wish they’d just be honest.”

“This coming from you? Colin, you should have told me you liked me.”

“I should have.” He pushes a strand of hair behind her ear and kisses her gently on the cheek. It is such a soft gesture that Penelope’s annoyance seems to melt away almost instantly. It occurs to her that that may have been his intention in kissing her that way, but she is too caught in the feeling of it to care. Probably not a great omen that he can sway her so quickly. “But you should have told me about the kiss.”

Now it is Penelope’s turn to distract, so she kisses him directly. He tastes of her cunt. Ludicrously attractive thing for Colin Bridgerton to taste like. “Maybe you’re right,” she allows. “But consider this: if I had told you about the kiss, then you never would have had anything to prove, and if you had nothing to prove, you wouldn’t have made me come twice tonight.”

“Penelope, I need you to listen to me very carefully,” he says. “I am going to make you come so many more times tonight.”

Reader: he did.

*

The tits 🗻: boom city

The wits 🧠: oh pen

The wits 🧠: not on christmas

The wits 🧠: al booty called you??

The tits 🗻: NO

The wits 🧠: YOU booty called HIM!!???

The tits 🗻: NO

The wits 🧠: wait

The wits 🧠: wait was it not al

The wits 🧠: PEN

@Penelope Featherington sent a photo

The wits 🧠: IS THAT MY FUCKING BROTHER

The tits 🗻: he said you already knew

The wits 🧠: OH HELL FUCKING YEAH LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The tits 🗻: hahahahahahaha

The wits 🧠: THIS IS THE BEST CHRISTMAS PRESENT IN HISTORY

The wits 🧠: LOSING MY MIND

The tits 🗻: same tbh

The tits 🗻: slightly annoyed at you that you knew and didn’t tell me

The wits 🧠: 😬

The tits 🗻: but I do not care that much because I feel so fucking alive and happy rn

The wits 🧠: YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH BOOOOOOOOOIIIIIIIIII

The wits 🧠: so happy for you!!! this rules!!!!!!!!!

The tits 🗻: okay gonna go return to sexual bliss

The wits 🧠: ew ew ew ew ew brother sex

The wits 🧠: but also

The wits 🧠: WOO HOO FUCK YES!!!!!! PEN SEX

The wits 🧠: god turns out I am CONFLICTED about this

The wits 🧠: pen?

The wits 🧠: ah whatever you little lovebirds