38Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpYxMw3kPaP38Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7u2KfP9haW
Benedict woke to light.
Sunlight pressed through the studio window, turning the dust in the air to a haze of gold. He blinked, momentarily lost. His back ached from the awkward angle of the settee, the room was cold, but beside him...
Warmth. Weight on his chest. Breath against his neck.
Caspian.
Everything returned at once: the kiss, the closeness, the tears, the confessions. Benedict went still, afraid to move and shatter the fragile thing around them.
Caspian slept with his face pressed to Benedict's shoulder, one arm curved around his waist. In sleep he looked younger, more exposed. The lines of tension had smoothed from his brow, his lips were slightly parted, and his lashes cast shadows across pale cheeks.
He was still here.
It felt impossible. After a month of waiting, after the despair, to wake and find this was not a dream. That Caspian was real, warm, alive, here.
Benedict drew his fingers slowly through Caspian's hair. The dark strands were dishevelled, soft to the touch. Caspian murmured something indistinct and pressed closer.
A tenderness so acute it made breathing difficult spread through Benedict's chest.
Beyond the window, London was stirring. The cries of street vendors, the clatter of hooves on cobblestone, the bark of a dog somewhere below. An ordinary morning. The city going about its life, indifferent to two men in an abandoned studio.
Caspian stirred at last. He exhaled slowly and opened his eyes, grey-blue and blurred with sleep. They found Benedict's face.
A moment of confusion, then recognition.
"Good morning," Benedict murmured, smiling.
Caspian blinked, as though he could not quite believe. He raised his hand and touched Benedict's cheek with uncertain fingers, testing the reality of it.
"You... I..." His voice was rough with sleep. "This truly happened?"
"It happened." Benedict caught his hand and pressed his lips to the palm. "You're here. I'm here. All of it is real."
Something moved through Caspian's eyes: relief threaded with fear.
"I thought I would wake alone," he said quietly. "That it had been a dream."
"Not a dream." Benedict drew him closer and kissed his brow. "I won't leave you."
Caspian pressed his face against Benedict's neck.
"I had forgotten what this was like," he said, barely above a whisper. "Waking in someone's arms. Knowing you were waited for."
Something ached in Benedict's chest.
"You had better grow accustomed to it," he said, and meant it. "Because I have no intention of going anywhere."
They lay in silence for several minutes more, simply holding one another. Then Caspian's stomach made an embarrassingly eloquent sound.
Benedict laughed.
"When did you last eat?"
Caspian pulled back, colour rising in his pale cheeks.
"Yesterday at noon. Bread, and..." He frowned. "Perhaps earlier than that."
"Good God." Benedict sat up and reached for his shirt. "Stay where you are. I'll bring food."
"Benedict, there's no need "
"There is every need." He fastened his buttons, shrugged on his coat. "I will not have you expire of hunger. Twenty minutes. Don't go anywhere."
The last words came out as something close to a plea.
Caspian held his gaze and nodded.
"I won't go. You have my word."
***
While Benedict was at the market, Caspian put himself in some semblance of order. He washed his face with cold water from the pitcher by the window, smoothed his disordered hair, dressed. His shirt and trousers were badly creased, but they would have to do.
He moved to the window and looked down at the street. Empty. No familiar faces, no watchful silhouettes in the mouth of the alley.
For now.
Caspian was under no illusion. This quiet would not hold. Sooner or later they would find him. They always did.
The door creaked. Benedict, back already, a basket over one arm.
***
He had been gone barely twenty minutes, yet he returned with a basket full of provisions: fresh bread, cheese, cold meat, apples, a bottle of milk.
Caspian stood at the window, dressed, though his hair was still in disarray. He turned sharply when Benedict entered, and the relief that crossed his face was so undisguised, so nakedly visible, that Benedict understood at once: Caspian had not truly believed he would come back.
"I told you I would," Benedict said, setting the basket on the table.
"I am not accustomed to trusting that," Caspian replied, with a honesty that landed quietly.
"Then we shall learn together."
They ate on the floor, backs against the wall. Caspian had refused the table, said it felt too formal, too much like ordinary life, the kind he no longer possessed. The basket sat between them. Caspian ate with the hunger of someone who had been going without, and Benedict watched him, and a strange, settled calm moved through him.
It was so simple. So unremarkable. Two people sharing a meal in the morning light. No grand gestures, no impassioned speeches. Only bread, and silence, and sun through the window.
For the first time in months, Benedict felt not like an artist consumed by his muse, but simply a man beside the one he loved.
"Tell me about yourself," he said, when Caspian finally slowed. "I want to know you."
Caspian wiped his hands on the edge of his shirt and looked toward the window, considering.
"What would you like to know?"
"Everything." Benedict smiled. "But we might begin somewhere smaller. Where did you grow up? Have you any family?"
The pause stretched. Caspian's fingers tightened in the fabric of his shirt, and something shuttered in his expression.
"I have no family," he said quietly. "Not any longer."
"Forgive me, I didn't mean to "
"It's all right." Caspian shook his head. "It is simply... a tender subject."
Benedict nodded and did not press. He changed course.
"Then tell me something else. What do you love? What did your life look like before you came to London?"
The tension in Caspian's shoulders eased, fractionally.
"I loved to read," he said, and there was something almost nostalgic in it. "The Greek philosophers. The Roman poets. I used to dream of becoming a scholar. Teaching, translating ancient texts."
"That is a fine dream."
"It was." Caspian looked away. "Life arranged things differently."
"What happened?"
The silence that followed was long. Caspian gazed at the window, and Benedict could see it in him: the pull between wanting to speak and the fear of being known.
"I made a mistake," he said at last, his voice measured and careful. "I allowed myself to be too open. Too honest with myself." A bitter half-smile. "In a world that has no patience for honesty."
"What do you mean?"
"I believed I could stop hiding. That I could simply be what I am." Caspian pressed his fingers harder into the fabric. "That there might be people who would accept me. As it turned out, I was mistaken."
"Someone betrayed you?"
"The whole world betrayed me, Benedict." Pain threaded through his voice. "The moment I dared to be myself."
Benedict understood. Of course. Caspian was the same as he was. He loved men. And someone had found out.
"Caspian," he began carefully. "If we are to be together, if I am to protect you, I need to understand what I am protecting you from. Who."
"No." Caspian turned to him sharply. "That is precisely why you must not know. The less you know, the safer you are."
"But,"
"Please don't press me." There was a plea beneath the words. "I cannot. Not yet."
Benedict looked at him: at the desperation in his eyes, the trembling of his hands in the fabric of his shirt. And he understood. To push would accomplish nothing. Caspian would only close himself further.
"Very well," he said. "Not today. But know this: when you are ready to tell me, I will listen. Without judgment."
Caspian nodded without raising his eyes.
They finished breakfast in a thoughtful, unhurried quiet. Benedict brushed the crumbs from his coat and moved the basket aside; Caspian drifted back to the window.
"I must go," he said at last, not turning. "Soon they will start looking for me."
"Who?" Benedict could not help himself.
"People who ought not to know where I am." Caspian straightened, adjusting his coat. "I was careful last night. I doubled back, changed direction, took the long way through the lanes. But a watch does not sleep indefinitely. Sooner or later, they will pick up the trail."
Cold moved down Benedict's spine.
"Someone is watching you?"
"Always." Caspian turned, and his expression held a quiet bitterness. "I told you. I am cursed. Everything I touch, in time, falls apart. Which is why..." He took a step toward the door. "Which is why, perhaps, I should not come back."
"No." Benedict was across the room before he had thought to move, stepping into his path. "You will not do that again. You will not simply vanish."
"Benedict "
"Promise me." He took Caspian by the shoulders. "Promise me you will come back."
Caspian looked at him for a long moment. Fear and longing fought in his eyes.
"If I come back," he said slowly, "you will be in danger. The people who follow me are without mercy. If they find out about you "
"Then we will be careful." Benedict's thumbs pressed gently against his shoulders. "We meet here, at the studio. At night, when no one is watching. I will tell no one. Not even my family."
"It is too great a risk "
"Greater than losing you again?" Benedict leaned forward until their brows nearly touched. "Caspian, I spent a month searching for you. A month half out of my mind. Do you truly think I will let you walk out of that door?"
"You don't understand how dangerous this is."
"Then explain it to me."
Caspian closed his eyes, his breath unsteady.
"I cannot." His voice broke slightly. "If you knew... you would despise me."
"Never."
"You cannot promise that."
"I can." Benedict brought his hands up to cup Caspian's face. "And I do. Whatever you have done, whatever came before, I will not turn from you."
Tears gathered in Caspian's eyes.
"You are too good," he said, barely audible. "Too untouched. And I... I am ruined. Broken beyond repair."
"Then we shall be broken together." Benedict kissed him gently, without urgency. "Caspian, listen to me. I love you. Not your past. Not your mistakes. You, as you are, exactly as you stand before me."
"Benedict..." The word fractured.
"Come back to me." He held him tightly. "Swear to me you will come back."
Caspian pulled back and looked at him, his expression worn through, torn between impulses he could not reconcile.
"You don't understand," he breathed. "These people will not stop. They have already "
He stopped. Pressed his lips together.
"What?" Benedict took his hands. "What have they done?"
"There was a man," Caspian said. He would not meet Benedict's eyes. "After Oxford, he helped me. He hid me, gave me money to get away. And then they found him."
"And?"
He fell silent, eyes closing.
"Caspian?"
"He was found dead a week later." The voice was flat, emptied of everything. "Officially, an accident. He fell from a staircase. Broke his neck."
The blood drained from Benedict's face.
"Good God,"
"This is why I cannot come back." Caspian pulled his hands free. "This is why you must forget me. Because if he finds out about you..." His voice wavered. "I could not survive another death on my conscience."
"Caspian "
"No!" He stepped back. "Everyone who helped me, everyone who showed me the smallest kindness, they all suffered for it. I will not allow you to be next."
"And I will not allow you to leave!" Benedict caught him by the shoulders. "Damn it all, Caspian, I am not some helpless boy who can be kept from the truth! I am a Bridgerton. My family has connections, influence, resources. If there is a way to protect you, we will find it."
"Your family cannot protect you from the people who hunt me."
"Then tell me who they are. Give me the chance to try."
Caspian looked at him, tears running freely now.
"I cannot," he said. "I cannot put you in that path. Even if it means losing you forever."
He turned toward the door.
"Caspian, wait"
But he was already crossing the threshold. He stopped there, on the edge of it, with his back to the room.
"I love you, Benedict." His voice broke. "Know that. Whatever comes next. That is why I must go. Because love means protecting the one you love. Even when it shatters them."
"You will shatter me if you leave." Benedict moved toward him. "Caspian, please "
He shook his head.
"Goodbye."
And was gone.
Benedict went after him. But Caspian was already halfway down the stairs. By the time Benedict reached the street, he had vanished around the corner.
Gone into the maze of London's lanes like smoke, like something that had never been entirely solid.
***
Benedict stood in the middle of the studio, surrounded by portraits of Caspian, and felt the full, tangled weight of it.
The pain of watching him leave again.
The cold terror of knowing men capable of murder were hunting him.
And beneath both, steady and immovable, a resolve that would not be reasoned with.
He crossed to the window and looked down at the street. Empty. No lurking figures, no watchers in the shadows.
For now.
He knew it could not last. Whoever followed Caspian would find this place eventually. They would trace the steps, see what needed to be seen, and report back.
And then what? Engineer an accident? Break a neck on a staircase and call it misfortune?
The cold deepened.
But behind the fear rose something fiercer: a fury, bright and unrelenting, and beneath it a resolve that felt almost frightening in its clarity.
Benedict looked at the portrait he had painted after their first kiss. Those storm-coloured eyes, full of fear and something that wanted desperately to be hope.
"I will not give up," he said, to the empty room, to the painted face looking back at him. "I will find a way to protect you. I will find whoever is hunting you. And I will stop them. Whatever it costs."
Outside, London went on as it always did. Carriages rattled over cobblestones, vendors called their prices, children ran through the alleys below.
And in a studio in Bloomsbury, Benedict Bridgerton stood among the portraits of the man he loved and made himself a vow: this story would not end in tragedy.
He would find the answers. He would find whoever hunted Caspian through these streets.
And he would make them answer for it.38Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsC4zKoTRUZ
and then Add to home screen.