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After spending four hours agonising over a commission with a deadline quickly looming over his head and then six whole hours at his mother’s house with the entire Bridgerton clan — yes, every last sodding one managed to make it to Mum’s for Sunday lunch, which always somehow turned into staying the whole day because no one was strong enough to survive Violet Bridgerton’s disappointed mother look — Benedict would like nothing more than to fall face first into his mattress and take a nap that will inevitably fuck up his already abysmal sleep schedule.
Even the idea of waking up at one in the morning with no hope of getting back to sleep was not enough to stop him.
No, Benedict decided, nothing was going to keep him from his bed.
Well, nothing, except apparently Sophie Baek standing in his room — he had definitely closed the door before he left — as she held one of his sketchbooks in her slender hands, staring intently at the pages.
Which honestly Benedict would be fine with, if it was one of his regular sketchbooks he leaves scattered about all over their flat and she just wanted to return it to his room.
However, without needing to check, Benedict knows this is not any of those sketchbooks.
This is The Sketchbook.
The one that doubles as his dream journal. The one where he draws every dream. Even the salacious ones.
Even the ones with her. (And, oh God, there are so many.)
“Sophie,” he manages to squeak out, voice strangled and desperate.
Sophie yelps loudly, jumping at his voice, the sketchbook falling from her hands and clattering to the ground.
If there was some sort of forgiving power out there in the universe, some ethereal being that was on his side, the book would have snapped closed on impact and he would never have to know what she saw.
Instead, the book lands wide open, forcing Benedict to stare at his own work.
God, why did he not draw them abstract? Why in the world did he insist on realism with these sketches out of all of them? Why not draw from emotion instead?
Well, it couldn’t be said this sketch was emotionless. Quite the opposite, in fact.
There Sophie was, her face so painstakingly detailed there was no denying it was her, sprawled across their couch.
His head between her thighs.
Christ, what the hell was wrong with him?
“Benedict!” Sophie’s high-pitched voice manages to pull his gaze away from the horrifying realisation of what she has seen, but that only means now he has to look at her, which feels like absolute torture.
Her face is pink, he notes as though his brain refuses to acknowledge how mortifying this moment is. Not as burning red as his surely is, but a rosy pink that in any other circumstance he would love to paint.
Oh yes, that would go swimmingly.
Sophie, darling, I know you just found my naughty little dream sketchbook where you feature quite heavily, but would you be a chum and sit in this chair by the window so I might paint you? The lighting is so beautiful over here.
Bloody Hell.
“I—“ He watches as her mouth moves as she tries to form words, honestly unsure of what he is even hoping to hear. “I-I’m sorry! I didn’t mean— It was just there— It was academic curiosity!”
“Academic curiosity?” He echoes back, the words mangled as they come out of his throat.
“Yes!” Her voice is rather high, Benedict somehow manages to observe. “It was just there, and it looked different from all your others and—“
Well, that much is true. It was probably foolish of him to make this sketchbook stand out from the others, but when he started it the idea made sense. It was different, and Benedict’s art had always been an extension of himself, so making this one feel special had just felt right. Now, however, that Sophie had seen some of his most closely guarded thoughts in startling detail, he thinks he could’ve probably been more discreet.
At least he didn’t decorate it with scribbles of Benedict + Sophie encased in a heart, although given the contents, he might as well have.
Even considering all of that, it doesn’t explain why she was in his room in the first place, and just when he’s about to ask after that, she opens her mouth and whatever he was about to say disappears on his tongue in an instant.
“Is this— Do you— You think about me like this?”
Oh, fuck.
God, his life is over.
Could the ground not just swallow him whole? A freak lightning strike? A God smiting him from the Heavens? (Really, any God would do, this is no time to be picky.) Truly, anything at all.
He waits but no such luck.
And she’s still staring at him with those deep, beautiful eyes he could get lost in.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
What can he possibly say to fix this?
“Sophie,” he tries, voice low and desperate while his pulse pounds in his ears.
She glances away from him and Benedict can swear he feels cracks starting to form on his heart.
He watches, helpless, as Sophie kneels down. And even when he is the one who should be on his knees begging with her to let him explain, she still takes so much care as she carefully picks his sketchbook up off the floor.
She is tender with it, smoothing the pages and closing the book softly. Sophie has always been the most supportive person in his life when it comes to his art, always encouraging him even when he feels like tossing his works out the window, and the thought that he has possibly now ruined that is threatening to tear him apart.
Sophie stands back up and gently places the book back where he had left it, and when she turns around to look at him again, there is something in her gaze he can’t make out.
And then, without another word, she leaves.
It is highly unsurprising, Benedict had been awaiting the moment she would inevitably run away from him since the moment he saw her with his book, but his heart still pounds and he can feel a mix of panic and anxiety swirling in his gut.
He runs after her.
“Sophie, wait! God, I’m so sorry, please just let me… explain?”
His pleading peters off as he comes to a halt in the living room, where she is not storming out of the flat, but instead sitting on the couch.
That sense of panic in his gut morphs into something else entirely seeing her lounging so prettily on the cushions.
Jesus, not now.
He stares at her, perplexed at what to do, until inevitably she breaks the silence for him.
“Show me.”
“What?” Benedict chokes out, his voice so hoarse and loud he flinches at the tone.
“You thought about it.” Sophie says from where she is perched, and he actually has to fight to pay attention to her words, his head spinning and his heart pounding. “About me. About us. Now I want you to show me.”
Is she tricking him? She must be, right? There is no way she’s saying what he thinks he’s saying.
And yet, somehow, his legs carry him forward until he’s standing in front of her, his eyes desperately searching her face for something.
She nips at her bottom lip as she tilts her head back so she can keep her eyes on him, and it’s just when he notices there’s something warm — no, something hot, something absolutely smoldering — in her gaze that she speaks again.
“On your knees, Ben.”
And this is when Benedict knows he must be dreaming again.
This is when he knows any minute now he will wake with a start, panting as he scrambles for his sketchbook, holding onto the memory until he can eternalise it on paper.
It will be a rush of emotions and then it will all slowly fade away.
Just another dream.
“Ow!”
“Ben!” Sophie exclaims, her strong gaze faltering as a laugh gets caught in her throat as she watches him flinch.
Benedict stares at his arm, the skin he had pinched between two fingers red and angry.
Not another dream. Real.
This is real.
“Sorry, I just—“ He looks between his arm and her face, trying to wade through the mess in his head, trying to understand how he went from wanting a nap to this. “Sophie—“
His voice is well and truly fucked, cracking and desperate and confused, and he doesn’t even know what he can even manage to say, but then Sophie reaches for him, her fingers tangling with his, and his heart jumps in his chest.
She tugs him forward and he follows without a thought.
He doesn’t get down on his knees, instead she guides him toward her and he slides on top of her, the warmth and shape of her beneath him making him dizzy with want.
He wants her beneath him and on top of him and laying next to him and he still can’t fathom that this is real.
He’s not even sure what this is. She found his drawings that were never supposed to see the light of day and now she’s on the couch with him and running her fingers through his hair and—
Oh, she’s running her fingers through his hair. That feels nice.
They’re quiet for a few minutes, nothing but the sound of their breathing as they lay there. And it’s this that reminds him that Sophie knows him better than anyone else, she knows when he needs silence, she knows that her presence calms him.
She also knows that running her fingers through his hair for a few minutes will inevitably draw out an appreciative noise from him, purring like a little cat in her lap.
He might be embarrassed if he had any embarrassment left in him, but apparently he has maxed out for the day.
“I dream about you, too.” Sophie says after a while, her voice so soft he almost wants to pinch himself again to make sure it’s still real.
(He doesn’t, the pain in his arm was not worth it.)
“You do?” He asks, curiosity in his voice that stumbles and falls as she shifts slightly to allow him to settle further against him, her thighs brushing his sides.
Seriously, how is this not a dream? Even his life isn’t this good.
“I mean, not always as graphically as you apparently do—“
“Sophie,” Benedict groans, burrowing his face somewhere between her shoulder and her chest, the scent of her invading his system even as he wallows.
She has the audacity to laugh at him, but she makes up for it by scratching his scalp with her nails and making him groan in an entirely different manner.
“But I do,” Sophie admits in a whisper and his heart nearly stops.
He moves his head to look up at her and she is just so beautiful. Her soft, silky hair. The gentle way she looks back at him. The perfect curve of her lips. The beauty marks on her face that make her look kissed by angels.
She’s ethereal.
He wants to paint her and kiss her and just watch her and—
“Wait,” Benedict manages to croak out as he realises something. “What do you mean, not always?”
“Hmm?” Sophie murmurs in response, but it doesn’t matter because suddenly Benedict is hastily putting puzzle pieces together in his mind, his throat dry when those pieces finally come together all at once.
“You said not always as graphically, which means that you—“
Sophie lifts an eyebrow at him in response, her mouth twitching upwards like she is trying and failing to hold back a smile.
“Oh,” he says, cheeks warm.
And then his eyes light up and he grins.
“Oh, Sophie,” he breathes, and his hands, which had been resting at her sides, are crawling up, dipping under the hem of her jumper and dragging it up until he exposes the skin underneath, so soft and smooth beneath his hands.
(Somewhere in the back of his mind Dream Benedict is giving him a high five.)
“You are going to tell me about every,” he presses a kiss to her stomach. “Last,” a kiss to her hip. “Dream,” he tugs the waistband of her leggings down just slightly, delighted when she tries to bite back a moan, enough so he can leave a kiss at the vee of her thigh. “And then—“
“Then?” Sophie asks, her voice nothing but a breathy whisper that he wants to hear forever.
He smiles against her skin.
“And then we are going to make each of them come true.”