benedict bridgerton has been looking for a new muse, where better to look than the delicate fingers of the new harpist who he keeps seeing around town?
if he is apollo, then maybe this time he will catch this falling icarus
| benedict bridgerton x...
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Frederick tugs Cornelius deeper into the throngs of the party, further away from Romil who had been stuck close to his side in an attempt not to get lost in the mass amount of people pulsing against the walls. Alas, he is swallowed up by the crowd before Cornelius can free himself of Frederick's tight clutches. A crowd so large it feels as if one steady heartbeat. Music tumbles from every corner, someone playing guitar in one room, someone else playing the cello, splintering the increasing volume of the chatter so that every sound is another rising wave washing right over Cornelius. Every painting that lines the walls has some sort of female cleavage staring back at him and Cornelius averts his eyes. Crass men making crass drawings. At least he can appreciate some Michelangelo. He is jostled out of the way by some poet with a thick beard and a very heavy velvet skirt, who lets their eyes travel over Cornelius' body – hardly hidden by the shirt he had to mostly unbutton as soon as he walked in, sweltering with the heat of the candles lit all around the many rooms of the beautiful townhouse – before they smirk and disappear into the crowd. Like a fly into the night.
He has never been to a party quite like this.
There seems to be a Roman theme if the music and women are anything to go by, stuck in white togas and with their hair piled high on their heads. They're pulled into the laps of greedy men and hungry women, skin lapped at by wine-stained tongues, bodies dripping with the paint of the artists who clamour to make sense of a world gone awry in their vision. Henry Granville had deemed it his very own bacchanalia, throwing his arms wide as his three new guests arrived, and not caring to introduce them to the already too many guests pushed against his walls. Cornelius hasn't seen the artist since.
A crystal glass is pushed into his hand, filled to the brim with gin that drips down his throat like syrup. It is too much at once, especially since he hasn't eaten since late lunch – not his fault that a late night had indeed resulted in a very late morning – and his head pulses as a sudden wooziness washes over him. It is much better to deal with this already thrumming crowd. Soon enough, Frederick is gone too, dragged into a room full of artists so he can strip down to nothing and lay himself bare to the charcoal between their fingers. The door is left open, but knowing parties like this – which Cornelius used to haunt in his youth, before he was, of course, stripped of everything he ever knew – it will soon be closed and he will not see Frederick for the rest of the night.
He should find Romil before he, too, is pulled into some secret sex party he is unprepared for.
Cornelius tries to traverse through the crowd. Jostled this way and that way. Past unsuspecting people kissing beneath beautiful paintings of naked couples. Past poets arguing over Byron, and Hazlitt, and if Wordsworth is past his prime. Past musicians singing the praises of the most well-known composers in the world and their neighbour next door who they overheard playing the piano one night. Past artists, and writers, and comedians, and philosophers, and everybody kissing, kissing, kissing. Cornelius grabs another drink from the hand of a woman currently sandwiched between two rather bulky men, rather enjoying her position as her chest is kissed and bruised and bite-marked. He tilts his head back and downs the gin.
