The Gingerbread Series - Benedict Cumberbatch x Reader

#6 "I'm thinking... your place or mine?"

I know you’re all HUGELY interested in the comings and goings of my life, which is why each chapter comes peppered with these terrific little updates :P It’s Sick Day number 2 today, because it turns out patients don’t like their student doctors to be snotty balls of walking disease that sneeze whilst conducting their physical examinations. Who knew?! :P

Good news for writing, bad news for… well, the rest of my life.

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It turns out that to write a love story, all you need is a little inspiration.

You had planned to just have a relaxing evening getting on with a few domestic chores, a small dinner and an early night. It’s now 2am and your fingers are still whizzing over the laptop keys like they have a mind of their own. You’ve written nearly 8000 words in the last 6 hours, pausing only to exchange text messages with Ben and Izzie.

From the sound of things, Ben had a wonderful afternoon catching up with his family. He’d even sent a photo of him holding Thomas (and Romeo the bear). The expression on his face had been one of pure relaxed contentment.

Izzie on the other hand, had listed the various household implements that she felt she might use as instruments of torture on her mother-in-law. From the sound of things their stay for the renovation was not going well.

Your eyes are beginning to sting with tiredness and strain from looking at the computer screen, but your mind is still hyperactively spinning with ideas. You’re going to have to call it a night soon and you resolve to jot the remaining ideas down in your notepad in bed rather than letting them run away with you indefinitely.

As you stand, various joints in your body crack and pop from the sudden change in posture. You stretch languidly, enjoying the sensation after sitting still for so long. Padding through to the kitchen, you make some hot chocolate in your favourite mug to take off to bed with you. As you wait for the kettle to boil, you peer out of the window at the bright skyline of Canary Wharf. It’s a clear, cold night and silver frost covers the roads, almost thick enough to look like snow. The iconic tower of 1 Canada Square dominates the view, the tallest of the buildings in the district. Even when the curtains are closed, the flashing aircraft warning light shines into your flat with a constant blink--blink--blink. In the distance you can hear the faint squeal of metal on metal; the wheels of the Docklands Light Railway trains on their tracks as they return to the depot at Poplar. These quirks of the area have become familiar and are, in their own way, almost homely. You’ve found that focusing on these little things has helped you embrace London more and think less about what you left behind.

Your parents inspired a love of travelling in you from a young age, fostering your imagination with stories of adventures abroad; tales of colourful cultures and foreign places. As far back as you can remember there were family holidays to discover these places you’d learnt about. One of your earliest memories is the bustle and smell of the baazars of Cairo; hot dry air carrying exotic spices, and the tang of leather and shisha smoke. However, after your parents divorced, travelling to spend time between the two of them became more of a chore, associated with guilt, disloyalty, and constant arguments. You soon craved consistency, and your passion for exploring quickly extinguished.

The demise of your parents’ relationship drove your need to put down roots. A longing for stability coloured your choices and you relished the predictability of following the path society expected of you: finish school, get a job, fall in love, get married, have children and a house with a white picket fence.  Life would be perfect; albeit in a mundane, safe kind of way.

So there you were, making your way through The Great Life Plan with only minor detours – you’d finished school, worked some jobs, quit some jobs, fallen in love, written a book … and then, as is always the way, fate decided it had other ideas and on one warm evening in May, your world had been turned upside down. Your reaction was, quite literally, to run away.