#catherine x leo voronsky

[ticklishraspberries]

Soft and Sweet (Catherine x Leo)

Summary: A stolen moment between Leo and Catherine. (Happy birthday to my lovely friend @signinandgetkinky!! Sorry it's so short, I wanted to get it out on your actual b-day so I didn't have much time. You wrote me a Catherine/Leo fic for my birthday, so I’m very excited to return the favor!! Thank you for the years of friendship, headcanons, media recommendations, and our in-person hangouts. Love you Jay, have a great day!! xoxo) This work contains sexual themes, minors do not interact.

While Catherine could be crass, arrogant, stubborn, and even cruel, she rarely showed these qualities when Leo took her to bed.

In her apartments, wrapped in those sheets, with Leo, Catherine was not a scorned and scheming wife, nor was she an aspiring empress. She was simply herself, in all her wit and beauty, lost in him.

Of course, she did not always lose herself in the ways of pleasure. Often, it would be in his conversation, the way they could talk for hours on end, spanning a wide range of philosophical topics. She could get lost in the sight of him, watching his chest rise and fall as he breathed, as he slept.

And sometimes, she was lost in laughter.

“Leo!” she shrieked, her voice reaching a pitch she had not known possible before he learned of her sensitivity, and sought to exploit it.

“Yes, darling?” he asked, his smirk as attractive as it was irritating as his quick fingers danced over her sides. 

Catherine attempted to reply, but her words were drowned by giggles that bubbled up and flowed like water from her lips. She could not remember a time she laughed so hard, so freely, or a time in which she felt so safe in powerlessness. In her marriage, the bed was not a safe place, nor a fun one. With Leo, though, the bed was just one of the many places he made her feel loved, respected, cared for, and protected.

His stubbled cheek grazed her belly, only adding to the sensations that sent her nerves aflame, and her hips jerked from side to side, a lame attempt at escaping. Really, she didn’t want to. Although he had left her breathless, flustered, and prone against the mattress, she felt no desire to stop him. She would have gladly spent her day there, naked and laughing beneath him.

Perhaps he made her soft. Marial and Orlo both seemed to resent what they had, as it distracted her from more important matters, such as overthrowing her husband or ruling Russia.

But with all her ambition, she was still human. She still craved love, and touch, and sex, and connection. And, apparently, laughter. While the touch could easily be described as torture, Leo never overdid it. The moment she felt overwhelmed with a lack of breath, an ache in her middle, or a desire for it to stop, he somehow sensed it.

Leo knew things about her without her needing to voice it. He could tell when she was angry, on the verge of tears, and he knew how to comfort her. He knew when she wanted him, and always knew how to please her. 

And the first time he ran his fingers down her body and it resulted in a small gasp, he somehow knew that it had been different than her other noises in bed, and had easily deduced that she was ticklish.

He had grinned then, too, all smug and beautiful. He had taken his time discovering all her sensitive places, and she had whined and squirmed, yet loved every second of it. And although she never confirmed that she liked it, Leo just knew.

He knew and loved her when she ranted and raved, and he knew and loved her when she fell apart beneath his touch. He saw the strength in her aspirations, and saw the bravery in her surrender to him. After her marriage bed had grown cold and cruel, Leo had taught her that sex was pleasurable, good, and safe.

His fingers eventually slowed, and her laughter died down to heaving breaths. His lips came to meet hers, his hands grabbing with a purposefully not-ticklish touch, his intentions set on taking her apart in other ways.

Her giggling was replaced by sighs and moans of pleasure, and there was still a few hours until Catherine would be called away by her duties.

So yes, she was crass, arrogant, and stubborn. But she was also soft, sweet, and sexual. She was absolutely smitten with him, entirely in love.

And he felt the same.

[marquisoforder]

low quality memes for a high quality show

[elfie4306]

Don't rewatch The Great, because you have to watch the beauty of Catherine and Leo's relationship unfold, all the while knowing how it ends for them, and it hurts.

[feylla]

am i the only one who like shipped catherine and leo

[shaunashipmn]

THE GREAT ⇢ 1x04

[elyjm1313]

I'm rewatching The Great after watching season 2 and I'm on S1E4 and Leo really is a great match for Catherine. He may distract her a bit from the whole taking over Russia thing, but on a personal level he's exactly what she needs.

[meliorn]

All I wish is to hold Russia in one hand and you in the other.

[timeandspaceandstars]

Elle Fanning as Empress Catherine in The Great (2020)

[ladyxmacbeth]

Sometimes I wish we never met...

[constellationclarke]

"I never thought being doomed would feel so pleasant." Oh man this fucks me up

[carsontheleft]

All is well in the court of Peter

Summary: What to do when your tsar is the root of your problems?

Pairing: Georgina x Peter (mentioned), Georgina x Grigor, Catherine x Leo (mentioned)

Comment: I wrote this after watching 1x07 of The Great and found my musings confirmed in 1x08, haven’t watched the last two episodes yet, though.

//

The burning of betrayal hits him hard when he sees them; Georgina and Peter blatantly fucking on a random desk, not a care in the world.

Although he’d love to, Grigor doesn’t interrupt them, confronts them (her). It’s not his place. What the Emperor wants, he fucking gets, even if it’s his best friend’s wife.

He closes the door quietly, they didn’t even notice him, and stands, waves of hurt crashing over him. The moans and Georgina’s enthusiastic calls eventually drive him away, into the dark hallways of the palace to spend the night on his own once again.

Grigor really thought things would change with Catherine’s arrival. He hadn’t been as naïve as to truly believe Peter would let off Georgie, but he had hoped with the duty of producing an heir he’d be engaged elsewhere more often.

Instead, with the ever-growing frustration over his wife, Peter turned to them, and Georgie in particular, more often, robbing them of almost every second of time alone they had.

Trailing the hallways, Grigor knots his fingers together to keep them from shaking. He’d been so close, so close, to killing the brat. The fucking dog died, but the Emperor survived, what a miracle! While the fear of being found out usually drives Grigor to seek out Peter’s presence, it gives way to anger and frustration in moments like these, when he’s the third one out in his own bed, so to speak.

There had been a glimmer of hope with Peter’s ‘new me’ and his suddenly found sympathy for his wife and her ideas, and where he first enjoyed the fact that it took pressure from Georgina and him, he only realized today that he was the only one in his marriage who reveled in that circumstance.

Oh, how blind he had been to think Georgina needed to be saved from Peter, that she was being a martyr here. Her entertaining Peter wasn’t the rouse, it always had been their marriage.

The only reason Georgina had actually married him was his lawful place in Peter’s court, whereas she, were she to approach Peter on her own, would only be his concubine. But through Grigor she’s Countess Dymov, sporting that well-respected name like a string of pearls.

Sure, if Peter were to die, his place in court wouldn’t be virtually untouchable anymore, but Grigor believes that he could get into to Catherine’s good graces if he’d want to. He could stop being such an asshole to Orlo, since the Count is the ever-present voice in her ear, and that could save his position. He could be useful to her, engage in her outrageous ideas and the ridiculous goal to turn Russia into a second France.

He knows the people here, is as inherently Russian as the next servant, he understands politics and society, and more of military than Peter, which isn’t a real accomplishment, but still.

Grigor is about to turn another corner, when a slurring voice rips him out of his thoughts.

“Grigor!”

He stops and backtracks to the open door on his right.

It’s Leo, sitting on the ground of his quarters, propped up against a shelf and waving with a decanter of vodka.

“Another lonely soul traveling a cold, dark night. Join me, my friend, and let us be lonely together!”

Grigor doesn’t know Leo Voronsky particularly well, safe for his cock of course, but the prospect of walking the hallways until his feet bleed or the sun rises, depending on whichever comes first, isn’t more inviting than drowning his sorrows in alcohol. He’s Russian after all, and if there’s one thing they’re good at, it’s drowning stuff in alcohol.

He joins Leo silently, takes off his coat before sitting down beside him.

“The Emperor takes our hearts like he takes the heads of the Swedes”, Leo takes a long pull and looks at Grigor expectantly.

“Don’t be so fucking dramatic”, the Count takes the decanter, “He’s finally pleasuring his wife, like he was supposed to do all along.”

“In contrast to pleasuring your wife?”

Grigor isn’t sure what Leo wants to provoke with this jab, it’s not like Peter fucking Georgina is news to anyone in court and their horse. He just takes another swig.

“Was your marriage one of love, Count Dymov?”, Leo asks eventually when the decanter is more than half empty.

“I was under the impression it was, yes. As much love as you could hope for in court.”

“Then you might just know how I feel with all the sympathy the Emperor holds for his Empress.”

Despite the amount of alcohol in his veins, Grigor is on his feet in the blink of an eye, hauling Leo up at the lapels of his jacket and pushing him backwards into the bookshelf.

“Know how you feel? How you feel?! How long have you known her, huh? Two months? I’m married to Georgina; I took her when I could’ve had almost any other woman in this fucking country. And Peter? I’ve been at his beck and call all my life and he thanks me by taking my wife, marking her up like she is his and stringing me along on fucking leash!! Voronsky, you don’t have any fucking clue what heartache feels like.”

As sudden as the anger appeared it leaves his body again, leaving swaying against Leo.

“I had promised her my heart long before she said she loved me. Just looking at her sets my body on fire. I was her home, her confidante before the Emperor lived through this change of heart. And now? She shushes me and promises me her love, even though her mind and heart are elsewhere, she tells me she can’t when she thinks about how the Emperor took her breath away and set his lips to her pussy. I’m being cast away like a used-up toy. I think I do know what heartache feels like, my friend.”

When Grigor loosens his hold on Leo, the latter slips down to the ground, resuming his earlier position. Grigor does the same.

Leo reaches behind him and pulls yet another decanter from the shelf and offers it to Grigor as a truce. Grigor takes it.

“All is well in the court of Peter”, Leo mumbles when they clink the vessels together.

“Huzzah.”  

[shaunashipmn]

THE GREAT ⇢ 1x04 | MOSCOW MULE

[shaunashipmn]

THE GREAT ⇢ 1x04

To cry is very Russian. It is salty and vodka‐laced usually.

[shaunashipmn]

THE GREAT ⇢ 1x07 | A POX ON HOPE

I'm trying to do something big. You know that. And your cartoons don't help. Did you come? Yes. Good. 'Cause if you had not, my response would be out of all proportion. But now you did, I feel okay. And if Marial sucked your cock, would you lay limp? I suppose I would not. And do I have a choice to be in his bed? You do not. This is our life. You have grown close to him, then. It perhaps got to me. I love you. You fucking...fucking idiot! Nice of you to say. The first bit. Less so, the second.

[timeandspaceandstars]

Sebastian De Souza as Leo Voronsky in The Great (2020)

[timeandspaceandstars]

Sebastian De Souza as Leo Voronsky in The Great (2020)