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sailforvalinor · 1 year ago

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Joker and Ace: Jester's Privilege

Chapter 1

(Note: I didn't make this clear when I first posted it, but this IS a Doctor Who fic, albeit with completely original characters and in terms of plot, 70% independent of DW's main plot. But this does begin roughly during the events of NuWho Series 1.)

Bath, England, May 183-

Despite the fact that it was only an evening in mid-May, the air in Lord Ace’s grand ballroom was hot and stuffy. Perhaps it was because due to the excessive amount of people in the room, but Theodore Ace observed that, to him in particular, it seemed to be only exacerbated by the fact that he was stuck listening to his sister prattle on about another of her unlucky suitors.

Emmeline huffed. “If you were a good and attentive brother, Theodore, you would at least pretend to take a mild curiosity in an admirer of your sister.”

“Oh I do take a curiosity, truly,” Theodore said drily. “Though I cannot advise that you marry him.”

Emmeline’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh? But I have not even told you his name.”

“There‘s no need. I can already tell you that a gentleman so gullible as to be fooled by your charms is not fit to govern your household, he’ll be robbed blind by his own servants and not even notice until he has nothing to pay them with. Why, you wouldn’t have any silver for the wedding supper.”

Emmeline’s face flushed red with anger. Theodore knew he had likely gone too far this time—but he had forgotten in his time away how quickly her shallow flippancy angered him.

The arch of her eyebrows threatened a storm at any moment, but to his surprise, she showed an unusual display of restraint and calmed her brow. “Angeline,” Emmeline said instead, “I fear our brother has been studying the art of shrewishness while away at university.” She giggled. “Hardly a trait appropriate to his sex.”

“Or his office,” Angeline said. “Clergymen are meant to be amiable, Theodore, and that’s a quality that you have hardly displayed in the past ten years.”

“A quality I’ve hardly displayed to you,” Theodore corrected. “Just because you have never witnessed my amiability doesn’t mean I don’t possess it.”

“Then prove it,” Angeline said. “Stop moping in this corner and go ask one of those girls to dance. There is a lack of partners and you are a tolerable enough dancer—and, after all, this is our ball.”

Theodore took a sip of his wine. “Mm. I think not.”

“Surely you cannot stand to converse with us for the entire ball.”

Theodore gave a wry smile. “I think you’ll find that my tolerance for pain has only increased since you saw me last, dear sister.”

Emmeline huffed, fanning herself. “If you’re going to disgrace your family, Theo, could you at least be less boring about it? Run off with a duke’s wife or throw away all your allowance on betting on the races. Get discovered black-out drunk in an alley somewhere, I don’t care. I forgot how tiresome you are.”

“Emmeline,” Angeline hissed. “Mind your tongue.”

“Yes, Emmeline, heed your sister’s counsel,” a light, tittery voice concurred. Theodore looked up and hid his wince at the approach of Mrs. Ida Ace, formerly Ida Clemence, the most decided flirt and infamous socialite Bath had seen in the last three seasons. Her recent marriage to his oldest brother, Cecil, seemed to have hardly deterred her tendency towards flamboyance—he’d heard his sisters call her costume that night “perfectly lovely,” though he himself thought the violent shade of green of the feathers adorning her hair rather garish.

“If you’re going to snap up Sir Lambton as I advised, you can hardly let the knowledge get around to him that accomplished, respectable ladies such as yourself know of the indulgences some gentleman of their acquaintance partake in,” Ida said, while taking it upon herself to fix an ornament in Emmeline’s hair, which he could tell even Angeline found patronizing. “Even these walls have ears—isn’t that so, Theo?”

If Theodore had harbored any hopes of his brother having the taste to bring a sister into the family at least slightly more tolerable than the ones he had already, he had been sorely mistaken—Ida was everything his sisters admired and envied, and thus everything he despised. But while Angeline and Emmeline were merely shallow and petty, Ida was truly dangerous—the daughter of one of his father’s “business associates,” she had been working as an informant since she had come out into society when she was seventeen, knowledge he was only privy to due to some careful digging of his own. Given her jibe, she apparently had discovered (or his brother had told her) of the secret passages and panels behind the walls of this house—and of the time Theodore had spent in those walls as a child, playing what his father called “games” with a water glass and scribbled shorthand.

Theodore knew that rising to her bait was a terrible idea—so he rose to Emmeline’s instead. “If I am to be a disappointment, Emmy, I’ll do so on my own terms,” he said shortly. “Any entertainment you get out of it will be purely incidental on my part. I’m not a strung-up marionette dancing for your enjoyment.”

“Aren’t you?” Ida suddenly fixed him with a piercing, curious stare. “Why, that’s not what your dear brother tells me. Of course, he can be the most wicked liar—he loves to tease me—but I’m certain I’ve learnt to read him by now.”

Theodore felt his mouth go dry. He set down his wine glass on a nearby table for fear of snapping the stem.

He was luckily spared from giving a response by Emmeline, peering over the balcony’s railing, suddenly exclaiming, “Who on earth is that?”

“Who do you mean, Emmeline?” Angeline said, joining her.

“That girl, right there!” Emmeline nearly raised her hand to point, Angeline slapped her hand down.

Ida’s gaze snapped away from Theodore. “Oh yes, that’s what I came up here to tell you.” Her voice lowered into a confidential whisper. “That girl down there—“ she indicated someone below with a tilt of her head “—I didn’t recognize her, so I made some inquiries, but no one seems to have any idea who she is. And—“ she raised her eyebrows, eyes glittering with the anticipation of the shock she was about to instill in her audience “—she’s here without an escort.”

Both of his sisters whirled around and gasped.

“She’s here without a--” Angeline repeated dumbly.

“--what?” Emmeline exclaimed.

“Waltzed right in, bold as brass,” Ida said.

Emmeline leaned over the railing again. “Who is she?”

“Emmy, stop staring,” Angeline scolded, as she stared down into the ballroom with eyes rounder than porcelain saucers.

At any other time, Theodore would have blocked out this sort of chatter, but tonight he found his ears pricking. There were no strangers at his father’s balls, even if some of the guests thought of themselves as such. These gatherings were a dance in more than one sense of the word--a carefully constructed production of meetings, alliances, silent wars. There were no mistakes, no striking deviance planned or accounted for other than what color gown or the embarrassing amount of rouge Miss So-and-So was wearing.

So, a stranger, a young lady that no one recognized, and an unescorted one, at that, was more than just an item of gossip, it was something completely unheard of in his father’s circle--an anomaly.

As subtly as he could manage, Theodore edged forward and peered over his sisters’ heads down into the ballroom. He’d expected to have some trouble finding the lady they spoke of, but he spotted her immediately--a girl walking along the edge of the ballroom, well out of the way of the dancers whirling in the center of the floor. It was impossible to miss her, for she cut a broad swath through the crowd, those around her backing away from her and attempting to hide the way they gawked at her with varying degrees of success. They did not stare for her beauty--though she was most certainly very fashionably dressed, wearing an elegant, champagne-colored gown with the lowered waist that had become so recently popular of late and pale flaxen curls piled on her head and tumbling over her shoulders--no, they stared because they all knew what he knew, that she did not belong here. She hardly seemed to notice how they gasped and whispered behind unfurled fans, hands clasped demurely in front of her and gazing at her surroundings with delight and curiosity.

Theodore took all this in at a mere glance, but as if she could feel herself being watched, the girl stopped in her tracks--then, slowly, curiously turned her gaze to the balcony where he stood.

Theodore nearly jumped back out of view, a jolt of electricity running through him that he did not quite understand the source of. Of course she could not have known he was looking at her; that was impossible. He didn’t even know that it was he she was looking at. He swallowed, astonished at his own confusion.

Slowly, the voices of his sisters swam back into focus. “--you wrote all the invitations yourself, didn’t you, Angeline?” Emmeline was asking.

“Of course I did, but I assure you, I did not invite her--whoever she is.”

“Well of course you didn’t,” Ida said condescendingly. “She’s likely some little village girl on her first trip to Bath who thinks she can walk into any ball she wishes as long as she’s passingly acquainted with someone in attendance. Shocking, to be sure.”

“Or maybe she’s a servant who has stolen her mistress’s clothes,” Emmeline said. She turned up her nose. “That gown is much too fine for her.”

Their voices began to sound like nails on a chalkboard, his annoyance reaching heights he’d never thought possible. He resisted the urge to grit his teeth.

“She walks as if she believed she waltzed straight off of a fashion plate--”

“--if you’ll excuse me,” Theodore interrupted, bowing with his last scrap of his composure and heading towards the stairs.

“Oh? Where are you off to?” Angeline asked.

“Didn’t you want me gone?” Theodore snapped back over his shoulder.

“Yes, but where are you going?”

Tonight was supposed to have been uneventful. He was supposed to have stayed out of sight, dance with the required number of ladies to avoid being considered rude, avoid getting into spats with his sisters, keep his own irritation with the proceedings down to a low simmer, and, above all, avoid attracting his father’s attention.

Well. To the devil with all that, he supposed.

“Nowhere,” he said, heading down the stairs.

“Oh, let him go,” he heard Ida tell his sisters condescendingly. “One of Theo’s greatest joys in life has always been to be clownishly contrary, and since as a clergyman I’m sure those joys shall become few and far between, we shall let him enjoy them while he can.”

When Theodore entered the ballroom, the girl was still standing in the same place, now studying the frescoed ceiling with great interest, her head tilted to one side.

Theodore knew he was being childish, exceedingly so. The exceedingly rational, careful side of his brain was telling him he would come to regret what he was about to do, but so great was his irritation with his sisters, this charade of a ball, and the very fabric of his life, that in that moment he could not bring himself to care.

So, Theodore Ace, third son of Lord Ace of --shire, without prompting, the proper decorum, or any means of introduction, and with the knowledge that every eye in the ballroom watched him, walked up to a lady he did not even know the name of and made his bow.

“Good evening, miss,” he said.

She turned, and at the sight of him her eyes lit up with such an unguarded, radiant delight that he felt a sudden sense of vertigo. A slow, broad smile spread across her face. “Hello,” she breathed.

Theodore froze for a moment at the strangeness of her reaction. There was something about the intensity of her gaze, the way she seemed to be taking in every line of his face, that suddenly made his cheeks go hot. But he would not be deterred.

He swallowed, determined to plunge on. “Would you dance with me?”

Chapter 2 ->

#joker and Ace #first draft!#I’m not sure if I want this to actually be the first chapter because I feel like it assumes you know too much #but at the moment this is the first part of the first chapter #Val’s ocs #tw alcohol #salt and light

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tojigasm · 5 months ago

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i just need to be idk, babied by logan, even though he knows that twenty something isnt a baby, hes showing you how to smoke properly, your sitting on his lap and taking sips of his drink, he lets you lay your head in his lap and cuddles up to him at night with ur cheek against his stomach and he just like, takes care of you? like he pets and humours and tolerates and when ur fucking hes so caring, stroking hair and kissing ur cheeks and forehead ur honour i want him so bad

And you get it soooo fucking bad because the idea of him being so paternal with you is something that just rots me to my coreee you guys. And there's a semblance of casual dominance about it that just makes me sob.

He's in the middle of fucking you. His chest pressed to your back, his skin flush to your own as he stands curved over you on your hands and knees on his bed. He keeps an arm wrapped around your chest, keeping you upright as he rolls his hips into, pressing a long kiss to the back of your head.

You'll be at the counter in the kitchen late at night, working on whatever when he wanders into the room in a grey hoodie and sweats. He makes his way to lean against the countertop, peering over at your notes. "Y'need anything, baby?" He'll eventually ask, running his knuckles over your forearm as you continue to write. "Mm, maybe water," you say, almost jumping out of your seat before you're being pushed back into the leather cushioning of the chair. "Let me do it fr'ya, sweetheart." And you don't get your glass of water until after he's "secretly" stolen a sip. He stands next to your seat at the counter until you're all done.

He's the first time you experience smoking. The smell of tobacco is heavy in the air while he sits on the front porch of the mansion. You've always been one to try new things and Logans never been one to deny you almost anything and so of course he holds the blunt of the cigar to your soft lips and lights the tobacco while you look all pretty fr'him. Takes you a couple tries and a few lessons in watching Logan easily breathe in the smokey tar, but you catch it eventually, earning a "atta' girl." From Logan.

Has you sit in his lap during movie nights at the mansion while he nurses a bottle of Jack Daniel's. He keeps a hand wrapped around your hip and the other on the neck of the bottle. Ever so often, you'll motion towards the bottle, and Logan'll hold you by the chin and tilt the bottle to your lips only for a second before pulling it away. You try to reach for it back, and he's pushing your hand away with a "C'mon, kid, that's enough." And you better not argue, it'll start an hour long discussion on how he knows best.

Or how the two of you will be lying on the couch after finishing a movie. You're resting against his chest as he runs the tips of his fingers up and down your back softly. And he'll just start giving you quick pecks here and there over your cheeks and on the tip of your nose and your forehead and chin before pulling back to look you over. He'll soothe the palm of his hand over the soft apple of your cheek, whispering softly "Yr'my baby, huh."

#the drinking one with him is very much like shhhh occasional drink enthusiast an alcoholic is speaking #will definitely be drafting a first drink fic with Logan later <333 #might flesh the rest of these out too <3 #logan howlett #wolverine #logan howlett x reader #wolverine x reader

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